August 21, 2020 | International, Aerospace
By PAUL MCLEARYon August 20, 2020 at 4:29 PM
WASHINGTON: As Japan undergoes the deepest rethink of its defense posture since the end of the Second World War, some big-ticket acquisition programs appear to be on shaky ground as the country retools to counter a rapidly modernizing Chinese military.
Tokyo put the brakes on two planned Aegis Ashore missile defense systems set to be built on the mainland, a surprise June move that came after local communities protested about the powerful radars and possibility that rocket debris could fall on local communities.
That reversal on a major $2.1 billion program led to questions over what other changes the government of Shinzo Abe might consider as it retools its defense strategy and considers funneling more money into offensive strike weapons, as opposed to purely defensive systems.
Earlier this week, fresh reports emerged from Tokyo that the government might also be reconsidering its purchase of three Global Hawk UAVs, which would provide long-endurance surveillance capabilities.
One source with knowledge of the program said, despite the reports, the Japanese government has indicated it supports the Global Hawk program, even in the face of possible divestiture by the US Air Force of its block 30 variants, the same version Northrop Grumman is making for Japan.
Despite the moves in Washington, South Korea is still in the process of buying four block 30 Global Hawks, the first of which was delivered in April. Further south, Australia purchased six MQ-4C Tritons — the maritime version of the Global Hawk — with the first three to be delivered between 2023 and 2025.
With those allies remaining in the program, and the US flying the drone from Guam on a seasonal basis, the allies have started to build a powerful, long-endurance sensor layer, along with its attendant supply chain.
That sort of capability would fit within plans the Indo-Pacific Command pitched to the Trump administration earlier this year to invest billions in joint infrastructure across the region. The proposal has found bipartisan support on Capitol Hill, with the Republican-controlled Senate's version of the annual defense policy bill including $1.4 billion for an Indo-Pacific Deterrence Initiative, while the Democratic-controlled House had $3.6 billion for an Indo-Pacific Reassurance Initiative focused on shoring up allies and partners. A conference committee will have to thrash out the differences and fill in almost all the details this fall.
The Japanese Ministry of Defense did not respond to questions on the issue by publication.
“Unmanned systems are going to be vital — in particular underwater unmanned systems and also aerial unmanned systems — given that Japan is an archipelago,” Ryo Hinata-Yamaguchi, professor at Pusan National University, said during a virtual event sponsored by the Atlantic Council on Wednesday. “Those are the domains that are most vital to Japan's security. It's really about Japan thinking about what we can afford to do, what we need to do.”
https://breakingdefense.com/2020/08/japans-reset-raises-questions-over-big-programs
July 20, 2021 | International, C4ISR
L3Harris Technologies and a team of European defence and technology firms have been contracted to develop future Nato surveillance concepts.
September 13, 2019 | International, Aerospace
FORT BENNING, Ga. – The Army tested its current and future equipment and warfighting methods for the potential next war in a massive, weeks-long simulated experiment that wrapped up recently. The Unified Challenge 19.2 experiment in August involved more than 400 participants working with 55 formations, 64 concepts and 150 capabilities, said Col. Mark Bailey, chief of the Army's Futures and Concepts Center's Joint Army Experimentation Division. The exercise ran Aug. 5-23. The simulation allowed Army leaders to “understand some of the complex patterns” that come out of the very complex systems that the United States and its adversaries are using, or developing to use, in future scenarios, Bailey told reporters this week. Much of what was tested couldn't be done in the real world because it hasn't been invented yet. For example, the Army's priorities in the Cross Functional Teams, from Future Vertical Lift to the Next Generation Combat Vehicle, are years away from fielding their platforms to the force, but through mathematical models and algorithms, researchers can plug in the day and play out a very detailed set of events. And the scope of the experiment dove deeper than what a typical tabletop exercise or wargaming scenario might. It allowed experimenters to see down to the small unit level and all the way up to the division and corps level what would likely play out if those formations collided with a near-peer competitor on foreign turf in a battle for territory. Chris Willis, the chief of the Maneuver Battle Lab's Model and Simulations Branch, said that for the first time, experimenters were able to use “nonlethal effects” in a simulation — electronic jamming, cyber-attacks and other methods — to support maneuver warfighting. That helped them gather data on concepts that Army leaders have been considering and theorizing about for years. But the multi-domain operations tools that were used in simulation were not being flung about the simulated battle space by random privates. Currently, the experiments look at having commanders below the brigade level aware of what MDO tools are at their disposal and how to get access to them when needed from higher echelons, which would likely house them. “The brigade would get access to some effects but those wouldn't rest inside of the brigade proper,” said Col. Chris Cassibry, director of the Maneuver Capabilities Development and Integration Directorate's Concepts Development Division. Cassibry emphasized that at this stage it's more important for the brigade commander to understand what's happening across the battlefield and use those effects to execute maneuver. For instance, the idea is that by enabling space and cyber assets, ground forces can have more freedom to maneuver. That was assumed to be the case but the complex simulation has put some data behind the concept for researchers to now analyze. A lot of what presented challenges that will consume commanders of the future was creating “windows of domain superiority,” Bailey said. Converging effects The basic plan is to converge effects, fires or non-kinetic or other types, which create that window. Commanders can plan for that and they do. But to do that at the speed that leaders believe MDO will unfold presents a whole other set of challenges. “Things happen so fast you must have this flexibility to do that in a moment's notice so that when you identify a target on a battlefield and don't have the artillery tube in range you have to quickly identify what else you have in range to hit that target,” Bailey said. And also, to understand that even if you switch “guns” quickly enough to another asset, drone, missile, electronic warfare, that means the new tool you've chosen will now not be used on another quickly emerging target or threat. That's where artificial intelligence must fill the gap, by offering up those menus of options for commanders and identifying the targets so that the human can then fire. Unified Challenge is a twice a year event; this was the second. Though it provides a lot of data, it's not something easily replicable. That means that in the near term, smaller experiments will unfold using some of the lessons learned from the larger experiment, further refining concepts and next steps on many of the ways in which the Army goes after MDO. The next step will be for the Futures and Concepts Center to compile a report of lessons learned and recommendations moving forward with some of the platforms, capabilities and doctrine. That will be delivered to the center director in the coming months, and once approved, spread across the Army to inform smaller scale experiments with portions of the larger effort to develop MDO doctrine and materiel, Bailey said. https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2019/09/12/massive-simulation-shows-the-need-for-speed-in-multi-domain-ops
August 2, 2023 | International, Security, Other Defence
Transport companies including Thales , MBDA and Fincantieri have won a contract to renovate French and Italian frigates, the French ministry of defence said on Wednesday.