Pentagon trims tech research funding request; AI, networking flat

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  February 18, 2019 | International, Aerospace

  University Of Central Florida Opens Its Doors To The Lockheed Martin Cyber Innovation Lab

  ORLANDO, Fla., Feb. 15, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) and the University of Central Florida (UCF) celebrated the grand opening of a new Cyber Innovation Lab on UCF's campus that will help meet the growing local and national need for cybersecurity talent. The lab's opening was celebrated with a ribbon cutting, a demonstration by UCF's Collegiate Cyber Defense Club (Hack@UCF) and a panel discussion with U.S. military and Lockheed Martin cyber experts about technology trends and how students can prepare for a career in the growing field. UCF-Photo "This lab will serve as the campus' primary hub for students to develop and expand their information security skills, preparing them to enter this high demand field and take on the cyber security threats of the future," said UCF President Dale Whittaker. "We are grateful for Lockheed Martin's longtime partnership and strong commitment to our students' success." The National Institute of Standards and Technology estimates there are more than 13,000 unfilled cybersecurity jobs in Floridaalone. That trend will continue, as the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts jobs for information security analysts will grow 28 percent by 2026. "The future battlespace will be heavily reliant on cyber... even more so than we're seeing today," said Stephanie C. Hill, deputy executive vice president of Lockheed Martin Rotary and Mission Systems. "By working with institutions like UCF, through labs like this one, we'll all better understand and accelerate our shared capabilities and potential to adapt and innovate in the fifth domain." In 2018, Lockheed Martin donated $1.5 million to UCF to help create the Cyber Innovation Lab and encourage the next-generation of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) talent to collaborate and solve today's challenging cyber problems. The company's donation will fund software and technology support to the lab, and employees will also provide cyber training and professional mentoring to engineering students. "Having a centralized space will streamline the way we organize our meetings and practices," said Hack@UCF President David Maria, a senior studying computer engineering. "With this lab, we can practice for competitions, host workshops and speakers, provide cyber security tools and resources, and give our student members a sense of community and help get them ready for future careers. It's not just a practice space. It's a home for us." The 970-square-foot lab is located in UCF's Engineering I building and will serve as a learning hub for the more than 350 students participating in cyber programs at UCF. Hack@UCF, a four-time national champion in competitions like the Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition and the U.S. Department of Energy CyberForce Competition, will also use the lab as its primary practice center. In Orlando, Lockheed Martin employs approximately 2,500 UCF graduates, with plans to expand its cyber workforce. The company's local Cyber Solutions business grew 400 percent over the past five years and expects that growth to continue as the nation seeks offensive and defensive cyber security capabilities to address the evolving cyber threats. To learn more about cyber at Lockheed Martin, visit www.lockheedmartin.com/cyber. About the University of Central Florida Founded in 1963 with a commitment to expanding opportunity and demanding excellence, the University of Central Florida develops the talent needed to advance the prosperity and welfare of our society. With more than 68,000 students, UCF is one of the nation's largest universities, offering more than 200 degree programs at its main campus in Orlando, medical school, and more than a dozen other locations in Central Florida and online. UCF was ranked by U.S. News & World Report among the nation's top 10 most innovative universities and rated by Kiplinger and Forbes as one of the best college values in America. For more information, visit ucf.edu. About Lockheed Martin Headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, Lockheed Martin is a global security and aerospace company that employs approximately 105,000 people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture, integration and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products and services. SOURCE Lockheed Martin https://news.lockheedmartin.com/2019-02-15-University-of-Central-Florida-Opens-Its-Doors-to-the-Lockheed-Martin-Cyber-Innovation-Lab

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  December 26, 2019 | International, Naval

  Pentagon proposes big cuts to US Navy destroyer construction, retiring 13 cruisers

  By: David B. Larter WASHINGTON – The Department of Defense has sent a plan to the White House that would cut the construction of more than 40 percent of its planed Flight III Arleigh Burke destroyers in in fiscal years 2021 through 2025. In total, the proposal would cut five of the 12 DDGs planned through the so-called future years defense program, or FYDP. In total, the plan would cut about $9.4 billion, or 8 percent, out of the total shipbuilding budget, according to a memo from the White House's Office of Management and Budget to the Defense Department obtained by Defense News. The memo also outlined plans to accelerate the decommissioning cruisers, cutting the total number of Ticonderoga-class cruisers in the fleet down to nine by 2025, from a planned 13 in last year's budget. The Pentagon's plan would actually shrink the size of the fleet from today's fleet of 293 ships to 287 ships, the memo said, which stands in contrast to the Navy's goal of 355 ships. The 355 ship goal was also made national policy in the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act. The memo comes on the heels of a wave of rhetoric from the Navy and the highest levels of the Trump Administration that the goal remains 350-plus ships, and the memo directs the Pentagon to submit a “resource-informed” plan to get to 355 ships, though its unclear how that direction might affect the Navy's calculus with regards to destroyer construction. The document gives the Navy a degree of wiggle-room to try and redefine what counts as a ship. “OMB directs DOD to submit a resource-informed plan to achieve a 355-ship combined fleet, including manned and unmanned ships, by 2030,” the memo reads. “In addition to a programmatic plan through the FYDP and projected ship counts through 2030, DOD shall submit a legislative proposal to redefine a battleforce ship to include unmanned ships, complete with clearly defined capability and performance thresholds to define a ship's inclusion in the overall battleforce ship count.” Destroyers are built by General Dynamics Bath Iron Works in Maine and by Huntington Ingalls in Pascagoula, Mississippi. Each destroyer costs an average of $1.82 billion based on the Navy's 2020 budget submission, according to the Congressional Research Service. A Trump Administration official who spoke on background said the Navy's proposed plan to shrink the fleet is being driven primary from the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and that OMB is strongly behind the President's goal of 355 ship. “OMB strongly supports 355 [ships] and is working with the Navy on it,” the official said. “OSD seems to be the most opposed to it.” A Navy spokesman declined to comment on the contents of the memo, saying it was related to a budget still in development and was “pre-decisional.” The military has a policy of refusing to comment on budget matters before they've been submitted to congress. The fate of the cruisers has been a nearly annual fight on Capitol Hill, as the Navy has tried desperately to divest themselves of the troublesome class, though this year's proposed cancellation of six cruiser modernization plans did not make a stir on the Hill. The cruisers themselves are the largest surface combatants in the Navy's inventory but have become increasingly difficult to maintain. Cruisers have 26 more vertical launch system, or VLS, cells per hull than their Arleigh Burke Flight IIA destroyer counterparts, and 32 more than the Flight I Burkes. Cruisers act as the lead air defense ship in a carrier strike group but as they have aged, the fleet has managed everything from cracking hulls to aging pipes and mechanical systems. The ships' SPY-1 radars have also been difficult to maintain, as components age and need constant attention from technicians. Last year, the Navy proposed canceling the modernization of Bunker Hill, Mobile Bay, Antietam, Leyte Gulf, San Jacinto and Lake Champlain in 2021 and 2022. The new proposal would accelerate the decommissioning of the Monterey. Vella Gulf and Port Royal to 2022, which would cut between three and seven years off each of their planned lives. The plan would also advance the decommissioning of the Shiloh to 2024, three years earlier that previously planned. The service's past efforts to shed the cruisers to save money repeatedly drew the ire of former House Armed Services Committee sea power subcommittee Chairman Randy Forbes, R-Va., who didn't trust the Navy to keep the ships in service and therefore wrote clear language into several National Defense Authorization Act bills prohibiting the move. The Navy ultimately agreed to the so-called 2-4-6 plan in 2015, which allowed the service to lay up to two cruisers a year, for no more than four years and allow no more than six of the ships to undergo modernization at any one time. 'Making a Case' The 2030 deadline for 355 ships as mentioned in the OMB memo was first laid out earlier this month by acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly in a speech at USNI's Defense Forum. “[Three hundred and fifty-five ships] is stated as national policy,” Modly told an audience on Dec. 5. “It was also the president's goal during the election. We have a goal of 355, we don't have a plan for 355. We need to have a plan, and if it's not 355, what's it going to be and what's it going to look like? “We ought to be lobbying for that and making a case for it and arguing in the halls of the Pentagon for a bigger share of the budget if that's what is required,” The speech was followed by the President's National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien at the Reagan National Defense Forum saying that Trump was serious when he committed to a 350-ship Navy. “When President Trump says a 350-ship Navy, he means a 350-ship Navy, and not decades from now,” O'Brien said. Bryan McGrath, a retired destroyer captain and analyst with the defense consultancy The Ferrybridge Group, said the plan to reduce the size of the fleet is a sign that the Defense Department isn't willing to put the resources required toward growing the fleet. “If what you are reporting is true, this is a sign of the tension between the grand desires for a much larger fleet and the modest resources being applied to the problem,” McGrath said. “There simply is no way to grow the fleet as it is currently architected while maintaining the current fleet at a high state of readiness with the given resources." McGrath said if 355 is still the goal, the Pentagon has to either dramatically restructure the fleet to switch out large surface combatants such as cruisers and destroyers with smaller, less expensive ships, or it has to change what's counted as a ship – both moves that have been signaled by the Navy in recent years. “This is why it's so hard to grow a Navy,” McGrath said. “You have to decide it's a national priority, you have to devote a lot of resources and you have to do it over a period of years. None of that has happened.” Dan Gouré , an analyst with the Arlington-based think tank The Lexington Institute and former Bush Administration Pentagon official, said trading existing force structure for unproven technologies such as unmanned ships that may pan out down the road is a classic Pentagon trap that rarely pans out. “It sends a bit of a chill up my spine to hear that the Navy may be considering cutting a bird in the hand for a theoretical eagle down the road,” Goure said. “That almost never works. I've been doing this long enough, 40 years of this, tell me when that's ever really worked.” https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2019/12/24/pentagon-proposes-big-cuts-to-us-navy-destroyer-construction-retiring-13-cruisers/

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  October 19, 2020 | International, Naval

  2019 was a landmark year for Connecticut’s defense industry

  Julia Bergman Military contractors in Connecticut had their most lucrative year in more than a decade in 2019, receiving $37.1 billion in defense contracts last year. That's according to the State of Connecticut Office of Military Affairs, which has tracked contracts received by the state's defense industry since 2007 and releases an annual report on the outlook for the industry. In reality, the value of defense contracts awarded in 2019 to Connecticut companies or companies doing business in the state was likely higher than $37.1 billion, as the report only relies on prime contracts worth $7 million or more. The previous high was in 2014, when the report recorded $27.1 billion in contracts. The growth in 2019 was spurred by the $22.2 billion contract the U.S. Navy awarded to Electric Boat last December for the construction of nine Virginia-class attack submarines — the largest shipbuilding contract ever awarded by the Navy. The contract includes the option to purchase a 10th submarine, which would increase its value to $24.1 billion. In addition to the record-breaking contract, Congress passed a defense budget that resulted in $30 billion for Connecticut-based defense programs this fiscal year, including the purchase of helicopters, jet engines and submarines all manufactured in the state. Defense contractors, deemed essential businesses during the coronavirus pandemic, have continued to fare well, similar to what happend during the 2008-09 recession, said Bob Ross, executive director of the Office of Military Affairs. At the time, Connecticut firms with both defense and commercial arms saw their commercial business lag but were kept busy by their military contracts. "We're seeing some of that again," Ross said. "For example, commercial aviation has been struck by the (coronavirus) pandemic, but the military aviation side has kept going." In the past three years, the growth in defense contracts has mainly been related to submarine construction at EB and jet engine manufacturing at Pratt & Whitney. "Suppliers have been busier than ever, particularly for submarines," the report says. "Such high level of defense production will likely be the case for many years to come, as Connecticut continues to produce and maintain the world's most sophisticated nuclear submarines, state of-the-art military jet engines, and a variety of military rotary wingaircraft used worldwide." https://www.theday.com/military-news/20201016/2019-was-landmark-year-for-connecticuts-defense-industry