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  January 30, 2019 | International, Land

  Raytheon/Lockheed Martin Javelin Joint Venture Awarded Contract For 2,100 F-Model Missiles, Marking Initial Full-Rate Production

  ORLANDO, Fla., Jan. 30, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The Javelin Joint Venture was awarded a production contract for 2,100 F-Model (FGM-148F) missiles, following a successful and rigorous system qualification test program that included 21 successful flight tests. The contract launches the initial full-rate production agreement for the Javelin F-Model missile, replacing the Javelin FGM-148E (Block I). The Javelin FGM-148F missile features an advanced multipurpose warhead (MPWH) as part of the man portable, fire-and-forget Javelin missile system. The MPWH incorporates the latest generation shaped charged technology to defeat present and future advanced armored threats while adding a fragmenting steel warhead case to significantly improve lethality against soft targets and light armored vehicles. The Javelin F-Model round deliveries are planned for early 2020 and will be available for international allies, with U.S. government permission. There are also funded efforts underway to develop a higher performance Lightweight Command Launch Unit (CLU) and FGM-148G Model missile that will dramatically improve system performance while reducing weight and lowering system cost. First deployed in 1996, Javelin is the world's most versatile and lethal one-man-portable and platform-employed anti-tank and multi-target precision weapon system. To date, more than 45,000 missiles and 12,000 CLUs have been produced. The Javelin weapon system has experienced numerous technology insertions since its initial fielding to stay ahead of advancing threats. Javelin, which is produced by a joint venture between Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, has been used extensively and to great advantage in combat operations in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Over 5,000 engagements have been successfully conducted by U.S. and coalition forces. Current U.S. allies that have Javelin in inventory include France, Taiwan, Jordan, Qatar, Turkey, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Indonesia, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, Oman, Ukraine, Georgia, Australia, Estonia, UAE and the United Kingdom. The Javelin Joint Venture is an award-winning enterprise recognized in 2015 by the Office of the Secretary of Defense for its outstanding achievements in providing operational support to warfighters with the highest level of mission success and tactical operational readiness. About Lockheed Martin Headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, Lockheed Martin is a global security and aerospace company that employs approximately 105,000 people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture, integration and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products and services. SOURCE Lockheed Martin https://news.lockheedmartin.com/2019-01-30-Raytheon-Lockheed-Martin-Javelin-Joint-Venture-Awarded-Contract-for-2-100-F-Model-Missiles-Marking-Initial-Full-Rate-Production

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  June 22, 2020 | International, C4ISR

  Artificial intelligence systems need ‘checks and balances’ throughout development

  Andrew Eversden The Pentagon's primary artificial intelligence hub is already studying how to aim a laser at the correct spot on an enemy vehicle, pinpointing which area to target to inflict the most damage, and identifying the most important messages headed to commanders, officials said June 16. But as part of that work, the Department of Defense needs to carefully implement checks and balances into the development process, experts urged June 16. “Fundamentally I would say there's a requirement ... that there's going to be a mixture of measures taken to ensure the governability of the system from the first stage of the design of the system all the way up through the operations of the system in a combat scenario,” said Greg Allen, the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center's chief of strategy and communications at the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, at the Defense One Tech Summit June 16. The JAIC is working on several lethality projects through its new joint warfighting initiative, boosted by a new contract award to Booz Allen potentially worth $800 million. “With this new contract vehicle, we have the potential to do even more this next year than we did in the past,” Allen said. Meanwhile, the Army's Artificial Intelligence Task Force is working on an advanced threat recognition project. DARPA is exploring complementing AI systems that would identify available combat support assets and quickly plan their route to the area. Throughout all of the development work, experts from the military and from academia stressed that human involvement and experimentation was critical to ensuring that artificial intelligence assets are trustworthy. The department has released a document of five artificial intelligence ethical principles, but the challenge remains implementing those principles into projects across a department with disparate services working on separate artificial intelligence projects. “We want safe, reliable and robust systems deployed to our warfighters,” said Heather Roff, senior research analyst at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab. “We want to be able to trust those systems. We want to have some sort of measure of predictability even if those systems act unpredictably.” Brig. Gen. Matt Easley, director of the artificial intelligence task force at Army Futures Command, said the service is grappling with those exact challenges, trying to understand how the service can insert “checks and balances” as it trains systems and soldiers. Easley added that the unmanned systems under development by the Army will have to be adaptable to different environments, such as an urban or desert scenarios. In order to ensure that the systems and soldiers are ready for those scenarios, the Army has to complete a series of tests, just like the autonomous vehicle industry. “We don't think these systems are going to be 100 percent capable right out of the box,” Easley said on the webinar. “If you look at a lot of the evolution of the self-driving cars throughout our society today, they're doing a lot of experimentation. They're doing lots of testing, lots of learning every day. We in the Army have to learn how to go from doing one to two to three vehicle experiments to have many experiments going on every day across all our camp posts and stations.” Increasingly autonomous systems also mean that there needs to a cultural shift in among all levels of military personnel who will need to better understand how artificial intelligence is used. Roff said that operators, commanders and judge advocate generals will need to better understand how systems are supposed “to ensure that the human responsibility and governability is there.” “We need to make sure that we have training, tactics, procedures, as well as policies, ensuring where we know the human decision maker is,” Roff said. https://www.c4isrnet.com/it-networks/2020/06/18/artificial-intelligence-systems-need-checks-and-balances-throughout-development/

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  October 7, 2019 | International, Aerospace

  Boeing’s F-18 jet may have a leg up in Germany over Eurofighter

  By: Sebastian Sprenger COLOGNE, Germany — The race between Boeing's F-18 jet and the Airbus Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft to replace Germany's Tornado fighter-bombers has tilted toward the American plane, according to a German media report. That is after German defense officials received information from the Pentagon about the time needed to certify the Eurofighter to carry nuclear weapons, according to an article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Getting the Eurofighter approved for that mission would take between three and five years longer than the F-18, which is considered a nuclear weapons-capable aircraft in the U.S. military, the newspaper reported. Germany has kept a subset of its approximately 80-strong Tornado fleet equipped to carry out the NATO nuclear-sharing doctrine. That means in the case of a hypothetical atomic war, German pilots would load their aircraft with U.S. nuclear bombs and drop them on their intended targets at the behest of the alliance. While Germany's nuclear mission periodically comes up as a source of controversy here, previous governments have left it untouched, portraying the largely symbolic assignment as a vital element of trans-Atlantic relations. A spokeswoman for the Defence Ministry in Berlin declined to comment on the SZ report, saying only that American and German defense officials have been in “continuous conversations” on the issue. The government is expected to announce a winner between the F-18 and the Eurofighter Typhoon early next year. In January 2019, defense officials eliminated the F-35 as a candidate, largely because picking an American plane would weaken the case for having such weapons be made by European companies in the future. Such is the case with the Future Combat Air Systems program, led by Airbus and Dassault. Airbus says if Germany chooses the Eurofighter as a Tornado replacement, it would be easier for companies on the continent to transition to an eventual development of the German-Franco-Spanish platform. The German defense minister's visit to Washington last month put the spotlight back on the prospect of an American buy, however. “We want to treat this question jointly,” Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer told reporters in the U.S. capital on Sept. 23. She added that Germany wants a “gap-less” continuation of the Tornado's capabilities, adding that she envisions a “tight schedule” for the replacement. Airbus, meanwhile, doesn't see the need to rush. With 10 years or so left before ditching the Tornado, the reported nuclear-certification time seems to still fit into the overall replacement schedule, spokesman Florian Taitsch told Defense News. Plus, he argued, it should be expected that, when given a choice, the Trump administration with its “America First” doctrine would be keen to push American-made weapons over European ones. “For us, the situation hasn't changed,” Taitsch said. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2019/10/04/boeings-f-18-may-have-a-leg-up-in-germany-over-eurofighter/