Leonardo, KNDS forge European industry alliance for next-gen tanks

On the same subject

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  August 22, 2018 | International, C4ISR

  What reduced size, weight and power mean on the battlefield

  Computers on the battlefield take a beating. Beyond the everyday wear and tear, they also must endure extreme temperatures and often violent vibrations. To help ensure its systems give soldiers and commanders the information they need, the Army relies on its Mounted Family of Computer Systems program. Known as MfoCS, pronounced em-fox, the program covers detachable tablets to fully-loaded, vehicle-mounted workstations. C4ISRNET spoke recently with Bill Guyan, vice president of business development for Leonardo DRS, about advances in battlefield computing. C4ISRNET: We hear a lot about a new emphasis on the hardening of security of contractors. And not just contractors, but primes, and then their contractors. Obviously this has become a point of concern for DOD leadership. Bill Guyan: One of the big areas of emphasis for the Army in the procurement of the [Mounted Family of Computer Systems] (MFoCS) and particularly MFoC2 II, were areas related to security, both from a cyber security standpoint and the ability to assure that the system was free from malware or any external threat. So there's a very comprehensive supply chain risk management strategy put in place and for this program we believe that this is the most secure edge computing system that the Army's ever purchased. It's absolutely critical that it be so, since ultimately there will be somewhere between a 100,000 and 125,000 of these systems fielded across the Army and Marine Corps, at the edge of the battlefield with each one of these systems serving as potential on ramp to the network and in an area of situational awareness that is absolutely mission critical. There was a time when we derived quick benefit from having an advantage and a capability that our opponents didn't. And over time the capability has evolved from a nice to have capability to a mission critical capability that we'd be hard pressed to fight without. C4ISRNET: The Army has put a lot of emphasis on size, weight and power. Can you explain how that manifests itself on the battlefield? Guyan: We optimize size, weight and power in two ways. At the hardware level we optimize by staying at the leading edge of available technologies, available commercial technologies and rapidly adapting and adopting them for employment in this mission critical extreme environment. The computers and displays are the soldiers' path to the network. It has to work at -40 centigrade and it has to work at 80 degrees centigrade. It has to work in extreme vibration and it has to work in contested EMI environments. It has to work all the time. For example, we led the charge in the adoption and fielding of solid state hard drives versus rotating media, which allowed us to not only improve the resiliency of the system, but also to reduce size, because we no longer have to isolate the rotating hard drive from the shock and vibration. We also migrated from the old backlight technology to an LED backlight, which is much more reliable, particularly in shock vibration at temperature extremes. But it also requires far less power. The other thing that we've been able to do is rapidly adapt the latest processor technologies when they're available. Of course, processors continue to get faster, smaller, and use less power. We're able to make sure that every generation of system can deliver more computing capability for less power, and less power means less heat. Full article: https://www.c4isrnet.com/show-reporter/technet-augusta/2018/08/21/what-reduced-size-weight-and-power-mean-on-the-battlefield/

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  November 28, 2022 | International, Aerospace

  Bombardier Defense to begin special mission modification package in Wichita as part of PEGASUS project

  Bombardier Defense celebrated the arrival of a Global 6000 aircraft in Wichita, Kansas as part of the next phase of the company’s contract to support the HENSOLDT-led PEGASUS program.

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  September 6, 2018 | International, C4ISR

  What’s standing in the way of multidomain operations?

  By: Daniel Cebul WASHINGTON — Mutlidomain operations are set to become standard for the U.S. armed services in the coming years, but technical, doctrinal and organizational hurdles remain. One impediment to multidomain operations involves issues in linking the service's disparate communication and information networks to share targeting data and communications. Rebecca Grant, a national security analyst with IRIS Independent Research, identified her “No. 1 problem" as “the communications architecture.” This stuff is not there yet," she said Wednesday at the Defense News Conference. "I'm less worried about the platforms, we've got some magnificent platforms. We've got to have that communication architecture. All the ability to do that is there, whether that's secure waveforms or the [radio frequency] links, but we have to take the plunge now, immediately, to go out and experiment with this next year.” The need for an integrated communications network was echoed by L3 Technologies' vice president of communications technology. “You need a network that can take all the networks we have right now, a systems-of-systems-level approach, that can tie these disparate networks together because you don't want to get rid of that install base because its too expensive to replace,” Keith Gentile said. Another challenge involves changing the services' doctrinal approaches to operations, especially as each branch becomes more dependent on one another. Gentile said that if the U.S. plans to quickly respond to enemy developments, doctrine surrounding operations in the domains must change. “There's a role mission and function issue that needs to be addressed when you talk about cross-domain or multidomain capabilities because each of the services operates in different domains," he said. "You got to go ahead and get away from the parochial pieces of service stovepipes, mission roles and functions — and realize you are talking about cross-domain capabilities.” Jaret Riddick, the director of the Vehicle Technology Directorate at the Army Research Laboratory, cited the service's recently stood-up Futures Command as one example of change within the services. “I would not downplay the steps the Army is making in standing up Futures Command. To take a four-star command and make the type of reorganization that has not happened since the early 1970s — I would not call that incremental,” he said. https://www.defensenews.com/smr/defense-news-conference/2018/09/05/whats-standing-in-the-way-of-multidomain-operations