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  August 14, 2024 | International, C4ISR, Security

  DDoS Attacks Surge 46% in First Half of 2024, Gcore Report Reveals

  DDoS attacks surge 46% in 2024, with gaming and technology sectors hardest hit. Learn about evolving attack patterns and their impact

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  August 5, 2019 | International, Aerospace

  Hypersonic threats need an offense-defense mix

  By: Melanie Marlowe Next week, people from across the missile defense community will gather at an annual symposium in Huntsville, Alabama, to consider how to adapt U.S. missile defense efforts to the challenge of renewed competition with Russia and China. A centerpiece of their discussions will be the emergence of advanced hypersonic missile threats and what to do about them. Over the past few years, the Pentagon has prioritized the development of offensive hypersonic strike weapons, with billions of dollars in contracts already awarded for each of the major military services to acquire hypersonic strike missiles of their own. The counter-hypersonic mission, however, received surprisingly short shrift in recent defense budgets, with progress on hypersonic defense thus far piecemeal and halting. Some leading military officials charged with procuring hypersonic strike missiles have said that defending against hypersonic missiles is too hard, so we shouldn't even try. That short-sighted approach is at odds with the vision of newly confirmed Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, who stated to Congress that he will advocate hypersonic missile defense, to include the development of new sensors, interceptors, and advanced command-and-control systems. Public commentary on hypersonic threats has been somewhat hyperbolic. Yes, hypersonics are fast — five or more times the speed of sound — but that's slower than many ballistic missiles. Aerodynamic maneuver makes for a less predictable flight path, but this also means that atmospheric friction would remove the kind of decoys that might accompany a ballistic reentry vehicle. Whether a boosted glide vehicle, a scramjet cruise missile or a maneuverable quasi-ballistic missile, hypersonics pose a complex air defense challenge, but they are not invulnerable. The strategic significance of hypersonics is nevertheless quite real. Today's Patriot, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense and Aegis defenses protect American carrier groups and ground forces against aerial and ballistic missile attack. Designed to go around or under those defenses, hypersonics are a more sophisticated means to hold forces at risk, and thereby undermine our broader defense goals and alliance system. Even if the United States catches up with the Chinese and Russians on hypersonic strike, our adversaries' ability to hold U.S. carriers and forward bases at risk will push back U.S. forces. They could certainly also be used to target the American homeland, but the more urgent threat is regional. Passive defense only goes so far — ships can only go so fast, and air bases cannot be moved. Active defenses must be part of a balanced strategy. The first priority here is a space sensor layer. Unlike ballistic missiles, hypersonic missiles fly at lower and changing altitudes, are harder to see, and travel an uncertain flight path. Current early warning satellites can detect the launch of boost-glide vehicles but are unsuited to tracking them during the glide phase. Today's surface-based ballistic missile radars would only be able to spot a weapon once it crosses the horizon. Only space sensors can provide birth-to-death, fire-control quality tracks for hypersonic missiles. Unfortunately, recent budget requests have been rather tepid in their commitment to space sensors. The administration's 2020 request virtually divested the program, and for the second year in a row the Missile Defense Agency listed the space sensor layer as its No. 1 unfunded priority. Thankfully, Congress seems to be in the process of restoring $108 million to return the program to the MDA to move out on development this year. The second element of hypersonic defense is interceptors. Although existing interceptors may well be improved, Secretary Esper has affirmed that new interceptors will have to be developed that are better suited to the mission's stressing thermal and high-maneuver environment. The MDA's third-highest unfunded priority for 2020 — $720 million for hypersonic defense — seems unlikely to be restored this year, but should be restored in the 2021 budget. Directed-energy weapons could potentially target hypersonic threats in their cruise phase or jam them in their terminal phase, but the mission's complexity will almost certainly require both kinetic and nonkinetic effectors. The most challenging element will be developing a command-and-control architecture that ties everything together. A long-range hypersonic glide vehicle of significant range could cross continents and multiple combatant commands. Even with better interceptors and an adequate sensor layer, information and fire-control solutions must be developed and rapidly passed to commanders. The Command and Control, Battle Management, and Communications network that supports the Ballistic Missile Defense System may be the foundation of such an architecture, but more dramatic upgrades will be required. The advent of the hypersonic era is central to the efforts by Russia and China to counter U.S. power projection in the world. The Pentagon's recent focus on hypersonic strike is necessary but insufficient. It falls now to congressional leadership and those assembling the 2021 budget to rebalance it with a more appropriate mix of hypersonic strike and defense. https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2019/08/02/hypersonic-threats-need-an-offense-defense-mix/

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  June 22, 2018 | International, Naval

  Upgrading US Navy ships is difficult and expensive. Change is coming

  By: David B. Larter WASHINGTON ― The U.S. Navy is looking at extending the life of its surface ships by as much as 13 years, meaning some ships might be 53 years old when they leave the fleet. Here's the main problem: keeping their combat systems relevant. The Navy's front-line combatants ― cruisers and destroyers ― are incredibly expensive to upgrade, in part because one must cut open the ship and remove fixtures that were intended to be permanent when they were installed. When the Navy put Baseline 9 on the cruiser Normandy a few years ago, which included all new consoles, displays and computer servers in addition to the software, it ran the service $188 million. Now, the capability and function of the new Baseline 9 suite on Normandy is staggering. The cost of doing that to all the legacy cruisers and destroyers in the fleet would be equally staggering: it would cost billions. So why is that? Why are the most advanced ships on the planet so difficult to keep relevant? And if the pace of change is picking up, how can the Navy stay relevant in the future without breaking the national piggy bank? Capt. Mark Vandroff, the current commanding officer of the Carderock Division of the Naval Surface Warfare Center and former Arleigh Burke-class destroyer program manager, understands this issue better than most. At this week's American Society of Naval Engineers symposium, Vandroff described why its so darn hard to upgrade the old ships and how future designs will do better. Here's what Vandroff had to say: “Flexibility is a requirement that historically we haven't valued, and we haven't valued it for very good reasons: It wasn't important. “When you think of a ship that was designed in the ‘70s and built in the ‘80s, we didn't realize how fast and how much technology was going to change. We could have said: ‘You know what? I'm going to have everything bolted.' Bolt down the consoles in [the combat information center], bolt in the [vertical launch system] launchers ― all of it bolted so that we could more easily pop out and remove and switch out. “The problem was we didn't value that back then. We were told to value survivability and density because we were trying to pack maximum capability into the space that we have. That's why you have what you have with the DDG-51 today. And they are hard to modernize because we valued survivability and packing the maximum capability into the minimum space. And we achieved that because that was the requirement at the time. “I would argue that now as we look at requirements for future ships, flexibility is a priority. You are going to have to balance it. What if I have to bolt stuff down? Well, either we are going to give up some of my survivability standards or I'm going to take up more space to have the equivalent standards with an different kind of mounting system, for example. And that is going to generate a new set of requirements ― it's going to drive design in different directions than it went before. “I suppose you could accuse the ship designers in the 1980s of failure to foresee the future, but that's all of us. And the point is they did what they were told to do. Flexibility is what we want now, and I think you will see it drive design from this point forward because it is now something we are forced to value.” https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2018/06/21/upgrading-us-navy-ships-is-difficult-and-expensive-change-is-coming/