General Atomics develops MQ-9 Reaper automatic take-off and landing enhancements

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  July 23, 2018 | International, Aerospace

  La bataille du futur avion de chasse de l'armée suisse a démarré

  La Suisse a lancé début juillet l'appel d'offres pour les nouveaux avions de combat. Les constructeurs Boeing, Airbus, Dassault, Saab et Lockheed Martin redoublent déjà d'efforts pour convaincre la Confédération. Cinq jets doivent être évalués: le Gripen E suédois (Saab), le Rafale français (Dassault), l'Eurofighter allemand (Airbus), et côté américain, le successeur du FA-18, le Super Hornet de Boeing, et le F-35A de Lockheed-Martin. Les constructeurs pourront soumettre leur offre à Armasuisse d'ici la fin janvier 2019. En Suède, l'opération de séduction a démarré à Linköping, petite ville de 150'000 habitants et capitale du Gripen. La localité est habituée aux rugissements du chasseur et au secret défense. Alors qu'il n'était qu'un projet en 2014, le Gripen E de Saab a désormais 30 heures de vols à son compteur. "Le Gripen E mûrit très vite", explique Rustan Nicander, responsable du marché suisse chez Saab. "Le Brésil et la Suède sont déjà clients, avant que la Suisse ne décide d'acheter l'appareil. Ce sera donc un appareil très mûr quand la Suisse fera son choix." Convaincre les politiques et l'industrie Pour remporter à nouveau l'appel d'offres, le constructeur suédois tente de rassurer, tout en misant sur son réseau. "Nous avions déjà remporté la dernière évaluation il y a quelques années", rappelle Jonas Hjelm, responsable des affaires aéronautiques. "Je pense que nous apportons cette fois un ensemble encore plus cohérent." Les performances du futur appareil ne constitueront pas le seul critère pour la Suisse. L'ultra-moderne F-35A américain n'a par exemple plus grand chose à prouver. L'entreprise américaine sait donc qu'elle doit aussi convaincre la politique et l'industrie. "Tous les pays qui ont acheté le F-35 ont eu un retour économique et industriel", affirme Yung A. Le, responsable de l'Europe du Nord chez Lockheed Martin. "Ce ne sera pas différent pour la Suisse. Nous avons des collaborateurs qui rencontrent l'industrie en Suisse romande, chez les Alémaniques et les italophones afin de mieux comprendre le tissu industriel." Après le travail de l'industrie, celui de la diplomatie Les entreprises étrangères avec lesquelles des contrats seront signés devront compenser 100% de la valeur des contrats par des affaires en Suisse. Discrète, la filiale allemande d'Airbus privilégie depuis son bureau bernois les coulisses aux grandes campagnes de communication pour vendre son Eurofighter. "Nous ne sommes pas nouveaux en Suisse, nous y avons déjà des contrats avec l'industrie, mais il faut que nous les développions davantage pour atteindre les besoins demandés", indique le Dr. Alexander-Long Vinh, responsable de cette campagne chez Airbus. Après le travail de l'industrie viendra celui de la diplomatie. Ce sera au gouvernement de chaque constructeur de transmettre une offre à la Suisse. Des tests au sol et en vol seront menés dans le pays entre mai et juillet 2019. Un deuxième appel d'offre pour les jets sera mené en novembre 2019 et les réponses sont attendues pour fin mai 2020. Le choix des modèles devrait tomber vers fin 2020. Le Parlement puis le peuple devraient pouvoir se prononcer sur la facture. Loïs Siggen-Lopez/tmun https://www.rts.ch/info/suisse/9717782-la-bataille-du-futur-avion-de-chasse-de-l-armee-suisse-a-demarre.html

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  July 7, 2020 | International, Aerospace

  Europe must take on its own defense responsibilities

  By: Ian Bond As they look at the state of their coronavirus-hit economies and U.S. President Donald Trump's poor standing in opinion polls, many European leaders may be tempted to put on hold any plans to meet NATO's target of spending 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense. But Europeans need to wake up. Trump is not a reliable ally, and the damage he has done to the trans-Atlantic partnership is likely to linger. Trump's hostility to NATO has been obvious since he called into question its Article 5 mutual defense guarantee during his last presidential campaign. We now know, according to former national security adviser John Bolton's tell-all memoir, that Trump was ready to pull the U.S. out of NATO at its 2018 summit. In recent weeks Trump announced without warning that the U.S. will withdraw 9,500 — more than one quarter — of the 34,500 troops it has stationed in Germany because the German government is not spending enough on defense. Then at a Washington press conference with Polish President Andrzej Duda, Trump said a large number of NATO countries were “delinquent” and declared that Europe was taking “tremendous advantage of the United States on trade.” Trump may not understand how NATO works or the value to the U.S. of having troops in Germany, but it is true that the U.S. carries a disproportionately large share of the financial burden of defending Europe. During his presidency, Barack Obama also accused Europe of being “complacent” about its own defense — though he was rather more diplomatic. Only a handful of European NATO members have met the alliance's target of spending 2 percent of GDP on defense over the past 20 years, while the U.S. has consistently exceeded it, spending 3.1-4.9 percent. But Europe's problem is not just the amount it spends on defense, but the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of its spending: Europeans get far too many systems and far too little military capability for their money. The European Commission's 2017 fact sheet on European defense reported that European Union member states operated 178 different major weapons systems; the U.S. had only 30. EU member states have 17 different types of main battle tank; the U.S. has one. This proliferation of weapons systems leads to high unit costs for short production runs, and a lack of interoperability. And European spending is not directed to ensuring that troops can fight when needed. The European members of NATO have almost 1.9 million active-duty troops, while the U.S. has 1.3 million and Russia about 900,000. But very few of the European forces can be deployed in a crisis. Politically and economically, this is a bad time to try to get European politicians to think seriously about increasing and rationalizing defense spending. The EU's economic forecast for spring 2020 foresees a contraction in real GDP of 7.4 percent this year, albeit followed by an increase of 6.1 percent in 2021. Some of Europe's biggest investors in defense are in NATO but not in the EU. The U.K. accounted for 16 percent of defense spending in Europe in 2019, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. But despite some early promise, Britain seems to have lost interest in any institutionalized cooperation with the EU on foreign and security policy. Relations between the EU and NATO member Turkey, which accounted for another 7 percent of European defense spending last year, have rarely been worse. Despite such difficulties, the fact that NATO and the EU are currently both reassessing the security environment presents an opportunity for a more joint approach. NATO is engaged in the #NATO2030 process, which Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg hopes will strengthen political consultation in the alliance. Meanwhile, by the end of 2020 the EU aims to complete a process to assess the threats it faces, which the bloc calls its “strategic compass.” These two efforts need to complement each other to produce a shared view of the threats to Europe, and the creation of a forum for political dialogue on security where European countries, regardless of whether they belong to both the EU and NATO, can discuss appropriate responses. Europe's ability to counter threats will depend on making its money go further by spending it efficiently, both nationally and multilaterally. The commission should do more to ensure that more defense procurement involves competitive tendering, rather than member states awarding contracts to national champions. But it should not try to shut defense firms from non-EU NATO countries out of the European market. The commission stands more chance of influencing the research and procurement decisions of member states if it has a substantial budget to dangle in front of them. It should keep pushing back against cuts proposed earlier in the year to the defense elements of the EU's next seven-year budget. And the commission needs to be more open to the participation of “friendly” countries in EU-funded programs. Joe Biden, a former U.S. vice president and a contender in the current presidential race, would be an easier president for Europeans to work with than Trump has been. But Biden's victory in November is not guaranteed. Moreover, the forces in U.S. society that propelled Trump to power in 2016 will still exist, and may return in 2024. Even if they would rather pretend that nothing is changing, the EU and as many non-EU, Europe-based NATO members as are willing to do so need to pay attention to Trump's message. And they need to start thinking about how to defend Europe and deter potential adversaries with reduced U.S. help. Ian Bond is the director of foreign policy at the Centre for European Reform think tank. He was a member of the British diplomatic service for 28 years, most recently serving as political counselor and joint head of the foreign and security policy group in the British Embassy in the United States. https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2020/07/03/europe-must-take-on-its-own-defense-responsibilities/

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  February 4, 2021 | International, C4ISR, Security

  Qatari research center chooses Leonardo for cyber range

  Agnes Helou BEIRUT — A Qatari cyber research center has selected Leonardo to provide a cyber range and training system to support security operations, the Italian firm announced Feb. 3. The Qatar Computing Research Institute, or QCRI, was established by the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development. The training platform ordered by the QCRI is capable of simulating cyberattacks so users can assess the resilience of digital infrastructure. “The training is completely to be performed in Qatar, and it is expected, through an approach oriented to ‘train the trainers,' to provide courses to a significant number of operators involved in the cybersecurity framework,” Tommaso Profeta, managing director of Leonardo's Cyber Security Division, told Defense News. He noted that training and exercise scenarios can be customized using a drag-and-drop graphical interface. The platform can also analyze and classify the results of simulated attacks based on data collected during real-world offensive campaigns. Scenarios can be used for individual training or classroom experiences, and they provide practice for security operations centers and incident response activities. This training tool “will allow the QCRI to deliver a complete cyber training process, from the design of the learning path to specific training sessions. Users will be able to practice their skills in simulated attack and defense scenarios, employing both information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT). The training will produce qualified teams of operators equipped with up-to-date knowledge and techniques, ready to face ever-evolving cyber threats,” according to a company statement. “The best cyber training/testing environments are in theory real production systems. But in practice for such environments, institutions, enterprises and organizations cannot easily experience critical situations without paying high, sometime unaffordable prices,” Profeta said. “Training and testing are therefore the two essential, human-driven processes that can effectively support the overall cyber ‘protection' loop, but only if they can cope with real threats and highly realistic systems in highly realistic situations.” Cyber ranges provide a controlled environment where cybersecurity experts can practice their technical and soft skills in emulated complex networks and infrastructures to learn how to respond to real-world cyberattacks. In these environments, cyber tools can be stressed to reveal their limits and vulnerabilities before deployment into cyberspace. Leonardo's platform challenges such assets and provides digital twin environments for predeployment testing. Asked whether other Gulf countries have expressed interest in this training system, Profeta said it “has already been presented to other high-level Middle East stakeholders, and a significant level of interest has been registered for the platform.” What scenarios are available? Those using the cyber range will try to defend against simulated but realistic cyberattacks. According to Profeta, these include: Man-in-the-middle attacks. Botnets. Exploitation of client and server vulnerabilities with lateral movements in search of sensitive data. Distributed denial-of-service attacks (HTTP flooding or domain name system reflection) designed to disrupt connections to a targeted server. Ransomware via multiple vectors, such as spear-phishing via email or drive-by downloads, relying on DNS-based covert channels. Data exfiltration of personally identifiable information and intellectual property. Though it's difficult to measure the potential effectiveness of this platform for Qatar, the company official predicted the system will reduce the cost of and improve the user experience in cyber training. Leonardo also supplies the NATO Computer Incident Response Capability, a cyber defense product. https://www.c4isrnet.com/cyber/2021/02/03/qatari-research-center-chooses-leonardo-for-cyber-range