August 24, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR
WASHINGTON — The microelectronics industry is at an “inflection point, and the U.S. government must implement policies to entice companies to do more manufacturing within American shores, the Defense Department's chief weapons buyer said Thursday.
Ellen Lord, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, said on a webinar that her office is taking a look at how to entice companies to bring microelectronic production and testing work back to the United States, where the Defense Department can more easily verify the security and reliability of the hardware.
Microelectronics are the cornerstone to advancing emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, quantum computing and 5G wireless networks, as well as critical components of weapons systems. But the Pentagon is concerned that the current market — where the majority of production and testing takes place outside the United States — allows for adversaries such as China to introduce backdoors that will harm U.S. national security.
“We can no longer identify the pedigree of our microelectronics,” Lord said at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Electronics Resurgence Initiative summit. “Therefore we can no longer ensure that backdoors, malicious code or data exfiltration commands aren't embedded in our code. While we develop the ability to identify the technical path to ensure all components, circuits and systems are clean regardless of their manufacturing location, we need to find a path to domestic sources to provide a secure and resilient supply of legacy, state-of-the-present and state-of-the-art microelectronics.”
The United States is one of three countries with advanced microelectronics manufacturing capabilities. Increasingly, American microelectronics manufacturers have moved microchip fabrication plants abroad, according to a 2016 report from the Congressional Research Service. To pull the microelectronics manufacturing back within U.S. shores, Lord proposed creating public-private partnerships.
“The U.S. government can provide a demand signal and can also infuse some capital to overcome some of the activation energy, if you will, to get the whole process rolling — of manufacturing, packaging, testing here in the states,” Lord said. “And then we partner with other industrial sectors to sustain that.”
Lord listed several reasons why companies had gone abroad, such as environmental regulations, local and state taxes, and economic pressures such as a wages.
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June 17, 2021 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security
Today
August 30, 2018 | International, C4ISR
By: Daniel Cebul WASHINGTON — The Air Force awarded Northrop Grumman a contract worth as much as $47 million for an analysis of system and payload requirements for a new missile warning satellite system in polar orbit. Specifically, the contract will be used for the Next Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared Polar (OPIR) space vehicles 1 and 2. Work will be performed in Redondo Beach, California, and is expected to be completed by June 25, 2020, according to a contract announcement. The OPIR polar space vehicles will be part of a five-satellite constellation that will augment the legacy Space-based Infrared Satellite (SBIRS), which operates as the U.S. military's early warning missile system. During the fiscal year 2019 budget release, the Air Force announced its plans to cancel the 7th and 8th SBIRS satellites in favor or reallocating funds towards OPIR systems. In May 2018, the Air Force released a notice of intent to sole-source contracts to Lockheed Martin and Northrop for the new program. Lockheed Martin will produce three geosynchronous orbiting satellites and Northrop Grumman is responsible for two polar orbiting satellites. The first geosynchronous OPIR satellite is scheduled to be launched in 2023, and the first polar satellite is scheduled to launch in 2027. The Air Force wants the entire “block O” architecture to be operational by FY 2029. Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor on the SBIRS satellites. Northrop Grumman provides the sensors, a scanner and a starer, on those satellites. Full article: https://www.c4isrnet.com/c2-comms/satellites/2018/08/29/northrop-grumman-gets-a-start-next-gen-missile-warning-satellites