Airbus signs contract for integration of 115 new Eurofighter ESCAN radars

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  July 24, 2020 | International, Naval

  US Navy makes progress on aircraft carrier Ford’s bedeviled weapons elevators

  By: David B. Larter WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy is over the halfway mark in certifying the new aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford's 11 advanced weapons elevators, which have been at the center of an ongoing controversy over delays in getting the Navy's most expensive-ever warship ready for its first deployment. In a news release Thursday, the Navy announced it had certified Lower Stage Weapons Elevator 1, the sixth certified working elevator. LSWE 1 moves bombs from the forward magazine up to a staging area beneath the flight deck, where the weapons are armed and sent to the upper-stage weapons elevators that go to the flight deck. Crews had already certified the elevator that brings bombs from the aft magazine to the staging area. The elevators are designed to reduce the time it takes to get bombs armed and to the flight deck to mount on aircraft. “LSWE 5 has given us the capacity to move ordnance from the aft magazine complex deep in the ship through the carrier to the flight deck with a speed and agility that has never been seen before on any warship,” Rear Adm. James Downey, program executive officer for aircraft carriers, said in a statement. “LSWE 1 doubles-down on that capability and ramps up the velocity of flight deck operations. LSWEs 1 and 5 will now operate in tandem, providing a dramatic capability improvement as we proceed toward full combat system certification aboard Ford.” The remaining five weapons elevators are on track for certification by the time the ship goes to full-ship shock trials in the third quarter of 2021. The weapons elevators became the center of a firestorm last year and contributed to the firing of former Navy Secretary Richard Spencer. In January 2019, Spencer announced he'd told the president that if the weapons elevators aren't functioning by midsummer, then the president should fire him. But within months Spencer had to admit that the weapons elevators would not be finished until the end of 2021 or maybe 2022, which he blamed on Huntington Ingalls Industries for a lack of adequate communication. Turnover The Ford has had a witch's brew of technical problems and delays since construction of the ship began in 2005. The latest hiccup came in June in the form of a fault in the power supply system to the electromagnetic aircraft launch system, which is replacing the steam catapult system on Nimitz-class carriers. The fault curtailed flight operations on the ship for several days while the crew and contractors tried to identify the issue. In the wake of that incident, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition James Geurts fired Capt. Ron Rutan as Ford's program manager, citing “performance over time.” Geurts installed Capt. Brian Metcalf as program head. Making the Ford deployment ready was a focus of former acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly, who likened the ship to an albatross around the Navy's neck. “The Ford is something the president cares a lot about, it's something he talks a lot about, and I think his concerns are justified,” Modly said. “It's very, very expensive, and it needs to work. “And there is a trail of tears that explains why we are where we are, but right now we need to fix that ship and make sure it works. There is nothing worse than having a ship like that, our most expensive asset, being out there as a metaphor for why the Navy can't do anything right.” Conceived in an era when the Defense Department was looking to make giant steps forward in military technology while it had no direct peer competitors, the lead ship was packed with at least 23 new technologies. Those included a complete redesign of the systems used to arm, launch and recover the ship's aircraft. All those systems have, in their turn, caused delays in getting the Navy's most expensive-ever warship to the fleet, which was originally to have deployed in 2018, but now will likely not deploy until 2023. The Ford cost the Navy roughly $13.3 billion, according to the latest Congressional Research Service report on the topic. https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2020/07/23/the-us-navy-is-making-progress-on-the-carrier-fords-bedeviling-weapons-elevators/

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  September 16, 2022 | International, Aerospace

  'SkyRange' uncrewed aircraft to speed hypersonic testing by 2024

  The program is part of a broader Pentagon effort to increase its hypersonic flight-test cadence from about a dozen tests annually to almost one per week.

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  December 17, 2018 | International, C4ISR

  Audit finds cyber vulnerabilities in US missile defense system

  By: Geoff Ziezulewicz The Army, Navy and Missile Defense Agency are failing to take basic cybersecurity steps to ensure that information on America's ballistic missile defense system won't fall into nefarious hands, according to a Defense Department Inspector General audit released Friday. Investigators visited five sites that manage ballistic missile defense elements and technical information, but the names of the commands were redacted in the publicly released report. “The Army, Navy and MDA did not protect networks and systems that process, store, and transmit (missile defense) technical information from unauthorized access and use,” the declassified report states. Such inadequacies “may allow U.S. adversaries to circumvent (missile defense) capabilities, leaving the United States vulnerable to missile attacks,” the report states. They found officials failed to employ safeguards familiar to most people online in 2018, the latest development to raise questions about the U.S. military's cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Among the shortcomings: Administrators for classified networks had no intrusion detection and prevention systems in place to watch for cyberattacks, much less stop them, according to the report. At one site, officials said they had requested to purchase those cyber safeguards in December 2017 but nine months later it still hadn't been approved. “Without intrusion detection and prevention capabilities, (the site) cannot detect malicious attempts to access its networks and prevent cyberattacks designed to obtain unauthorized access and exfiltrate sensitive (missile defense) technical information,” the report states. Officials also failed to patch system flaws after receiving vulnerability alerts, one of which had first been identified in 1990 and had still not been fixed by April. Another vulnerability that could be exploited by an attacker was first identified in 2013 but also was never pathced, according to the report. “Countless cyber incident reports show that the overwhelming majority of incidents are preventable by implementing basic cyber hygiene and data safeguards, which include regularly patching known vulnerabilities,” the IG report states. “(Missile defense) technical information that is critical to national security could be compromised through cyberattacks that are designed to exploit these weaknesses.” Some facilities failed to force employees to use common access cards, or CAC, when accessing the classified system, a basic cybersecurity practice known as multi-factor identification. Instead, officials were able to access the sensitive information using just a username and password, the report states. Hackers use phishing and other tactics to exploit passwords and gain access to such systems. New hires are supposed to be allowed network access without a card for only their first two weeks on the job. But IG investigators found users on the systems without CAC cards for up to seven years. At one site, a domain administrator never configured the network to allow only CAC holder access. “Allowing users to access networks using single factor authentication increases the potential that cyber attackers could exploit passwords and gain access to sensitive (missile defense) technical information,” the report states. Investigators also found unlocked server racks at some locations, another key vulnerability to insider snoopers. “The insider threat risk necessitates that organizations implement controls...to reduce the risk of malicious personnel manipulating a server's ability to function as intended and compromising sensitive and classified data,” the report states. External storage devices held unencrypted data and some sites failed to track who was accessing data, and why. Other administrators told investigators that they lacked the ability to record or monitor data downloaded from the network onto these devices. Unless these officials enforce the encryption of such removed data and monitor its downloading and transferring, “they will be at increased risk of not protecting sensitive and classified (missile defense) technical information from malicious users,” the report states. Investigators also found that some supposedly secure sites were failing to even lock their doors. One location had a security door that hadn't worked for years. “Although security officials were aware of the problem, they did not take appropriate actions to prevent unauthorized personnel from gaining unauthorized access to the facility,” the report states. Other sites featured no security cameras to monitor personnel movement and security officers failed to conduct badge checks. While the report makes recommendations to fix the documented problems, officials for the inspected agencies offered no comments on the non-classified draft report of the audit. Friday's scathing IG audit marked the latest in a string of reports detailing shoddy cybersecurity throughout the armed forces and defense contractors. During the same week, the Wall St. Journal reported that Chinese hackers are targeting military systems and those of defense contractors working on Navy projects. Beijing-linked cyber raids have attempted to steal everything from missile plans to ship-maintenance data in a series of hacks over the past 18 months, the Journal reports. As a result, Navy Secretary Richard Spencer has ordered a “comprehensive cybersecurity review” to assess if the Navy's cyber efforts “are optimally focused, organized, and resourced to prevent serious breaches,” spokesman Capt. Greg Hicks said. The review will also look at authorities, accountability and if the efforts reflect and incorporate government and industry best practices, he said. “Secretary Spencer's decision to direct a review reflects the serious to which the DoN prioritizes cybersecurity in this era of renewed great power competition,” Hicks said. https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2018/12/14/audit-finds-cyber-vulnerabilities-in-us-missile-defense-system