La DGA commande un prototype de laser anti-drones à Cilas

On the same subject

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  July 6, 2021 | International, C4ISR

  DARPA Selects Raytheon, BAE Systems, Northrop Teams to Develop Event-based Sensors

  DARPA Selects Raytheon, BAE Systems, Northrop Teams to Develop Event-based Sensors

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  February 3, 2021 | International, Naval

  How Kathleen Hicks will approach nukes, shipbuilding and the budget

  By: Aaron Mehta WASHINGTON — Following a smooth confirmation hearing, it appears Kathleen Hicks is headed to the Pentagon. As had been expected, Hicks, the nominee to be deputy secretary of defense for Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, received little in the way of pushback from senators. A significant number of them — including outgoing Senate Armed Service Committee Chairman Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., and his successor, Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I. — indicated they would support her nomination out of the committee. The hearing, which lasted more than three hours, gave insight into how Hicks would approach a number of key issues for the Defense Department if she arrives in office. Hicks is open to changing budget traditions to drive joint activity. It is commonly accepted in defense circles that the Pentagon's budget will be flat at best, if not declining, in the coming years. That led to a number of questions from senators about how to drive reforms and find savings for the department. Hicks said the incentive structure must change, particularly for general officer- and senior civilian-level hires, in order to focus on joint impacts. A service that has “given up the capacity or the capability often believes that they will lose out overall, and the incentive structure is built around budget share. We should make clear always from a leadership perspective that the incentive is about serving the joint war fighter,” she said. “So the incentives start around promotion, but they also include how we keep the money, if you will, oriented towards services who are putting forward good ideas, even if those good ideas seem to go against a vested interest.” Hicks later committed to looking at “pass through” funding included in the Air Force budget each year. That money, which can account for as much as 20 percent of the service's budget request, goes to other government organizations and has for years been a thorn in the side of Air Force advocates, who argue it leads to the service having a smaller budget than the Army and Navy. The Navy's shipbuilding plan may get changed. The Trump administration delivered a long-awaited shipbuilding plan to Congress toward the end of 2020, one that was met with a skeptical eye from outside analysts who questioned some of the baked-in assumptions. Hicks, it seems, falls into that camp, although she said the broad structure is likely correct. “There's some really interesting operational themes that I'm attracted to: There's a focus on increasing use of autonomy, there's a focus on dispersal of forces and there's a focus on growing the number of small surface combatants relative to today,” Hicks said. “But there are some things in that unclassified report, as I mentioned to you, that I saw as flags. There's an indication that the information in there would require further analysis to validate the numbers.” Hicks said she would hope to work quickly once Navy leadership is in place on developing the Biden administration's plan. Focusing just on allied defense spending misses the point. President Donald Trump often focused his personal ire on allied nations who were not spending as much on defense as he would like. While NATO, with its pledge for countries to spend 2 percent of their respective gross domestic product on defense, was an early and common target, Japan and South Korea also drew his ire over the last four years. Hicks said she watched that with “concern,” noting that the focus purely on spending would impact how other nations work with the U.S. She believes the Biden administration will work to smooth over tensions around burden-sharing. “We should always be focused on burden-sharing, ensuring that allies fulfill their commitments. But when it becomes that tactical issue that overrides the strategic value of the alliances, alliances that the Chinese and Russians could only hope to match ... if we get to that point, we have become astrategic,” Hicks said. “We need to make sure that we're taking a strategic approach to what commitment means,” she added. “I think we need to make sure that allies are as into the security relationship as we are. Sometimes it's through spending. Sometimes it's through defense spending. And sometimes that commitment is expressed in other ways, and I think we should be strategic about how we consider those commitments.” Because of Austin's recusals, she'll be the point person on any Raytheon projects. Prior to assuming office, Austin served on the board of defense giant Raytheon Technologies. During his confirmation process, he pledged to recuse himself, if at all possible, from any decisions related to Raytheon while serving as defense secretary. That means Hicks will be the highest-ranking voice on programmatic decisions regarding two key nuclear capabilities: the replacement program for America's intercontinental ballistic missiles known as the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, or GBSD; and the Long Range Standoff Weapon, or LRSO, a nuclear cruise missile. In her written answers to members, Hicks noted she would likely end up running programmatic decisions on those systems as well as “other timely missile defense issues.” Hicks backs nuclear modernization, but won't comment on specific projects. Like Austin did during his confirmation hearing, Hicks was unequivocal in her support for broad nuclear modernization. But just like Austin, she stopped short of pledging specifically to uphold the entirety of the current nuclear modernization strategy, notable at a time when both the LRSO and GBSD programs find themselves as targets from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, as well as from the nonproliferation community. She deferred on technical questions about GBSD and its timeline, noting she doesn't currently have access to that data. “My view is that the triad has served us very well, it has created stability and it has value,” Hicks said. However, she stressed that major decisions on nuclear policy, including about a potential “no first use” declaration, would come from above her. “I think our decisions on nuclear weapons should be driven foremost by strategy,” not money, she added. Hicks said it is her “understanding” that a Nuclear Posture Review will be conducted by the Pentagon; the assumption among experts is that the NPR under a Biden administration will come to some different conclusions than that of the Trump administration, whose document called for the creation of two new low-yield nuclear warheads. The transition fight will impact the fiscal 2022 budget. Before being announced as the deputy defense secretary nominee, Hicks was the leader on President Joe Biden's Pentagon landing team. While transitions between administrations are usually smooth, the unprecedented situation of Trump's refusal to accept his election loss bled over into the transition effort at the Department of Defense. By mid-December, officials on the Biden team were publicly complaining about political appointees at teh DoD blocking their access. Pentagon officials canceled a number of planned meetings but insisted there was no issue. Asked during Tuesday's hearing about the impact those delays may have going forward, Hicks stressed the issue was “really around a handful of folks who made things difficult,” but said there would be a hangover effect for the FY22 budget. “I think the biggest challenge that I will face, if confirmed, because of this is around budget transparency,” she said, indicating that the transition team was unable to look at what the Trump administration was doing with the FY22 budget request until late in January. “Typically that information is shared with the transition team because the administration will owe to Congress a president's budget submission in the spring. So the inability to look at that information ... I think it will cause some delay in the timeline by which we can give budget quality information back to Congress. So that would be the area [where] I would ask for a little relief or understanding.” https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2021/02/02/how-kathleen-hicks-will-approach-nukes-shipbuilding-and-the-budget/

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  December 17, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval

  Israel launches first-ever multitier missile defense test

  JERUSALEM — The Israel Missile Defense Organization and the U.S. Missile Defense Agency for the first time demonstrated a multilayered air defense system using the Iron Dome, David's Sling and Arrow weapon systems in a recent series of tests. “Using this approach, a variety of threats may be identified and intercepted via full coordination and interoperability between the systems,” Moshe Patel, the head of IMDO, said Monday. The organization falls under the purview of the Ministry of Defense, whose minster, Benny Gantz, praised the “development of a multilayered air defense system [that] secures us from threats near and far.” The Iron Dome system has been used against rockets and other threats for the last decade, and joint development with the U.S. has supported the Arrow and David's Sling programs. Israel delivered the first of two Iron Dome batteries to the U.S. Army earlier this year. The Israeli tests, which took place within the last few weeks but were announced Dec. 15, saw the systems deploy against cruise missile, UAV and ballistic missile targets. While Israel said the results of the tests will enable industry engineers to evaluate and upgrade the capabilities of the system, the wider context is that the announcement comes amid tension with Iran as well as improved relations between Israel and a number of Gulf states, according to experts. “U.S.-Israel cooperation on multilayered missile defense technologies continues to advance and is a critical factor in ensuring Israel can defend itself from a diverse array of threats posed by Iran and its proxies,” said Dan Shapiro, a visiting fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies, who served as U.S. ambassador to Israel in the Obama administration. Jonathan Schanzer, senior vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the ability of Israel's Iron Dome system to hit guided munitions is significant, “particularly as Iran increasingly seeks to arm its terrorist proxies with weapons that [have] evasive qualities. Has Israel developed tech to counter Iran's lethal precision-guided munitions effort? It certainly seems so.” The changing geopolitical environment in the region — particularly improved Israeli relations with Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates in recent months — is important, according to Udi Evental, a colonel in Israel's reserve-duty service and a senior fellow with the Institute for Policy and Strategy at the higher-education institution IDC Herzliya. “The normalization process opens new opportunities both for Israel, Arab states in the Gulf and the U.S.,” Evental said. “Israel might be able to deploy sensors and other means closer to Iran in a way that could offer more and better interception opportunities. ... The U.S. could lead the command and control of such an architecture and integrate into it some American assets as well.” Dan Feferman, a former strategic planner with the Israel Defense Forces and a fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute, pointed out that “Iran spent a lot of money developing [its strike] capabilities. So [Israel] is testing [its weapons systems] out, and it is an attempt to show Iran and its proxies that [Israeli] capabilities will soon be neutralized and they might as well not bother trying.” In addition to challenging the effectiveness of Iran's regional strategy, the tests also serve as a model for how Israel's neighbors can enhance their own defenses against Iranian threats, according to Shapiro, the former U.S. ambassador to Israel. The tests, he explained, serve as “a source of deepened Israeli-Arab security coordination.” Gulf states could benefit from Israel's defense capabilities, especially in light of the drone and cruise missile attack on Saudi Arabia's Aramco facility in September 2019. Israel's MoD said the drill was in the works for a year, indicating that the planning came after the attack in Abqaiq. Shapiro's colleague, Yoel Guzansky, added that recent reports noted one Gulf state is interested in buying air defense technology from Israel. He also described the Abqaiq attack as a motivator for the recent tests. “For years, cruise missiles were a problem that had to be addressed: Like drones, they fly at low altitudes.” Patel indicated that any cooperative program like David's Sling and Arrow must be approved by the U.S. to market and export to Gulf customers. But Israel has more independence when it comes to Iron Dome, despite Raytheon's involvement in the system's U.S.-based manufacturing. Although it's too early to assume much, he said, “there is a lot of advantage like sharing information and sensors in those countries because we have the same enemies and launchers and more — but it is too early. We begin to build our defense cooperation; this could be considered in the future.” Israel's MoD said the tests indicate the systems are capable of simultaneously intercepting threats. Rafael Advanced Defense Systems is the prime contractor for the development of the David's Sling weapon system, in cooperation with the Raytheon. Israel Aerospace Industries' Elta Systems subsidiary developed the Multi-Mission Radar, and Elbit Systems developed the Golden Almond battle management system, both of which were involved in the tests. “When the different systems in the multilayered mechanism are combined, they may face a variety of simultaneous threats and defend the citizens of the state of Israel,” said retired Brig. Gen. Pini Yungman, executive vice president and head of Rafael's Air and Missile Defense Division. The tests were carried out at sea for safety reasons. The Iron Dome has been integrated with Israel's Navy in the form of the C-Dome, which is to be deployed with the service's new Sa'ar 6-class corvettes. Officials said David's Sling can also be used at sea. During the tests, Iron Dome was used to intercept cruise missiles — a new capability for a system that has historically been deployed against unguided rockets, drones and mortars. Israel has generally used Iron Dome against short-range threats around the Gaza Strip and Golan, while Arrow was used for the first time in 2017 and David's Sling for the first time in 2018 against threats from Syria. The Israel Defense Forces also integrated the multitiered system and sensors into a common air picture, tracking threats, sharing data and launching different interceptors with one command-and-control system for the first time. Combining multiple technologies using open architecture and sensors to create a kind of “glass battlefield” digital picture is a technology Rafael has been working on. This is also part of Israel's multiyear Momentum plan that foresees multilayered air defense as key to success in future wars against local adversaries and what Israel calls “third circle” threats like Iran. https://www.defensenews.com/training-sim/2020/12/16/israels-launches-first-ever-multitier-missile-defense-test/