Navy extends service lives of four more destroyers

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  February 5, 2020 | International, Aerospace

  At Defence Expo 2020, Make-in-India achievement; Rafale engine doors, Falcon front cockpit. Here’s all Dassault aviation will show

  For the first time Dassault Aviation of France will be exhibiting at the Defence Expo and the main attraction besides other displays will be the Rafale mock-up with the Indian colours. Defence Expo 2020 is being held at Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh The Rafale fighter aircraft which were handed over to the defence minister Rajnath Singh last October will be arriving in India early summer. The mock-up in the colours of the IAF is to illustrate the determination of the French company's commitment to meet all future additional fighter aircraft needs. Also, a mock-up of Rafale M (Naval variant) will be on display to present capabilities of the variant taking part in the tender of 57 aircraft to equip Indian Navy aircraft carriers. There will also be a Mirage 2000 I/TI mock-up on display. Highlighting its “Make in India” achievements on display will be Rafale engine doors manufactured in the Dassault Reliance Aerospace Ltd (DRAL) 15000 square meters the facility in Nagpur, and the first Falcon 2000 cockpit front section manufactured at Dassault Reliance Aerospace Limited facility at MIHAN, Nagpur. Eric Trappier, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Dassault Aviation has said, “Our participation in the DefExpo is the expression of the company's full dedication to contribute to India's outreach”. According to the company larger infrastructures are being developed which will help in ramping up of DRAL capabilities towards the taking-off of an entire line of Falcon 2000 fully manufactured and assembled in India. This will pave the way for the future manufacturing and assembly of Rafale in India. And these will help to build up an Indian aerospace manufacturing eco-system, both in civil and military fields, which will position India as an international reference in the global aerospace market. The company has played a very important role in helping India to establish a state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities with cutting edge technologies. https://www.financialexpress.com/defence/defence-expo-2020-rafale-mirage-2000-make-in-india-achievement-engine-door-cockpit-dassault-aviation-dral/1855850/

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  December 14, 2018 | International, Land

  Need to upgrade Army vehicle software? Got 10 minutes?

  By: Adam Stone The Army is rolling out a new streamlined tool for updating critical software on thousands of vehicles that use the Joint Battle Command-Platform (JBC-P) system. Vehicles depend on the Force XXI Battle Command Brigade and Below system to deliver communications, friendly and hostile-force tracking, maps and other key intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance functionality. But FBCB2 is out of date, and upgrades have required the pricey and time-consuming replacement of both hardware and software. “We wanted to give war fighters the option of doing a software-only upgrade,” said Dan Ghio, JBC-P deputy product manager. “We will still hit them with the full hardware upgrade eventually. This just gets us to a more common software baseline in the meantime. It's a stopgap for those who can get at least some of the upgrades done.” The upgrades started rolling out in the spring and so far over 800 vehicles have completed the process. Of the 103,000 fielded platforms, roughly 20,000 to 30,000 can be updated using the new approach, which applies to platforms such as Humvees and Mine-Resistant Ambushed-Protected vehicles. All upgrades should be completed by fiscal 2023, said Lt. Col. Shane Sims, JBC-P product manager. “We started with a unit at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, just to see if we were on track,” Sims said. “The process is pretty easy. You call our help center and our folks will send out a new hard drive with the new software loaded on it. Once you attach it to the system it's a 10-minute process to load it up.” While it would have been technically possible to upload the software via the internet, connectivity constraints made the hard drive a better option. “These are users with very limited bandwidth. It would take a very long time to fully download a new operating system,” Sims said. By sending out new hard drives, the engineers also help to position the system for future enhancements, while reducing the overall burden of system support. “We want to keep pushing more and more capabilities out into the field, but right now our support teams in the field have to support 18 different hard drives. There is a huge sustainment cost to supporting all of that,” Sims said. “We're a huge Army and the more we standardize, the better it is.” The latest software version includes a few significant functional enhancements. The user interface has been modernized and made more intuitive; engineers have hardened the security on the back end and made the system more reliable, Ghio said. By creating a “standardized, repeatable and intuitive process” for upgrades, he said, Army aims to empower war fighters to take control over their most critical technologies. “We believe solders and commanders can take on some of the [technology] mission themselves if given the right tools and the right instructions,” Sims said. “As we move to the future, we are going to have to rely on our units to modernize things on their own. That will allow us to inject new capabilities at a much faster pace.” Looking ahead, Army engineers are still looking to overcome the bandwidth limitations that presently prohibit them from pushing out upgrades online. “We are definitely looking at ways to do an over-the-air update,” Sims said. “It would be a lot of easier, just the same way you do an update to an iPhone or an Android. We could send a message to the entire force and have everyone updated at once. That would improve our security posture and would serve to keep everyone current.” At the same time, safety and security concerns factor heavily, as the Army looks to enhance systems on vehicles that are equipped for live fire. “A software malfunction on a firing system would be a catastrophic event, so we have to make sure that our software doesn't interfere with any of the safety mechanisms on these platforms,” Sims said. https://www.c4isrnet.com/it-networks/2018/12/13/need-to-upgrade-army-vehicle-software-got-10-minutes

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  August 13, 2024 | International, Aerospace

  Space Force, allies craft global supply chain strategy

  Space Force says the strategy could be completed in within the next year.