BlueHalo Awards Mercury Production Agreement to Provide Digital Signal Processing Hardware for U.S. Space Force Satellite Control System

On the same subject

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  July 17, 2018 | International, C4ISR

  Is the ‘Google Translate’ of sensor systems coming?

  By: Mark Pomerleau A recent flight test has demonstrated how a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency program could help legacy systems communicate with newer ones. The program, called System of Systems Integration Technology and Experimentation, is a collaboration between Lockheed Martin and DARPA. Using live assets and virtually simulated systems, the partnership exhibited interoperability between a ground station, flying test bed, a C−12 and flight test aircraft, transmitting data between them through an unknown partner capability called STITCHES. John Clark, vice president of ISR and UAS at Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, boiled down STITCHES to a simple analogy: it aggregates the data of one sensor type and interprets it for another type much the way Google Translate detects English and delivers Italian. This specific flight test looked at ISR and shortening decisions to strike, explained Clark. “It was all centered around the idea of kill chain timeline reduction and showing how information could be gathered,” he said, speaking to reporters at a media roundtable July 12. The current five-year program is nearing its end, but Clark shared that the objective was not to transition the capability to a service. “The whole premise behind it was to go prove that these types of system of system architectures could be employed much faster and this distributed idea was much nearer than we thought,” he said. The military services are striving to more seamlessly integrate information, systems and operations across the five domains of warfare, however, so any lessons learned could one day prove valuable. https://www.c4isrnet.com/intel-geoint/sensors/2018/07/16/is-the-google-translate-of-sensor-systems-coming/

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  May 27, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  Downward trend: Southeast Asian countries cut defense spending

  By: The Associated Press BEIJING — A study says Southeast Asian countries are cutting defense spending as a result of the economic crisis brought on by the coronavirus outbreak, potentially opening up room for China to further assert its claims in the region. Aristyo Rizka Darmawan, a maritime security expert at the University of Indonesia, writes that slashing defense spending is seen as a relatively easy way to cut costs when countries are facing pressure on their budgets. “Indonesia, for example, has announced it will slash its defense budget this year by nearly US$588 million. Thailand has likewise reduced its defense allocation by $555 million. Malaysia, Vietnam, and the Philippines all face similar pressure,” Darmawan wrote in the online journal of the Lowy Institute, an Australian think tank. “Less defense spending will invariably mean less patrols at sea.” China recently announced it will increase its defense spending by 6.6 percent in 2020, despite a major downturn in the country's economic growth due to the pandemic. The increase is the lowest in years, but will still allow China to expand its ability to enforce its territorial claims in the South China Sea and grow its military presence in the Western Pacific and Indian oceans. Another key priority is maintaining a credible threat against Taiwan, the self-governing island democracy that China considers its own territory, to be brought under its control by military force if necessary. China has maintained its presence in the South China Sea throughout the virus outbreak. Recent frictions include Chinese ships shadowing Malaysian mineral exploration operations and the sinking of a Vietnamese fishing boat by a Chinese maritime security vessel. However, China's foreign minister dismissed claims that the country is exploiting the coronavirus outbreak to expand its regional footprint, labeling such accusations as “sheer nonsense.” State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters at a news conference on Sunday that China is cooperating closely on anti-virus efforts with Southeast Asian countries, several of whom have overlapping territorial claims with China in the strategically vital waterway. While China has long been stepping up its presence in the region, Wang said other countries — likely meaning the United States and its allies — have been creating instability with military flights and sea patrols. “Their ill-intentioned and despicable moves are meant to sow discord between China and [Southeast Asian countries] and undermine the hard-won stability in the region,” Wang said. https://www.defensenews.com/global/asia-pacific/2020/05/26/downward-trend-southeast-asian-countries-cut-defense-spending/

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  June 17, 2024 | International, C4ISR

  Defense Innovation Unit seeks systems to counter Red Sea drone attacks

  The program, dubbed Counter NEXT, aims to quickly test counter UAS prototypes and field them on naval vessels around the globe.