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  January 19, 2021 | International, Land

  French Army orders 364 Serval armored vehicles

  By: Christina Mackenzie   PARIS — The French Army is expected to receive 108 Serval armored vehicles in 2022 as part of an order from manufacturers Nexter and Texelis totaling 364. The contract was finalized through the DGA procurement agency on Dec. 23 but was not announced until Jan. 15. The two companies, which formed a temporary joint operation to build the light-armored, multirole Serval, will deliver the first 12 production vehicles in the first half of 2022, followed by a further 96 in the second half. The government previously allocated funding for the vehicle order, so the Army is expected to have a total of 978 Servals by 2030. The Serval is a four-wheel drive, 15-ton vehicle designed to replace the 40-year-old VAB, an armored personnel carrier and support vehicle. It complements the much bigger 24-ton Griffon armored vehicle, and these two, together with the Jaguar reconnaissance and combat vehicle, form the core of the French Army's Scorpion program to replace all French front-line fighting vehicles. They will be linked via a new communications and battlefield management system, the Scorpion Combat Information System. Three main versions of the Serval — patrol; intelligence and reconnaissance; and communications — will each have their own variants. Designed to operate in combat zones, the Serval combines flexibility, strategic mobility and payload-carrying capacity. The DGA said that despite difficulties caused by the coronavirus pandemic, testing of the vehicle, which began in September 2019, was sufficiently advanced to allow this first production phase to take place before the end of 2020, as planned in France's 2019-2025 Military Program Law. In addition, as part of a procedure undertaken by the gendarmerie (national police force) to renew its fleet of armored vehicles, the Nexter-Texelis team has proposed a vehicle based on the Serval capable of operating in mainland France and overseas. https://www.defensenews.com/land/2021/01/15/french-army-orders-364-serval-armored-vehicles/

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  October 30, 2019 | International, C4ISR

  Army’s plan to field its network could collapse under an extended continuing resolution

  By: Jen Judson ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md. — Critical fielding plans for major elements of the Army's revamped network could fall apart if Congress does not reach a budget deal soon, according to service leaders in charge of network modernization. Should Congress opt to extend the current continuing resolution, which funds the government at fiscal 2019 budget levels, past the Nov. 21 deadline, the Army will struggle to get more capable radios and other elements of its new and improved network to units. While a shorter extension would be less painful, a yearlong continuing resolution, or CR, would derail the efforts. “The whole fielding plan will collapse without a budget,” Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy said during a recent trip to Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, where he was briefed on the service's efforts to deliver a modernized network to the force. “The longer [the CR] goes, I think it can definitely impact the schedule. If it bleeds into the next calendar year, you can look at a day-for-day slip” until a budget is passed, he said, adding that the longer a CR exists, the more likely the Army will have to reformulate its fielding plan because the units originally intended to receive the equipment won't be available to test the new capabilities and train with them. The Army is scheduled to conduct three major test events next year of its network. The 1st Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division will assess the first capability set of the new Integrated Tactical Network, or ITN, in February. The manpack and leader radio operational test, which is part of the Handheld, Manpack, and Small Form Fit radio program, is scheduled for the third quarter of FY20. Furthermore, at next year's Defender Europe military exercise, the Army will use the Command Post Computing Environment, the Tactical Server Infrastructure and a number of ITN's initial capabilities to assess interoperability with partners and allies. If a CR extends past the first quarter of the fiscal year, the Army will be unable to test radios with a new waveform, known as TSM, as part of its HMS radio program. The current plan is for the 1st Brigade of the 82nd to test the radios in the third quarter of FY20. The TSM waveform is critical to a modernized network because it provides greater capability than what is currently fielded. The radios with the TSM waveform are more secure, can connect a larger number of radios on a single network, can easily tie into coalition partners' communications, and can more effectively push voice and data. If the Army is faced with a yearlong CR, the HMS radio program would be limited to a $3.7 million budget out of $35.6 million requested in FY20. Without the funding, the manpack and leader radio operational test won't happen until FY21, and the Army will likely have to shift to a different unit to conduct the test because of the operational tempo of the 82nd, according to Maj. Gen. Peter Gallagher, who is in charge of the Army's network modernization. Additionally, if testing can't begin until FY21, the Army's full-rate production schedule will slip. “We're confident that our radios will support the waveform, but we're talking about maybe a situation where we couldn't ramp up production to meet the capability set fieldings without essentially ordering stuff in the absence of that operational test, which is not exactly a best practice,” Gallagher said. The Army is planning to field the radios to four units in 2021: the 1st Brigade of the 82nd; the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team; the 3rd Brigade of the 25th Infantry Division; and the 2nd Brigade of the 82nd. A long-term CR would also prevent the procurement of critical ITN communication enhancement equipment that will also be delivered to the four planned brigade combat teams in FY21. Without the equipment, the Army would have to delay communication patches for light infantry formations. A yearlong CR would affect the fielding of the Tactical Server Infrastructure, or TSI, which is also facing a potential FY20 budget cut. The Senate Appropriations Committee's Defense Subcommittee cut its procurement line by more than half, and it's unclear whether that decrement will survive conference committee. The TSI would only have 26 percent of its funding under a yearlong CR, which means the procurement of TSI servers, both small and large versions, will be delayed. A $45.86 million reduction in FY20 would prevent the fielding of 101 large variant servers and 184 small variants, which means two corps, three divisions and 10 brigade combat teams — including units like the 18th Airborne Corps, the 1st Cavalry Division, the 101st Airborne Division, III Corps and 4th Infantry Division — wouldn't get the updated server hardware needed to run the Command Post Computing Environment, Gallagher said during a briefing with McCarthy. And because the servers used to run the Command Post Computing Environment will be delayed, so will the rollout of the CPCE itself. Units like the 10th Mountain Division and the 335th Theater Signal Command have requested accelerated fielding of the CPSE and TSI capability. Currently fielded servers are cumbersome to initialize and are not appropriately protected to deal with emerging cyberthreats. The Tactical Defensive Cyber Operations Infrastructure capability, which protects the servers, will also be delayed. As the Army's first capability set due for fielding in 2021 would be delayed under a CR, its next capability set slated for 2023 would also be pushed back. The Army wouldn't have the funds to conduct experimentation and soldier evaluation because those are considered new start programs with no funding lines in FY19. Those efforts include experiments with low-Earth and medium-Earth orbit constellations, data management, new waveforms, command post mobility, and network management tools. This early research and development is meant to inform preliminary design and further larger-scale experimentation leading up to 2023. https://www.c4isrnet.com/2019/10/29/army-network-fielding-plan-could-collapse-under-extended-continuing-resolution/

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  August 1, 2018 | International, C4ISR

  Homeland Security announces new first response cyber center

  By: Justin Lynch In the face of increasing cyberattacks, the Department of Homeland Security is creating a new center to share threat information with private companies and kicking off a 90 day sprint to identify the country's digital “crown jewels" that may be especially vulnerable, the agency's secretary said July 31. The National Risk Management Center is expected to provide a centralized home where firms and local agencies can turn for cybersecurity solutions. “The next major attack is more likely to reach us online than on an airplane,” said Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. She added that “intruders are in our systems” and “everyone and everything is now a target.” The announcement came during a cybersecurity summit that the Department of Homeland Security hosted in New York City. The event aimed to bridge the gap between the government and some of the top companies in the United States that make up the critical parts of American digital life. It was envisioned as the start of a new relationship between the private and public sector. Nielsen said that the threat center is “driven by industry needs” and is spurred by a ”re-emergence of the nation state threat” and the “hyperconnected environment” of the United States. She said that previously some local governments have called 911 during a cyberattack. In the future, they would call the new cyber center. “Nation-state actors attempt to infiltrate critical infrastructure operations across multiple sectors,” a Homeland Security fact sheet on the new center read. It added there is a “need for an agreed-upon playbook to integrate government and industry response efforts.” The center also provides a playbook for risk management and identifying critical cyber supply chain elements. Although there are already government-backed risk-sharing initiatives, DHS leaders hope that the private sector will be more willing to share their challenges and expertise. Jeanette Manfra, the assistant secretary for the Office of Cybersecurity and Communications at Homeland Security, told reporters that the new center is "going to start small, we don't want to sign up for all sorts of things and then fail.” The hope is for the national counterterrorism center to be able to focus on incident response, and the center announced on Tuesday will focus on identifying national risk. The risk center will pull staff from other parts of government, Manfra said. A leader has not been named, and it has not received an increased budget. Throughout the conference, government officials were eager to entice the private sector to work with the new risk center. It appears that business participation is a necessary condition for the centers' success. The announcement comes just one week after Homeland Security warned that the Russian government is conducting cyberattacks against critical infrastructure sectors that include energy, nuclear, water, aviation and critical manufacturing. “The warning lights are blinking red," Coats said during a July 13 event at the Hudson Institute. Current threat sharing portals have been described as ineffective. The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 already attempted to spur collaboration between the public and private sector. Some experts told Fifth Domain that they did not expect the new portal to be groundbreaking. Only six companies are currently sharing cyberthreats with government, according to Chris Krebs, head of the national protection and programs directorate at Homeland Security. “We have to age to establish a value proposition for an organization to share into the system,” said Krebs. He highlighted better supply chain risk management as an incentive that would set the new center apart from previous intelligence-sharing schemes. Companies can write into their contracts that their vendors must use the threat-sharing portal so they know that contractors are managing third-party risks, Krebs said. At the event in New York City, some of the largest corporations praised the new program while speaking onstage with top government officials. “This was an obvious thing to do for a decade but it didn't happen,” said John Donovan, the chief executive of AT&T. https://www.fifthdomain.com/critical-infrastructure/2018/07/31/homeland-security-announces-new-risk-management-center/