February 3, 2021 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

India releases details of new defense budget

NEW DELHI — India on Monday allocated $18.48 billion for weapons procurement in its 2021-2022 defense budget amid an ongoing military standoff with China and financial stress on the national economy due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Excluding pensions, the new defense budget totals $49.6 billion, an increase of more than 3 percent from the previous year's $47.98 billion. New capital expenditure of $18.48 billion meant for arms procurement witnessed an increase of about 16 percent from the previous year's $15.91 billion.

This is the highest-ever increase in capital outlay for defense in the last 15 years, according to Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh.

An additional $2.84 billion was spent on emergency arms purchases in the summer of 2020 to deal with the ongoing confrontation with China.

The budget's revenue expenditure meant for maintenance of existing weapons, pay and allowances, and recurring expenses is set at $29.02 billion, compared to $28.75 billion in the previous defense budget.

Officials in India point to the COVID-19 pandemic as disrupting the economy and thus affecting the government's income and driving spending decisions. Consequently, the defense budget might not be as high as it would've been were there not a pandemic, said Amit Cowshish, a former financial adviser for acquisition at the Ministry of Defence.

Cowshish noted that the funds may be inadequate for all the planned acquisitions from abroad and at home to be signed during the upcoming financial year, which begins April 1.

Capital expenditure is essentially defense funding meant for fresh arms procurement and existing liabilities from previously conducted defense contracts. Revenue expenditure is defense spending meant for the pay and allowances of military personnel as well as the maintenance of weapons and other existing inventory items.

The Army will receive $4.9 billion in capital expenditure, which is an increase of 8.17 percent from the previous year's $4.53 billion. “The service could buy additional military vehicles and upgrade its drones fleet,” a senior Army official said.

The service's revenue expenditure is set at $20.37 billion, compared to $20.11 billion in the previous budget.

The Navy will receive $4.55 billion in capital expenditure, which is an increase of nearly 22 percent from previous year's $3.73 billion. This could pave the way for the service to buy 10 tactical MQ-9 Reaper drones from General Atomics through the U.S. Foreign Military Sales program, an Indian Navy official said.

The revenue expenditure for the Navy is $3.19 billion, which is meant for the maintenance of warships and submarines, compared to $3.13 billion in the previous budget.

The Air Force will receive $7.2 billion in capital expenditure, which is a hike of 19 percent from the previous year's $6.05 billion. According to a service official, this will go toward a new contract for 83 homemade LCA MK1A Tejas light combat aircraft, an existing commitment to pay for 36 Rafale fighters from France and five units of S-400 missile defense systems from Russia, among other efforts.

The Air Force's revenue expenditure is $4.19 billion, compared to $4.1 billion in the previous budget.

About $1.55 billion in capital expenditure will go toward the state-owned Defence Research and Development Organisation for new projects, compared to $1.47 billion in the previous budget. DRDO has also been given a revenue expenditure totaling $1.24 billion, compared to $1.2 billion last year.

This year, existing liabilities could eat up to 90 percent of the new capital expenditure, which will impact several new weapons procurement efforts, an MoD official said.

But if that high percentage is accurate, according to Cowshish, there must be a lot of equipment already on contract. The military will have to make do with whatever amount is left over for acquiring new systems, he noted.

“Capability-building and self-reliance ... are long-term projects, which are not dependent entirely on the budgetary allocation in a particular year. Hopefully things will improve in the future.”

https://www.defensenews.com/global/asia-pacific/2021/02/02/india-releases-details-of-new-defense-budget/

On the same subject

July 10, 2020 | International, C4ISR, Security

Pentagon AI center shifts focus to joint war-fighting operations
Nathan Strout The Pentagon's artificial intelligence hub is shifting its focus to enabling joint war-fighting operations, developing artificial intelligence tools that will be integrated into the Department of Defense's Joint All-Domain Command and Control efforts. “As we have matured, we are now devoting special focus on our joint war-fighting operation and its mission initiative, which is focused on the priorities of the National Defense Strategy and its goal of preserving America's military and technological advantages over our strategic competitors,” Nand Mulchandani, acting director of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, told reporters July 8. “The AI capabilities JAIC is developing as part of the joint war-fighting operations mission initiative will use mature AI technology to create a decisive advantage for the American war fighter.” That marks a significant change from where JAIC stood more than a year ago, when the organization was still being stood up with a focus on using AI for efforts like predictive maintenance. That transformation appears to be driven by the DoD's focus on developing JADC2, a system of systems approach that will connect sensors to shooters in near-real time. “JADC2 is not a single product. It is a collection of platforms that get stitched together — woven together ― into effectively a platform. And JAIC is spending a lot of time and resources focused on building the AI component on top of JADC2,” said the acting director. According to Mulchandani, the fiscal 2020 spending on the joint war-fighting operations initiative is greater than JAIC spending on all other mission initiatives combined. In May, the organization awarded Booz Allen Hamilton a five-year, $800 million task order to support the joint war-fighting operations initiative. As Mulchandani acknowledged to reporters, that task order exceeds JAIC's budget for the next few years and it will not be spending all of that money. One example of the organization's joint war-fighting work is the fire support cognitive system, an effort JAIC was pursuing in partnership with the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab and the U.S. Army's Program Executive Office Command, Control and Communications-Tactical. That system, Mulchandani said, will manage and triage all incoming communications in support of JADC2. Mulchandani added that JAIC was about to begin testing its new flagship joint war-fighting project, which he did not identify by name. “We do have a project going on under joint war fighting which we are going to be actually go into testing,” he said. “They are very tactical edge AI is the way I'd describe it. That work is going to be tested. It's actually promising work — we're very excited about it.” “As I talked about the pivot from predictive maintenance and others to joint war fighting, that is probably the flagship project that we're sort of thinking about and talking about that will go out there,” he added. While left unnamed, the acting director assured reporters that the project would involve human operators and full human control. “We believe that the current crop of AI systems today [...] are going to be cognitive assistance,” he said. “Those types of information overload cleanup are the types of products that we're actually going to be investing in.” “Cognitive assistance, JADC2, command and control—these are all pieces,” he added. https://www.c4isrnet.com/artificial-intelligence/2020/07/08/pentagon-ai-center-shifts-focus-to-joint-warfighting-operations/
July 3, 2018 | International, C4ISR

Cyber Command moves closer to a major new weapon
By: Mark Pomerleau The Air Force issued a formal proposal earlier this month for the Department of Defense's long-awaited cyber weapon system, known as the Unified Platform, sources tell Fifth Domain. DoD officials have said the Unified Platform is one of U.S. Cyber Command's largest and most critical acquisition programs to date. Industry officials have said it is necessary to conduct cyber operations and is critical to national security. Just as sailors rely on an aircraft carrier, pilots need airplanes or soldiers need tanks, cyber warriors require a system to which they launch their attacks. Pentagon leaders have said the Unified Platform will house offensive and defensive tools, allow for command and control, situational awareness and planning. Industry officials have referred to the programs as a “cyber carrier” used to launch cyber operations and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. But details on what the Air Force, which issued the request on behalf of Cyber Command, wants in a Unified Platform are scarce. Sources told Fifth Domain a formal request for proposal was released through the General Services Administration's premier enterprise Alliant Governmentwide Acquisition Contract vehicle, which “provides flexible access to customized IT solutions from a large, diverse pool of industry partners ... [and] allows for long-term planning of large-scale program requirements.” Under this model, GSA completes much of the initial contracting legwork and, in this case, allows the Air Force to focus on the specific technical requirements, sources said. Companies compete to be eligible for task orders under the Alliant contract and then GSA selects contractors who compete against each other for individual task orders on the final program. This means, only vetted companies would work on the program. Alliant is also designed to streamline contracts for IT projects only, eschewing some of the documentation and financials in typical contracts enabling faster awards. The Unified Platform proposal was only released to companies on the contract about two weeks ago, sources said, and is due in mid-July. Today, each of the individual services use their own disparate systems, many of which are not linked together. The spokesman added that efforts are underway to review and consolidate existing service and Cyber Command's platforms. Unified Platform seeks to take the best of breed of these and provide all cyber warriors a consolidated system. “In concert with US Cyber Command and all Services, the Air Force as Executive Agent is directing development and deployment to ensure timely and relevant full-spectrum capabilities for our cyber warriors,” an Air Force spokeswoman said. An Air Force spokeswoman said that the Air Force's Life Cycle Management Center will serve as the system integrator and will lead a multi-contractor, agile development/operations effort to launch and expand the Unified Platform. Currently, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and Booz Allen Hamilton are known to be competing for the contract. Sources said other companies may also be considering a bid. The Air Force, in its research and development budget for fiscal 2019, asked for $29.8 million for the Unified Platform program this year. It requested $10 million for fiscal year 2020 and $6 million in fiscal 2021. The total cost of the program is not immediately clear. Other companies are also working on Unified Platform prototypes in the interim. Enlighten IT Consulting, a Maryland based company, was awarded earlier this year a sole source contract to provide a Unified Platform prototype, Duane Shugars, Enlighten's vice president of operations, told Fifth Domain. Enlighten is providing a capability Cyber Command's cyber mission force is using in real world missions today in which they collect data, push it into their analytics to run and share it for intelligence fusion. As the command continues to grow and mature leaders have said it will need its own infrastructure to conduct operations. As recently as 2015, top Pentagon officials acknowledged Cyber Command did not possess a robust joint computer network infrastructure capability, a robust command and control platform and systems to plan and execute fast-moving, large-scale cyber operations. During his confirmation process to lead Cyber Command, Gen. Paul Nakasone said the organization needs its own infrastructure separate from the National Security Agency, which is currently co-located with Cyber Command and has traditionally shared personnel and infrastructure. “Operating under the constraint of the intelligence authorities that govern NSA infrastructure and tools would severely limit USCYBERCOM's ability to effectively support wartime cyber operations,” he said. https://www.fifthdomain.com/dod/cybercom/2018/06/29/cyber-command-moves-closer-to-a-major-new-weapon/
February 8, 2024 | International, Aerospace

Houthis, Russians wield same Iranian-supplied drones, DIA studies show
The Waid 1 and 2 drones share distinctive features — wing stabilizers, pitot tubes, fuselages — with Iran’s Shahed-131 and -136, according to the agency.

All news

India releases details of new defense budget

On the same subject

Houthis, Russians wield same Iranian-supplied drones, DIA studies show The Waid 1 and 2 drones share distinctive features — wing stabilizers, pitot tubes, fuselages — with Iran’s Shahed-131 and -136, according to the agency.

Houthis, Russians wield same Iranian-supplied drones, DIA studies show
The Waid 1 and 2 drones share distinctive features — wing stabilizers, pitot tubes, fuselages — with Iran’s Shahed-131 and -136, according to the agency.