June 27, 2018 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR
By: Jen Judson and Sebastian Sprenger
PARIS, France — The U.S. Army has honed in on six modernization priorities, none of which can afford to linger in a sluggish acquisition process as threats grow in sophistication and the battlefield grows more complex, which has piqued the interest of many foreign companies, who are banking on having an increased chance at playing in the U.S. market due to the pace at which the Army wants to prototype and procure capabilities.
At European defense conference Eurosatory, several companies unveiled not just paper or miniature model concepts but actual capabilities targeting the top two priorities: The Next-Generation Combat Vehicle (NGCV) and Long-Range Precision Fires (LRPF).
The Army announced last fall that it would establish a four-star command to tackle its modernization priorities in short order. They are LRPF, NGCV, Future Vertical Lift, the Network,Air-and-Missile Defense and Soldier Lethality, in that order.
And since that announcement, the service has set up cross-functional teams to focus on each priority. Many leaders of the CFTs said earlier this year that they planned to prototype capabilities within just a few years and get them into the hands of soldiers.
Next-gen combat vehicles
The U.S. Army's first stab at building prototypes for what it intends to be an innovative, leap-ahead NGCV and its robotic wingman will be ready for soldier evaluations in fiscal 2020 with a follow-on prototypes expected in 2022 and 2024.
Germany's Rheinmetall Defence revealed its new Lynx KF41 infantry fighting vehicle at Eurosatory on June 12 with an eye toward the U.S. market. The company pulled out all the stops including a 10:00 a.m. champagne toast to christen the vehicle.
It's sometimes the case, at a unveiling, for the vehicle to just be a non-functioning, life-size model to convey the concept, but Rheinmetall made it clear the vehicle being shown is real. The company has publicly available footage of the vehicle's rigorous test campaigns.
Executives at Rheinmetall told Defense News it believes the stars could be aligned for a successful pitch of the Lynx vehicle to the U.S. Army. Due to its modular design, a few hours of work can turn the Lynx into anything from a medium tank to a battlefield ambulance.
Ben Hudson, head of the company's vehicle systems division, hopes the feature will be an interesting proposition for the U.S. Army's NGCV.
“We are highly interested in it, and we have been below the radar for a little for the last couple of years while we've delivered this,” Hudson told Defense News following the unveiling. “We don't want to deliver a PowerPoint, we want to deliver a real vehicle, and we have shown this to some people in the U.S. Army and I think it is fair to say there is some genuine interest for the U.S. to look at this vehicle as a serious competitor for the Next-Generation Combat Vehicle.”
When asked how Rheinmetall might become involved in that collaboration, Hudson said there have been a lot of changes over the past several months as the Army's new cross-functional team under its new Futures Command moves forward with efforts to bring an NGCV capability online.
“All I can say is the next six months for that program are going to be very interesting, and we look forward to things that may occur early next year. That's all I can really say about that for now,” he said.
What's still missing, however, is an official U.S. partner company that could give the bid an American face and manage domestic production. Such teaming is practically mandatory these days, and Hudson said there is no shortage of suitors.
“We've had significant interest from U.S. companies at Eurosatory over the last couple of days,” he said. “We've had a lot of people interested in partnering with us because we don't only have a concept, we've got a real vehicle and turret for the program.”
Israeli company Rafael didn't have a dramatic unveiling at the show, but told Defense News that it was developing and testing a 30mm weapon station outfitted with its Trophy active protection system as an all-in-one system.
The Army is outfitting several brigades worth of Trophy APS on its Abrams tanks.
The turret can be purchase with our without the Trophy system, Rafael's Michael L. told Defense News at the show. Michael's last name has been withheld for security reasons.
One customer is buying more than a hundred 30mm weapon stations, he said.
And while Rafael is envisioning the possibility of its 30mm turret and APS system being a good option for outfitting upgunned Strykers going forward, it's also setting its sights on becoming involved in NGCV prototyping with its work in flexible turret design as well as in its long history fielding APS capability.
But not every leading tank manufacturer outside of the U.S. is clamoring to get involved in the U.S. combat vehicles market.
In the case of Germany's Krauss-Maffei Wegmann and its French partner Nexter, executives believe the odds of selling entire vehicles to the American armed forces are dim. “We play a role in the U.S., we are selling in the U.S., but not on a system level,” KMW boss Frank Haun said during an interview at Eurosatory.
Mayer, his Nexter counterpart, added that “political reasons” and the “industry landscape” make it difficult for outsiders to break into a market tightly controlled by domestic players.
In Haun's experience, arms sales to the U.S. have the highest chance of succeeding when there is little money at stake. “Whatever is under the radar of senators and congressmen will work,” he said.
U.S. defense contractors have significant influence in Congress thanks to traditional lobbying campaigns targeting both Democrats and Republicans. In addition, many large companies employ workers in plants across the United States, which means lawmakers from those areas are eager to ensure a continued flow of defense money to the contractors.
Long-range precision fires
The U.S. Army will demonstrate LRPF technology from a precision-strike missile to hypersonics and ramjet capabilities within the next couple of years, according to the service's LRPF CFT.
In the near future, the service is looking at how it will evolve its current M109A7 self-propelled howitzer — or the Paladin Integrated Management — into extended-range cannon artillery. At the same time, a competition is ongoing to build a new LRPF capability that replaces and surpasses the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS).
Norwegian ammunition company Nammo unveiled what it's calling an “extreme range” artillery concept using ramjet propulsion that it hopes will meet the emerging LRPF requirements for a variety of countries, including the United States.
Nammo has combined its experience in both ammunition and rocket-propulsion technology, and it's merging those capabilities to create an artillery shell capable of reaching more than 100 kilometers in range without changing the gun on a standard 155mm howitzer, according to Thomas Danbolt, company vice president of large caliber ammunition, who spoke at Eurosatory, one of the largest land warfare conferences in Europe.
The company displayed a model of the artillery shell at the exposition and plans to test several LRPF capabilities in the coming years, particularly its new extreme-range artillery projectile.
The projectile will go through a flight demonstration in the 2019 or 2020 time frame, according to Erland Orbekk, company vice president for ramjet technology, which coincides with the Army's LRPF CFTs tentative plans to test ramjet and hypersonics capabilities as early as 2019.
Swedish company Saab has also teamed up with Boeing to develop a Ground-Launched Small-Diameter Bomb (GLSDB) and announced at the show that the pair had demonstrated — in cooperation with the U.S. Army Aviation & Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center (AMRDEC) — its capabilities for ground forces during a test fire where the laser-enabled weapon launched and then tracked and engaged a moving target at a distance of 100 kilometers. The range ultimately will be closer to 150 kilometers.
The partnership allows for the team to easily tap the U.S. market as well as international customers interested in improving rocket artillery capability, according to Boeing's Jon Milner, within the company's direct attack weapons international programs division.
Milner said Boeing and Saab would continue to assess what customers want. The U.S. Army has made it clear it needs longer range artillery in order to avoid being out-gunned and out-ranged by adversaries, but also a lot of NATO countries are interested in the capability because of NATO mandates which creates a significant international market for the weapon.
January 4, 2023 | International, Aerospace
Pratt & Whitney's deliveries of F135 engines are on hold while the U.S. military and contractors try to find the root cause of a Dec. 15 F-35 mishap.
February 13, 2019 | International, C4ISR
By Tomás Díaz de la Rubia The dust lay thick upon the ruins of bombed-out buildings. Small groups of soldiers, leaden with their cargo of weaponry, bent low and scurried like beetles between the wrecked pillars and remains of shops and houses. Intelligence had indicated that enemy troops were planning a counterattack, but so far, all was quiet across the heat-shimmered landscape. The allied soldiers gazed intently out at the far hills and closed their weary, dust-caked eyes against the glare coming off the sand. Suddenly, the men were aware of a low humming sound, like thousands of angry bees, coming from the northeast. Growing louder, this sound was felt, more than heard, and the buzzing was intensifying with each passing second. The men looked up as a dark, undulating cloud approached, and found a swarm of hundreds of drones, dropped from a distant unmanned aircraft, heading to their precise location in a well-coordinated group, each turn and dip a nuanced dance in close collaboration with their nearest neighbors. Although it seems like a scene from a science fiction movie, the technology already exists to create weapons that can attack targets without human intervention. The prevalence of this technology is pervasive and artificial intelligence as a transformational technology shows virtually unlimited potential across a broad spectrum of industries. In health care, for instance, robot-assisted surgery allows doctors to perform complex procedures with fewer complications than surgeons operating alone, and AI-driven technologies show great promise in aiding clinical diagnosis and automating workflow and administrative tasks, with the benefit of potentially saving billions in health care dollars. In a different area, we are all aware of the emergence of autonomous vehicles and the steady march toward driverless cars being a ubiquitous sight on U.S. roadways. We trust that all this technology will be safe and ultimately in the best interest of the public. Warfare, however, is a different animal. In his new book, Army of None, Paul Scharre asks, “Should machines be allowed to make life-and-death decisions in war? Should it be legal? Is it right?” It is with these questions and others in mind, and in light of the advancing AI arms race with Russia and China that the Pentagon has announced the creation of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, which will have oversight of most of the AI efforts of U.S. service and defense agencies. The timeliness of this venture cannot be underestimated; automated warfare has become a “not if, but when” scenario. In the fictional account above, it is the enemy combatant that, in a “strategic surprise,” uses advanced AI-enabled autonomous robots to attack U.S. troops and their allies. Only a few years ago, we may have dismissed such a scenario — an enemy of the U.S. having more and better advanced technology for use in the battlefield — as utterly unrealistic. Today, however, few would question such a possibility. Technology development is global and accelerating worldwide. China, for example, has announced that it will overtake the United States within a few years and will dominate the global AI market by 2030. Given the pace and scale of investment the Chinese government is making in this and other advanced technology spaces such as quantum information systems, such a scenario is patently feasible. Here, the Defense Department has focused much of its effort courting Silicon Valley to accelerate the transition of cutting-edge AI into the warfighting domain. While it is important for the Pentagon to cultivate this exchange and encourage nontraditional businesses to help the military solve its most vexing problems, there is a role uniquely suited for universities in this evolving landscape of arming decision makers with new levels of AI. Universities like Purdue attribute much of their success in scientific advancement to the open, collaborative environment that enables research and discovery. As the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center experiments with and implements new AI solutions, it must have a trusted partner. It needs a collaborator with the mission of verifying and validating trustable and explainable AI algorithms, and with an interest in cultivating a future workforce capable of employing and maintaining these new technologies, in the absence of a profit motive. "The bench in academia is already strong for mission-inspired AI research." That's not to diminish the private sector's interest in supporting the defense mission. However, the department's often “custom” needs and systems are a small priority compared to the vast commercial appetite for trusted AI, and Silicon Valley is sure to put a premium on customizing its AI solutions for the military's unique specifications. Research universities, by contrast, make their reputations on producing trustable, reliable, verifiable and proven results — both in terms of scientific outcomes and in terms of the scientists and engineers they graduate into the workforce. A collaborative relationship between the Defense Department and academia will offer the military something it can't get anywhere else — a trusted capability to produce open, verifiable solutions, and a captive audience of future personnel familiar with the defense community's problems. If the center is to scale across the department and have any longevity, it needs talent and innovation from universities and explainable trusted AI solutions to meet national mission imperatives. As the department implements direction from the National Defense Authorization Act to focus resources on leveraging AI to create efficiency and maintain dominance against strategic technological competitors, it should focus investment in a new initiative that engages academic research centers as trusted agents and AI talent developers. The future depends on it. But one may ask, why all this fuss about AI competition in a fully globalized and interdependent world? The fact is, in my opinion and that of others, that following what we perceived as a relatively quiet period after the Cold War, we live today again in a world of great power competition. Those groups and nations that innovate most effectively and dominate the AI technology landscape will not only control commercial markets but will also hold a very significant advantage in future warfare and defense. In many respects, the threat of AI-based weapons to national security is perhaps as existential a threat to the future national security of the United States and its allies as nuclear weapons were at the end of World War II. Fortunately, the U.S. government is rising to the challenge. Anticipating these trends and challenges, the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Science and Technology Policy announced, in a recent memo, that the nation's top research-and-development priorities would encompass defense, AI, autonomy, quantum information systems and strategic computing. This directly feeds into the job of the aforementioned Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, which is to establish a repository of standards, tools, data, technology, processes and expertise for the department, as well as coordinate with other government agencies, industry, U.S. allies and academia. The bench in academia is already strong for mission-inspired AI research. Purdue University's Discovery Park has positioned itself as a paragon of collaborative, interdisciplinary research in AI and its applications to national security. Its Institute for Global Security and Defense Innovation is already answering needs for advanced AI research by delving into areas such as biomorphic robots, automatic target recognition for unmanned aerial vehicles, and autonomous exploration and localization of targets for aerial drones. Complementary to the mission of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, the Purdue Policy Research Institute is actively investigating the ethical, legal and social impacts of connected and autonomous vehicles. Some of the topics being researched include privacy and security; workforce disruption; insurance and liability; and economic impact. It is also starting to investigate the question of ethics, technology and the future of war and security. Purdue University is a key player in the Center for Brain-Inspired Computing project, forging ahead on “AI+” mentality by combining neuromorphic computing architectures with autonomous systems applications. The Integrative Data Science Initiative at Purdue aims to ensure that every student, no matter what their major is, graduates from the university with a significant degree of literacy in data science and AI-related technologies. Data science is used by all of the nation's security agencies and no doubt will be integral to the functioning of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center and its mission. The opportunities for Purdue and Discovery Park to enter into a partnership with the center are vast and span a wide range of disciplines and research areas. In short, the university is primed to play a vital role in the future of the nation's service and defense agencies and must be relentless in pursuing opportunities. It has become apparent that the United States is no longer guaranteed top dog status on the dance card that is the future of war. To maintain military superiority, the focus must shift from traditional weapons of war to advanced systems that rely on AI-based weaponry. The stakes are just too high and the prize too great to for the nation to be left behind. Therefore, we must call upon the government to weave together academia, government and industry for the greater good. We're stepping up to secure our place in the future of the nation. Tomás Díaz de la Rubia is Purdue University's vice president of Discovery Park. http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2019/2/11/viewpoint-academia-a-crucial-partner-for-pentagons-ai-push
September 25, 2024 | International, C4ISR, Security