July 27, 2021 | International, Aerospace
Puma 3 AE and Raven tactical unmanned aircraft system (UAS) orders include spares.
December 6, 2023 | International, Aerospace
High-altitude platforms with deep-sensing capabilities could soon come to the Army, providing a new way for troops to see across vast distances.
September 4, 2018 | International, C4ISR
By: Adam Stone As Navy Cyber Security Division director, Rear Adm. Danelle Barrett casts a wary eye over the rising importance of data as a weapon of war. Data is an ever-more-critical battlefield asset, given the rising internet of things, including a rapidly growing inventory of unmanned intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets across the Navy. Protecting all that data from enemy exploitation represents a potentially massive cyber challenge. This spring, the Navy announced “Compile to Combat in 24 Hours,” a pilot project to leverage web services and a new cloud architecture in the service of data security. C4ISRNET's Adam Stone spoke to Barrett about the potential there, and about the emerging IT security landscape in a data-centric military. C4ISRNET: Data has become increasingly valuable, especially in terms of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. How valuable is it? How do you describe the significance of data these days? REAR ADM. DANELLE BARRETT: If you look at what goes on in industry and how they use big data for decision making, to be predictive and proactive: that's exactly the kind of environment that we want to get to. Being able to trust those data, to access the data, expose the data, reuse the data — that becomes actually the hardest part. C4ISRNET: Let's talk about that. Sharing data involves risk. Talk about that risk landscape. BARRETT: The more data that you have out there and the more places you have it, obviously you have an increased attack surface. Adversaries will go after your data to try to get an advantage. So, you want to protect data down to the lowest layer and you want to make sure that you have defense in depth built in, and resiliency to be able to work through any kind of attack or interruption in your data flow. We build our architectures around being resilient using the NIST [National Institute of Standards and Technology] model of “detect, react and restore.” You build in as much resiliency as you can. C4ISRNET: Can you say, specifically, how that's done? BARRETT: I'll give you an example of something that we're testing in our architecture to try to improve the data down to the data element layer. We have an effort called “Compile to Combat in 24 Hours.” We're looking at modernizing our afloat architecture and, as we do that, we're decomposing big monolithic applications, if you will, into web services similar to what you'd get on an iPhone: smaller capabilities, smaller web services as opposed to these big monolithic applications. As you do that, you can ensure that you're using standard ports and protocols, so you don't have applications on the ship that are reaching back over nonstandard ports, which would present an increased attack surface. If you can standardize on your ports, you can sense those better and monitor those better. Then you then go down to the data element layer. Say you standardize on extensible markup language, XML, you can then apply the SAML protocol that is inherent to that to protect your data at that lowest layer. We're testing that concept in an architecture now. Full article: https://www.c4isrnet.com/it-networks/2018/08/31/the-rising-importance-of-data-as-a-weapon-of-war/
October 29, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security, Other Defence
Tom Kington ROME — Italy has announced a major boost to its defense budget even as the country spends millions of euros battling the devastating effect of COVID-19 on its economy. Overall defense ministry spending is up 9.6 percent this year to €15.3 billion (U.S. $18.1 billion), with the procurement budget emerging as the big winner as it rises by 26 percent from last year if coupled with top-up spending from the industry ministry. “This is a very positive budget for the armed forces, especially for procurement during this challenging economic climate,” said Paolo Crippa, a defense analyst at the CESI think tank in Rome. The figures are included in Italy's 2020 budget, which should have been released in the spring, but was held up by the COVID-19 crisis which hit Italy hard in March and is now threatening the country again. This year's €15.3 billion defense ministry spending compares to just under €14 billion last year, signaling a halt in a series of year-on-year falls. Procurement takes up €2.8 billion of the budget, up 50 percent on last year, but for a true picture of Italian procurement spending the annual top-up for domestic procurement provided by the Italian industry ministry must be added, which amounts to €2.64 billion, also up from last year. The total to spend on procurement therefore comes to €5.45 billion, up 26 percent on last year's €4.32 billion. Of the other two other spending categories in the ministry budget, Maintenance and Operations rises 23 percent to €2.15 billion, while personnel spending remains stable at €10.4 billion. “The rise in M&O spending follows claims by generals that cuts were damaging military readiness,” said Crippa. The budget was drawn up by defense minister Lorenzo Guerini, a member of the center-left Democratic Party which governs in a coalition government with the anti-establishment Five Star party. Since first entering government in 2018, Five Star has softened its anti-military stance, which saw it initially push to scrap the F-35 program. This year, the F-35 program receives €800 million to help conclude the purchase of the first 28 of Italy's planned 90 aircraft buy. A further €126 million is also budgeted to get the purchase of the next 27 aircraft underway. Other ongoing programs that get more funding in 2020 include the purchase of 650 new VTLM 2 vehicles – an upgrade of the army Lince vehicle, as well as a mid-life refurbishment for Italy's Storm Shadow missiles and the purchase of T-345 and T-346 jet trainers. Further programs also getting a dose of regular funding are Italy's new, €1.17 billion LHD vessel the Trieste, a €2 billion acquisition of 150 new Centauro II wheeled tanks and a €974 million purchase of 16 new CH-47F helicopters. Comparing the total envisaged price tag of some programs in the budget to the price listed in last year's budget reveals costs are rising. A plan to buy four new U-212 NFS submarines has risen from €2.35 billion to €2.68 billion this year, a hike of over €300 million. The ongoing purchase of ten PPA naval vessels has risen over €400 million to €4.27 billion. Some programs appear for the first time in the budget, including two new “DDX” destroyers for the Navy. No money is earmarked in 2020 but €4.5 million is due to be used for a de-risking study beginning in 2021. A second new entry is a listing for a “multi-mission, multi-sensor” Gulfstream G-550 jet. Without stating how many aircraft Italy plans to order, the budget gives the total price tag of the program as €1.23 billion and states that funding will start in 2021. The capabilities of the platform listed include command-and-control, “electronic superiority” and “electronic protection of forces.” An Italian analyst who declined to be named said the program was a reprisal of a long nurtured Italian plan for a sensor platform dubbed JAMMS, which would offer signals intelligence, communications relay and radar capabilities. The Italian Air Force declined to comment on the program. An illustration of the aircraft in the budget document resembles Israel's “Shavit” Signals Intelligence Gulfstream. Italy already flies two Gulfstream 550 Conformal Airborne Early Warning aircraft it purchased from Israel's IAI in 2012 as part of a swap deal under which Israel purchased 30 M-346 trainers from Italian firm Leonardo. The budget document states that after getting underway, the new program will take onboard future technology advancements and the benefits of “international cooperation accords.” The analyst said, “There is a plan to buy the platform now since the Gulfstream G550 is going out of production, then add Israeli systems in return for purchases by Israel from Italian industry.” Programs on the military's wish list which do not have any funding earmarked yet also get a mention in the budget document, starting with investment in the U.K.-led Tempest program for a future sixth-generation fighter. But the absence of cash for the program, which the U.K. and Sweden have already invested in, risked making Italy the weakest partner in the trio, wrote Italian defense publication RID. “In this way, there is the risk that Italy's ability to influence the development decreases and it will be weaker when it comes to future talks on the dividing of manufacturing,” the publication stated. The document also confirms Italy's interest in joining the U.S. Future Vertical Lift helicopter initiative to build next generation helicopters, which is currently being pursued by the United States only. Government officials have already mulled investing in the program using funds paid out by the EU to help the Italian economy rebound from COVID-19. Analysts have suggested that buying into FVL may overlap with work by Italy's Leonardo to build the AW249, a replacement for Italy's AW129 Mangusta attack helicopter. This year, the plan to complete a €2.7 billion purchase of 48 of the AW249 helicopters receives funding in the budget. “There is cash for the successor to the AW129 but seeing the mention of the FVL confirms Italy is also interested in that initiative,” said Crippa. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2020/10/28/italy-defense-budget-rebounds-despite-covid-crisis/