May 31, 2019 | International, Aerospace
MADRID — With Spain on track to join a Franco-German quest for a new European combat aircraft, lawmakers in Germany next week are expected to decide on Berlin's initial funding contribution.
June 5 will be the penultimate session of the Bundestag's Defence and Budget committees before the parliamentary summer break begins in late June. It is also the last opportunity to secure approval for a €65 million (U.S. $72 million) study contract for the Future Combat Air System before the June 16-23 Paris Air Show. German and French officials envision some level of pomp and circumstance at the event to cement their ambitious sixth-generation fighter plans.
For now, the idea is to have a framework agreement signed by the two defense ministers, Florence Parly and Ursula von der Leyen, even if final approval by German lawmakers remains outstanding. In that case, a contingency clause would be added to the text to reflect that the pact is preliminary until Germany's legislature approves it.
Defense officials in Berlin said they eventually expect parliamentary approval, but acknowledged that the timing is tight.
Meanwhile, staffs are working behind the scenes to modify the slate of program governance documents to reflect Spain's participation. It remains to be seen whether those tweaks, which include questions of intellectual property ownership, can be sorted out in time to warrant a senior-level Spanish government representative joining the festivities at Paris.
A German defense spokesman stressed that Spain's participation in the FCAS program was assured and that only legal matters had yet to be sorted out.
In that spirit, Germany's choice to lead a delegation to the inaugural FEINDEF defense expo in Madrid, Spain, appears apt: Luftwaffe Brig. Gen. Gerald Funke, who also oversees FCAS planning for Germany, could be spotted at the opening event.
If the Bundestag approves, a full integration of Spain into the program would amount to addressing the “devil in the details,” he told Defense News.
Airbus and Dassault are the main contractors for the ambitious air warfare program. Including Spain likely would mean that Airbus, which has a sizable footprint in the region, will reshuffle its share of work to include Spanish industry.
September 21, 2023 | International, Aerospace
The policy could be included as part of a forthcoming Space Sector Plan that outlines opportunities to boost the U.K. space economy and promote resilience.
July 6, 2018 | International, C4ISR
By: Antti Kolehmainen The rise of non-traditional actors, cyberattacks and state-sponsored subversion is challenging democratic governance and creating an increasingly volatile operational and security environment for defense agencies. To address these threats, military organizations must be able to operate seamlessly and intelligently across a network of multinational partners. This year's Accenture Technology Vision identified five trends that are essential components of any intelligent defense organization: Citizen AI, extended reality, data veracity, frictionless business and Internet of Thinking. Private AI: training AI as an effective troop member Harnessing AI's potential is no longer just about training it to perform a specific task: AI will increasingly function alongside people as a full-fledged member of a team. In the high-stakes world of defense, it's especially important that AI systems act as trustworthy, responsible and efficient colleagues. AI could have a major impact for military organizations, including defense logistics and cybersecurity. An adversary equipped with advanced AI capabilities will not wait for its enemies to catch up technologically before launching an offensive. AI's ability to process and analyze vast amounts of data has significant implications across the Observe, Orient, Decide, Act (OODA) loop. From augmenting our ability to detect new threats to analyzing countless variables, AI could transform surveillance and situational awareness. Extended Reality: The end of distance Extended reality (XR), which includes virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), is the first technology to relocate people in both time and place—effectively eliminating distance. For the defense sector, the ability to simulate and share a common view of an operational theatre is immensely powerful. Recently, Accenture created a mixed reality proof of concept using Microsoft HoloLens and gaming engine Unity that provides military personnel with an interactive map showing real-time location and status data for troops and resources on the ground. With a simple command, a user can order reinforcements or supplies, or create and test different scenarios through a mixed reality interface. XR technology can also enhance operational command capabilities in the field. For example, AR goggles could provide dashboards and data visualizations where and when they are needed – such as at an operating base. XR also will have major implications for training, allowing soldiers and pilots to engage in highly realistic combat simulations. Data veracity: the importance of trust As defense organizations become increasingly data-driven, inaccurate and manipulated information is a persistent and serious threat. Agencies can address this vulnerability by building confidence in three key data-focused tenets: provenance, or verifying data from its origin throughout its life cycle; context, or considering the circumstances around its use; and integrity, or securing and maintaining data. The ability to trust and verify the data that flows between multinational partners is critically important. Organizations must be capable of delivering the right data to the right recipient, at the right time – which can only be accomplished by radically reorienting how data is shared across today's armed forces. Today's vertical approach involves passing information up and down the command stack of a nation's military. In contrast, multinational military operations demand that information is also shared horizontally across the forces of different nations and partners. This shift requires a profound change in technology, mindset and culture within agencies. Frictionless defense: built to partner at scale Our recent survey found that 36 percent of public service leaders report working with twice as many strategic partners than two years ago. And when partnerships between industry, academia and military organizations are horizontally integrated and technology-based, they can expand faster and further than ever before. But legacy systems weren't built to support this kind of expansion, and soon, outdated systems will be major hindrances to collaboration. With this in mind, defense organizations must develop new IT architectures to reduce complexity. Agile IT systems will allow innovation to flourish, unimpeded by internal politics and employee resistance. A modern IT architecture will push organizations to clearly define the services they offer and turn each service into a potential enabler of collaboration. The Internet of Thinking: intelligent distributed defense capabilities Today's technology infrastructures are designed around a few basic assumptions: enough bandwidth to support remote applications, an abundance of computing power in a remote cloud and nearly infinite storage. But the demand for immediate response times defies this approach. Recent projections suggest that by 2020, smart sensors and other Internet of Things devices will generate at least 507.5 zettabytes of data. Trying to manage the computational “heavy-lifting” offsite will become limiting. The need for real-time systems puts hardware back in focus: special-purpose and customizable hardware is making devices at the edge of networks more powerful and energy efficient than ever before. Public service organizations are taking note: our survey indicates 79 percent of leaders believe it will be very critical over the next two years to leverage custom hardware and accelerators to meet new computing demands. The next generation of military strategies ride on pushing intelligence into the physical world. Defense organizations have to embrace new operating models to enable high-speed data flows, harness the potential of distributed intelligence and successfully neutralize threats. The defense sector is challenged to respond to new types of threat, political volatility and even new combat arenas, and acquiring new technology capabilities is a strategic imperative. Delivering greater situational awareness and the ability to respond rapidly to unpredictable adversaries requires investments in AI, edge computing and other emerging technologies. Likewise, today's information architectures will need to be redesigned to collaborate quickly, effectively and securely. Antti Kolehmainen is managing director, defense business service global lead at Accenture. https://www.c4isrnet.com/opinion/2018/07/05/5-technology-trends-driving-an-intelligent-military
August 2, 2019 | International, Aerospace
By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army has awarded a contract each to Northrop Grumman and Raytheon to build a 50-kilowatt-class laser weapon for Stryker combat vehicles for the Short-Range Air Defense (SHORAD) mission, according to an Aug. 1 statement from the service's Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office. The two companies will build their respective directed-energy weapons as subcontractors to Kord Technologies. The Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office, or RCCTO, entered into a $203 million agreement with Kord under the OTA, or other transaction authority, contracting mechanism that is used to rapidly fund the production of prototypes. The contract could increase to $490 million for the delivery of four prototypes. One of the laser weapon systems developed through the OTA could be integrated onto a platoon of four Stryker vehicles in fiscal 2022. But the Army is leaving competition open to any vendors that did not receive an OTA contract to compete using their own internal research and development dollars. The Army is rapidly developing and fielding Manuever-SHORAD vehicles in response to an urgent need in Europe. A year ago, the Army chose Leonardo DRS to integrate a mission equipment package that will include Raytheon's Stinger vehicle missile launcher onto a Stryker as its M-SHORAD capability. General Dynamics Land Systems — which produces the Stryker — will be the platform integrator for the system. The final prototypes will be delivered to the service by the first quarter of FY20. The directed-energy M-SHORAD capability will protect brigade combat teams from unmanned aircraft, helicopters, rockets, artillery and mortars. “The time is now to get directed energy weapons to the battlefield,” Lt. Gen. L. Neil Thurgood, director of hypersonics, directed energy, space and rapid acquisition, said in a statement. “The Army recognizes the need for directed energy lasers as part of the Army's modernization plan. This is no longer a research effort or a demonstration effort. It is a strategic combat capability, and we are on the right path to get it in soldiers' hands.” The award marks progress toward the Army's new strategy for accelerating and fielding directed-energy weapons. The M-SHORAD laser weapon prototypes are part of a technology maturation effort — the Multi-Mission High Energy Laser. The Army is also building a High Energy Laser Tactical Vehicle Demonstrator. While the laser for the demonstrator will be a 100-kilowatt-class laser on a Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles platform — developed by Dynetics and Lockheed Martin — the service aims to develop 250- to 300-kilowatt-class directed-energy weapons. More powerful laser weapon systems will allow the services to protect against rockets, artillery, mortars and drones “as well as more stressing threats,” according to the release. The Army plans to deliver prototypes of approximately that power onto tactical vehicles for the High Energy Laser Indirect Fire Protection Capability to a platoon by FY24. “By teaming with the other services and our industry partners, we will not only save resources, but exponentially increase the power level and get a better system to soldiers faster,” Thurgood said. https://www.defensenews.com/land/2019/08/01/northrop-and-raytheon-to-compete-to-build-laser-weapon-for-short-range-air-defense/