Elbit Systems U.S. Subsidiary Awarded a Contract by the U.S. Air Force to Supply Missile Warning Systems

On the same subject

• 

  January 15, 2021 | International, Aerospace

  L3Harris to build prototype satellite capable of tracking hypersonic weapons

  Nathan Strout WASHINGTON — The Missile Defense Agency awarded L3Harris Technologies a $121 million contract to build a prototype satellite capable of tracking hypersonic weapons, the agency announced Jan. 14. Under the contract, L3Harris is tasked with building an on-orbit prototype demonstration for the agency's Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor, a proliferated constellation in low Earth orbit that is capable of detecting and tracking hypersonic weapons. The constellation is designed to fill the gap in the country's missile defense architecture created by hypersonic weapons, which are dimmer than traditional ballistic missiles, making them harder to see with the nation's infrared sensors based in geosynchronous orbit. In addition, they are able to maneuver around terrestrial sensors. With China and Russia developing these weapons, the Department of Defense is eager to develop a new constellation that can detect and track the threats anywhere in the world. And so is Congress — in December lawmakers set aside $130 million to fund the project. The HBTSS design solves the hypersonic weapon problem by placing the sensor much closer to the Earth's surface in the lower orbit, making it easier to see the threat. But because the sensors are closer to the Earth, they have a far more limited field of view than the sensors in geosynchronous orbit. In order to achieve global coverage, the Missile Defense Agency wants a proliferated constellation made up of dozens of satellites on orbit. L3Harris was one of four companies awarded $20 million contracts in 2019 to develop a prototype payload design and risk reduction demonstration for HBTSS, along with Northrop Grumman, Leidos and Raytheon Technologies. According to the initial contract announcements, work on those designs was due Oct. 31, 2020. With this most recent award, L3Harris has won the subsequent competition between the four companies to build the actual prototype. The company has also been selected to build satellites for the Space Development Agency that will track hypersonic threats and feed data to HBTSS. In October, L3Harris won a $193 million contract to build four of the agency's eight wide field of view (WFOV) satellites, with SpaceX building four more. According to Space Development Agency leaders, their satellites will work in conjunction with HBTSS satellites to track hypersonic threats. The WFOV satellites will provide initial detection and tracing of the weapons, passing custody from satellite to satellite as the threats traverse the globe. Then, the WFOV satellites will pass custody to the medium field of view HBTSS satellites, which can provide targeting solutions with their more accurate sensors. The WFOV satellites are scheduled for launch as early as September 2022. Work on the HBTSS prototype contract will be complete in July 2023. https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/space/2021/01/14/l3harris-to-build-prototype-satellite-capable-of-tracking-hypersonic-weapons

• 

  August 18, 2020 | International, Land, C4ISR

  Kratos Targets Ground System ‘Revolution’

  We think that p-LEO is a big deal. And there's got to be a revolution that has to hit the ground segment, says Phil Carrai, president of Kratos's space, training and cyber division. By THERESA HITCHENSon August 17, 2020 at 1:20 PM WASHINGTON: As DoD and commercial industry scramble to develop small satellite constellations in Low Earth Orbit for everything from high-speed communications to near-real time Earth observation, Kratos is quietly working to solidify a central role providing the new ground systems required to make them work. While there is enormous military and commercial interest in the proliferation of small LEO satellites, known as p-LEO, not nearly as much attention has been paid to the radically different ground-based infrastructure to support those constellations. But the necessary changes in ground architecture will be monumental, and extremely lucrative for those companies at the crest of that wave. “We think that p-LEO is a big deal. And there's got to be a revolution that has to hit the ground segment,” says Phil Carrai, president of Kratos' space, training and cyber division. “We think this is kind of our play for the next many years. ... We've been making some substantial investments in that, in the sense of taking what was analog and stovepiped and moving it into a digital, dynamic, cloud infrastructure.” Kratos, headquartered in San Diego, is a mid-tier company with $750- to $800 million in annual revenue, and is perhaps best known in the defense arena right now for its low-cost attritable drones. Its XQ-58A Valkyrie is one of the top contenders for the Air Force's high-profile Skyborg program to build autonomous drones that can mate with piloted aircraft for a variety of missions; it also is providing an airframe, based on its Mako UTAP-22, as a subcontractor to Dynetics in DARPA's Gremlins program to develop drone swarms. But space-related work is the firm's bread and butter. Kratos' space, training and cyber Division is the company's biggest, Carrai said, with a large, but often behind-the-scenes, footprint in both the military and commercial satellite communications markets. Indeed, while Valkyrie's role in the Air Force's Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS), which is developing new technologies to support command and control of future all-domain operations, has been well documented, Kratos space-related comms systems and ground equipment are actually playing a bigger part as subsystems within many other company's offerings, company officials explained in a teleconference with Breaking D. “Our space portfolio really is all about communications and the ground segment, if you will, so that's been our heritage,” Carrai said. “Probably 90 percent of US satellite missions use our technology in one form or fashion. So, we are rather unique in the sense that we can claim the US Air Force and SMC [Space and Missile Systems Center] as one of our largest customers, and, probably in our top 10 or top five, Intelsat and SES are also very large customers.” The advent of 5G mobile telecommunications networks, and its promise of hyper-connectivity through the Internet of Things including from space, has mesmerized DoD and the Intelligence Community, as well as industry. The chief benefit of tying together satcom and wireless and terrestrial networks, for both national security and commercial communications, is expanded reach to hard-to-access areas. For example, satellite signals have trouble penetrating areas like ‘urban canyons'; laying fiber and erecting cell-towers in rural and harsh terrain such as mountainous regions is very costly if not impossible, but satellite communications is relatively simple. The challenge is integrating currently incompatible (in more ways than one) and heavily stovepiped networks in a seamless fashion that allows near-instantaneous roaming among them. That is why the ground system issue is so important. “We think that there's a substantial change that needs to take place from the ground perspective,” Carrai said. Not only will there need to be “way more sites” to connect to fast-moving LEO satellites due to the simple laws of physics, but satellite ground stations will need to be configured more like terrestrial communications nodes with machine-to-machine operations ensuring the best link to any one satellite at a given place or time. Chris Badgett, Kratos VP for Technology, explained that this kind of “dynamic resource allocation or that dynamic situational awareness” is particularly important to military users in order to provide jam-proof communications. In essence, this would allow a military radio to ‘jump' from one frequency being jammed to another that is open. Today, if ‘changing the channel' is possible, it is up to a solider or sailor or Marine to figure that out and manually flip switches. The ultimate goal is to automate that frequency and network ‘hopping' capability so that users don't even notice that it's being done. The mess that is the world of DoD satcom terminals is a long-standing sore-thumb for operators, particularly in the Army. As Breaking D readers know, DoD currently maintains 17,000 terminals with “approximately 135 different designs,” as the Government Accountability office found. Those terminals operate across diverse platforms—such as ships, backpacks, vehicles and aircraft — all with differing system requirements, so that for the most part each terminal system (i.e. each type of radio) is tied to only one satellite network and one type of platform. And while fixing the current problem is already a Herculean task, it could be a show-stopper to Dod's vision of future all-domain operations, linking sensors and shooters provided by all the services together via a Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) network. “The major obstacle that we have from a ground system standpoint is the current ground architectures have all been designed and developed in a very stove-piped and mission-specific sense. And so each ground system was designed for the mission that it was supporting,” said Frank Backes, senior VP for Kratos Space Federal Solutions. “Where we're going now with a joint, or combined, capability is the integration of those ground systems. And therein lies the complexity. “How do you take a legacy-based architecture that was very stovepipe designed and integrate it together into a common system that gives you enterprise-wide control of the infrastructure, and also gives you the awareness of all the systems? It's very easy to become overwhelmed in the information that a combined system provides,” Backe added. As Breaking D readers know, sorting out those answers is what Gen. Jay Raymond, head of the Space Force, set out to do with his Vision for Enterprise Satellite Communications (SATCOM). That is aimed at creating a seamless network of military and commercial communications satellites in all orbits, accessible to troops, vehicles, ships and aircraft via ground terminals and mobile receivers that would automatically “hop” from one satellite network to another. Carrai said Kratos believes that ultimately the “current analog stovepipe infrastructure that exists today” must simply be replaced. What is needed for integrated satcom is “a roaming modem or a roaming terminal,” and the ability to integrate satellite-provided imagery into the network, a “kind of a virtual antenna.” “If you don't have that capability, you're not going to be resilient, it's going to cost a lot of money, and you're going to create a huge exposure because everybody's going to know what antennas are used for what purpose,” he added. All that said, Carrai opined that partly because of push from the Space Force, the stovepipe problem with milsatcom networks is beginning to change. “It's still a struggle,” he said, because “there's a lot of drive from the spacecraft manufacturers to link the ground system with it. You know, that's what makes it a multibillion dollar system.” In addition, he said, the scramble by commercial satcom operators to get on the 5G bandwagon is forcing them to figure out how to open up proprietary networks. “Commercial operators all see that 5G and data is their future, not broadcast, he said. “The commercial operators are going to lead if not the defense side because they have to interoperate with the telecom operators if they're going to survive.” https://breakingdefense.com/2020/08/kratos-targets-ground-system-revolution

• 

  April 22, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  COVID closed Mexican factories that supply US defense industry. The Pentagon wants them opened.

  By: Joe Gould WASHINGTON ― Factory closures in Mexico due to the coronavirus pandemic are hurting U.S. defense firms, and the Pentagon is urging America's neighbor to the south to reopen vital suppliers. Because Mexico has not designated its aerospace and defense sector as essential, it's disrupting the supply chain for the American defense industrial base, particularly aircraft manufacturers. Though little known, Mexico's defense exports to the U.S. and beyond grew mightily over the last 15 years as defense firms large and small opened production facilities there. Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon on Monday, Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Ellen Lord said she discussed the problem with U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Christopher Landau. She was planning a letter to Mexican Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard, she said, to ask that he, “help reopen international suppliers there. “These companies are especially important for our U.S. airframe production.” The pandemic has raised broader questions about America's dependence on global supply chains, particularly its reliance on China for key medicines and supplies. A Pentagon task force set up to monitor COVID-19′s impact on military suppliers found “several pockets of closure” linked to “international dependencies,” Lord said. “Mexico right now is somewhat problematical for us but we're working through our embassy, and then there are pockets in India as well,” Lord said. More broadly, only small fractions of the Pentagon's suppliers in the U.S. have closed due to the new coronavirus and distancing measures imposed to fights its spread, but the aviation, shipbuilding and small space launch subsectors have been hardest hit by disruptions from the virus, Lord said. The Pentagon is using $250 million from last month's emergency stimulus funding to bolster defense firms, and it will funnel another $750 million to medical resources. The Defense Department is also working with the White House budget office to request “billions and billions” of dollars in future fiscal packages to cover schedule delays, accelerated progress payments and other costs, Lord said. A Pentagon spokesman declined to provide details about the products and companies impacted by the Mexican factory closures, and said Lord's letter to Ebrard was not being shared publicly because it contained sensitive information. A 2013 United States International Trade Commission report noted that General Electric, Honeywell, Lockheed Martin and Eurocopter were among more than a dozen U.S. firms of various sizes that opened Mexican subsidiaries ― all part of a Mexican aerospace export boom. Mexico's growth was fueled by its lower manufacturing costs, duty-free access to markets through the North American Free Trade Agreement, a Bilateral Aviation Safety Agreement with the U.S., and by Mexican government subsidies and workforce development efforts. According to the Mexican Federation of Aerospace Industries, or FEMIA, Mexico's aerospace exports rocketed from $1.3 billion in 2004 to $9.6 billion last year. Lizcano said Mexico manufactures everything from avionics, to landing gear and fuselages, and it's in the top ten overseas suppliers to the U.S. aerospace and defense sector. But coronavirus is blunting Mexico aerospace growth, and it is reverberating across its economy. Mexico's Labor Department said this month that the country had lost 346,748 jobs since mid-March due to the economic impact of the new coronavirus. FEMIA is arguing publicly that its government should designate Mexico's aerospace and defense sector as “essential,” to synchronize with the U.S. and Canada, its general manager, Luis Lizcano, told Defense News. It's also coordinating with its trade association counterparts in the U.S. and Canada. “What we're asking is that we standardize in this sector because we're going to break with supply chains with OEMs for commercial and defense aircraft,” Lizcano said. The U.S.-based Aerospace Industries Association had a similar argument: “Maintaining the free flow of goods and services between the United States, Canada, and Mexico is vital to our nation's economy and to our industry," AIA President and CEO Eric Fanning said in a statement. He hailed the recent United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement as aid to that goal. “However, this certainty is currently threatened by disruptions in America's common aerospace and defense supply chain affecting companies of all shapes and sizes. To restore certainty and keep goods and services moving, all levels of government within the U.S., Canada, and Mexico must work together to provide clear, coordinated, and direct guidance about how best to protect our workers, while ensuring aerospace and defense is declared an ‘essential' function in all three countries. "A unified North American approach helps ensure critical operations will continue under some of the strictest health and safety standards in the world and offer much-needed stability during this crisis.” On Monday, the CEO of the National Defense Industrial Association, retired Gen. Herbert “Hawk” Carlisle, said the increasingly global nature of some American defense supply chains cannot and should not be reversed. The U.S. ought to keep its suppliers diversified, he said, to avoid choke points overseas. “What you don't want are single points of failure where if something happened in that country, it couldn't produce,” Carlisle said. “You have [to have] multiple, avenues to supply that capability. Some may be internal, and you can have more than one nation external.” https://www.defensenews.com/2020/04/21/covid-closed-mexican-factories-that-supply-us-defense-industry-the-pentagon-wants-them-opened/