Australia to buy 20 Hercules military transport planes in $6.6 bln deal

On the same subject

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  September 14, 2020 | International, Aerospace

  Rafale pour la Grèce : entretien avec Eric Trappier, PDG de Dassault Aviation

  Eric Trappier, PDG de Dassault Aviation, s'exprime dans Le Figaro. Il souligne notamment que L'intention manifestée par la Grèce, samedi soir, d'acquérir 18 avions de combat français Rafale «est une bonne nouvelle pour la France et pour son industrie aéronautique, dans le contexte difficile de la crise du Covid-19, marquée par un effondrement de l'activité sur le marché civil. C'est aussi une bonne nouvelle du point de vue politique avec un renforcement des relations entre les deux pays méditerranéens que sont la Grèce et la France. Et, enfin, c'est une bonne nouvelle pour Dassault Aviation et les partenaires du programme Rafale». Les Rafale sont appelés à remplacer la flotte de Mirage 2000 d'ancienne génération grecque, et à renforcer les capacités de défense et d'attaque du pays aux côtés des Mirage 2000-5 plus récents et des F-16 américains, en cours de modernisation. «Le premier ministre grec nous a demandé d'aller vite afin que les avions entrent rapidement en service dans leurs forces. Aussi, allons-nous tout mettre en œuvre afin d'aboutir à la signature du contrat commercial avant la fin de l'année. C'est ambitieux mais nous avons déjà démontré, notamment avec notre client égyptien, que nous savions répondre présents dans des délais très courts», explique Éric Trappier. La Grèce, client historique de Dassault depuis 1974, devient le tout premier client européen, membre de l'Otan, du Rafale. Il s'agit, pour l'avion de combat français, du quatrième succès à l'exportation, après l'Égypte et le Qatar en 2015 puis l'Inde en 2016, rappelle Le Figaro. «C'est encore une exception en Europe qui, je l'espère, montrera l'exemple à d'autres pays», souligne Éric Trappier. Le Figaro du 14 septembre

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  September 22, 2020 | International, Land, C4ISR

  New US Army radios show anti-jam progress at network experiment

  Andrew Eversden WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army is seeing improvements in anti-jam capabilities in new radios crucial to securing manned-unmanned communications at its annual Network Modernization Experiment. At NetModX '20, which runs from late July to early October at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey, the Army's Combat Capabilities Development Command's C5ISR Center — or Command, Control, Communication, Computers, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Center — is testing the resiliency of the new radios. The effort will help the service observe how they would perform in the field as the Army looks to partner humans and machines. Initial data from the event suggests the two companies involved — Silvus and Persistent Systems — have improved their radio capabilities from last year, specifically in regard to anti-jam, according to Daniel Duvak, chief of the C5ISR Center's Radio Frequency Communications division. But one major challenge is making the radios less detectable as the Army's tactical network team starts to focus on command post survivability — or reducing the electromagnetic signature of command post communications — while not sacrificing latency and throughput. “If you want to make it less detectable, you know oftentimes you have to trade off the throughput or the range or one of those other products,” Duvak said. “So that's the piece and the real technical challenge that they're continuing to work on over the next few months. We've seen progress that they've made in those areas, but that's the piece that they're still working on.” Robert Stevens, an electronics engineer at the Radio Frequency Communications division, told C4ISRNET that the radios are an important piece of the next-generation combat vehicle. And Duvak said the Army's tactical network modernization team — made up of the Network Cross-Functional Team and Program Executive Office Command, Control, Communications-Tactical — wants to use the radios as a mid-tier radio solution. The development and fielding of new science and technology projects can take more than five years; however, the Army wants to speed that up as it seeks to modernize systems in preparation for future conflicts with near-peer adversaries. At last year's Network Modernization Experiment, the C5ISR Center tested several vendors' radios to see where commercial technology stood. Alternative contracting options, like broad agency announcements as well as cooperative research and development agreements, have proved critical to quickening radio development. Under the contracting mechanisms, vendors and the Army have more flexibility to experiment with radios and make iterative modifications as requirements change. Duvak said this is different from how the Army did business years ago, when it would award yearslong contracts but eventually receive radios that no longer met current requirements. “What we were able to do at this program was, in just about a year and a half of development time, take a couple of those products that we saw that were very promising and we were able to add and actually fund vendors to enhance those radios with those resiliency features that we were just talking about for the contested environment,” Duvak said. “Things like making them anti-jam, or more difficult for the adversary to jam, making them more difficult for the adversary to detect or intercept our communications.” Duvak said the Army wants the new radio capabilities for Capability Set '23, a collection of new tactical network tools to be fielded to soldiers in fiscal 2023. The resiliency of communications is critical as the tactical network modernization team pivots to reduce the electronic signature of the service's command post under Capability Set '23. The team is looking to increase bandwidth and reduce latency as part of that set of tools. Preliminary design review for Capability Set '23 is scheduled for April next year. https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/it-networks/2020/09/21/new-us-army-radios-show-anti-jam-progress-at-network-experiment/

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  October 10, 2019 | International, C4ISR

  The data challenge of space-based hypersonics defense

  By: Nathan Strout Managing data is the biggest challenge to developing a new space-based sensor layer that would help detect hypersonic weapons, the director of the Missile Defense Agency said Oct. 7. The agency is working toward building the Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor, a layer of sensors on orbit that would be capable of detecting and tracking hypersonic weapons that the nation's current missile defense architecture was not designed to handle. The new system will be built into the Space Development Agency's constellation of low earth orbit satellites. For Vice Adm. Jon Hill, the director of the agency, designing the sensors for the system is a surmountable engineering issue and evolving commercial launch capabilities mean it will be easy to get the technology to space once its ready. The real challenge is “the passing of track data between different space vehicles and maintaining track and dealing with clutter.” Hypersonic weapons are dimmer than traditional ballistic missiles, making them harder to detect. The sensors will have to be able to remove that clutter, detect the threat and then pass their data to the next LEO sensor, which will pick up the object as it travels around the globe at hypersonic speed. Allowing for that data flow from sensor to sensor is essential to the effective operation of the system. Hill compared the complexity of that data transfer to his time in the Navy, where information had to go between moving vessels, but the data issue with satellites is magnitudes of order more difficult. “When you put yourself on a moving body that's moving, not at 30 knots but at a much higher speed, you know, maintaining the stability of that track, being able to pull the clutter out of it, determining how much you want to process up on orbit versus how much you want to feed down and process on the ground, then how you distribute. Do you distribute directly from the sensor? Do you control the weapon from space? Or do you take it to the ground station and do it there? There [are] different trades, and we'll probably do it differently in a lot of different ways because that adds to the overall resilience of the system,” Hill said speaking at a Center for Strategic and International Studies event October 7. Finding the right answers to those questions will be a priority for the MDA as it works to works to get the system on orbit quickly. “It's going to be a great capability. We just need to get it up there as soon as we can and rapidly proliferate,” Hill said. https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/space/2019/10/09/the-data-challenge-of-space-based-hypersonics-defense/