Army missile defense battle command system takes out cruise missile threats in major test

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  July 29, 2021 | International, Land

  Lawmakers want answers on US Army plans to protect vehicles from drones

  Will the Army's combat vehicles be able to actively defend against drones? A House subpanel wants to know.

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  December 1, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  How the Biden administration is expected to approach tech research and development

  Andrew Eversden WASHINGTON — Experts expect President-elect Joe Biden's administration to build on the Trump administration's investments in emerging technologies, while adding to research and development budgets in the Defense Department and across the federal government. The incoming Biden administration signaled throughout the campaign that basic research and development funding would be a priority. Biden wrote in Foreign Affairs he would make research and development a “cornerstone” of his presidency and pointed to the United States having the “greatest research universities in the world.” “It's basic research that's the area where you get the breakthroughs, and you need long-term, sustained investments to build up a strong S&T base,” said Martijn Rasser, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security's technology and national security program. Biden's R&D investment is an expected change from the Trump administration's approach, which experts have noted is narrower in scope and focused on harnessing private sector innovation. “The reality is the U.S. private sector has eclipsed the government, which in some ways that can be good,” said Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee's Subcommittee on Intelligence and Emerging Threats and Capabilities. “The private sector can move with greater agility than the government, but the private sector may not be focusing on developing those exquisite technologies that we need for the war fighter.” Experts told C4ISRNET they expect the Biden administration to invest more money in basic research areas and to reform immigration laws that slowed the innovation pipeline from abroad to the United States. “China is closing in. They are spending every year more and more on R&D. They will soon, if not already, be spending as much as we are, if not more on R&D,” Langevin said told C4ISRNET. “Congress has woken up to this problem.” Basic research Perhaps the most likely area the Biden administration is poised to change is basic research and development funding. According to annual reports from the Congressional Research Service, the Trump administration consistently proposed top-line cuts to federal research and development in yearly budget proposals. This included the fiscal 2021 budget proposal's $13.8 billion decrease in defense R&D over the fiscal 2020 funding enacted by Congress. While the Pentagon has often been spared from such cuts, the Trump administration has also suggested trimming the defense-related basic research budget line — money that is a “substantial source of federal funds for university R&D,” according to the Congressional Research Service. The White House's FY21 defense-related basic research budget line asked for a reduction of about 11 percent from FY20 enacted, or a $284.2 million decrease. Biden's campaign platform calls for a four-year investment of $300 billion in R&D for new technology such as 5G, artificial intelligence, advanced materials and electric cars. “A nation speaks to and identifies its priorities by where it puts its research dollars, where it puts its money,” Langevin said. “Basic research has to be more of a priority, and that's something I'm going to encourage the Biden administration to focus on.” Michèle Flournoy, thought to be a leading contender to become the next secretary of defense, has also written about the need to increase investment in emerging technologies to counter China. In Foreign Affairs in June, Flournoy wrote that “resilient battlefield networks, artificial intelligence to support faster decision-making, fleets of unmanned systems, and hypersonic and long-range precision missiles” will “ultimately determine military success.” “Continuing to underinvest in these emerging capabilities will ultimately have dire costs for U.S. deterrence,” she wrote. Congressional and think tank reports published during the Trump administration's tenure called for an increase in basic research funding. A report from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence's strategic tech and advanced research subpanel, led by Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., recommended bumping up federal research and development funding from 0.7 percent to 1.1 percent of gross domestic product, or an increase of $146 billion to $230 billion. A report by the Council on Foreign Relations from 2019 applauded the Trump administration's requested increases in funding for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, now funded at $3.46 billion, and the Defense Innovation Unit, for which the Trump administration requested $164 million. Laying the groundwork Initiatives started under the Trump administration did provide a groundwork on which the Biden administration can build. Under the Trump administration, DARPA kicked off a $1.5 billion microelectronics effort. In artificial intelligence, the administration launched the American AI Initiative. However, the Council on Foreign Relations criticized that effort because it had no funding and left agencies to prioritize artificial intelligence R&D spending without metrics, while also drawing funds from other research areas. The administration also made an $1.2 billion investment in quantum information science. “The Trump administration started bringing national attention and federal focus to many of these technologies,” said Lindsey Sheppard, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “I hope to see from the Biden administration perhaps a more cohesive guiding strategy for all of these pieces.” While the Trump administration has started many initiatives, the Council on Foreign Relations report also criticized the Trump administration's innovation strategy as an “incremental and limited approach,” writing that “action does not match the language officials use to describe the importance of AI to U.S. economic and national security.” While investment in future technology is important, defense budgets are expected to stay flat or decrease in the coming years. In her Foreign Affairs article, Flournoy acknowledge that the budgetary reality will require “tough tradeoffs.” Experts agree. “R&D programs are going to have to start being able to consistently, clearly articulate justifications for their budgets and the returns on investment,” Sheppard said. But the coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the need for increased investments in research and development, Himes and Langevin argued. Both lawmakers identified biothreats as something they fear for the future. Biological threats are one area that DARPA — an organization Langevin pointed to as a major federal R&D success story — has triumphantly address. Commercial partners from DARPA's 3-year-old pandemic prevention platform program announced they developed a COVID-19 therapeutic using new techniques. “There's absolutely going to be a rethink,” Himes told C4ISRNET in an interview. “Are we correctly allocating money between the possibility that there could be a pandemic that kills a million Americans, versus the possibility that we're going to have to fight the Russians in the Fulda Gap? I think there's going be a lot of thinking about that. And there should be thinking about that because our money should go to those areas where there's the highest probability of dead Americans.” Immigration innovation Another way to improve American innovation in critical future technologies is by allowing highly skilled foreigners to work in the United States. Biden has hinted at changes that will affect American innovation through the expected reversals of President Donald Trump's immigration policies, which limited high-skilled workers from legally working in the country. The Biden administration's platform states it wants to reform the H-1B visa process that the Trump administration restricted, much to the chagrin of American tech companies, which use the program to hire top talent from abroad. Think tanks have recommended reforming the current U.S. immigration policy to attract international students, entrepreneurs and high-skilled workers because of the innovative ideas they provide. For example, an analysis by Georgetown University's Center for Security and Technology found that 68 percent of the United States' top 50 artificial intelligence companies were co-founded by immigrants, most of whom came the U.S. as students. “A lot of the Trump administration's policies — we're shooting ourselves in the foot making it so much harder for people to come here,” said Rasser, who wrote a report for CNAS last year calling for H1-B caps to be increased. “Because of the fact that people want to come to the United States to live and work, that's one of our greatest competitive advantages. It's something I expect the Biden administration to reverse.” https://www.c4isrnet.com/smr/transition/2020/11/29/how-the-biden-administration-is-expected-to-approach-tech-research-and-development/

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  June 3, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  Pentagon taps $688 million in coronavirus aid for defense industry

  By: Joe Gould WASHINGTON ― The Pentagon plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in coronavirus relief funding to support vulnerable manufacturers of submarine torpedo tubes, aircraft engine parts and hardened microelectronics that were hit by closures or other effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The $688 million defense-industrial base fund is just one category within the $10.5 billion the Department of Defense received from Congress' $2.1 trillion CARES Act package. The department submitted its 54-page spending plan to Congress on Friday amid pressure from lawmakers after DoD had spent only 23 percent of that money weeks after it was signed into law in late March. The Pentagon has thus far obligated $167 million of the $1 billion Congress granted under the Defense Production Act, a Korean War-era law that the president recently invoked, to have industry produce key items such as N95 respirator masks and swabs needed for coronavirus testing, ventilators and other items. Under the same law, the Pentagon's spending plan says it would use $688 million to address impacts to the defense-industrial base caused by COVID-19, "by directly offsetting financial distress in the DIB and providing investments to regions most severely impacted to sustain essential domestic industrial base capabilities and spur local job creation.” The plan calls for $171 million for the aircraft propulsion industrial base; $150 million for shipbuilding and submarine launch tubes; $150 million for the space launch industrial base; $80 million for the microelectronics base; $62 million for body armor suppliers; and $40 million for high-temperature materials used in hypersonic weapons. The priorities likely overlap with vulnerable industrial base areas previously identified by the Pentagon's assessment last year, said Wesley Hallman, the National Defense Industrial Association's senior vice president of strategy and policy . “It makes sense given what's going on now economically to ― under the [coronavirus aid] legislation ― reinforce some of the critical vulnerabilities that were identified in that report,” Hallman said. The Pentagon plans $171 million to sustain and preserve the aircraft propulsion industrial base, as many military aviation suppliers have been hard hit from the commercial side by coronavirus travel restrictions. Some would preserve an "essential workforce through support to sustained operations at key repair facility and stabilizing sub-vendors essential to a healthy propulsion industrial base,” according to the department. What that means is the DoD may have to absorb some of suppliers' overhead costs to keep vital suppliers in business, said Teal Group aviation analyst Richard Aboulafia. “Commercial aviation is in the worst crisis it's ever faced, and aviation propulsion aftermarket is the single part of the industry most hit by COVID-19,” Aboulafia said. “It could be [that] if there's a part like a combustor, DoD could be saying: ‘What do you need by way of guaranteed orders to keep that line open?' ” The department, which relies on a vulnerable network of suppliers for parts for the venerable TF33 engine, hopes to “support initiatives to certify and approve new parts sources for” the engine and “catalyze the sub-tier vendor base and mitigate risk of sub-tier vendors exiting the propulsion business.” Pratt & Whitney hasn't made the TF33 in more than 40 years, but it's still used by the B-52 bomber, and no replacement is due for years. The DoD also planned $150 million for the shipbuilding industrial base in areas such as castings, forgings and submarine launch equipment, as well as to support continuous production of essential components such as missile tubes. (Shipbuilding overall has contracted over the last decade, and there were only four suppliers with the capability to manufacture large, complex, single-pour aluminum and magnesium sand castings, according to the DoD's 2019 industrial capabilities report to Congress.) The CEO of Virginia-based military contractor BWXT, Rex Geveden, said on an earnings call last year that the company ― which makes missile tubes for the Columbia-class submarine ― was mulling an exit from the missile tube business. The Navy and its Naval Sea Systems Command, he said, were seeking more than one supplier, adding: “We're not interested in the future orders unless we do have a way to make money on these orders.” The DoD planned another $150 million to maintain a competitive space launch industrial base. DoD relies on a small pool of companies to launch satellites into orbit, but there are numerous companies of all sizes that support those launches, and the DoD has sought to reintroduce more competition over the enterprise in recent years. The department would also spend $80 million to support several critical suppliers of radiation-hardened microelectronics ― products vital to DoD but with limited commercial applications. The funding would “protect the domestic capacity to ensure radiation hardened microelectronics testing capability, and key subcompacts such as substrates and wafer, are available for DoD weapon systems," according to the spending plan. The $40 million would protect suppliers of high-temperature materials used in potentially game-changing hypersonic weapons. “An expanded, sustainable domestic production capability for hypersonic systems is essential to the Department achieving its modernization priorities,” the plan states. https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2020/06/02/688m-in-covid-aid-helping-defense-firms-per-dod-plan/