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February 19, 2024 | International, Land

Joint venture with Ukrainian partner: Rheinmetall to produce artillery ammunition in Ukraine

The MoU was signed in the presence of Alexander Kamyshin, the Ukrainian Minister for Strategic Industries, during the Munich Security Conference.

https://www.epicos.com/article/789867/joint-venture-ukrainian-partner-rheinmetall-produce-artillery-ammunition-ukraine

On the same subject

  • How to take EU-NATO relations from words to action

    December 4, 2019 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

    How to take EU-NATO relations from words to action

    By: Jeffrey A. Stacey After the successful 2011 Libya operation, it appeared the U.S. and European allies were on the cusp of a new era of working together on international crises, only to stall out thanks to economic austerity and populist elections. Now that the refugee crisis in Europe is subsiding and allied troops and equipment have deployed to Poland and the Baltics, the window of opportunity has once again opened for deepening relations between the European Union and NATO. By setting up an EU-NATO informal track, regularizing operational transitions and embarking on expanded coordination in out-of-area operations — all of which are more crucial, given a potential Brexit and the 2020 U.S. election — these two crucial, overlapping alliances can step into a new era. There are two logical diplomatic tracks to be pursued: a formal track centered on implementation of EU and NATO ministerials/summits, as well as an informal track centered on working through difficult issues and preparing them for decision-makers. Senior officials from both organizations have commented recently that the informal track would be particularly useful for the kind of deep-dive, “peer around the corner” strategizing that busy officials are rarely afforded an opportunity to engage in. The EU is a global leader in what it calls “crisis management,” and what NATO refers to as “stabilization and reconstruction.” Joint planning ahead of such operations, aligning civil/military planning in advance, will allow for improved outcomes in theater. In general, NATO would gain a new capability to act in the immediate aftermath of its military operations when a crisis occurs, and the EU would gain the opportunity to spearhead joint Western crisis management as a matter of course. Taking a cue from the so-called changing of berets in the 2004 NATO mission in Bosnia — when European soldiers involved in the terminating NATO mission simply changed their uniforms out for EU uniforms and remained in place to take part in the EU follow-on mission — there is a strong likelihood that a similar arrangement can be made for deployed civilians. The EU and NATO have ample reasons to agree to regularize operational leadership transitions in moving from the military phase of a conflict to the post-conflict stabilization phase. Here's how it could work: The EU would be designated to spearhead the stabilization phase, having jointly planned this phase of the operation with NATO civilian planners at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe. NATO would commit to always selecting a European as the head of the NATO temporary civilian operation, and would call up a modest number of civilian experts from the nations, who would deploy to theater and engage in a delimited number of core stabilization tasks with the plan for a larger EU-led civilian deployment to absorb the NATO operation. NATO civilian operators would focus on a discrete set of core stabilization tasks awaiting the follow-on EU mission to become more comprehensive. Once a decision to deploy a civilian mission occurs in Brussels, the NATO stabilization mission would devolve to the EU. Most of the civilian experts will already be from EU countries, with the mission head also European. The rest of the NATO civilians can be seconded to the civilian operation mission via framework agreements such as the extant one between the U.S. and the EU that already has seconded Americans to EU missions in Africa. This operational compromise would prevent either alliance from playing second fiddle, ushering in a new era of co-planning and cooperating for both. Why can't both sides “just do it,” i.e., simply enact a leadership transition in theater whenever the need arises? Pragmatism can work in the moment, but it doesn't set precedents, as proven by the fact this is not already happening; past “impromptu” experiences of working together on the ground have not led to any pattern or even expectation of repeat or improved cooperating since. This proposal is firmly in the EU's interests, as it will put it fully in the driver's seat of crisis management and bring the EU the recognition it deserves for its existing capabilities and substantial operational experience. This proposal is also firmly in NATO's interests, for the alliance that almost split over its ongoing Afghanistan operation has no interest in further prolonged field deployments. There is also an additional strategic opportunity for both, as closer EU-NATO cooperation would be an important means for keeping the U.K. connected with its EU partners in the security and defense field following Brexit. But with crises around the world proliferating, in more pressing terms these two critical overlapping alliances among Western allies need to jointly become more operationally ready. Despite the political challenges in numerous Western countries, an agreement to overcome the EU-NATO operational impasse is on the cards. Prior to the negative impact of U.S. President Donald Trump's arrival, NATO-EU relations had been at their pinnacle. With an EU-NATO informal track and a means for overcoming the operational hurdle in hand, substantial progress can still be made prior to the next U.S. administration. https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2019/12/03/how-to-take-eu-nato-relations-from-words-to-action/

  • Congress announces commission to review National Defense Strategy

    January 11, 2023 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security, Other Defence

    Congress announces commission to review National Defense Strategy

    Four members served on the 2018 National Defense Strategy Commission, which defense hawks in Congress wielded to argue for higher military budgets.

  • Here’s what the battlefield tech industry predicts for 2019

    January 4, 2019 | International, C4ISR

    Here’s what the battlefield tech industry predicts for 2019

    By: Mike Gruss The new year will likely bring a new secretary of defense, a renewed emphasis on changing how the Pentagon buys weapons systems and a continued focus on watching technological development by the Chinese government. C4ISRNET asked industry leaders what trends they expect to emerge in the battlefield landscape in 2019. Here's what they said: Accelerated acquisition “Right now, your toaster can tell your refrigerator that it needs to order more bread, but the world's most advanced military is still challenged to connect its huge array of systems. That's just not sustainable. Before the military can start tackling huge technological leaps like artificial intelligence, we have to change the way we develop weapon systems. I see 2019 as the point when the DoD really starts moving away from buying proprietary, stove-piped, closed hardware systems and instead looks to the commercial software world as a model for how we develop and integrate weapon systems. Focusing on commercial-style software development is how we'll be able to develop truly open, upgradeable, cyber-resilient systems quickly. And by quickly I'm saying weeks or months for a new system, not years or decades. The pace of technology is moving faster than ever before, especially in the software world. We need to accept that and move with it if we want to stay ahead.” — Todd Probert, vice president of mission support and modernization at Raytheon An increased need for a coordinated response “Today's environment is evolving to warfare coordinated across multiple domains driving our forces to be more adaptable and coordinated in our response. As this threat environment accelerates, we recognize that our customers require methods that will enable them to operate seamlessly and simultaneously across domains. We see C4ISR technologies as the foundation for managing and responding to these more complex missions on a shorter timeline. We will continue to invest in transformational technologies that will help make multidomain operations more predictive and more effective. This includes: Machine-to-machine communication across new and legacy datalinks; Fusion to enable information from several sources into one unified picture of the battlespace and reduce the data to decision timeline; Artificial intelligence to provide decision makers with the ability to react quickly to problems that demand fast-paced analysis and decision making. AI offers the technology to change the human role from “in-the-loop” controller to “on-the-loop” thinker who can focus on strategy versus the execution detail; ‘Algorithmic warfare' to support a partnership between humans and computer systems, exponentially increasing the pace of processing, exploitation, dissemination and C2 operations; and Advanced multi-level secure modeling and simulation to manage patterns of life and actionable changes. — Brent Upson, director of ISR Systems at Lockheed Martin A move to small form factor networking “In 2019 we expect the DoD to significantly increase its investment in small form factor networking, secure wireless and virtualization-enabled compute necessary to improve war-fighter mobility and situational awareness in tactical and expeditionary programs. Tactical communications programs have proven the efficacy of size weight and power (SWaP) reduction by moving to small form factor equipment, and the savings enable entirely new IT-enabled use cases at the network edge. In particular, tactical deployments of classified wireless using commercial technologies, data center services and storage, and defensive cybersecurity solutions will see sizable new adoption in 2019.” — Peggy Miller, chief executive officer at PacStar Audio for authentication “Audio will be the buzz word of 2019 for network solutions. Introducing audio as a security layer in IP video provides a new layer of overall security to physical security solutions. Audio technology allows security professionals to interact with people remotely, as well as provide an automated response to prevent situations from escalating to an incident by identifying aggressive voices, glass breaking and even gunshots. With this new audio technology and analytical capabilities, security professionals can proactively detect, interpret and respond to events and emergency situations.” — John Merlino, government business development manager at Axis Communications, Inc. Attacks on data in the cloud “In the past two years, enterprises have widely adopted the Software-as-a-Service model, such as Office 365, as well as Infrastructure- and Platform-as-a-Service cloud models, such as AWS and Azure. With this move, far more corporate data now resides in the cloud. In 2019, we expect a significant increase in attacks that follow the data to the cloud. With the increased adoption of Office 365, we have noticed a surge of attacks on the service — especially attempts to compromise email. One threat the McAfee cloud team uncovered was the botnet KnockKnock, which targeted system accounts that typically do not have multifactor authentication. We have also seen the emergence of exploits of the trust model in the Open Authorization standard. One was launched by Fancy Bear, the Russian cyber-espionage group, phishing users with a fake Google security app to gain access to user data. "Similarly, during the last couple of years we have seen many high-profile data breaches attributed to misconfigured Amazon S3 buckets. This is clearly not the fault of AWS. Based on the shared responsibility model, the customer is on the hook to properly configure IaaS/PaaS infrastructure and properly protect their enterprise data and user access. Complicating matters, many of these misconfigured buckets are owned by vendors in their supply chains, rather than by the target enterprises. With access to thousands of open buckets and credentials, bad actors are increasingly opting for these easy pickings.” — Sekhar Sarukkai, vice president of engineering, cloud at McAfee The expansion of technology to counter small drones "The ever-expanding proliferation of small UAS (sUAS) has resulted in a rapid rise in sUAS incidents, leaving security personnel starved for a holistic solution to this new and evolving threat. A hobbyist unwittingly flying near a flight line or a drone pilot with nefarious intentions present both risk and unmet challenges. Counter-sUAS (C-sUAS) technology is an essential tool for assessing airspace activity, understanding the severity of drone incursions, and informing new protocols to mitigate potential threats. With C-sUAS technology, security personnel can now observe a drone's behavior and deploy appropriate offensive or defensive countermeasures, which may include direct contact with the pilot or coordination with local law enforcement. In all cases, detection of sUAS activity is the critical foundation of any C-sUAS program. “2018 was a year of testing and evaluating. Rapid prototyping, experimental deployments, and government testing events validated that no single C-sUAS system is a one-size-fits-all solution. Moreover, C-sUAS technology must be flexible to meet the needs of each specific environment.” — Phil Pitsky, vice president of U.S. federal operations at Dedrone https://www.c4isrnet.com/industry/2019/01/02/heres-what-the-battlefield-tech-industry-predicts-for-2019/

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