September 24, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security, Other Defence

Flooding the zone: Future aviation capability tightens kill chain at Project Convergence

WASHINGTON — Partnering helicopters and unmanned aircraft just a few years ago meant that a pilot could control a drone to fly ahead to conduct reconnaissance. Maybe it meant a pilot could control payloads or even the weapon systems on that drone.

But at Project Convergence at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona, this month, manned-unmanned teaming took on a far more advanced meaning.

The Army's Future Vertical Lift team rolled into the service's weeks-long “campaign of learning” with 19 semi truck trailers and almost 200 people, Brig. Gen. Wally Rugen, who is in charge of the Army's FVL modernization efforts, told Defense News in a Sept. 22 interview.

The effort brings together future weapons and capabilities envisioned for a 2030s battlefield against near-peer adversaries such as Russia and China. It includes using a machine learning and artificial intelligence-enabled battle management system that is in development.

Rugen said he was “very, very proud” to see technology at the event mature to the point that allowed for data to be pushed across networks “faster than we've done in the past” through a tight-knit kill chain that included space, air and ground assets underpinned by Assured Position, Navigation and Timing (APNT) and an advanced network.

The team had 127 technical objectives it wanted to meet through 11 use cases and the three mission threads.

The breadth of the effort reflects that the Army is at a critical juncture when it comes to modernizing its fleet. The service is attempting to develop and field both a Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) and Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) as well as a variety of Air-Launched Effects (ALE) capabilities along with a modular open system architecture that makes it easier to upgrade and modernize as time goes on. Leaders want all of this by 2030.

The next level of algorithmic warfare

A year ago, the Army's Architecture, Automation, Autonomy and Interfaces capability, or A3I, was put to the test at China Lake, California. In that effort, an operator with a tablet in the back of an MH-47 Chinook cargo helicopter took control of a Gray Eagle drone and tasked it to fire a small, precision-glide munition at an enemy target located on the ground. At the last second, a higher level threat was detected and the munition was rapidly redirected toward a different threat, taking it out within seconds.

At Project Convergence, the final shot of the campaign came from a soldier on the ground taking control of a Long-Range Precision Fires (LRPF) munition surrogate (a Hellfire missile) on a Gray Eagle — representing a FARA — and firing on the target. This takes critical seconds out of the operation as the pilot of the aircraft wouldn't have to focus on trying to locate the target himself, aiming and firing the missile.

At China Lake, the Army was able to use automation to reroute the Gray Eagle around poor weather. This year the aircraft were avoiding threat weapon systems, Rugen said. And while the Dynetics GBU-69 small glide munition used last year was inert, this time the Army used live rounds.

The Army also used an open system architecture that was flexible enough for payloads and capabilities to be swapped in out of its A3I Gray Eagles without having to rely on the original equipment manufacturer to do it, Rugen highlighted.

Multidomain aviation

During the first mission thread, which focused on the penetration phase laid out in the Army's Multidomain Operations warfighting concept, aircraft partnered with space-based assets, APNT, and LRPF capabilities to locate, then degrade and destroy enemy assets modeled after the Russian Pantsir air defense systems and other weapons.

The ALE pushed ingested data forward through the network to get it to the right shooters, whether that would be an Extended Range Cannon Artillery (ERCA) system on the ground or a Gray Eagle or another ALE.

During the exercise, the team launched six ALEs “flooding the zone with our drones for the first time and we did that multiple times over,” Rugen said.

Flooding the zone brought a variety of capabilities to the overall force during the three phases of operations.

First, the Army was able to extend the ALE capability out to almost 62 kilometers, which provides deep standoff for manned aircraft like FARA.

“For a division commander,” Rugen said, “that's just transforming his or her battlefield geometry.”

The ALEs performed both the reconnaissance, surveillance and targeting acquisition mission and worked as a mesh network to extend the battlefield. Two ALEs were truck launched and four were air launched.

“We did prove we could launch up to 80 knots forward speed on our FARA surrogate aircraft,” Rugen said.

The team was also able to recover all of its ALEs from the operation using the Flying Launch and Recovery System (FLAReS).

Rather than letting the drones belly land in the sand or on a runway, which would result in damage, FLAReS has a hook on the edge of the wing that catches the ALE's wing in flight. “It's been wonderful to see that innovation,” Rugen said.

In a classified operation related to the penetration phase of battle, an ALE dropped off a Gray Eagle at an operationally relevant altitude for the first time, Rugen noted.

In the dis-integrate mission thread, which aims to destroy and disrupt subcomponents of enemy capability such as command and control systems and intelligence capabilitiesas well as other critical nodes, the ALEs helped refine targeting information in a GPS-denied environment and passed it back to the ERCA system for long-range shots.

In that phase, a Gray Eagle, serving as a “munitions mule,” flew outside of the enemy weapon engagement zone, and another aircraft took control of a sensor-enabled munition deployed from the Gray Eagle.

In the third mission phase, where the goal is to exploit freedom of maneuver gained in the penetrate and dis-integrate phases in order to defeat enemy objectives, the air assets and Next-Generation Combat Vehicles were able to pass information back and forth using an internally developed system called Firestorm that works as the machine-to-machine brain.

During the phase, the team was able to demonstrate the ability to automatically route the engagement, Rugen said. This means the aircraft or vehicle was able to ingest data and then the machine automatically sets up its route to engage the target with no involvement from the pilot.

“Keeping the aviator out of it was the ingenious thing we were able to do,” Rugen said.

Project Convergence also wasn't just about the technology but the tactics, techniques and procedures through which the Army worked, according to Rugen. “We're not just hitting the technology button here,” he said. “Some of it is the advanced ingress techniques against our pacing threats.”

Overall, the interoperability between various battlefield capabilities from the ground all the way to space was an achievement, according to Rugen. "I'm not saying it's flawless, but we are not in our stove pipes and it's made us, at times, uncomfortable. But being uncomfortable is not necessarily bad.

“We definitely had to converge because we were forced to, and there was some forcing to it, but it's been great,” he added.

https://www.defensenews.com/land/2020/09/23/flooding-the-zone-future-aviation-capability-tightens-kill-chain-at-project-convergence/

On the same subject

July 31, 2020 | International, Aerospace

U.S. Air Force Launches Three-Year Fielding Plan For Skyborg Weapons
Steve Trimble July 07, 2020 The next combat aircraft to enter the U.S. Air Force inventory will not be a manned sixth-generation fighter or even the Northrop Grumman B-21. By fiscal 2023, the Air Force expects to deliver the first operational versions of a new unmanned aircraft system (UAS) called Skyborg, a provocative portmanteau blending the medium of flight with the contraction for a cybernetic organism. The Skyborg family of aircraft is expected to fill an emerging “attritable” category for combat aircraft that blurs the line between a reusable UAS and a single-use cruise missile. July 8 award date for Skyborg contracts Leidos is managing autonomy mission system As the aircraft are developed, Skyborg also will serve as the test case of a radical change in acquisition philosophy, with ecosystems of collaborative software coders and aircraft manufacturers replacing the traditional approach with a supply chain defined by a single prime contractor. The Air Force also plans to manage the Skyborg aircraft differently than other UAS. Although Air Combat Command (ACC) is considering the Skyborg family as a replacement for pre-Block F-16s after 2025 and MQ-9s after 2030, the aircraft is not likely to fit neatly into an existing force structure with dedicated Skyborg squadrons. “Even though we call Skyborg an attritable aircraft, I think we'll think of them more like reusable weapons,” says Will Roper, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics. The Skyborg is an attritable weapon, which means key components such as the jet engine will be designed with a short service life. Credit: AFRL via YouTube The Skyborg propulsion systems—including expendable subsonic and supersonic jet engines—will be rated with a fraction of the service life expected of a fully reusable UAS or manned aircraft. “We'll do whatever number of takeoffs and landings they're ‘spec'd' for, and then we'll attrit them out of the force as targets and just buy them at a steady rate,” Roper says. Starting in fiscal 2023, a concept of operations for a formation of four Lockheed Martin F-22s will include Skyborgs as part of the manned aircraft's load-out. “I expect that the pilots, depending on the mission, [will] decide: Does the Skyborg return and land with them and then go to fight another day, or is it the end of its life and it's going to go on a one-way mission?” Roper explains. In some cases, the pilot may decide a target is important enough that it is worth the loss of a Skyborg, even if its service life has not been used up, he adds. As the concept evolves, a diverse array of Skyborg aircraft designs will likely find roles beyond the air combat community, Roper says. “I don't think it'll just be fighters,” he says. “I think they'll fly with bombers. I think they'll fly with tankers to provide extra defensive capability. That's what I love about their versatility and the fact that we can take risks with them.” Skyborg is often presented as the epitome of the “loyal wingman” concept, in which one or multiple UAS are controlled or managed by a manned aircraft to perform a variety of surveillance, support and strike tasks during a mission. But the aircraft also could have the ability to operate independently of a manned aircraft, with the capability to launch and recover hundreds of such systems without the need for runways or even bases. The Kratos XQ-58A, which achieved first flight in March 2019, is one of several potential members of the Skyborg UAS family. Credit: U.S. Air Force “If [China and Russia] know that they have to target only tens or even hundreds of ports and airfields, we have simplified their problem,” says ACC chief Gen. Mike Holmes. The new class of attritable aircraft, he says, are designed so that “we can still provide relevant high-tempo combat power to be freed up from a runway.” If Skyborg is the future, it begins on July 8. The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) is due on the second Wednesday of this month to award a contract to start developing the first in a family of experimental UAS bearing the name Skyborg. The AFRL already has a stable of potential concepts. The Kratos XQ-58A Valkyrie, which has flown four times since March 2019, is the most visible example of the AFRL's Low-Cost Attritable Aircraft Technology platform. Meanwhile, the Low-Cost Attritable Aircraft Platform--Sharing project quietly kept several UAS industry leaders involved in design studies, including Boeing, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc., Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. Each company selected will be awarded a contract with a maximum value of $400 million over a five-year ordering period. But the core of the Skyborg program is the software; specifically, the military aviation equivalent of the algorithm-fed convolutional neural networks that help driverless cars navigate on city streets. In announcing Leidos on May 18 as the Skyborg Design Agent (SDA), the AFRL selected the same company that delivered the software “brain” of the Navy's Sea Hunter unmanned surface vehicle, which navigated from San Diego to Honolulu in 2018. As SDA, Leidos' role is to deliver a software core that uses artificial intelligence to learn and adapt as the aircraft flies. The autonomy mission system core—as integrated by Leidos from a combination of industry and government sources—will be inserted into multiple low-cost UAS designed by different companies, with each configured to perform a different mission or set of missions. That is how the Skyborg program is set up today, but that is not how it started. Roper created the original “Skyborg” term and concept when he led the Strategic Capabilities Office within the Office of the Secretary of Defense in 2012-17. Roper transferred Skyborg to the AFRL, where it was renamed Avatar. A year after taking over Air Force acquisition in 2017, Roper changed the name back to Skyborg and created a program office in October 2018. In March 2019, Roper revealed the Skyborg concept to a group of reporters a week before the AFRL issued the first request for information to industry about the program. At that time, Skyborg was still organized more traditionally, with plans to select a single contractor to serve as a prime integrator. By early 2020, program officials reorganized Skyborg into modular hardware and software subcomponents built on an open architecture that requires no prime integrator. As the acquisition strategy has evolved, so has the Air Force's thinking about how to use the Skyborg family of systems. “The whole idea was [that] the contested environment is going to be challenging, it's going to be uncertain, and so it makes the most sense to have something that doesn't have a pilot in it to go into the battlefield first,” Roper says. “But once you agree that's a self-evident operational concept, it opens up the door for a lot of nontraditional thinking for the Air Force.” After a 2-3 year experimental phase, the AFRL plans to deliver an early operational capability in fiscal 2023. Follow-on operational Skyborgs could be funded within the Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) project or through a separate program of record. The Skyborg concept even has links to the Air Force's architecture for the Advanced Battle-Management System (ABMS). “Attritable-ONE,” which is defined as having “multirole attritable capabilities,” is one of about 30 product lines in the ABMS architecture. “Skyborg and the AttritableONE teams are closely coordinated for planning and collaboration purposes,” the AFRL informed industry in response to questions about the Skyborg solicitation. The aircraft supplier must deliver a highly flexible design. Leidos, the design agent, will provide the autonomous mission system that will serve as the pilot, flight control computer and mission systems operator for the aircraft. But the “size, weight, power and cooling details for the Skyborg core autonomy system have not been finalized,” the AFRL told the bidding companies. “The majority of the system will be software-based and integrate with the sensors onboard the host aircraft,” the AFRL says. “Extensive collaboration between the Skyborg system design agent and the participants in this [contract] is expected.” https://aviationweek.com/ad-week/us-air-force-launches-three-year-fielding-plan-skyborg-weapons
June 23, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

Defense planning takes a back seat in Britain’s struggle to shake the coronavirus
By: Andrew Chuter LONDON — Producing a promised new defense and security review was never going to be straightforward for the British government, but the impact of the COVID-19 crisis and the fast-evolving geostrategic position has muddied the waters even further, leaving open the question of future investment priorities. The integrated defense, security and foreign policy review ordered by Prime Minister Boris Johnson soon after he entered office last December was meant to provide answers to how Britain would make its way in the world post-Brexit. That exercise is partly, but not entirely, on ice as the government focuses its attention on trying to control COVID-19 without putting the economy back in the Stone Age. Completion of the review has been pushed back from this summer to sometime next year. Stephan Lovegrove, the Ministry of Defence's permanent secretary, told the parliamentary public accounts committee recently that some work on the review was ongoing, with early results expected to emerge this year. “There will potentially be something direction-setting later this year. Exactly how full that is, I do not know. Our view is that the fuller it can be, the better,” Lovegrove said. One MoD official, who asked not to be named, said one of the key items now being worked on was a look at the balance of economic priorities versus national security priorities. It's a key question, the answer to which will likely set the scene for decisions on defense investment priorities for years to come. Johnson's original claim that the review would be policy driven, not financially compelled, is no longer the case — if it ever was. Independent analyst John Louth says that post COVID-19, it's going to be all about the money. “Without doubt the pandemic has changed everything. It [the review] is going to be driven by affordability,” Louth said. Defense commentator Howard Wheeldon of Wheeldon Strategic Advisory said funding was going to be a big problem across the West. “Pressures on Western governments in relation to defense spending have probably never been greater. But while we are seeing a significant awareness of the need to invest in activities like cyber, space and ISTAR we cannot afford to ignore the ongoing need to invest in conventional weapons,” he said. “China is investing heavily in air and maritime, and Russia, despite economic pressures, is increasing spend on conventional weapons. Given that COVID-19 has impacted on virtually every nation we must expect that defense spending will be impacted in the medium term,” Wheeldon said. “For the UK we must anticipate cuts in legacy systems across all three services but I am of the view that the army will bear the brunt when it comes to capacity reduction,” he added. It's not just affordability that is the issue. The pandemic is focusing the minds of parliamentarians and others on issues like homeland resilience. The military here have been lauded for their efforts supporting the fight against COVID-19 but it could eventually come at a cost, according to Doug Barrie, a senior analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank in London. “The recognition for greater societal resilience, and the associated cost of this, as a result of the pandemic threatens to be a draw on the U.K.'s armed forces in terms of personnel and future investment — this will put pressure on defense expenditure across the board,” Barrie said. “A neutral budget would be a success for MoD, but I can see some projects being postponed and platform capabilities trimmed as a near term measure,” he added. It wouldn't be so bad if the defense equipment budget was currently under control, but it's not. The National Audit Office, the government's financial watchdog, reckons the current equipment plan has been unaffordable for several years. The worst-case scenario puts the 10-year equipment budget shortfall at £13 billion (U.S. $16 billion) says the NAO. While a decision by Johnson and his advisors on Britain's strategic road map is thrashed out the MoD is living pretty much hand-to-mouth, balancing the books annually by in-year reductions in equipment spending and other measures. Lovegrove told the parliamentary committee the MoD is focusing on smaller programs to cut to leave the government with space to make decisions on more strategic issues during the defense review. Such an approach does have financial consequences, though. “What we typically seek to do is to look at some of the less strategic capabilities, which we are capable of making decisions on outside of a full-blown, multi-year strategic review, and ask difficult questions of those for the [Service] Commands. Ultimately, we would like the Commands to make their own decisions. Sometimes those are cut; more often, they are deferred and descoped,” he said. “Deferring programs in order to give ministers proper choices within a strategic context has the result of pushing the bow wave of the unbalanced budget out a year or two, making it a bit bigger,” the permanent secretary said. “There is a cumulative effect of doing what we have to do to maintain the integrity of the program of record when the balance is out of whack, in that we defer for a year, then defer for a year, then put projects on shorter rations. The bow wave becomes bigger. You see that in the nature of the more difficult financing position that we have for the next three or four years. ... So, yes, I think that the program is very tight and getting tighter,” Lovegrove warned. Without the results of the review the defense sector is operating in a bit of a vacuum on the equipment front. Louth said that ultimately what the MoD spends its money on will be dictated by an as yet unknown view of Britain's foreign policy goals in a post-coronavirus, post-Brexit era. “Where the money is invested depends what they [the government] want to do. The problem is can anybody put their hand up and say ‘we understand what theUK strategic ambition is at the moment,” he said. Despite the strategy vacuum the review likely heralds significant change to investment priorities, according to Wheeldon. “I see a huge change of approach emerging in the UK — one that will concentrate more resources on internal defense, cyber and space and less on conventional armies and battlefield activities. The UK will remain committed to air and maritime and in particular ISTAR and carrier strike. Whilst retaining the overall air and maritime commitment to the NATO alliance I envisage a shift away from front-line land systems support to that of increased ISTAR, space and cyber,” Wheeldon said. Which sectors will see the money invested ? “My money would remain very much on ensuring we have sufficient air and maritime capabilities, particularly ISTAR, and fast jet and surface and sub-surface maritime capability. Investing in space is crucial, investing in cyber is hugely important. I also remain committed to replacement of our nuclear deterrent capability,” Wheeldon said. Barrie agreed about the key requirement to invest in sectors like cyber, space and ISTAR, but cautioned that even here “ambitions will have to be shaped by budgetary reality.” In a paper published in March as the COVID-19 crisis took hold, the Royal United Services Institute's deputy director-general, Malcolm Chalmers, and Will Jessett, a former strategy director at the MoD, offered a view of Britain's defense priorities should be in the future. Britain's new policy should be encapsulated in a new doctrine of enlightened national interest, they said. “Under such an approach, the first priority for the armed forces should be the defense of the UK homeland and its immediate neighborhood. ... The shape of expeditionary forces should now be determined primarily through the need to work closely with NATO allies in defense of Europe and its immediate neighborhood,” the two analysts said. The analysts' view of local and regional defense is partly reflected in their equipment list for Britain's future forces. “Defence priorities over the coming decade need to include robust air defense of the UK (and the Republic of Ireland), strengthened coastal defenses against limited incursions, protection of infrastructure (defense and civil) against virtual and physical attack, and maintaining the ability to provide adequate support to the civil power in national emergencies,” they said in their RUSI paper. A move towards defense of the U.K. and, through NATO, its immediate neighborhood, would represent a significant shift. Just a little over 15 months ago then-Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson was making the case for Britain competing for its interests on a global playing field. “In an era of great power competition we cannot be satisfied simply by protecting our own backyard” Williamson said in a speech at RUSI. Britain has spent billions of pounds building two new F-35 equipped aircraft carriers as part of that policy and needs to invest heavily to buy additional jets and carrier strike support vessels. But a swing towards beefing up defenses in Europe may gain more traction following U.S. President Donald Trump's recent announcement he was withdrawing thousands of troops from Europe. Whether or not Trump means it, or is playing to the gallery ahead of the U.S. elections in November, is unclear, but a significant reduction in U.S. manpower would go right to the heart of NATO planning assumptions. Causing European powers like Britain to rethink how they address the need for their forces to maneuver against a potential adversary like Russia without significant US military support. Louth said the Russian's pushing west to regain territory lost since the end of the Cold War is not as unthinkable as it once was. “We have to be able to address that level of uncertainty and in defense that must be about protecting Europe's borders. What it means is you have to have an investment strategy and a capability generation process that allows you to protect those borders by being able to maneuver across a highly amorphous battlefield across a number of domains.The physicality of force goes to the heart of deterrent,” the analyst said. https://www.defensenews.com/smr/transatlantic-partnerships/2020/06/22/defense-planning-takes-a-back-seat-in-britains-struggle-to-shake-the-coronavirus/
April 20, 2018 | International, Naval

Why the Navy wants more of these hard-to-find software developers
By: Mark Pomerleau With a relative dearth of cyber expertise in the military, Congress mandated last year the services begin direct commissioning pilot programs. The Navy, however has been doing direct commissioning for highly skilled software engineers for a few years, albeit on a small scale. The cyber warfare engineer (CWE) program is a highly competitive program with officers on five year rotations performing software or tool development for cyber operators. CWEs serve as members of the cyber mission force, the Navy's cyber mission force teams that serve as the cyber warriors for U.S. Cyber Command, producing cyber tools, but can also conduct target analysis, vulnerability research, and counter-measure development against malicious cyber activities. Since 2011, the Navy has only recruited 25 of these commissioned officers to its ranks. “Twenty-five developers in the Navy as military officers is definitely not enough,” Lt. Christopher Liu, the most senior cyber warfare engineer told Fifth Domain in an interview at the Navy League's Sea Air Space conference April 9. With a relative dearth of cyber expertise in the military, Congress mandated last year the services begin direct commissioning pilot programs. The Navy, however has been doing direct commissioning for highly skilled software engineers for a few years, albeit on a small scale. The cyber warfare engineer (CWE) program is a highly competitive program with officers on five year rotations performing software or tool development for cyber operators. CWEs serve as members of the cyber mission force, the Navy's cyber mission force teams that serve as the cyber warriors for U.S. Cyber Command, producing cyber tools, but can also conduct target analysis, vulnerability research, and counter-measure development against malicious cyber activities. Since 2011, the Navy has only recruited 25 of these commissioned officers to its ranks. “Twenty-five developers in the Navy as military officers is definitely not enough,” Lt. Christopher Liu, the most senior cyber warfare engineer told Fifth Domain in an interview at the Navy League's Sea Air Space conference April 9. “We definitely need to increase the billets and increase the amount that we can hire ... to have more talents to be able to work on the cyber mission,” he said. “As soon as the number increases, we'll be able to expand the program rather than just five years to eight years, hopefully make it into a 20 year career so people can get trained up and work on missions and not be forced into different fields.” The Pentagon has been besieged by concerns about the DoD's ability to both retain and attract cyber talent among its ranks when similar jobs in the private sector pay significantly more. Vice Adm. Michael Gilday, commander of 10th Fleet/Fleet Cyber Command, acknowledged in recent congressional testimony that the military is not competitive with the private sector and noted that the base pay for the CWE position is around $37,000 a year. “That's what we pay somebody to answer the phones around here,” Senator Claire McCaskill, responded to Gilday interrupting him in frustration. “We're asking them to have incredible expertise. That seems to me totally unrealistic.” Some current CWEs feel the work they're doing inside the Navy has greater meaning than similar work they did in the private sector. “I find that this is a lot more fulfilling,” Ensign Jordan Acedera, the most junior CWE told Fifth Domain. “You finish a project, you're given something that's a lot more challenging and that really tests you.” For Lt. (j.g.) George John, who was formerly writing software at a stock trading company, work with the CWE provides a better environment that's not driven so much by profit margins and hitting quarterly revenue targets. “We don't have to worry about profitability or bringing to market,” he said. “We can pursue a little more ... what's possible. Throw stuff against the wall, see what sticks, take our time to figure out a plan of action.” One of the biggest challenges, however, is lack of knowledge of the program, even inside the Navy. “You still walk across captains and commander who say 'CWE, what in god's name is that,” John said. With more CWE personnel in the force, the Navy could build a more informed and skilled software engineering cadre, the group said. “There's tons of software. Everybody has some type of software pet project,” John said. “To be able to get more CWEs on those things and coordinate with one another and say here's what [Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services] is doing with their communications and their infrastructure. How are we doing that differently on the base side? You can talk and address security concerns with one another. Just within the cyber operations realm, Liu said, as the headcount increases, the CWEs could work on the requirements the operational community within the cyber mission force rather than having to prioritize projects. They could even start to look at developing capability prior to a specific requirement coming in as a means of staying ahead of the game as opposed to waiting for and reacting on requirements from operators. https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/navy-league/2018/04/11/why-the-navy-wants-more-of-these-hard-to-find-software-developers/

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