June 26, 2018 | International, Naval, C4ISR
The Navy needs to take a "hard look” at its digital needs according to a senior Navy software official, especially in technology such as machine learning and artificial intelligence, or risk vital weapons systems failing on the future battlefield.
Attendees of the Amazon Web Services Public Sector Summit in Washington June 21 heard warnings that obsolete and slow approaches are driving up costs of time and resources for the Navy's newest technologies that interact with one another in combat.
"It's really a matter of making System A talk to System B,” said Richard Jack, a lead engineer and project director at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific. “A logistics system that needs to be able to interact with a weapons system.”
Software superiority is an important part of the Navy's plan for a global competitive edge, from unmanned underwater vehicles to drones operated from ships. Unless the Navy wants to get an error message at a crucial combat moment, they will have to search outside their own technology labs for the solution to the interoperability challenge, Jack said.
“The Navy can't do this alone, as 99 percent of the brain trust is in the cloud service providers and the industry,” Jack stated. He expressed the need to “take advantage” of lessons learned by cloud industry leaders on big data collection and interpreting results to make predictions .
Jack suggested accelerating operations with increased cloud computing, creating shared infrastructure to make sure data centers are connected, eliminating duplicative investments across some programs, and further expanding AI and machine learning advancements.
The software engineer expressed confidence that learning from cloud service providers will result in the Navy enhancing warfighting abilities, envisioning a cloud to allow instant data sharing “between a weapons system, an airframe, a UAV, and a logistics system” at the same time.
Jack also praised cloud computing as important to the “compile to combat” program, in which the Navy is experimenting with ways to deploy new software capabilities to ships at sea in less than 24 hours.
While the cloud can “be super fast and super efficient” for accessing large amounts of data anywhere, Jack also promised that it also allows the Navy to “really push the boundaries of machine learning,” even though “we are behind the curve” at the moment.
Through “strategic partnerships” with the “Amazons, Googles and IBM Watsons of the world,” Jack promised the Navy could accomplish even more in the areas of AI and machine learning that will dominate warfighting in the era of the cloud.
https://www.c4isrnet.com/it-networks/2018/06/25/how-the-navy-can-lean-in-to-software-superiority/
December 13, 2021 | International, Aerospace
Helsinki a fait le choix d'acheter 64 appareils F-35 de l'américain Lockheed Martin, pour un montant de 8,4 milliards d'euros. Supériorité...-aero-spatial
November 4, 2021 | International, Aerospace
A new request for proposals will govern the agency's new commercial imagery contracts.
April 29, 2020 | International, Naval
The Navy will recompete the program after the first 10 ships are under contract, leading to a new award and another bite at the apple for the bidders who lost out the first time around. By PAUL MCLEARY WASHINGTON: The Navy will award the first contract for an ambitious new class of frigates in the coming days, several sources with knowledge of the plan said, speeding up a program that wasn't slated to get underway until later this year. After the first award for ten ships, the Navy will launch a new competition for the next ten, possibly splitting the class and giving other shipbuilders another bite at the apple. Moving forward the buy of the first of what should be 20 frigates serves more than one purpose. It locks in place one of the service's top priorities while also pushing work to the winning shipbuilder months ahead of the original schedule, just as the Pentagon worries about the cratering of global manufacturing supply chains as a result to the COVID-19 pandemic. The country's largest shipbuilders are competing for the $1.2 billion first ship, with the price settling in at a projected $900 to $950 million per ship after that. In the running are Huntington Ingalls Industries, which is thought to be offering a more lethal version of its national security cutter. There's also a joint effort between Navantia and General Dynamics Bath Iron Works with a version of its F-100 design already in use by the Spanish navy. Fincantieri Marinette Marine is offering a version of its FREMM frigate in use by the Italian navy. Finally, Austal is trying with a version of its aluminum trimaran Littoral Combat Ship. Fincantieri and Lockheed also make a version of the LCS, but decided not to submit it to the competition. Hanging over any new start shipbuilding program however is the specter of the long-troubled LCS, a vessel still working to find a role and mission within the fleet. Despite its problems, the Navy has ordered 38 of them but is walking away from the class to pursue the new frigate. Unveiling the fiscal 2021 budget earlier this year, Rear Adm. Randy Crites, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for budget, acknowledged “we don't want to have a repeat of some of the lessons of LCS where we got going too fast,” on the frigate effort, despite speeding up the initial award. Plans call for the FFG(X) to be a small, multi-mission ship loaded out with the Aegis combat system, 32 vertical launch cells and the new SPY-6 radar system. The ship will be smaller than the Arleigh Burke destroyer, the Navy's current workhorse, but outfitted with more power generation capabilities and advanced electronic warfare systems, along with radar and anti-submarine warfare gear. Navy spokesman Capt. Danny Hernandez said in an email that the frigate “will provide increased range, endurance and survivability over previous small surface combatants,” as well as improvements in surface warfare, electromagnetic maneuver warfare and air warfare, “with design flexibility for future growth.” That's a lot of capability to fit in a relatively small package at less than $1 billion per ship. But the Navy's top brass and Defense Secretary Mark Esper have declared the fleet needs to be faster, lighter, more maneuverable and more numerous to meet the challenges of modern Chinese and Russian navies. “It's clear they need fewer large surface combatants and more smaller surface combatants,” a congressional source told me. “But whether the frigate is considered by the Secretary of Defense as being small enough” is an open question. Getting the frigate in place early will provide some stability in an uncertain time for the Navy and its industrial base. The service's long-term plans were thrown into flux in February when Secretary Mark Esper held up the release of the Navy's 30-year shipbuilding plan and the long-awaited Integrated Force Structure Assessment (INFSA), after he found the Navy's draft wanting. He assigned Deputy Defense Secretary David Norquist to lead a group through a months-long review of the plans before making them public this summer. In a letter to the House Armed Services Committee, Esper said he wants the force to grow larger than the much-discussed 355 ship fleet Navy leaders have long aspired to, with many of those new ships being smaller than the ones currently at sea, and many others unmanned. “Three months ago, I would have said, ‘oh yeah they're gonna want to build more than 20'” frigates,” the congressional source said. “But now with the intervention of the Secretary of Defense it's unclear. Maybe he's fine with just 20, and he wants them to build a lot more of something that's considerably smaller still.” Two of the shipbuilders competing, Fincantieri in Wisconsin and Austal in Alabama have a lot riding on the contract, as their big-ticket work on LCS runs out in coming years. Huntington's yards are somewhat protected because it is the only shipbuilder in America capable of building aircraft carriers, and has two more Ford-class big decks to build over the next decade, along with large amphibious ships. Lawmakers in Wisconsin, well aware of what's at stake, sent a letter to President Trump earlier this year promoting the Fincantieri Marinette Marine shipyard as best suited for the work. “We have witnessed what the loss of opportunity does to the Midwest,” the letter said. “When industry departs, so does hope.” Wrapping up the pitch for close to $20 billion worth of work over the 20 ship contract, the senators concluded by telling the president his “leadership and attention to this opportunity is vital.” There is no indication that any political weight is being put on the Navy in awarding the contract, but in an election year, with an industrial base staggering through supply chain meltdowns, the frigate contract is looming large. https://breakingdefense.com/2020/04/navy-readies-to-buy-new-frigates-as-industrial-base-wobbles/