Navy Finalizes Order for Pathfinder-Class Oceanographic Survey Ship - Seapower

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  August 13, 2020 | International, Aerospace

  Griffin joins Rocket Lab board following Pentagon exit

  Nathan Strout WASHINGTON — Just over a month after leaving the Pentagon, former Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Mike Griffin has joined the board of Rocket Lab, a small launch provider with increasing business with the U.S. government. “Rocket Lab has established itself as the leader in dedicated small satellite launch, and it's a privilege to be joining the board at an exciting time for the business as it continues to increase launch cadence and expand into satellite manufacturing and operations,” Griffin said in a statement. “Space continues to be a highly contested domain crucial to our national security, and it's also a domain that presents significant commercial opportunity. The Rocket Lab team has a proven track record of executing on a clear vision to make space accessible to these diverse communities, and I look forward to supporting that vision.” As the U.S. government has sought to leverage the growing small launch market in recent years, Rocket Lab has been there to pick up the contracts. The U.S. Air Force has awarded the company multiple launch contracts in recent years, and the U.S. Space Force is expected to launch a payload with the company in the coming months. At the same time, the National Reconnaissance Office launched its first payload from New Zealand on one of the company's Electron rockets earlier this year. Although the company recently saw one of their launches fail to reach orbit, resulting in the loss of all commercial payloads onboard, a subsequent investigation has cleared Rocket Lab to resume launch activities and both NRO and the Space and Missile Systems Center have said they plan to continue doing business with the company. Griffin's addition to the board certainly reflects the company's desire to continue pursuing national security small launch contracts. “We are honored to welcome Mike to Rocket Lab's board of directors,” said Peter Beck, Rocket Lab's founder and chief executive. “He brings a wealth of knowledge and experience from the civil, defense, and commercial space sectors that will be invaluable to our team as Rocket Lab continues to grow and meet the ever-evolving launch and space systems needs of the national security community and commercial sector alike.” Griffin has a long history in the space arena. In 2005 he became the 11th NASA Administrator, a position he held until his resignation in 2008. During his tenure he initiated development of the agency's first commercial cargo delivery service to orbit. More recently at head of R&E for the Department of Defense, Griffin was heavily involved in rethinking how the Pentagon approached the space domain. Griffin oversaw the establishment of the Space Development Agency in 2019, despite resistance from inside and outside of the Pentagon. Griffin was the agency's most high profile advocate, pushing for funding for the nascent organization from Congress and arguing that it should remain independent from the U.S. Air Force's traditional space acquisitions structure—at least initially. Over the agency's first year and a half, he helped articulate a unique identity for the SDA in developing a new proliferated constellation in low Earth orbit, which will eventually be made up of hundreds of satellites. That National Defense Space Architecture is now expected to be a key component to two of DoD's most pressing issues: Hypersonic missile warning and Joint All Domain Command and Control. During his tenure, Griffin was well known for his strong personality, which ruffled the feathers of both his colleagues at DoD and lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Most notably, he clashed with former Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson over the establishment of SDA, and the day before he announced his resignation the House Armed Services Committee recommended removing the Missile Defense Agency from under his control. Griffin announced his resignation June 23, officially exiting the building July 10. He and his deputy, Lisa Porter—who resigned at the same time—have since opened up a new business together called Logiq Inc. White House Chief Technology Officer Michael Kratsios was announced as Griffin's successor. Aaron Mehta in Washington contributed to this story. https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/space/2020/08/12/griffin-joins-rocket-lab-board-following-pentagon-exit

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  March 10, 2020 | International, C4ISR

  Pentagon Seeks New SatCom Tech For ‘Fully Networked C3’

  "Our fully networked C3 [Command, Control, & Communications] will look completely different" from current satellites and terminals, said OSD's Doug Schroeder. By THERESA HITCHENS SATELLITE 2020: The Pentagon wants industry ideas on how to craft a “fundamentally new architecture” for command, control and communications (C3) that will allow “any user using any terminal to connect to any other user using any other terminal,” says Doug Schroeder, who oversees the effort under the Office of Research and Engineering (R&E). This kind of omnipresent, all-service connectivity across land, sea, air, and space is essential for the Pentagon's rapidly evolving of future war, known as Joint-All Domain Operations. “Our Fully Networked C3 communications will look completely different. We have a new vision. We're crafting it with the help of industry,” he said. “We're relying on very heavily on industry, starting with this Broad Agency Announcement dated March 6,” which asks for companies to submit white papers in short order. According to Schroeder, the Space Development Agency (SDA) will be the funding authority. Vendors whose short, 10 to 15 page white papers are chosen will be invited at the end of April to a Pitch Day. Winners then will be given three months to develop a proposal; contracts for prototypes will be granted 24 months later. Speaking to a relatively sparse audience here at the annual commercial satellite industry conference, Satellite 2020 — which is underway despite the threat of the COVID-19 Coronavirus — Schroeder stressed: “We are going to take our new direction from you.” The new strategy, called Fully Networked C3 (FNC3), is being spearheaded by R&E director Mike Griffin and his assistant director for FNC3, Michael Zatman. According to the BAA, the first issued under the effort, the new strategy is being designed to “enable the DoD to reliably communicate with all its tactical and strategic assets.” C3 is one of Griffin's Top Ten areas of technology innovation for which DoD is developing an agency-wide development strategy. Specifically, DoD now is looking for “Beyond-Line-Of-Site (BLOS) communications systems for airborne, surface, and subsurface systems that is [sic] compatible with both FNC3 enabled systems and legacy systems,” the BAA states. The BAA calls for White Papers to be submitted by March 30 for three different types of BLOS technologies: 1. Protected Radio Frequency (RF) BLOS Communications. 2. Multi-User/Multi-Point High-Data-Rate Laser Communications. 3. Communications with submerged assets. R&E intends to “develop, prototype, and demonstrate each innovative communications capability with the goal of transitioning the technologies into programs of record,” the BAA said. To ensure speedy results, DoD will use Other Transaction Authority (OTA) for prototyping (found under 10 U.S. Code § 2371b.) Much of the detail about the effort is contained in classified annexes. What we do know: Beyond-Line-Of-Sight communications relayed through satellites generally require equipping platforms — such as aircraft, ships, and ground vehicles — with high-throughput voice and data links, capabilities all of the services have expressed interest in. In particular, after years of little progress, Griffin has reinvigorated DoD interest in optical communications via laser links, in large part due to fears about Russian and Chinese RF jamming. Commercial industry has been rushing to develop optical links to enable satellite-to-satellite data transmission, and the Space Development Agency is interested in that capability for its so-called transport layer of small satellites in Low Earth Orbit. Radio-frequency communications with submarines when underwater are generally limited to terse text messages, transmitted at very low frequencies (three to 30 kilohertz) and extremely low frequencies (three to 300 hertz) and requiring very large antennas to receie them. Research work is ongoing at MIT on how to link traditional underwater sonar to airborne RF receivers, a methodology called Translational Acoustic-RF) communication. Research also is ongoing, including at MIT's Lincoln Lab, on using narrow-beam lasers to allow one underwater vehicle to communicate with another. BLOS communications can also be accomplished without using satellites. Alternative method include tropospheric scatter using microwave radiation, high frequency (HF) wireless, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) relays, and passive reflector systems. https://breakingdefense.com/2020/03/pentagon-seeks-new-satcom-tech-for-fully-networked-c3

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  July 6, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval

  Forecast: Western Maritime Helicopter Deliveries/Retirements 2020-2029

  July 06, 2020 Aviation Week Network forecasts that over the next ten years, 677 new, Western-designed helicopters performing maritime missions will be built, 114 will be re-engined/remanufactured, and 355 will be retired. Aviation Week defines this mission market as helicopters performing search and rescue (SAR) over bodies of water without special equipment, general-purpose helicopters based primarily on ships performing specifically maritime missions, or helicopters carrying specialized technology for anti-surface and anti-submarine warfare (ASW) missions and over-water airborne early warning (AEW) missions. The V-22 is included in the forecast due to the CMV-22B's role performing the traditional helicopter mission of vertical replenishment. The largest procurement of maritime helicopters this decade will be the U.S. Coast Guard's upgrade of its fleet of 95 Airbus MH-65Ds (based on the H155) to the MH-65E standard. The largest new-build procurement of maritime helicopters will be NH Industries NFH90s going to several European countries. While the NH90 still has a customer in Qatar, it has definitively failed to gain wider traction in the Middle East as it struggled to compete with Leonardo and Sikorsky offerings. Very close behind the NH90 is the ubiquitous Sikorsky S-70/H-60, with new-build helicopters in the next 10 years. The two largest procurements of maritime helicopters in the world both belong to the Indian Navy, which has a 123-aircraft Naval Multi-Role Helicopter (NMRH) requirement for anti-submarine warfare helicopters and a 111-aircraft Naval Utility Helicopters (NUH) requirement. Leonardo's continued blacklisting by India has removed its ability to compete for 2/3rd of the worlds yet -to-be-decided maritime helicopters but it remains a strong competitor for much of the remaining helicopters in open competitions and requirements. For more information about the 2020 Forecast and other Aviation Week data products, please see: http://pages.aviationweek.com/Forecasts  https://aviationweek.com/special-topics/vertical-lift/forecast-western-maritime-helicopter-deliveriesretirements-2020-2029