Pentagon Looks into Virtual Reality to Prepare Troops for Nuclear War

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  July 5, 2021 | International, Aerospace, C4ISR

  Rafael combines AI and automatic target recognition in new Sea Breaker missile

  The need for better target recognition is important in environments with moving targets and near civilians.

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  May 19, 2020 | International, Aerospace

  Trump has questions about the F-35′s supply chain. Here are some answers.

  By: Valerie Insinna WASHINGTON — During a Thursday morning cable news appearance, U.S. President Donald Trump blasted the F-35's global supply chain and hinted he might intercede to bring more work on the Lockheed Martin-made jet back to the United States. Trump brought up the F-35 during an exchange where Fox Business Network's Maria Bartiromo asked how the president plans to incentivize key U.S. industries — such as pharmaceutical companies — to cut China out of their supply chain. “I could tell you hundreds of stories of the stupidity that I've seen. As an example, we're making a fighter jet. It's a certain fighter jet, I won't tell you which, but it happens to be the F-35,” Trump said. “It's a great jet, and we make parts for this jet all over the world. We make them in Turkey, we make them here, we're going to make them there. All because President [Barack] Obama and others — I'm not just blaming him — thought it was a wonderful thing,” he said. “The problem is if we have a problem with a country, you can't make the jet. We get parts from all over the place. It's so crazy. We should make everything in the United States.” “Could we do it?” Bartiromo asked. “Yeah, we're doing it because I'm changing all those policies,” Trump said. “Look, we make F-35s — very important, the greatest jet in the world — where the main body of the jet is made in Turkey and then sent here.” But if that relationship breaks down, Turkey could refuse to give the United States key F-35 components, Trump said. It was unclear whether Trump actually plans to take action to move additional elements of F-35 back to the United States. In a statement to Defense News, Defense Department spokesman Lt. Col. Mike Andrews said the Pentagon has no comment and referred questions on Trump's statements to the White House. “The Department remains fully committed to the F-35 program, and maintaining a competitive edge with its unique, unmatched 5th generation capabilities. We will continue to aggressively reduce F-35 cost, incentivize Industry to meet required performance, and deliver advanced capabilities to our warfighters at the best value to our taxpayers." he said. A spokesman for Lockheed referred questions to the Defense Department. It's worth noting that while Trump got many broad assertions about the program right, not all of his statements about the F-35 stand up to scrutiny. Here's a point-by-point explainer: Global participation is baked into the very foundation of the Joint Strike Fighter program. The Joint Strike Fighter program — which stems from efforts started in the 1990s — was structured not only to produce planes for the U.S. military but also for key allies. Nations that wanted to be “partners” on the program would help foot the bill for developing the jet in exchange for work producing components on the program. There were several benefits to this structure. From an operational perspective, it would ensure that many of the Pentagon's closest allies were using the same jet, making it easier to send information and coordinate military engagements. From an industrial perspective, having a deep, multilayered global supply chain would theoretically make F-35 production less prone to disruption, and it could make it easier for Lockheed to distribute parts to sustain the jet worldwide. There were also economic advantages for the United States. Having so much international buy-in ensured future sales, which benefited U.S. defense manufacturers and the Defense Department, which can buy its planes more cheaply due to economies of scale. Originally there were nine partner nations on the program: Australia, Canada, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States. However, the United States expelled Turkey from the program last year after the country purchased the Russian S-400 air defense system. President Barack Obama and his predecessors weren't really to blame for the globalized structure of the program. Historically — at least until Trump — a president hasn't publicly interfered in the F-35 program. The Obama administration was broadly supportive of the F-35, continuing to finance the program even as it hit a number of technical snags that caused cost and schedule to balloon. However, the structure of the program and much of the F-35 supply chain was already set in stone before Obama was sworn into office in 2009. Lockheed Martin won the Joint Strike Fighter contract in 2001 after producing a prototype version of the F-35 known as the X-35 and facing off against Boeing's X-35 demonstrator. At that point, the company would have already cemented much of its supply chain as part of the process of preparing a proposal for the competition. The first F-35 flew in 2006. While there have been changes to the F-35 supply chain since the jet went into production, the more major changes have occurred during block upgrades, when legacy technologies are swapped out for cheaper, improved versions. One example is the transition of the distributed aperture system from a Northrop Grumman to Raytheon product during the upcoming 15th lot of F-35 production. Turkey has an industrial role in building the F-35, and that's changing on the U.S. government's terms. Trump's assertion that Turkey could deny the United States key F-35 components doesn't reflect the current status quo, as it's the U.S. Defense Department that is working to expel Turkey from the program. While it is true that Turkey, as an international partner on the F-35 program, helps to manufacture the jet and build key components, Trump has overstated the role played by Turkey. According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, Turkey makes about 1,000 different components for the F-35. The Pentagon is set to stop awarding F-35-related contracts to Turkish firms this year. According the GAO, the Defense Department already identified alternate suppliers for all components currently made in Turkey, and the department is working with those suppliers to speed up production. When Trump talks about Turkey building the “main body” of the jet, he is talking about the center fuselage, some of which are built by Turkish Aerospace Industries. However, TAI is only the secondary supplier of the center fuselage, with Northrop Grumman making that component for the majority of F-35s. It is very likely that Northrop will take over production of that structure until another supplier is found to replace TAI. Updated 5/14/20 with statements from the Pentagon and Lockheed Martin. https://www.defensenews.com/air/2020/05/14/trump-has-questions-about-the-f-35s-supply-chain-here-are-some-answers/

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  July 22, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  COVID Drives AUSA Mega-Conference Online: Gen. Ham

  Bringing together an estimated 33,000 soldiers and civilians from around the world was just too dangerous in the coronavirus era. By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.on July 21, 2020 at 3:42 PM WASHINGTON: Every October, the Walter E. Washington convention center in downtown DC – a behemoth building covering two whole city blocks – fills with soldiers, contractors, and reporters. Over 30,000 people pack shoulder-to-shoulder in conference rooms to hear from Army leaders, speak face to face, line up for fried chicken, shake hands, hug, and handle military hardware from prototype rifles to full-sized tanks. But with COVID-19 cases rising alarmingly around the country, none of that will happen this October. “We've made the difficult decision to convert the 2020 AUSA Annual Meeting from an in-person meeting to a virtual experience,” said retired Gen. Carter Ham, the Association of the US Army's president and CEO, in a statement Tuesday afternoon. The mega-conference – historically one of the biggest in-person gatherings for the defense industry in the DC area – will now take place entirely online over Oct. 13-16. Breaking Defense plans to cover the virtual event as exhaustively (and as exhaustingly for our reporters) as it has the physical one every year since 2011. “With recent trends, it just became clear to me that we simply could not, in any reasonable manner, ensure a safe, secure environment for the 32,000-plus people we expected this October,” Gen. Ham told me in an follow-up email. “We are working very closely with the Army to craft an agenda which provides opportunities for key leaders to connect with our members and constituents.” “One of the keys to that is finding ways to connect Army leaders with the businesses, large and small, who normally are present in the exhibition hall,” Ham said. “Finding a way to do something similar to that experience in the virtual world will be a challenge, but it is an integral part of the AUSA Annual Meeting, so we'll figure it out.” AUSA is still working out the logistics of this massive switch. Registrations and sponsorship agreements from the in-person version of the event will not automatically carry over. “Registration for the new virtual meeting is expected to open by September,” the AUSA statement says. “AUSA is now coordinating details for the virtual event, and team members will be reaching out directly to exhibitors and sponsors about new opportunities.” With over 600 sponsors in a typical year – ranging from small businesses with a single, small booth to titans like Boeing and Lockheed Martin – the Annual Meeting is a major source of revenue for AUSA. How this will impact the association's budget is unclear – even to AUSA itself at this point. Breaking Defense graphic from AUSA data “The AUSA Annual Meeting is our most important revenue-generating event of the year,” Ham said bluntly. “The revenue from this event is largely what allows us to conduct other events throughout the year. So, I don't know yet precisely what the impact will be, but there will be some effect. Fortunately, AUSA is in a strong financial position so we will be able to sustain this change.” AUSA's latest annual report said the 2018 conference “generated $16 million in revenue,” just under half the association's total projected revenue of $33 million for the 2018-2019 fiscal year. (The report for 2019-2020 hasn't been published yet). But AUSA also reported its investment portfolio was worth $51 million; that was as of May 2019, before COVID roiled the stock market, but the portfolio should still be large enough to offer at least some buffer. The initial wave of the COVID-19 coronavirus forced AUSA to cancel its Global Force conference in Huntsville, Ala. this March just a week ahead of opening day. That gave the association no time to schedule virtual alternatives, although multiple events from Army aircraft announcements to Shark Tank-style pitch meetings were hastily turned into teleconferences or webcasts. Global Force had expected some 6,000 attendees. Since then, AUSA has held a host of online events, largely but by no means entirely without glitches, but they were all much smaller in scale. The Annual Meeting had expected some 33,000 attendees. Moving that conference online will be a vastly larger organizational and technical challenge. It's also an opportunity, Ham argued. “While we will all certainly miss the opportunity to be together with the broader Army Family, choosing to provide our programs in a virtual environment does offer us an opportunity to connect with audiences who might not know AUSA all that well or who have simply not been able to travel to Washington DC for the event in prior years,” he told me. “I view this very much as a chance to extend our reach and to more effectively fulfill our mission to support the Army.” Even if nothing glitches, though, the virtual Annual Meeting won't replace the human connection that came from the Army's annual gathering of its disparate tribes. “What will I miss? This is the Army's family reunion,” Ham said. “Every October, the opportunity to see old friends and to make new friends is the most enjoyable part of the Annual Meeting. I'll miss that, to be sure, but I also know that via this virtual experience, we will make new connections, new relationships that will make AUSA 2021 even better when we can all be together again.” https://breakingdefense.com/2020/07/covid-drives-ausa-mega-conference-online/