BAE awarded $90M to upgrade, maintain Navy's communications and combat systems

On the same subject

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  February 19, 2021 | International, Naval

  Astronics Awarded Boeing Contracts to Support Navy’s MQ-25 Unmanned Tanker - Seapower

  EAST AURORA, N.Y. — Astronics Corp. has been awarded contracts by Boeing to supply CorePower aircraft power distribution units and custom-engineered exterior lighting for the MQ-25 unmanned aerial refueling program, Astronics said in a Feb. 17 release.  “Our CorePower Electronic Circuit Breaker...

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  April 14, 2020 | International, Naval

  US Navy should turn to unmanned systems to track and destroy submarines

  By: Bryan Clark Anti-submarine warfare, or ASW, is one of a navy's most difficult missions. Sonars detect submarines with only a fraction of the range and precision possible using radars or visual sensors against ships above the water. Submarines can carry missiles able to hit targets hundreds of miles away, requiring searches to cover potentially vast areas. And the torpedoes that aircraft and surface ships use to sink submarines need to be dropped right on the submarine to have any chance of sinking it. These challenges led the Cold War-era U.S. Navy to rely on a sequential approach for tracking enemy submarines. Electronic or visual intelligence sources would report when an opposing sub was leaving port, and it would hopefully get picked up by sound surveillance, or SOSUS — sonar arrays on the sea floor — as it entered chokepoints, like that between Iceland and the United Kingdom. Patrol aircraft would then attempt to track the submarine using sonar-equipped buoys, or sonobuoys, and eventually turn it over to a U.S. nuclear attack submarine, or SSN, for long-term trail. The U.S. ASW model broke down, however, in the decades following the Cold War as U.S. submarine and patrol aircraft fleets shrank, the Chinese submarine fleet grew, and Russian submarines became quieter. Today, the U.S. Navy devotes enormous effort to tracking each modern Russian submarine in the western Atlantic. During the 2000s, the strategy of full-spectrum ASW started an essential shift in goals, from being able to sink submarines when needed to being able to defeat submarines by preventing them from accomplishing their mission. Full-spectrum ASW and other current concepts, however, still rely on aircraft, ships and submarines for sensing, tracking and attacking enemy submarines to bottle them up near their own coasts or sink them in the open ocean. Although SOSUS has improved since the Cold War and is joined by a family of new deployable seabed arrays, the next link in the U.S. ASW chain is still a P-8A Poseidon patrol aircraft, an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, or a U.S. SSN. These platforms are in short supply around the world, cost hundreds of millions to billions of dollars to buy and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a day to operate. With defense budgets flattening and likely to decrease in a post-COVID-19 environment, the U.S. Navy cannot afford to continue playing “little kid soccer” in ASW, with multiple aircraft or ships converging to track and destroy submarines before they can get within missile range of targets like aircraft carriers or bases ashore. The Navy should instead increase the use of unmanned systems in ASW across the board, which cost a fraction to buy and operate compared to their manned counterparts. Unmanned aircraft could deploy sonobuoys or stationary sonar arrays, and unmanned undersea or surface vehicles could tow passive sonar arrays. Unmanned surface vehicles could also deploy low-frequency active sonars like those carried by U.S. undersea surveillance ships that can detect or drive off submarines from dozens of miles away. Although autonomous platforms will not have the onboard operators of a destroyer or patrol aircraft, improved processing is enabling small autonomous sensors to rapidly identify contacts of interest. Line-of-sight or satellite communications can connect unmanned vehicles and sensors with operators ashore or on manned ASW platforms. A significant shortfall of today's ASW concepts is “closing the kill chain” by attacking enemy submarines. Air- or surface-launched weapons have short ranges and small warheads that reduce their ability to sink a submarine, but their cost and size prevents them from being purchased and fielded in large numbers. Unmanned systems could address this shortfall in concert with a new approach to ASW that suppresses enemy submarines rather than destroying them. During World War II and the Cold War, allied navies largely kept submarines at bay through aggressive tracking and harassing attacks, or by forcing opposing SSNs to protect ballistic missile submarines. The modern version of submarine suppression would include overt sensing operations combined with frequent torpedo or depth-bomb attacks. Although unmanned vehicles frequently launch lethal weapons today under human supervision, the small weapons that would be most useful for submarine suppression could be carried in operationally relevant numbers by medium-altitude, long-endurance UAVs or medium unmanned surface vessels. Moreover, the large number and long endurance of unmanned vehicles would enable the tracking and suppressing of many submarines over a wide area at lower risk than using patrol aircraft or destroyers. Today the U.S. Navy uses unmanned systems in ASW primarily to detect submarines. To affordably conduct peacetime surveillance and effectively defeat submarines in wartime, the Navy should increase the role of unmanned systems. Using manned platforms to conduct command and control, and unmanned vehicles to track, deter and engage submarines, could significantly reduce the costs of ASW operations and enable the Navy to scale its ASW efforts to match the growing threat posed by submarine fleets. Bryan Clark is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. He is an expert in naval operations, electronic warfare, autonomous systems, military competitions and war gaming. https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2020/04/13/us-navy-should-turn-to-unmanned-systems-to-track-and-destroy-submarines/

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  September 20, 2018 | International, Aerospace

  The Air Force can be an “angel investor” for some startups

  Air Force Busts Out Credit Cards To Buy High Tech Gear The Air Force can be an “angel investor” for some startups, said Will Roper, the service's top acquisition official. By PAUL MCLEARY WASHINGTON The Pentagon has been trying for years to replicate the speed of Silicon Valley-style startup culture, with only sporadic — and limited — success. But the Air Force says it's doubling down on the effort, and is looking to start using government credit cards to buy small amounts of gear from tech firms that don't have much interest in forming long-term relationships with the government. The Air Force can be an “angel investor” for some startups, said Will Roper, the service's top acquisition official (and former head of the Pentagon's Strategic Capabilities Office). “The benefit is huge because it finally pulls startups into orbits around our program offices,” Roper told reporters at the Air Force Association conference on Tuesday. “Even if round one of their product isn't ready, they're aware of us as an angel investor. We're not trying to have them work for the government. We just want their products to make sense for us.” Roper is eyeing a series of startup days that will be held across the Air Force, beginning with an initiative between the Air Force Research Laboratory and AFWERX to knock out fifty contracts in fifty hours by the end of October. In 2015, then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter established the DIUx office in Silicon Valley, in the hope that a presence in the midst of tech startup boom country would convince small companies that working with the government would pay off. So far, the results have been modest, with most firms declining to sign up to be a part of the painfully slow and cumbersome government contracting process. What worries the Pentagon is that rivals like China don't suffer the same competition with the private sector for top talent. The government in Beijing compels technology firms to work with the government, which has led to a series of rapid-fire advances in artificial intelligence and surveillance technologies developed by large tech firms being sucked up by the government. In the United States, many tech firms are far more wary. Over 3,000 Google engineers recently signed a petition to refuse to work with the Pentagon on Project Maven, a program that collects and sorts data from drones to assist in targeting. The engineers objected to working on a program that could be used in bombing campaigns. Google will withdraw from the program. At the same time, Google leadership is working with the Chinese government on developing a Chinese-specific search engine that censors information Beijing wants to keep from its citizens. Roper knows the hurdles he faces. He's not looking to lock these companies into long-term contracts or relationships: “We're looking to buy into their ideas...I would love for them to sell us their product on their way to being bought up by Amazon.” In order to get there, the plan is for the Air Force to review the companies who want to partner with them and send out invitations to do a live pitch. At the end of a day of pitches, the idea is for 60 to 80 percent of the companies to walk out with a deal the same day. That's where the credit cards come in. Roper said he wants his people to use theirs to literally buy tech on the spot with a swipe. “The authorities that govern government purchase cards are broad and so we had both our government contracting professionals and legal professionals come back and they determined that we can do small business awards using a [government card],” he said. The new authority helps both sides: The companies get the cash, and the government doesn't drive away a potential partner by throwing months of lag time at them before a deal can be done. Even other transaction authority agreements, which are used when the Pentagon needs to move fast, “take three to four months — and that's in a good case — [but] that's too long for a startup.” https://breakingdefense.com/2018/09/air-force-busts-out-credit-cards-to-buy-high-tech-gear/