Le SIAé livre son premier exemplaire du Dassault ATL2 modernisé au standard 6

On the same subject

• 

  October 1, 2018 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  Trump signs defense spending plan, with one more swipe at Democrats

  By: Leo Shane III WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump finalized an $854 billion spending bill on Friday that fully funds the military for fiscal 2019 and prevents a government shutdown next week, accomplishments that congressional leaders have called important and laudable. But Trump's signature came with one final attack on Democrats over the spending measure, lamenting lawmakers' decision not to include extra money in the appropriations package for his planned wall along the southern U.S. border. “Unfortunately, the radical Democrats refuse to support border security and want drugs and crime to pour into our country,” he said in a statement after signing the bill. The comments came just a week after Trump took to social media to blast “this ridiculous Spending Bill,” raising fears of a presidential veto on Capitol Hill. Instead, Trump largely praised the measure on Friday, calling it “important legislation to rebuild our military” and promote other domestic priorities. The appropriations measure includes $674 billion in defense funding for fiscal 2019, and marks the first time in a decade Congress has finalized the spending measure before the start of the new fiscal year. The measure funds a 2.6 percent pay raise for troops starting next January and a boost in military end strength of 16,400 spread across the active-duty and reserve forces. Trump, in his statement, praised the measure for including “93 new F-35 Lightning Joint Strike Fighters, 142 Apache and Black Hawk helicopters, and 13 Navy battle force ships — made right here in the USA.” In a statement after the signing, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, praised the president for pushing for the funding increases in his budget request and past public statements. “By funding our military in full and on time, we can begin to restore its strength, agility, and effectiveness,” he said. “As I have said before, the task before us now is to make full, on time funding of our military the rule in Washington, and not the exception.” The spending bill also includes full-year funding for the departments of Health and Human Services, Education and Labor, as well as bridge funding for a handful of other government agencies to keep them operational through Dec. 7. Last week, Trump signed into law a separate package that included full-year funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs and for military construction projects. https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2018/09/28/trump-signs-spending-plan-avoiding-shutdown

• 

  September 13, 2019 | International, Aerospace

  Massive simulation shows the need for speed in multi-domain ops

  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 9, 2019 | International, Aerospace

  US Air Force pauses flight ops for more than a hundred C-130s over ‘atypical’ cracking

  By: Valerie Insinna WASHINGTON — More than a quarter of Air Mobility Command's C-130 Hercules fleet are being temporarily removed from service after “atypical” cracking was found. During scheduled depot maintenance, the U.S. Air Force discovered cracking of the lower center wing joint — also known as the “rainbow fitting” — which led Air Mobility Command head Gen. Maryanne Miller to order an inspection of a portion of the fleet, according to an AMC statement released Wednesday evening. A total of 123 of 450 C-130H and C-130J aircraft will be temporarily grounded while inspections occur. “This temporary removal of service will not impact ongoing C-130 support to overseas contingency operations,” AMC said in its statement. The decision to pause operations and conduct inspections was made after a single C-130 was found with the lower center wing joint cracks, said AMC spokesman Maj. Jonathan Simmons. But the risk posed by the issue — that the wing could become dislodged from the aircraft — was so serious that the Air Force decided to move forward with inspections for all planes that could potentially be impacted. The 123 aircraft chosen to go through inspections have not been equipped with an “extended service life center wing box” and have flown more than 15,000 hours. Maintainers will look for cracking, and, if discovered, will replace the rainbow fitting. That repair takes “approximately one to two months” to do and is “dependent on depot level availability and capacity,” Simmons noted in an email. Currently, AMC believes it has an adequate supply of rainbow fittings and is not concerned about a potential shortfall. If no defects are found, the aircraft will return to service. So far, eight aircraft have gone through inspections and are now able to fly, Simmons said. Each inspection is set to take eight hours, but the command does not know how long it will take to move all 123 aircraft through the inspection and repair process. “The Air Force takes the safety of its airmen and aircraft very seriously and is working diligently to identify and repair affected aircraft as soon as possible,” AMC said in its statement. https://www.defensenews.com/air/2019/08/08/air-force-pauses-flight-ops-for-more-than-a-hundred-c-130s-after-atypical-cracking-found/