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July 19, 2019 | International, Aerospace, Other Defence

New Wright-Pat facility aims to improve cyber defenses of fighters and bombers

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The Air Force has opened a $1.5 million facility designed to improve the fighter and bomber fleets' cyber defenses against adversaries. The new work area will provide a collaborative space for acquisition professionals to learn about current and emerging threats and better protect against them.

The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center's Fighters and Bombers Directorate at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio unveiled the facility during a July 9 ribbon cutting ceremony.

“We are in an age where we have a very sophisticated threat and an adversary that is really trying to get into all of our systems,” Brig. Gen. Heath Collins, fighters and bombers program executive officer, said in a recent Air Force news release. “This facility is absolutely going to be at the core of how we protect our systems moving forward.”

Joseph Bradley, director of the Cyber Resiliency Office for Weapons Systems, which provided funding and expertise for the project, called it a “key component of the CROWS mission” and said it will boost the Air Force's collaboration and ability to tackle challenges.

The facility isn't the only one that CROWS intends to help launch. According to the Air Force, CROWS wants to set up similar facilities at development, acquisition and sustainment centers over the next five years.

https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2019/07/16/new-wright-pat-facility-aims-to-improve-cyber-defenses-of-fighters-and-bombers/

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  • Raytheon AI: Fix That Part Before It Breaks

    March 23, 2020 | International, Land, C4ISR

    Raytheon AI: Fix That Part Before It Breaks

    A modern mechanized military lives or dies by maintenance. But what if a computer could warn you when your weapons and vehicles were about to break, so you could fix them before they ever let you down? By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR. WASHINGTON: Raytheon is working with the military on multiple pilot projects for AI-driven predictive maintenance. What's that? Traditionally, military mechanics spend a huge amount of time on what's called preventive maintenance: They carry truckloads of spare parts to war, they consult historical tables of roughly how often certain parts wear out or break down, and they preemptively crack open the access hatches to check those parts on a regular basis. The idea behind predictive maintenance is to feed all that historical data into a machine learning algorithm so it can tell maintainers, vehicle by vehicle and part by part, when something is likely to fail. It's a tremendous technical challenge that requires scanning in years of old handwritten maintenance forms, downloading digital records, and then constantly updating the database. Ideally, you want up-to-the-minute reports on things like engine temperature and suspension stress from diagnostic sensors installed in frontline vehicles. You need to account not only for what kind of equipment you're operating, but how hard it's running for a particular mission and even where in the world it's operating, because environmental conditions like heat, moisture, dust, and sand make a huge difference to wear and tear. And you can't just push out a single software solution and call it done. You have to constantly update your data so the algorithm can continue to learn, evolve, and adapt to different situations. But, Raytheon's Kevin Frazier and Butch Kievenaar told me, artificial intelligence and machine learning have advanced dramatically over just the last five years. Now Raytheon – a long-established defense contractor – is partnered with a flock of niche innovators to make it happen. Currently, they told me, Raytheon is already conducting or about to launch several multi-month pilot projects, seeking to prove the technology's value to the military: For the Army, they're working with a commercial partner on the M2 Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle, the mainstay armored troop transport of the heavy combat brigades, and the hulking M88 Hercules, a tracked “armored recovery vehicle” designed to tow broken-down battle tanks back for repair, if necessary under enemy fire. For the V-22 Joint Program Office – which supports the Osprey tiltrotor for the Marines, Air Force Special Operations Command, and now the Navy – they're working on the V-22's collision-avoidance radar, a Raytheon product. And across their customer base, they're looking at ways to do predictive maintenance on the many complex components Raytheon provides for a host of programs. How does this work? Let's hear from Kevin and Butch in their own words (edited for clarity and brevity from a highly technical 50-minute interview): Q: What kinds of problems can this technology help the military solve? Kevin: Right now, maintenance is conducted either on a scheduled timeline or when something breaks. What we are trying to do is replace that one piece because you know it's about to wear out and prevent it from breaking. Butch: One of the biggest things is you've got to understand what mission you're trying to achieve. If I'm trying to answer platform readiness questions, then I have to have certain data that's related to that topic. If I am trying to do supply chain analysis, I'm asking questions about where are critical parts and what size stockages we have to have to reduce turnaround time. So I'm answering a different question, and I'm looking at a different data set. So the key to setting all this up is what you do on the front end with your data to give the data scientists so that we can refine the algorithm appropriately. Q: AI/ML requires a lot of data. Is that data really available for all these different military systems? Kevin: It is. It's in different states. Some vehicles have sensors on them. Some do self-diagnostics. Some of the older equipment, especially the support equipment, doesn't have any sensors on them — but they all have files. They all are in the maintenance system, so the data exists. Data doesn't have to purely digital. It does have to be digitized at some point, but it doesn't necessarily have to start being digital. It could be maintenance logs that are hand-written, or the operator of a particular vehicle does a walk around and does an inspection report, writes that up — that's something that you actually can scan and input. Now we can add so many different types of data that your whole data environment becomes much richer. It helps you get to that algorithm — and then to continue to take in that data and refine that model. You're still recording that data and getting data from both handwritten and digital sources to update your model and tune it, so that you're just that much more accurate. Butch: What we're talking about is discrete algorithms solving for discrete problem sets. You look at the environment, and what the algorithm does is it learns. You keep ingesting data. You can get it a bunch of different ways so your analytical tool continues to learn, continues to refine. I can do a physical download from the vehicle, or scan maintenance records, or get it all fed off of a downloader that automatically feeds to the cloud. It can be as fast as we can automate the process of that piece of equipment feeding information back. For the Army and the Air Force especially, there is sufficient data over the last 15 that pertains to the impacts of combat. And we have it for different environments that you can then use to help train and refine the algorithms that you're using as it learns. Kevin: You have to understand the impacts the environment has on how the vehicle is functioning and what type of a mission you're doing, because that will cause different things to wear out sooner or break sooner. That's what the AI piece does. The small companies that we partner with, who are very good at these algorithms, already do this to some extent in the commercial world. We're trying to bring that to the military. Butch: The really smart data scientists are in a lot of the smaller niche companies that are doing this. We combine their tools with our ability to scale and wrap around the customer's needs. These are not huge challenges that we're talking about trying to solve. It is inside the current technological capability that exists. We have currently several pilot programs right now to demonstrate the use cases, that this capability that actually works. https://breakingdefense.com/2020/03/raytheon-ai-fix-that-part-before-it-breaks

  • German ministry seeks data on quicker fighter jet deliveries

    September 12, 2018 | International, Aerospace

    German ministry seeks data on quicker fighter jet deliveries

    Andrea Shalal BERLIN (Reuters) - The German military has asked potential bidders in a high-stakes competition to replace its aging Tornado fighter jets about accelerating deliveries of new warplanes before an initial target date of 2025, sources familiar with the matter said. The defense ministry posed the question in early August in a follow-up to its initial request for information from Europe's Airbus (AIR.PA) and Lockheed Martin (LMT.N) and Boeing (BA.N), both from the United States, the sources said. The ministry had no comment on the latest twist in a tender that could be worth billions of euros. One of the sources said the request signaled concerns about the growing cost of servicing the current fleet of 85 operational Tornado jets. Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen says she favors a European solution - the Eurofighter Typhoon built by Airbus, Britain's BAE Systems and Italy's Leonardo SpA (LDOF.MI) - but Lockheed and Boeing still hope for a chance to bid for the work. Airbus and the U.S. government submitted data this spring about the four fighter jet models under consideration - the Eurofighter, Lockheed's F-35, and the Boeing F/A-18E/F or F-15E. Germany is studying a number of options, including buying one type of jet to replace the Tornado jets, a split buy of two aircraft types, and a service life extension of the Tornado jets, according to multiple sources familiar with the process. Germany has also asked Washington for information about the possibility of leasing Boeing F-15 fighter jets, two sources said, although that is seen as an unlikely outcome. Von der Leyen in July said she expected a preliminary decision on the next steps by the end of the year. POSSIBLE SPLIT BUY? One proposal calls for Germany to buy 40-45 Lockheed F-35 jets to replace those Tornados that can carry nuclear bombs, and about 75 new Eurofighters to replace both the other Tornados and a first batch of Eurofighters delivered between 2003 and 2008. Buying F-35s would allow Germany to keep a mixed fleet of fighter jets, a key requirement in its military strategy, while averting costly and time-consuming modifications to the process of certifying the Eurofighter to carry nuclear bombs. Although not a nuclear power, Germany hosts some U.S. nuclear warheads under NATO's nuclear-sharing policy and operates a number of Tornado warplanes that can deliver them. The U.S. has told Germany it could take 12 to 18 months to study the Eurofighter certification issue. German industry executives are pressing for quick answers, given that the already high cost of keeping the Tornado jets flying could rise once Britain and Italy phase out their fleets. “The cost of spare parts and operations keeps going up,” one industry executive said. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-fighter/german-ministry-seeks-data-on-quicker-fighter-jet-deliveries-idUSKCN1LR24V

  • Here’s what Lockheed will have to do to make up for F-35 spare parts problems

    September 30, 2020 | International, Aerospace

    Here’s what Lockheed will have to do to make up for F-35 spare parts problems

    Valerie Insinna WASHINGTON — The Defense Department and Lockheed Martin reached a handshake agreement that will require the defense giant to invest about $70.6 million to fix an ongoing problem with F-35 spare parts, one that resulted in increased government labor costs, the department announced Sept. 29. For the past few months, Lockheed and the Defense Contracts Management Agency have been locked in a dispute over more than 15,000 F-35 spare parts sent to the U.S. military with incorrect or incomplete “electronic equipment logs” or EELs, which allow the parts to be absorbed into the F-35′s logistics system and installed on the jet. Lockheed and the Defense Contracts Management Agency expect a final agreement to be formalized sometime within the next two weeks or so, said DCMA spokesman Matthew Montgomery, who confirmed the $70.588 million deal to Defense News. The use of EELs — which allow the government to track the usage and lifespan of major F-35 parts — is unique to the joint strike fighter program and is meant to help inform smarter, more cost-effective maintenance and buying practices. But when parts are delivered with inaccurate EEL information, it can take hours for military maintainers and Lockheed support personnel to track down the correct data that will allow a part to be uploaded into the system and installed in the aircraft. Instead of paying back the government directly for the added costs associated with the EELs, Lockheed will “compensate the government with Lockheed Martin investments” that will ultimately ensure spare parts are delivered with accurate electronic logs, said Lockheed spokesman Brett Ashworth. “We appreciate the partnership with the Defense Contract Management Agency and the F-35 Joint Program Office, and we remain focused on ensuring the warfighter has the support they need to employ the F-35′s game changing capabilities,” he said. The final sum of the agreement is less than half of the $183 million sum that DCMA initially projected that the government had spent to correct wrong or incorrect EELs since 2015. It was not immediately clear why DCMA had agreed to a compensation deal worth so much less than the department's estimated costs. During a July hearing, lawmakers from the House Oversight and Reform Committee chastised Lockheed for its failure to deliver parts ready to fly. “That's $183 million that the American taxpayers were forced to pay because Lockheed Martin failed to meet the requirements of its contract,” said Rep. Carolyn Maloney, the committee's chairwoman. But Greg Ulmer, Lockheed's vice president for the F-35 program, said then that the company should not take all of the blame for the spare parts problems. “It's not all associated with Lockheed Martin performance. There are many aspects associated with [parts that are] not ready for issue,” he said. https://www.defensenews.com/air/2020/09/29/heres-what-lockheed-will-have-to-do-to-make-up-for-f-35-spare-parts-problems/

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