Canada has plenty to gain from upping its defence spending

On the same subject

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  September 5, 2018 | International, C4ISR

  Next-gen RFID could improve how vehicles get to the battlefield

  By: Adam Stone With incredible volumes of material on the move – think: arms and munitions, supplies, vehicles – the military quite simply needs a better way to track its stuff. “We hear a lot of concerns about getting in-transit visibility in the last tactical mile, from the supply point to the end user,” said Jim Alexander, product lead for automated movement and identification solutions in PEO EIS – Enterprise Information Systems. “We are working with our partners and with transportation command to gather up the requirements for the next generation of in-transit visibility for DoD.” At the heart of transit tracking today is radio-frequency identification (RFID), which allows logisticians to tag and track goods on the move. But RFID has its limitations: It's infrastructure intensive and not globally available. Military planners are looking to do better. Falling short RFID technology took a big step forward about 20 years ago with the widespread adoption of “active RFID.” Rather than scan individual items by hand, active RFID uses a fixed scanner to monitor entire lots. You'll see this equipment at airports and at the gates of military installations. But active RFID isn't an ideal solution. “It consists of a dome-shaped reader on a pole, connected to power and ethernet. So you are running power lines and communication lines, and if the reader goes down someone has to go out and physically service it,” said Rosemary Johnston, senior vice president of government at solutions provider Savi. The company is sole provider for the DoD's RFID-IV contract, which has a $102 million ceiling. “Each reader costs a couple of thousand dollars, plus the cost of hooking it up, running wires via trenches. It becomes a major construction investment project,” said Johnston, a former chief master sergeant with the U.S. Air Force. In addition, active RFID equipment isn't necessarily well-suited to today's highly agile expeditionary fighting style. “The military doesn't know where the next fight is going to be, so they use portable deployment kits rather than do this massive construction, but even those are heavy ― the lightest weighs 25 pounds ― and they require good satellite coverage. It becomes very resource constrained,” she said. With the next-gen RFID contract, the military envisions a better way of doing business. A cellular solution Satellite-readable RFID tags offer some relief, as they expand the military's reach without requiring extensive additional overhead. But satellite time is costly. Savi's emerging solution would leverage widely available cellular signals as a new means to capture and communicate RFID information. Johnston describes early trials of cellular RFID in Africa, where materials tracking has been a perennial problem. U.S. and European forces have just six fixed RFID readers on the entire continent, making supplemental coverage an urgent need, she said. “We have used cellular technology in Africa with a commercial company very successfully for the past three or four years. The networks we would use on the military side would be very similar to what this commercial customer uses, so we believe that represents a great opportunity for Africa Command,” she said. The switch to cellular isn't technically complicated: military planners would need to add a cellular module to the existing RFID tag. That module could then be programmed to automatically report location status to the military's in-transit visibility server. High-value cargo might report hourly, whereas more mundane supplies could be set to check in daily or every couple of days, in order to conserve battery life in the RFID tag. At PEO-EIS, Alexander said he sees strong potential in the technology. With a cellular system, “you could get a much more granular look, a more detailed look at where my stuff is,” as compared to relying on fixed checkpoints, he said. “If you have sensitive cargo you can know where it is every hour on the hour, as opposed to waiting for that cargo to pass by a fixed site.” Some technical details still need to be worked out in order to implement a commercial-grade cellular solution within the military. For example, “you don't want to have anything in the device that would trigger a static charge if you are working around ammunition,” Johnston noted. “We are working through that process right now.” https://www.c4isrnet.com/it-networks/2018/09/04/next-gen-rfid-could-improve-how-vehicles-get-to-the-battlefield

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  October 15, 2024 | International, Aerospace

  Army’s mixed reality device set for upgrades and battalion assessment

  The Army expects to award a production contract following next year's events.

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

  The European Union’s defense ambitions are still showing signs of life

  By: Sebastian Sprenger COLOGNE, Germany — A new budget proposal for the European Union shows that the bloc's defense plans are back on the table as the continent pushes to revive its economy following the coronavirus crisis. Two flagship programs to that end — the European Defence Fund and the Military Mobility initiative — are set to receive €8 billion (U.S. $9 billion) and €1.5 billion (U.S. $1.7 billion), respectively, in the seven-year plan beginning in 2021, according to a proposal unveiled this week by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Those figures are lower than the initial proposal of €13 billion and €6.5 billion for the two budget lines. But they represent an uptick compared with recent negotiation positions that envisioned defense-related spending slashed even more. Defense spending remains an unbeloved subject in many European countries, and it is notable that there is no dedicated political narrative around building military prowess in the context of the bloc's recovery plan, dubbed Next Generation EU during a May 27 speech by von der Leyen. Still, the fact that the European Defence Fund — designed to foster intra-continental defense cooperation — remains in the mix is in itself a statement, according to analysts. Defense-spending advocates in Europe believe a robust military can strengthen the EU's hand in trying to assert its role on the world stage with other players like China and Russia. The new proposal of €8 billion for the European Defence Fund may not seem like much, given the high, upfront costs for multinational military equipment projects, said Sophia Besch, a senior research fellow at the Center for European Reform. “But it's a win for the [European] Commission in the current political context,” she added. “COVID-19 has shifted the priorities, and even before the crisis there were signs that defense was losing ground in the traditional budget battles,” Besch said. Given that, the new proposal is “better than nothing,” she argued. At the same time, the de facto reduction would make it harder to prove for the commission that the intended effects can be achieved with the amount envisioned, Besch predicted. Funding through the European Defence Fund and its associated channels ensures that certain projects in many member states can happen at all, said Yvonni-Stefania Efstathiou, an Athens, Greece-based defense analyst specializing in the emerging European defense-cooperation framework PESCO, or Permanent Structured Cooperation. “Allocations to the EDF have the potential of triggering more defense cooperation, as those funds will be used to finance collaborative research and common capability development projects,” she said. What is still missing, however, is an overarching context of where the EU wants to go with its defense ambitions, she argued. “The impact of these funds will be limited unless there is also progress on the common definition of strategic priorities and military requirements.” The cut to the budget line for military mobility means member states stand to pay more of their own money for updating bridges, roads and rail networks to ensure military equipment can quickly move along the continent in the event of a standoff with Russia. The work is seen as a critical interface between the EU and NATO, and alliance officials previously expressed hope for a funding injection that could speed projects along, especially in Eastern Europe. “Unless we have the full costings of how much bridges and roads will cost, it is hard to evaluate whether the funds are sufficient,” Efstathiou said. “What is easy to predict, however, is the dissatisfaction of the Eastern European states.” https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2020/05/29/the-european-unions-defense-ambitions-are-still-showing-signs-of-life/