June 20, 2024 | International, Security
Researchers Uncover UEFI Vulnerability Affecting Multiple Intel CPUs
Discover the critical UEFI firmware flaw affecting Intel processors. Learn how to secure your devices against potential cyber threats.
May 14, 2020 | International, Land
Contractors Recovering From COVID Shutdowns: Bruce Jette
While the pandemic continues, Pentagon metrics show production on Army programs is returning to normal, the Army's acquisition chief told Breaking Defense.
By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.on May 14, 2020 at 4:01 AM
WASHINGTON: The number of defense contractors reopening after COVID-19 quarantines now exceeds the number of new shutdowns, the Army's senior acquisition official said in an interview. That is happening, Bruce Jette told me, because industry is learning and adapting. New health precautions, from disinfecting tools between shifts to social distancing on the factory floor, should contain further outbreaks of COVID-19 and keep Army programs on track, he said – even if there's a new upsurge in infections nationwide.
According to daily updates from Defense Contract Management Agency, Jette said, “the openings are outweighing the number of closings, and total number of closings is down significantly, so things are improving quite a bit.”
Of 10,509 facilities large and small that DCMA is tracking, 248 had closed at some point — but only 40 are still closed. The number of reopenings has exceeded the number of new closings since April 20.
But, I asked, what if there's another spike, whether from states relaxing shutdown orders or a change in weather come the fall? Because of the new precautions now in place, Jette told me, “I would say that in the long run, if we had some degree of a resurgence, I don't think it would be as marked as the first one.”
Learning To Cope
There was an initial wave of shutdowns in the first days of the pandemic, Jette said, because a single case of COVID-19 might require putting the entire workforce at a facility into quarantine, particularly at smaller companies. That wasn't a panicked reaction, but a reasonable precaution. Workers had been mingling freely in close quarters, most coronavirus carriers were asymptomatic, and virtually no reliable tests were available. A company facing a single case had no way of knowing who else might already be infected.
But that's no longer true, Jette went on. Private companies and government agencies alike have now broken up large groups of workers into smaller ones, creating “bubbles” in which any contagion can be contained.
“For example, in the past, one shift came in and started using the tools from the other shift,” Jette said, as one example. “Now, between shifts, a cleaning team comes in and disinfects all the tools.”
Wiping down shared equipment, surfaces, and spaces is just one part of a multi-layered defense against contagion. Workers on the same shift who once all came in and out together, chatting in close quarters and shaking hands, may now arrive and leave on staggered schedules so they can stay six feet apart at all times. Workflows have been changed and workstations physically moved, where possible, to permit social distancing on the factory floor. Employees who must work side-by-side wear masks and gloves.
Those precautions reduce the chance of someone catching the coronavirus in the first place – and just as important, they make it harder for one infected employee to spread the disease, especially to colleagues outside their “bubble.” So when somebody does get sick, you only need to quarantine their particular team, not shut down the whole factory.
“If somebody in the bubble comes down [with COVID],” he said, “ only that bubble ends up isolated.”
Even Pentagon offices like Jette's own are getting cleaned more frequently and more thoroughly, he told me, even when no one working in them has actually gotten sick. “[Even when] nobody has become infected in a particular office,” he told me, “we are having a cleaning team go through and do one office here, one office there, and just do a thorough wipe-down to make sure that there's nothing that got into that office undetected.”
These precautions aren't excessively onerous, disruptive, or costly, Jette said. They're just things nobody had thought about doing before – but now they might be useful even after the pandemic is under control.
“I don't see it being a significant burden on the system; it was just something we didn't see was an issue before,” he said, “[but] I may well help us have fewer flus and colds if we just continue the same practice.”
Dealing With Disruption
Industry may be adapting well, but a global pandemic is still extraordinarily disruptive. Like the rest of the Defense Department, the Army is closely tracking not only its prime contractors but the smaller subcontractors and sub-sub-contractors, which are much more fragile. To date, the Army has pumped $167.5 million into small businesses to help them ride out COVID disruptions.
“There have been some cost implications to the government,” Jette said, “but mostly with respect to the CARES Act,” which ensures workers at facilities closed by COVID are paid instead of let go.
The main way the Army has helped out companies is by making payments they already had coming, just ahead of schedule. For example, Jette said, the service has started writing checks to contractors every 15 days instead of the normal 30. It's also increasing progress payments, normally limited to 80 percent of total contract value (85 percent for small business) to 90 percent (95 for small business).
“Cash flow was one of those things we concerned ourselves with,” Jette said. “Congress gave us flexibilities there. There were things passed down from OMB in the White House that gave us some flexibility as well.”
To help figure out which subcontractors might be in trouble, the Army's prime contractors have opened their books and shared information with the service, far beyond anything they were contractually obligated to do, Jette said. Since the early days of the pandemic, even before shutdowns began, he's been getting a daily report on the health of subcontractors, which now routinely runs over 60 pages.
“The primes ... were all very cooperative in trying to give us visibility down to the lowest level supplier,” Jette said. “It's really been helpful for us, because it helps us get a better gauge on what we have to do if something goes awry.
In some cases when a subcontractor shuts down, the primes can find an alternative supplier. But despite the huge size of the defense industrial base, Jette said, there are single points of failure where only one company that's been formally qualified to build a certain part or perform a certain industrial process. It takes time to get a back-up supplier up to speed – sometimes longer than the 16.8 days that, on average, it takes a quarantined facility to reopen.
That has resulted in delays, Jette acknowledges, but, so far, Army programs are finding ways to make up the time elsewhere in their schedules and still deliver new weapons to the troops on time – what's called First Unit Equipped, or FUE.
“Delivery schedules on some products have slipped a little bit right...but at this point, none of them has assuredly slipped the FUE,” Jette told me. “As of right now, the vast majority of challenges that we've had with COVID, we've been able to accommodate within the current contracts with minor changes.”
But the factories aren't the only part of the system that has to function. “The most significant thing isn't production,” Jette said. “It's trying to get all the testing done to make sure that all the systems work.”
While some testing takes place in labs, what's most complex is operational testing, which puts a new technology in the hands of soldiers in the field to see how it works in for a real unit, interacting with all the rest of that unit's gear, conducting a realistic mission in realistic conditions. That requires bringing together not only the soldiers but technical specialists from the manufacturers, Army program offices, and Army testing organizations across the country.
“Those are not simple to just change or move around, [and] that's part of what we've struggled with,” Jette said. “In some cases, we have suppliers who provide a capability and it's ready to be tested and we just don't have the facilities or the units available yet for full testing.”
Officials need adequate test data before they can approve a program to start production – what's known as a Milestone C decision. But, Jette said, if you have to delay that formal approval, you can compensate by getting ready to jump-start manufacturing as soon as you have the go-ahead. The contractor can even start production ahead of Milestone C at its own risk, if it's confident that testing will not find any significant problems.
At some point, it comes down to what kind of risk you're willing to take. If you rev up your manufacturing base before testing is complete, but then testing discovers a problem you have to fix, you may have to make expensive, time-consuming changes to your design, to your production process, or even to items already built. But if you wait for all the testing to get done, no matter how long it takes, you may not get the kit to troops on schedule.
Unprecedented Stresses
It's a difficult and stressful time; Jette can't recall anything like it in his 30 years in the defense sector.
“At least based on my experience which goes back to the early '90s,” he told me, “you may have had strains on a particular vendor, [but] this is fundamentally a nationwide challenge that covers all of our programs.”
“I can't think of any time where we had such a longstanding challenge to keeping programs fully operational,” he said.
“Probably the closest thing,” he said, is when Congress can't pass defense funding bills on time and passes a stopgap Continuing Resolution. A CR essentially puts spending on autopilot at last year's levels with no ability to start new programs, ramp up existing ones, or cancel failing ones. Like the pandemic, a CR can impact every function of the Defense Department, or even the entire federal government, for weeks or months on end.
But funding problems don't threaten the health and safety of every worker the way the pandemic does. “In this case, we have to consider the financial underpinnings, but we also have to consider the impact to the people themselves.”
“Our most valuable resources are people,” Jette said. “If I don't have good people, I'm not getting good work done. I want to make sure those people want to work here, and a big piece of that is giving them a safe and healthy environment.”
https://breakingdefense.com/2020/05/contractors-recovering-from-covid-shutdowns-bruce-jette/
On the same subject
-
-
May 25, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security
Securing technological superiority requires a joint US-Israel effort
By: Bradley Bowman   The United States is now engaged in an intense military technology competition with the Chinese Communist Party. The ability of U.S. troops to deter and defeat great power authoritarian adversaries hangs in the balance. To win this competition, Washington must beef up its military cooperative research and development efforts with tech-savvy democratic allies. At the top of that list should be Israel. Two members of the Senate Armed Services Committee understand this well. Sens. Gary Peters, D-Mich., and Tom Cotton, R-Ark., introduced S 3775, the “United States-Israel Military Capability Act of 2020,” on Wednesday. This bipartisan legislation would require the establishment of a U.S.-Israel operations-technology working group. As the senators wrote in a February letter to Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, the working group would help ensure U.S. “warfighters never encounter a more technologically advanced foe.” Many Americans may be surprised to learn that they can no longer take U.S. military technological superiority for granted. In his new book, “The Kill Chain,” former Senate Armed Services Committee staff director Chris Brose notes that, over the last decade, the United States loses war games against China “almost every single time.” To halt this trend, the Pentagon must shift its ongoing modernization efforts into high gear. Early cooperative R&D with the “Startup Nation” can help in this regard. Israel is one of America's closest and most technologically advanced allies. The country boasts an “innovative and agile defense technology sector” that is a “global leader in many of the technologies important to Department of Defense modernization efforts,” as the legislation notes. Some may deem the working group unnecessary, citing the deep and broad cooperation that already exists between the United States and Israel. But, as the legislation explains, “dangerous United States military capability gaps continue to emerge that a more systematic and institutionalized United States-Israel early cooperative research and development program could have prevented.” Consider the fact, for example, that the Pentagon only last year acquired for U.S. tanks active protection systems from Israel that had been operational there since 2011. Consequently, U.S. soldiers operated for years in tanks and armored vehicles around the world lacking the cutting-edge protection Washington could have provided against missiles and rockets. That put U.S. soldiers in unnecessary risk. Such examples put the burden of proof on those who may be tempted to reflexively defend the status quo as good enough. Given the breakneck speed of our military technology race with the Chinese Communist Party, it's clear the continued emergence of decade-long delays in adopting crucial technology is no longer something we can afford. One of the reasons for these delays and failures to team up with Israeli partners at the beginning of the process is that U.S. and Israeli defense suppliers sometimes find it difficult to secure Washington's approval for combined efforts to research and produce world-class weapons. Some requests to initiate combined U.S.-Israel R&D programs linger interminably in bureaucratic no-man's land, failing to elicit a timely decision. Confronted by deadly and immediate threats, Israel often has little choice but to push ahead alone with unilateral R&D programs. When that happens, the Pentagon misses out on Israel's sense of urgency that could have led to the more expeditious fielding of weapons to U.S. troops. And Israel misses out on American innovation prowess as well as on the Pentagon's economy of scale, which would lower unit costs and help both countries stretch their finite defense budgets further. Secretary Esper appears to grasp the opportunity. “If there are ways to improve that, we should pursue it,” he testified on March 4, 2020, in response to a question on the U.S.-Israel working group proposal. “The more we can cooperate together as allies and partners to come up with common solutions, the better,” Esper said. According to the legislation, the working group would serve as a standing forum for the United States and Israel to “systematically share intelligence-informed military capability requirements,” with a goal of identifying capabilities that both militaries need. It would also provide a dedicated mechanism for U.S. and Israeli defense suppliers to “expeditiously gain government approval to conduct joint science, technology, research, development, test, evaluation, and production efforts.” The legislation's congressional reporting requirement would hold the working group accountable for providing quick answers to U.S. and Israeli defense supplier requests. That's a benefit of the working group that will only become more important when the economic consequences of the coronavirus put additional, downward pressure on both defense budgets. Once opportunities for early cooperative U.S.-Israel R&D are identified and approved, the working group would then facilitate the development of “combined United States-Israel plans to research, develop, procure, and field weapons systems and military capabilities as quickly and economically as possible.” In the military technology race with the Chinese Communist Party, the stakes are high and the outcome is far from certain. A U.S.-Israel operations technology working group represents an essential step to ensure the United States and its democratic allies are better equipped than their adversaries. Bradley Bowman is the senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2020/05/22/securing-technological-superiority-requires-a-joint-us-israel-effort/
-
May 19, 2020 | International, Security
Winning The Spectrum: Pentagon Unveils New Strategy
By BRYAN CLARK and TIMOTHY WALTON on May 19, 2020 at 4:01 AM The Electromagnetic Spectrum is the key to waging electronic warfare, and EW is key to waging modern war. An enemy who can jam communications or GPS, mislead you (spoofing is the term of art) and stop your weapons from functioning (cyber attacks using radio waves). The US largely abandoned EW after the Cold War ended. Then the Russians made it very clear in their war against Ukraine just how effective EW could be and senior folks in the US military grew uneasy. They and Congress realized how much we had made ourselves vulnerable and the Hill ordered creation of a group to devise a strategy to restore American EW eminence. Bryan Clark and Tim Walton of the Hudson Institute preview the new strategy below — only at Breaking D Read on! The Editor. The electromagnetic spectrum is getting more popular and crowded every day. As Breaking D readers know, the DoD and FCC are battling over frequencies adjacent to those used by GPS, which the telecommunication company Ligado wants to use for its satellite-based 5G network. DoD worries that Ligado's transmissions will drown out the relatively weak signals that reach Earth from GPS satellites. Ligado fired what is only the first of what will be many salvos in the 5G spectrum battle. To achieve 5G's promised low latency and broadband speed telecommunication companies require wider swaths of spectrum compared to 4G–some of which they don't control. With high-frequency millimeter wave 5G towers only able to reach a few city blocks, telecom providers like Ligado are pursuing mid and low-band spectrum below 6 Ghz that enables greater coverage–but also puts them in conflict with FAA and military radars, radios, and GPS. The clamor for 5G spectrum comes as DoD is itself fielding a collection of new networks to support its concept of Joint All Domain Command and Control, or JADC2. The Army Integrated Tactical Network, Air Force Air Battle Management System, and Navy Integrated Fire Control combine existing datalinks and radios with emerging communications systems to connect all U.S. forces across a theater, placing new demands on spectrum. But the EM spectrum is also a global common like the air or sea. To prevent U.S. forces from operating effectively, the Chinese and Russian militaries spent the last 20 years modernizing their electronic warfare equipment, training new EW operators and technicians, and placing EW forces in every unit or formation. During the same period, DoD rested on its Cold War laurels and failed to invest in EW systems or training. DoD strategies developed in 2013 and 2017 addressed the growing challenges of managing and controlling the EM spectrum by directing services to develop better versions of current capabilities and concepts but failed to significantly close the gaps between the U.S. and adversary militaries. Congress, increasingly worried, mandated that DoD stand up an EM Spectrum Operations Cross-Functional Team and create a new strategy. That is nearing completion and may be DoD's last opportunity to gain an enduring advantage in the EM spectrum. New EM Spectrum Superiority Strategy Instead of incrementally improving existing EM systems and tactics in a doomed effort to solve capability shortfalls, the new EM Spectrum Superiority Strategy will emphasize how to undermine the strengths and exploit the weaknesses of adversaries in the EM spectrum. The strategies' initiatives will be targeted at fundamental asymmetries between U.S. and opposing militaries that can provide DoD leverage. A change in approach is desperately needed. The U.S. military didn't fall behind in EW and EM Spectrum Operations due to a lack of funding, as spending for both rose steadily since 2015, but because the additional dollars were not spent implementing a coherent strategy. Funding instead upgraded legacy systems to fill various capability gaps, not all of which were high priorities. Under today's plans, DoD will take decades to catch great power adversaries enjoying “home team” advantages and the luxury of focusing on only one potential opponent. Moreover, post-pandemic budget constraints will likely prevent increasing funding to plug capability gaps faster. The key asymmetry between the U.S. and opposing great power militaries is the simple facft that Chinese and Russian are close to likely areas of conflict. China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) and the Russian Armed Forces can place EW and sensor systems on their own territory or in nearby sea or airspace where they can rely on reliable and difficult-to-jam wired or line-of-sight EM communications. Leveraging their understanding of the environment, Chinese and Russian forces can employ passive, multistatic, and low-frequency EM sensors and pre-architected systems of systems and tactics to find and attack U.S. forces. The U.S. military must span the world. This requires a more expeditionary force and adaptable C2 process compared to the Chinese or Russians, and which can accommodate more contested communications, changing force packages, and the variety of local conditions. When communications are lost, junior leaders of U.S. forces would employ mission command, exploiting their initiative and judgement to improvise a course of action that follows the commander's intent. Giving The Enemy Something To Worry About The PLA's reliance on pre-planned, static systems of systems and tactics could be a liability against highly dynamic and unpredictable U.S. spectrum operations. The EM Spectrum Superiority Strategy should exploit this opportunity by adopting new operational concepts that emphasize maneuver and complexity. A maneuver-centric approach doesn't require across-the-board improvements to U.S. EM spectrum systems. To create complexity for opponents U.S. forces need capabilities for dynamic and automated spectrum sharing with commercial or military users guided by electronic support sensors and electromagnetic battle management, or EMBM, systems. To protect themselves from enemy attack, U.S. forces would rely on passive or multistatic sensing, complemented by LPI/LPD communications and electronic countermeasures. And U.S. electronic attacks would need the agility afforded by AI-enabled cognitive jammers that use photonics to move across wide ranges of spectrum. The ability of cognitive jammers or EMBM systems to understand the EM environment will depend on their access to information on threat, friendly, and civilian EM spectrum systems. Today, data and analysis from the Intelligence Community is slow to reach operators and slower still to be programmed into EW equipment. DoD will need to establish new frameworks for EM spectrum information sharing and build on its recent success in accelerating the reprogramming process by incorporating AI to a greater degree in deployed EW and EMBM systems. Capabilities for complex and unpredictable EM operations will be difficult to define for today's top-down requirements process, which seeks a point solution for a particular application and situation. DoD will need to identify potential new EM capabilities through comprehensive assessments of their mission impact in a variety scenarios using modeling and simulation or experimentation and mature them through new processes like the DoD Adaptive Acquisition Framework. The most challenging element of a new strategy will be preparing EW and EM spectrum operators for maneuver warfare. DoD's current ranges are unable to provide realistic EM operating environments for experimentation or training due to a lack of modern threat systems and concerns that adversaries can monitor U.S. EM emissions during live, open-air events. Rather than focusing on expensive range upgrades, DoD should shift its emphasis to virtual and constructive events, which would enable concept development, tactics innovation, and training against the most challenging threats at all security levels. The urgency to change DoD cannot continue pursuing EMS superiority through incremental, evolutionary improvements. This approach is too unfocused, will take too long to reach fruition, is potentially unaffordable, and cedes the initiative to America's adversaries. DoD should move in a new direction and focus EM capability development on implementing concepts for maneuver warfare that create adaptability for U.S. forces and complexity for adversaries. If the DoD does not mount a new more strategic and proactive approach to fighting in the EM spectrum, adversaries could be emboldened to continue their efforts to gain territory and influence at the expense of U.S. allies and partners. Demonstrating the ability to survive and fight in a contested and congested EM spectrum could help U.S. forces slow Chinese and Russian activities and give them something to worry about for a change. Bryan Clark is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. Timothy Walton is a fellow at Hudson. https://breakingdefense.com/2020/05/winning-the-spectrum-pentagon-unveils-new-strategy/