May 20, 2021 | International, Land
Rheinmetall delivers combat robots to Britain, tank defenses to Hungary
Germany’s Rheinmetall has announced two new deals for high-tech weaponry, featuring ground robots and active protection systems.
November 26, 2020 | International, C4ISR
Could soldiers silently communicate using brain signals in the future?
WASHINGTON — A breakthrough in decoding brain signals could be the first step toward a future where soldiers silently communicate during operations.
New research funded by the U.S. Army Research Office successfully separated brain signals that influence action or behavior from signals that do not. Using an algorithm and complex mathematics, the team was able to identify which brain signals were directing motion, or behavior-relevant signals, and then remove those signals from the other brain signals — behavior-irrelevant ones.
“Here we're not only measuring signals, but we're interpreting them,” said Hamid Krim, a program manager for the Army Research Office.
The service wants to get to the point where the machine can provide feedback to soldier's brains to allow them to take corrective action before something takes place, a capability that could protect the health of a war fighter.
Krim pointed to stress and fatigue signals that the brain gives out before someone actually realizes they are stressed or tired, thus letting troops know when they should take a break. The only limit to the possibilities is the imagination, he said.
Another potential future use is silent communication, Krim said. Researchers could build on the research to allow the brain and computers to communicate so soldiers can silently talk via a computer in the field.
“In a theater, you can have two people talking to each other without ... even whispering a word,” Krim said. “So you and I are out there in the theater and we have to ... talk about something that we're confronting. I basically talked to my computer — your computer can be in your pocket, it can be your mobile phone or whatever — and that computer talks to ... your teammate's computer. And then his or her computer is going to talk to your teammate.”
In the experiment, the researchers monitored the brain signals from a monkey reaching for a ball over and over again in order to separate brain signals.
But more work is to be done, as any sort of battle-ready machine-human interface using brain signals is likely decades away, Krim said.
What's next? Researchers will now try to identify other signals outside of motion signals.
“You can read anything you want; doesn't mean that you understand it,” Krim said. “The next step after that is to be able to understand it. The next step after that is to break it down into into words so that ... you can synthesize in a sense, like you learn your vocabulary and your alphabet, then you are able to compose.
“At the end of the day, that is the original intent mainly: to have the computer actually being in a full duplex communication mode with the brain.”
The Army Research Office-backed program was led by researchers at the University of Southern California, with additional U.S. partners at the University of California, Los Angeles; the University of California, Berkeley; Duke University; and New York University. The program also involved several universities in the United Kingdom, including Essex, Oxford and Imperial College. The Army is providing up to $6.25 million in funding over five years.
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October 9, 2018 | International, Land
Replacing the Bradley is the top priority for the Army’s next-gen combat vehicle modernization team
By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — The modernization team tasked with advancing the Army's next-generation combat vehicles is focused, as its top priority, on replacing the Bradley Fighting Vehicle with an Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle, according to the team's leader, Brig. Gen. Ross Coffman. The OMFV is meant to “provide options to commanders in combat, so it's a decision to, manned or unmanned, gain contact with the enemy, and that can be visual or through firepower, and it actually provides options to commanders so that they can use the best way to accomplish their mission,” Coffman said in an interview with Defense News shortly before the Association of the United States Army's annual meeting. The Next-Generation Combat Vehicle Cross-Functional Team — established as part of the Army's new Futures Command — tackles the service's second highest priority out of six major lines of effort that are intended to fully modernize the force by 2028. The CFT has had many conversations with industry to determine what's possible. The team has laid out what it thinks will be the requirements for the vehicle, Coffman said, including aspects like an optionally manned capability, loading it on a C-17 aircraft, protection elements and lethality. Even though the Army plans to rapidly prototype and procure the OMFV, Coffman said the team will continue to roll new technologies in through constant experimentation, in parallel with OMFV procurement, so that the first OMFV that comes out and gets fielded is constantly improved. The Army will roll those improvements into manufacturing “so that we can always maintain the current technology on these vehicles,” he said. The Army is requesting that designs have lots of room for upgrades and to add in new technology. "We know technology will continue to move at the pace it is today or faster, and it is going to allow us to have enough physical space and computing power as well as propulsion power that, if we want to add things to these vehicles, we have the ability to build them [to be] the best they can be,” Coffman said. Jumping right in, the service plans to release a request for proposals, not just a draft, by the end of the year, Coffman said. It is anticipated that the proposals will be due in May next year, and then the Army will downselect to two competitors who will build 14 prototypes in an engineering and manufacturing development phase in the first quarter of fiscal 2020, according to industry sources. Coffman said he hoped to cast a wide net with industry, including looking to partners around the world for solutions. “We want them to bring us their best, and we will evaluate and downselect to some number and do a procurement contract at the end of the final evaluation,” he said. To accommodate for the OMFV effort and the other lines of development within the CFT's portfolio, the Army has downgraded its prototype activity within the Army's Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center. A year ago, the Army had kicked off a major prototyping effort to develop what the service was calling its NGCV by awarding an industry team a contract to build two demonstrators by fiscal year 2022. The Army awarded a seven-year, $700 million contract to a team consisting of SAIC — the team lead — as well as Lockheed Martin, Moog Inc., GS Engineering Inc., Hodges Transportation Inc. and Roush Industries. Jim Scanlon, senior vice president and general manager of SAIC's Defense Systems Group, told Defense News in a recent interview that while the initial plan was to build prototypes, the strategy has evolved. Now, the team is working on sub-system experimentation for TARDEC using Bradley assets, to test capabilities such as mobility systems and manned-unmanned teaming. SAIC, according to Scanlon, sees the Mobile Protected Firepower solution it is hoping to prototype for the Army as possessing technological capabilities that will serve as “hooks” — or a pathway — to fulfilling OMFV requirements. Other companies are likely to emerge with offerings for OMFV, including General Dynamics Land Systems, AM General and BAE Systems. BAE Systems brought its CV90 fighting vehicle, developed for the Swedish army, to AUSA. The Netherlands, Finland and Denmark are also customers of the vehicle. According to BAE, it brought the CV90 to the show as a starting point to discuss possible options for the NGCV program. Raytheon and Rheinmetall announced at the AUSA conference Oct. 8 that they are partnering to provide Rheinmetall's Lynx combat vehicle as its submission to the impending OMFV competition. https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/ausa/2018/10/08/replacing-the-bradley-is-the-top-priority-for-the-armys-next-gen-combat-vehicle-modernization-team
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November 3, 2020 | International, Land
UK government to retake control of its atomic weapons management from industry
By: Andrew Chuter LONDON – Britain's Ministry of Defence has taken back management control of its nuclear weapons facilities from an industry-led consortium that has been running the operation for two decades. Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said in a statement to parliament that the Atomic Weapons Establishment will become wholly owned by the MoD, with the new arrangement expected to be in place by June 2021. “Under the revised arrangements, AWE plc will become an arms-length body wholly owned by the MoD. It will continue to be managed by a world-leading team and a new board will be appointed by the MoD,” he told lawmakers. Since 1999 AWE has been managed and operated by a Lockheed Martin-led consortium, which also includes Jacobs Engineering and Serco, in a deal which had been expected to run until 2025. The arrangement, won in competition, followed several years of commercial management by Hunting-BRAE. The establishment, based at Aldermaston in southern England, is at the core of British activities toward developing, producing and disassembling nuclear warheads for the Royal Navy's fleet of Trident missile-armed submarines. In February the MoD committed itself to development of a new nuclear warhead to allow the Navy to field an effective deterrent for deployment on the new fleet of Dreadnought-class submarines due to start replacing the existing boats early in the next decade. The MoD owns the AWE sites and facilities. The day-to-day management, operations and the maintenance of Britain's nuclear stockpile are the responsibility of the consortium, which employs the workforce and maintains the nuclear site operating licenses. Wallace said the MoD has been looking at a successor arrangement for the current deal since July last year. “Although the existing arrangements have brought stability to the organization the MoD has concluded that AWE will revert to a direct government ownership model,” said the defence secretary in his statement to parliament. The MoD appears to have left the door open to some degree of commercial involvement in AWE. In his statement Wallace said the new business model will see AWE “continue to draw on private sector specialist support to strengthen capability as well as playing a key role in managing capital projects and contracts.” In a separate statement the defense ministry said removal of the current commercial arrangements would "enhance the MoD's agility in the future management of the UK's nuclear deterrent, whilst also delivering on core MoD objectives and value for money to the taxpayer. “The decision was taken in order to simplify and further strengthen the relationship between AWE and the MoD,” the statement said. AWE Management Limited, the name of the company formed by the consortium to manage and operate the nuclear facilities, only appointed a new chief executive, Alison Atkinson, in May. An industry competition for what is thought to be a three-year transformation program at AWE is already in its early stages. An industry executive who asked not to be named said the MoD had invoked what is known as a “termination of convenience” clause in the contract to prematurely end the deal with the consortium. “It was not performance related. Lockheed Martin and its partners could be due compensation,” said the executive. AWE has not been without its problems though, and, along with the MoD, most recently attracted criticism from the National Audit Office, the government financial watchdog, for its handling of a program known as Mensa to build a facility to assemble and disassemble nuclear weapons. Progress on Mensa has quickened recently but the program is expected to be over six years late and 146 percent over budget, according to an NAO report published in the summer. In a statement, a Lockheed Martin spokesman said the company remains “fully committed to the delivery of the UK's continuous at-sea deterrent. We'll continue to support the UK government, as the Atomic Weapons Establishment transitions to a new operating model and delivers current and future requirements.” https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2020/11/02/uk-government-to-retake-control-of-its-atomic-weapons-management-from-industry/