November 8, 2023 | International, Naval
Spain’s Navantia teams with Australian shipbuilders for corvette offer
The Tasman class of vessels would be manufactured at a new shipbuilding hub in Western Australia, according to the company.
September 21, 2018 | International, Aerospace
‘I’ll be their angel investor’: Air Force vice chief wants to crowdsource airmen’s ideas
By: Kyle Rempfer
As the U.S. military turns its attention to the threats posed by near-peer adversaries, Air Force leadership is shifting its focus to great power approaches to combat, like multi-domain operations and expeditionary warfare.
A culture of innovation among airmen will be pivotal in preparing for such a conflict, and the effort to foster that independence and creativity is already underway.
In the coming weeks, the Air Force will be rolling out a new initiative to crowdsource solutions from airmen around the service.
Across all specialty codes, the service is calling on airmen to design apps, develop algorithms and create new approaches to the problems that plague their career fields or help the Air Force carry out its missions.
The program — dubbed the Vice Chief's Challenge — will be spearheaded by Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Stephen Wilson.
“We want to take the ideas our airmen have to see around corners, anticipate what's next and solve these really complex national security challenges,” Wilson told Air Force Times.
Those challenges range from fusing open-source social media information into actionable intelligence with new software, to upgrading legacy aircraft with gadgets to help airmen stay in the fight longer.
“Navigation apps like Waze change the way we travel across town by giving us an intuitive display that integrates traffic, hazards, and route recommendations in real time. Companies like Uber and Amazon have transformed our view of logistics," according to a copy of the Vice Chief's Challenge provided to Air Force Times. "They are not the only ones leaning forward. I am sure each of you have seen opportunities to enhance [multi-domain operations]. I want to hear your best ideas.”
The initiative is designed to deliver capabilities to the Air Force in months, rather than the usual years, Wilson said. And it's going to become routine, always running against the backdrop of the service's other acquisition initiatives.
“It's this cultural change and this shift that happens ... and today, I think it's clear in this great power competition, we need this urgently," Wilson said. “I need to remove barriers to innovation."
The Vice Chief's Challenge will consist of three phases. First, ideas will be solicited from across the service in a broad announcement. Then, workshops will be set up in which subject matter experts help refine the most promising proposals and draft development plans for the budding ideas. The final phase will involve developing and demonstrating prototypes for the chosen concepts.
“We'll start small by gathering ideas from individual airmen, rapidly evolve concepts with national thought leaders, and scale fast by working with industry to build and demonstrate prototypes in the next year,” Wilson said.
Each phase will be led by a different organization, but the Air Force Research Lab and the Office of the Vice Chief of Staff will serve as executive agents to ensure smooth transition between phases.
The initiative is similar to last year's first-ever Spark Tank innovation proposals.
“Each of the [major commands] went out to their different wings and solicited ideas, picked their best ones and came to us," Wilson said. "There were a dozen ideas, of which we picked six of them and presented them at the [Warfighter's Edge] conference.”
The idea chosen for development ended up being that of a boom operator on the KC-135 Stratotanker. He proposed a plan to re-engineer the boom operator platform instructor position for the entire KC-135 fleet at a projected cost of $1.5 million. The proposed innovation aims to both reduce back and neck injuries and save the Air Force $132 million each year in this critical aircrew specialty, according to Air Mobility Command.
“It was across the fleet, easy to implement, and that's what we're using now,” Wilson said.
Other innovative ideas that Wilson has already seen, and clearly wants more of, involve software development that connects sensors, platforms and nodes to share information across the force.
“We had an airman and second lieutenant who briefed me on software development they had done that was unbelievable — the capability they were bringing me and the speed at which they were doing it,” Wilson said.
The duo took SIPRNet information and found a way to fuse it together using complex computer coding for targeting purposes. The result was a tool dreamed up in-house that directly solved a pressing issue.
Much of that is simply owed to the fact that those airmen knew what they needed to do, how to do it and already worked in a position to provide the service.
“The CEO of Pivotal [Software Inc.] pulled me aside and said ‘I work with all the Fortune 500 companies across the world, and I would put these two people against any company, anywhere,'” Wilson said.
That's the sort of innovation the Vice Chief's Challenge is looking to tap into.
Wilson doesn't know yet how many ideas will be taken to completion, but by this time next year, he's hoping that the Vice Chief's Challenge will be handing out some awards.
“I can't compensate them like industry can, but I can offer them purpose," he said.
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July 15, 2022 | International, C4ISR
BAE Systems delivers new M-code GPS receivers to Germany under first non-US sale
Berlin placed the order for an undisclosed number of receivers in 2020 as a Foreign Military Sale (FMS) fulfilled through U.S. Space Systems Command (SSC).
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September 4, 2018 | International, C4ISR
Five Eyes Intel Alliance Urges Big Tech to Help Break Encrypted Messages
By Joseph Marks The U.S. and four major allies warn new legislation might be necessary to ensure law enforcement can access communications. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen joined leaders of the U.S.'s four major intelligence sharing partners Thursday in a statement urging tech companies to help law enforcement access otherwise-encrypted communications from criminals and terrorists. The joint statement stopped short of urging new laws to mandate that cooperation but warned that “should governments continue to encounter impediments to lawful access to information necessary to aid the protection of the citizens of our countries, we may pursue technological, enforcement, legislative or other measures to achieve lawful access solutions.” The statement from the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, collectively known as the Five Eyes, describes law enforcement's inability to access encrypted communications as “a pressing international concern that requires urgent, sustained attention.” While “governments should recognize that the nature of encryption is such that there will be situations where access to information is not possible,” the statement notes, “such situations should be rare.” Obama and Trump administration officials have warned since 2014 that end-to-end encryption systems, which shield the content of communications even from the communications provider, are allowing criminals and terrorists to plan operations outside law enforcement's reach. Legislative proposals that would make it easier for police to access those communications have failed to gain traction, however, even after a 2015 showdown between the FBI and Apple over an encrypted iPhone used by San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook. An inspector general's investigation in March found the FBI rushed to court in that case, seeking to compel Apple's assistance without exploring other options for cracking into the phone. Thursday's statement notes that: “Providers of information and communications technology and services ... are subject to the law, which can include requirements to assist authorities to lawfully access data, including the content of communications.” The statement does not go into detail, however, about what laws would justify those requirements and how they should be interpreted. The San Bernardino case was never decided in court because an unknown third party sold the FBI a method for breaking through the phone's passcode and accessing its encrypted contents. U.S. tech companies, for the most part, have resisted calls to cooperate with law enforcement. They argue that any effort to weaken encryption would be found and exploited by criminal hackers or foreign spies. Technologists, civil libertarians and many members of Congress have urged police to use other methods to break through encrypted communications without forcing companies to help or installing government backdoors into encryption systems. Those methods include obtaining a warrant to hack into the communications and building a case using unencrypted metadata. During the summit, Nielsen and other Five Eyes officials also agreed to strengthen cooperation between their nations' cyber centers and to cooperate on improving the cybersecurity of supply chains for critical infrastructure such as energy plants and airports. https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2018/08/five-eyes-intel-alliance-urges-big-tech-help-break-encrypted-messages/150961/