Our nation’s defense supply chain imperative

On the same subject

• 

  March 31, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  COVID-19: Roper Stands Up Task Force To Assist Industrial Base

  "I have mobilized the Department of the Air Force into a wartime acquisition posture," said Roper. "We are at war with this virus." By THERESA HITCHENS WASHINGTON: The Air Force has stood up a special acquisition task force to help keep its industrial base humming during, and after, the COVID-19 pandemic, says service acquisition czar Will Roper. “I have mobilized the Department of the Air Force into a wartime acquisition posture, and that is the purpose of our acquisition COVID-19 task force,” Roper told reporters in a teleconference today. “We are at war with this virus.” The move follows in the footsteps of DoD Undersecretary for Acquisition and Sustainment Ellen Lord, who has set up a number of task forces as the Pentagon puts into place the $2 trillion coronavirus relief package passed by the Senate last night, the House this morning and on its way to President Donald Trump for signature. The package includes $10-plus billion for Pentagon response efforts, including $1.5 billion that could go directly to industry. “Cash flow and liquidity are everything right now,” Roper explained. One of key focuses is on small businesses and the startup ecosystem, he stressed, given that the Air Force over the past two years significantly ramping up its efforts to reap technology innovations from the commercial sector. “All of you know that small businesses are the most vulnerable right now,” Roper said. “We're going to have to do things differently with our small companies than with our primes.” As an example, Roper mentioned the move by the service's new AFVentures arm for startup investment to switch within 72 hours its planned ‘Pitch Bowl' at the March 13-20 South By Southwest festival in Austin to a virtual event. The event involved some 5,000 participants, he said and resulted in 599 contracts worth a total of almost $1 billion — “the single largest small business transaction in government history.” “That was one of our first big virtualizing activities within acquisition,” he said. “We flowed critical cash to companies who can burn it against that in their contracts now.” Further, he said, the Air Force already has put out another solicitation asking small businesses who might be able to help with COVID-19 response “to put their hands up so that we can get additional cash to them or put them on contract if their not already working with us.” Roper said the Air Force acquisition task force has “four lines of effort:” “Relief.” Roper said “these teams are thinking through external assistance requests that may potentially come in,” and how best to apply contracting to move out “billions of dollars if needed.” “Resilience.” This is focusing on “defense industrial base health issues,” he said. For example, if there are “suppliers under duress, or small businesses that are not getting enough cash flow fast enough,” are there ways the service can help? “Recovery.” This team will look at what is needed after the crisis lifts. While Roper cautioned industry that “COVID-19 is not a blanket excuse for programs slipping to the right,” he said the service will be mindful that some will do so — thus the “recovery” team will try to figure out what funding those programs might need to get back on track after a schedule slip. “Being rapid for small businesses.” This effort, Roper said, is led by AFVentures, and is meeting daily to ensure the Air Force spends all of its small business funds. “They have been in training for this for two years,” he said of AFVentures personnel. “They have demonstrated the ability to do more small business contracts that anyone in the government at speeds never seen.” Roper said that so far there have been “no major delays” in critical acquisition programs, such as the top priority Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) to replace the aging Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles. Indeed, he said he talked with the GBSD team this morning who are “doing business as usual,” only virtually. Similarly, testing under the Skyborg program not only is moving ahead, but Roper has given that acquisition team the go-head to “accelerate solicitations as soon as they are ready.” Under the program, the Skyborg “brain” would use artificial intelligence to pilot low-cost “attritable” drones that would provide data (such as telemetry, flight plans and weather) to a manned fighter leading a formation — a job that a wingman's aircraft normally would do. While so far the only drone body to have flown the Skyborg computing package is the the Valkyrie, built by Kratos, the service isn't ruling out using others. One of the key reasons that Air Force acquisition programs can keep moving, Roper said, is because of the service's past efforts to innovate in the area of information technology. Asked about the some $300 million in the coronavirus relief package slated for DoD to spend on IT to support teleworking, Roper wouldn't provide the exact Air Force share. But, he stressed that IT is key to DoD's success not just during this crisis but for the future. “Information technology in the government has never been an exceptionally high priority, and it's been one of the most disappointing things to me about joining the government is having to have antiquated 1990s-era technologies to exchange information,” he said. The Air Force's “pivot” to begin using commercial cloud technology — now embodied in the cloudONE — has “really benefited” the service as the COVID-19 crisis has unfolded, he said. However, he added, a key barrier to taking full advantage of this tech are out-dated security measures — particularly around classified information — that have been in place for decades. Therefore, he said, his office is working with DoD CIO Dana Deasy and his Air Force counterpart Bill Marion “to try to smartly look at removing security restrictions and using new technology.” If this effort is successful, he explained, “then we'll be able to work remotely as long as needed.” The effort in part is bouncing off of Air Force's project — under its high-priority Advanced Battle Management System designed to underpin Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) — to develop the “deviceONE” that can securely allow classified information to be relayed to tablets and handhelds for operators in the field, he said. The bottom line, Roper said, is that the changes in how the Air Force and DoD as a whole are working in driven by the pandemic are likely to have lasting effects. “I'm excited to see what the Department of the Air Force will be like post-COVID-19, because with this much disruptive change happening in the government all at once, and rethinking about how we do our business, we won't go back to being the same department again.” https://breakingdefense.com/2020/03/covid-19-roper-stands-up-task-force-to-assist-industrial-base

• 

  August 12, 2019 | International, C4ISR

  Extending Field of View in Advanced Imaging Systems

  New program focuses on developing curved infrared focal plane arrays to improve optical performance and widen field of view while reducing system size of military imagers The military relies on advanced imaging systems for a number of critical capabilities and applications – from Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) and situational awareness to weapon sights. These powerful systems enable defense users to capture and analyze visual data, providing key insights both on and off the battlefield. Today, nearly all imaging systems rely on detector arrays fabricated using planar processes developed for electronic integrated circuits on flat silicon. While significant progress has been made in advancing these technologies for narrow field of view (FOV) systems, optical aberrations can limit the performance at the periphery in wide FOV systems that then require large, costly, and complex optics to correct. The trade-off for correcting optical aberrations by using large, heavy lenses is a reduction in optical signal and a large size penalty, which limits their use for new and emerging capabilities. “Tremendous progress has been made over the past 20 years towards making multi-megapixel infrared (IR) focal plane arrays (FPA) for imaging systems cost effective and available to the Department of Defense,” said Dr. Whitney Mason, a program manager in DARPA's Microsystems Technology Office (MTO). “However, limitations to the technology's performance and size remain. Current advances on the commercial side have shown the viability of small area, curved FPAs (CFPAs) for visible cameras. While these technologies have shown modest benefits, more must be done to achieve the performance and size requirements needed for imaging systems used in emerging defense applications.” DARPA developed the FOcal arrays for Curved Infrared Imagers (FOCII) program to expand upon the current commercial trend for visible sensor arrays by extending the capability to both large and medium format midwave (MWIR) and/or longwave (LWIR) infrared detectors. The program seeks to develop and demonstrate technologies for curving existing state-of-the-art large format, high performance IR FPAs to a small radius of curvature (ROC) to maximize performance, as well as curve smaller format FPAs to an extreme ROC to enable the smallest form factors possible while maintaining exquisite performance. FOCII will address this challenge through two approaches to fabricating a curved FPA. The first involves curving existing state-of-the-art FPAs, while keeping the underlying design intact. The focus of the research will be on achieving significant performance improvements over existing, flat FPAs, with a target radius of curvature of 70mm. The fundamental challenge researchers will work to address within this approach is to mitigate the mechanical strain created by curving the FPGA, particularly in silicon, which is very brittle. The second approach will focus on achieving an extreme ROC of 12.5 mm to enable a transformative reduction in the size and weight compared to current imagers. Unlike the first approach, researchers will explore possible modifications to the underlying design, including physical modifications to the silicon that could relieve or eliminate stress on the material and allow for creating the desired curvature in a smaller sized FPA. This approach will also require new methods to counter the effects of any modifications during image reconstruction in the underlying read-out integrated circuit (ROIC) algorithm. The FOCII program is hosting a proposers' day on August 13, 2019 at the Executive Conference Center, 4075 Wilson Blvd., Suite 300, Arlington, Virginia, 22203 from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. EDT. The purpose of this meeting is to provide information on the FOCII program, promote additional discussion on this topic, address questions from potential proposers, and provide an opportunity for potential proposers to share their capabilities and ideas for teaming arrangements. The Special Notice for can be found here, https://www.fbo.gov/index.php?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=4c8a360d1f5be2e1b7e784f86b7d42fb&tab=core&_cview=0 Full details are available in the FOCII Broad Agency Announcement on FBO.gov: https://go.usa.gov/xV3EH. https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2019-08-09

• 

  August 9, 2023 | International, Land

  Polish MOD to Acquire Batch of SPIKE LR Missiles in a New Deal with RAFAEL & Polish MESKO

  As RAFAEL’s local Polish industrial partner, MESKO has already manufactured SPIKE Missiles for the Polish MOD, and this will be the third such deal involving the SPIKE Missile Family.