General Dynamics Electric Boat Awarded $251 Million in Navy contracts

On the same subject

• 

  July 22, 2019 | International, C4ISR

  DARPA Announces Microsystems Exploration Program

  Over the past few decades, DARPA's Microsystems Technology Office (MTO) has enabled revolutionary advances in electronics materials, devices, and systems, which have provided the United States with unique defense and economic advantages. To continue its path of successful electronics innovation, DARPA today announced a new MTO effort called the Microsystems Exploration program. The Microsystems Exploration program will constitute a series of short-term investments into high-risk, high-reward research focused on technical domains relevant to MTO. Leveraging streamlined contracting and funding approaches, awards for each area of exploration – or μE topic – will be made within 90 days of announcement. Each μE topic will run for up to 18 months, during which time researchers will work to establish the feasibility of new concepts or technologies. “This strategy of making smaller, targeted research investments will allow us to capitalize quickly on new opportunities and innovative research concepts,” said Dr. Mark Rosker, director of MTO. “The Microsystems Exploration program provides a way to assess whether or not a concept could evolve into a full program without requiring the use of more significant resources.” The Microsystems Exploration program will employ best practices from DARPA's other fast-track solicitation programs – the agency-wide AI Exploration program and the Defense Science Office's “Disruptioneering” initiative. These programs are focused on enabling rapid advances in artificial intelligence and basic science respectively, and have shown numerous benefits to this approach. Similar to these efforts, the simplified proposal, contracting, and funding process employed by each μE topic will make it even easier for individuals and organizations to contribute to DARPA's mission. Each award may be worth up to $1 million, as described in the individual μE solicitations. To help advance MTO's strategic imperatives, the Microsystems Exploration program will pursue innovative research concepts that explore frontiers in embedded microsystem intelligence and localized processing; novel electromagnetic components and technologies; microsystem integration for functional density and security; and disruptive microsystem applications in C4ISR, electronic warfare, and directed energy. In alignment with these technical domains, the first three potential topics focus on hardware security, novel materials, and new computing architectures for heterogeneous systems. The first potential topic aims to address security issues within the hardware supply chain. Defense systems increasingly rely on commercial of the shelf (COTS) devices that move through complex supply chains, with each component changing hands several times. Throughout the process, nefarious actors have numerous opportunities to compromise the technology by introducing malicious circuitry – or hardware Trojans – to printed circuit boards (PCBs). The ability to detect when components are tampered with is difficult as the attacks are designed to remain hidden and avoid post-manufacturing tests until its functionality is triggered. The “Board-Level Hardware Security” related topic could explore the technological feasibility for real-time detection against these hardware Trojans installed in complex COTS circuit boards. New uses of scandium (Sc)-doped aluminium nitride (AIN) could be investigated as a future potential μE topic. Sc-doped AlN is a popular material for a number of device applications, which span RF filters, ultrasonic sensors, and oscillators. Recent work has demonstrated the emergence of the material's use in ferroelectric switching, which has enormous potential across a number of applications and devices. However, current exploration of this capability has been limited to a research setting. The “Ferroelectric Nitride Materials and Non-Volatile Memory” related topic could expand on this research, identifying the thickness and doping ranges that exhibit ferroelectric behavior, the robustness and reproducibility of the ferroelectric response, and further demonstrating ferroelectric nitrides as a technologically useful material. Another potential μE topic could seek to address the trade-off between programmer productivity and performance that happens as hardware complexity continues to skyrocket. Advances at the hardware and software level that have enabled continued progress in computing performance, cost, and ubiquity have hit a wall. The expectation is that subsequent performance gains will come from an increased level of parallelism, specialization, and system heterogeneity, which will place further strain on programmer productivity. This “Massively Parallel Heterogeneous Computing” related topic could explore the creation of compiler technology that improves programmer productivity of massively parallel and heterogeneous processing systems. Additional information about the Microsystems Exploration program can be found under Program Announcement DARPA-PA-19-04. Further details on the three potential μE topics can be found under Special Notice DARPA-SN-19-69. The Microsystems Exploration Research Area Announcement Special Notice has been issued solely for information and potential new program planning purposes. All future and official solicitation notices for μE topics will be published to Federal Business Opportunities (FBO) at www.fbo.gov. https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2019-07-16

• 

  July 25, 2018 | International, Aerospace

  Bulgaria issues request for proposals for fighter jets

  SOFIA (Reuters) - Bulgaria has sent a request for proposals (RFP) for 16 new or used fighter jets to replace its aging Soviet-designed MiG-29s to seven countries, the defense ministry told Reuters on Wednesday. The Black Sea country, which joined NATO in 2004, has called for bids to supply aircraft from the United States, Portugal, Israel, Italy, Germany, France and Sweden. Last month Bulgaria's parliament approved a plan to buy the jets. It plans to acquire them in two equal stages as part of efforts to improve its compliance with NATO standards. Some 1.8 billion levs ($1.08 billion) will cover the first eight aircraft, as well as ground handling, team training and three years of initial integrated logistics support. Potential suppliers include Boeing's F/A-18 Super Hornet, Saab's Gripen, Dassault's Rafale and Lockheed Martin's F-16 or Eurofighter, the ministry said. Sofia is asking manufacturers to provide bids by October 1. The ministry has called for bids for new or used jets from the United States (F-16 and F/A-18 Super Hornet), France (Dassault Rafale) and Sweden (Gripen C/D) as well as new jets from Germany (Eurofighter 3 Tranche) and used planes from Portugal (F-16), Israel (F-16) and Italy (Eurofighter Tranche 1). NATO has encouraged its eastern members to develop, buy and operate new alliance equipment. Some eastern European NATO allies that were once Soviet satellites still rely on Russian-made military jets - two-thirds of Poland's military equipment dates from the pre-1991 Soviet era, for example. The question of which warplanes to buy has vexed successive governments in Bulgaria for more than a decade. Sofia aims to raise its annual defense expenditure to 2 percent of the country's gross domestic product by 2024. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bulgaria-defence-jets/bulgaria-issues-request-for-proposals-for-fighter-jets-idUSKBN1KF10W

• 

  December 7, 2018 | International, C4ISR

  Is near-instant satellite imagery almost here?

  By: Mike Gruss Intelligence analysts and soldiers on the battlefield could have access to near real-time imagery from commercial satellites as soon as 2021 thanks to new industry partnerships. Amazon Web Services unveiled Nov. 28 a new product named AWS Ground Station, which includes parabolic antennas at 12 locations across the globe. Those ground stations can download imagery data as satellites pass overhead and then push that information to the cloud at faster speeds than traditional ground stations. Meanwhile, leaders from satellite imagery company DigitalGlobe said in tests they were able to move imagery data from the ground station to the cloud in less than a minute. Using today's technology, that task takes about an hour. Combined, the speed of the new ground stations and the expected launch of DigitalGlobe's constellation of next-generation imagery satellites in 2021 would offer a new level of immediacy to customers. “When firefighters are attacking a wildfire, they need the most up-to-date information to save lives and homes,” Jeff Carr, director of mission operations engineering support at DigitalGlobe, wrote in a Nov. 27 blog post. “When first responders are tracking down refugees fleeing danger in flimsy rubber boats, they need real-time information about where those rubber boats are located before they sink. The uses for current and accurate space-based data is growing — and the end-users need it quickly.” DigitalGlobe provides imagery to the National Reconnaissance Office under the Enhanced View contract and to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency with the Global EGD contract. Several companies that already provide imagery and data to the Department of Defense and intelligence community — including BlackSky, Spire and HawkEye 360 — are also using the ground stations. Traditionally, ground stations download information from satellites on a rigid schedule, meaning users must wait several hours until the next pass when new information is available and can be processed. The company's new Legion satellites will double the number of times the satellites contact ground stations. In addition, an imagery satellite could revisit the same target as many as 15 times a day. All of that means defense and intelligence agencies could have access to imagery that is a few minutes old, not several hours old. Turner Brinton, a DigitalGlobe spokesman, declined to comment on the technical aspects of how the company would support the U.S. government. “Satellite data is incredibly useful for building a wide range of important applications, but it is super complex and expensive to build and operate the infrastructure needed to do so,” Charlie Bell, senior vice president of AWS, said in a press release. “Today, we are giving satellite customers the ability to dynamically scale their ground station antenna use based on actual need. And, they will be able to ingest data straight into AWS, where they can securely store, analyze and transmit products to their customers without needing to worry about building all of the infrastructure themselves.” In addition, Lockheed Martin and Amazon Web Services announced a new partnership Nov. 27 that would allow customers to download satellite data faster, more often and from multiple satellites at the same time. That technology is a shoebox-sized antenna and satellite receiver known as Verge. Each antenna would cost about $20,000 and replace larger parabolic antennas, which are often priced at more than $1 million. While Pentagon officials have worried that larger ground stations for military satellite could make easy targets, the relatively small size of Verge could be an attractive feature to defense officials focused on resiliency. It's unlikely the Defense Department would rely on the new technology for its satellite downlinks, but Lockheed Martin leaders said they could envision the military would use the ground stations for experimental satellites, particularly those in low-Earth orbit. Or the technology could be used to create a backup ground station for some of the Pentagon's more sophisticated satellites. Already, Lockheed Martin has tested a network of 10 S-band antennas in the Denver area that downlinked from a small satellite from the Air Force Research Laboratory, said Rick Ambrose, Lockheed Martin's executive vice president for space. In addition, the company has also downlinked data from another, unspecified government satellite and sent that data to the agency's cloud. https://www.c4isrnet.com/intel-geoint/2018/12/03/is-near-instant-satellite-imagery-in-the-near-future