F-35 officially wins Belgian fighter contest

On the same subject

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  May 5, 2020 | International, Aerospace

  Drones Cleared For Take-Off As Govt Launches GARUD Portal To Ease Norms

  Waking up to the use of drones in its fight against the Covid-19 pandemic, the ministry of civil aviation and Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) have launched the GARUD portal. The platform will provide fast track exemptions to government agencies for using drones in their operations against the pandemic. GARUD or ‘Government Authorisation for Relief Using Drones' was developed by the National Informatics Centre in eight days. Providing exemptions to government agencies by changing Rule 160 of the Aircraft Rules, 1937, for easy and fast approvals for drone usage, any government department can apply for these exemptions on the GARUD platform. However, the government has also put restrictions on these exemptions. For instance, the government will provide permission to only battery-operated drones or remotely piloted aircraft (RPAs). Permission won't be granted to autonomous and fixed-wing RPAs. The order also makes the organisation responsible for ensuring safe operations of RPAs. Operations involving RPAs are to be conducted under the supervision of authorised entity while not risking lives, property, or any other aircraft. Moreover, the government has allowed all the government agencies to use either their own drones or use ones offered by third-party providers which are mostly startups. According to the rules, all the drones should have a valid unique identification number (UIN) or drone acknowledgement number (DAN) issued by the DGCA. The agency using the RPAs will have to update the details of the drone on DGCA's Digital Sky platform. Moreover, the drones shouldn't be weighing more than 25 KG and cannot pick up, drop or spray any substance. This provision leaves authorities to use these drones for surveillance. Other restrictions include no flight before sunrise and after sunset. The government also imposed a height limit of up to 200 metres for the drones. Besides surveillance, many drone startups in India are also looking to support the delivery of essentials. They are also being used to back on-ground medical staff. Pune and Silicon Valley-based FlytBase is offering drone services free to government officials until May 2020. Moreover, Hyderabad-based Marut Drones is delivering medicines and collecting blood samples. It has also been deployed to spray sanitizer in the city. Recently, the DGCA also allowed hyperlocal delivery provider Dunzo and Bengaluru-based drone maker Throttle Aerospace Systems to test their long-range drone delivery solutions. These startups are also expected to deliver grocery via drones in the near future. https://inc42.com/buzz/drones-cleared-for-take-off-as-govt-launches-garud-portal-to-simplify-norms/

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  February 19, 2021 | International, C4ISR

  Space Lasers Will Revolutionize Military Communications, If They Work

  The Pentagon has ambitious plans to launch hundreds of communications satellites in the years ahead. But getting them to talk to one another isn’t easy.

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  September 21, 2020 | International, C4ISR

  CENTCOM looks to industry for data-centric network

  Andrew Eversden WASHINGTON — U.S. Central Command needs industry's help in designing a network infrastructure that provides improved secure information sharing with allies and partners, its top IT official said Sept. 17. Brig. Gen. Jeth Rey, director of command and control, communications, and computer systems at CENTCOM, said his team is working to establish a data-centric architecture that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to limit access to data based only on what a user needs. “What I have the team looking at is working in that transport agnostic, looking at a data-centric connection, and then how can we then use attributes to then release information to that person who is trying to access the data. And so that's where data centricity is at the end of the day trying to use machine learning and AI,” Rey said at the 2020 Intelligence and National Security Summit. “That's where we need help from industry.” Rey compared CENTCOM's need to the service provided by banks, where a person logs in with credentials, and then the bank reaches into its massive database, pulling out only the information specific to that person. CENTCOM, the largest combatant command, also has data and information sharing requirements with more than 50 nations, adding another degree of difficulty in developing a secure architecture where users can only access the necessary data. “We here at CENTCOM are going to work with partners, and we need to share our information with them,” Rey said. “We need that help in order to display from a single document with multiple security measures ... but release only that information on that document to that person by their credential.” The need Rey described is similar to an architecture developed by the U.S. intelligence community for its data access needs. That platform, known as IC GovCloud, enabled users to store data in one place and the community to implement security measures to limit personnel access to what they “need to know,” said Greg Smithberger, chief information officer at the National Security Agency and director of the agency's Capabilities Directorate. “We built the GovCloud from the ground up with this thought in mind so that with the data comes knowledge of where it came from and what the rules are in terms of how it needs to be handled and who has the need to know. And the systems are enforcing that need to know, so that if the humans make a mistake, there's a safety net there,” he said during the same webinar. https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/it-networks/2020/09/18/centcom-looks-to-industry-for-data-centric-network/