French military tees up new tech in rush to conquer the seabed

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  November 18, 2019 | International, Land

  Here’s who will build the US Army’s heavy common robot

  By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army has chosen FLIR's Kobra robot to serve as its heavy version of the Common Robotic System that will be used for explosive ordnance disposal and other heavy-duty jobs. The production contract will run for a period of five years and could be worth up to $109 million. The Army wanted its Common Robotic System-Heavy, or CRS-H, to weigh up to 700 pounds and to carry a variety of sensors and payloads to support missions. “The Kobra [unmanned ground vehicle] delivers unmatched strength, power and payload support in an easy-to-operate robot package,” according to a FLIR statement sent to Defense News. Kobra has a lift capacity of 330 pounds and can stretch up to eleven-and-a-half feet to get at difficult-to-reach places, but it is also still nimble enough to climb jersey barriers and fit into the back of a standard utility vehicle, according to FLIR. FLIR's legacy business, Endeavor Robotics, won a contract in 2017 to provide the Army with a medium-sized UGV — the Man Transportable Robotic System Increment II. FLIR is delivering the Centaur UGV for the program. FLIR bought Endeavor Robotics in February, an acquisition that made sense because FLIR's camera and sensors — its bread and butter — have been used on countless manned and unmanned vehicles like those developed by the Massachusetts-based robotics company. FLIR also acquired Prox Dynamics in 2016, the Norwegian maker of the tiny micro-drone — the Black Hornet — that is now used as the Army's soldier borne sensor. Endeavor also competed for the CRS-Individual system — a man-packable robot that is less than 25 pounds — but lost to fellow Massachusetts-based robotics company QinetiQ North America in March. For the CRS-H program, FLIR beat out QinetiQ. Kobra is also participating in a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency effort to build a system-of-systems solution that can operate in subterranean environments. The company's solution consists of the Kobra robot that will enter subterranean environments carrying radio repeaters —based on the company's small, throwable FirstLook robots — and drop them off along the way to continue connectivity as it travels deeper underground. The system will also carry a four-legged robot supplied from Ghost Robotics to explore more rugged and difficult terrain as well as a quadcopter that will investigate vertical shafts and other hard to reach places. The winner of the challenge is expected to receive $2 million in 2021. The CRS-I and CRS-H programs are part of a larger Army program to streamline its robotics inventory. By necessity, during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army clamored to buy UGVs that could help provide a level of standoff between soldiers and the dangers faced on the battlefield, mostly improvised explosive devices. The Army procured roughly 7,000 UGVs and ended up with a petting zoo of robots from Talons to PacBots to Dragon Runners, to name a few. The service had roughly nine variants of robots used for explosive ordnance disposal, two robots for engineering battalions to conduct route clearance, two for Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) tasks and three for contingency and global response forces. The Army's way forward uses just a few common platforms where systems and sensors can be swapped out easily for different missions and which are all controlled using one universal controller. It's been the season for major headway in Army robotics programs across the board. The service is also underway with development of robotic combat vehicles in light, medium and heavy categories. The Army invited four teams to compete to build prototypes for its future light RCV last month: A Textron and Howe & Howe team, a team of QinetiQ and Pratt & Miller, HDT Global and Oshkosh Defense. And three teams were picked earlier this month to move on in the Army's competition for a medium-sized RCV: General Dynamics Land Systems, QinetiQ and the Textron and Howe & Howe team. The Army also awarded, at the end of last month, a contract to GDLS to provide the Squad Multipurpose Equipment Transport (SMET) unmanned vehicle. GDLS offered up its Multi-Utility Tactical Transport — or MUTT — in that competition. https://www.defensenews.com/land/2019/11/15/heres-who-just-won-a-contract-to-build-the-armys-heavy-robot/

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  July 8, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  Defense Industry’s Covid Closings Decline, Pentagon Agency Says

  By Anthony Capaccio The defense industry has made major strides reducing the impact of Covid-19 on operations, decreasing total closings of facilities to six on Monday from a high of 148 in mid-April, according to the Pentagon agency that oversees contracts. “We're seeing a significantly smaller fraction of the industrial base impacted on a daily basis” as contractors have become “better at restoring operational capability after potential exposures” to the coronavirus, Army Lieutenant General David Bassett, director of the Defense Contract Management Agency, said in an interview. “We've gone from having a substantial fraction of the industrial base impacted to today,” where it's “just a handful.” In total, 279 defense contracting locations were forced to shut down an average of 20 days since April because of the pandemic. In addition, 149 locations currently have reduced operations because of the virus, according to the agency, which tracks 10,509 locations of major defense contractors and their subcontractors. “These closures have generally been short-term in order to clean facilities” or to “reduce the potential exposure of employees,” according to agency spokesman Matthew Montgomery. Ellen Lord, the Defense Department's acquisitions chief, has warned that pandemic disruptions are expected to result in defense industry claims for reimbursement of more than $10 billion under the Cares Act, which provides economic aid including reimbursing contractors for payments to employees affected by disruptions such as plant closings. She has said a single contractor, which she didn't name, is estimated to have at least $1.5 billion in potential claims. Bassett said the decline in plant closings reflects that companies “have really got a plan in place so that they know what they have to do when they find people who have been exposed, how they have to handle the plant and then what they can do to get back up quickly and safely.” Bassett assumed command of the contract agency on June 3 after a career that included positions as the Army's top program manager for command-and-control networks and for ground-combat vehicles. “As we watch right now and cases are beginning to rise in certain areas of the country, I've asked all of our teams to really think about what we can do right now to make sure if we do end up in a shutdown we can avoid impacts to the industrial base and our deliveries,” he said. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-07/defense-industry-s-covid-closings-decline-pentagon-agency-says

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  October 30, 2024 | International, C4ISR, Security

  Researchers Uncover Python Package Targeting Crypto Wallets with Malicious Code

  Malicious Python package "CryptoAITools" targets crypto wallets, stealing sensitive data on Windows and macOS.