Private equity firm to buy UK defense company in $5 billion deal

On the same subject

• 

  August 27, 2024 | International, Naval

  NATO taps Exail for mine-clearing underwater drones

  The Dutch and Belgian navies will be the primary users of the systems, the company announced in a statement.

• 

  April 8, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  COVID-19: Help Fleets Of Innovators Make 3D Printed Face Masks

  By JOHN QUIGG Next month we'll celebrate the 80th anniversary of Operation Dynamo, better known as “the Miracle of Dunkirk.” In the course of three days, hundreds of British civilian boats crossed the Channel to save their Army from starvation and the advancing Germans. Why? The Royal Navy did not have enough ships to transport the troops nor the right type of boats to operate in the shallows of the French coast. The key to the operation's success was governmental agility, masterful logistics, and realizing that the only solution to saving the entire force was a never-seen-before public/private partnership and lightning fast decision making (along with favorable weather and air cover). Our first responders and medical heroes are trapped on a figurative beach as the crest of the COVID-19 epidemic looms with too few supplies, thus facing illness and possible death. Supply chains ravaged by years of creating just-in-time global networks are not up to this challenge. The “Little Ships” in our modern story to the rescue will be 3-D printers. The air cover will be shielding from tort lawyers, and the civilian volunteers the remarkable talents comprising the nation's maker community. I confess that this is personal — my youngest brother is an EMT in suburban Atlanta. He tells me that his coworkers and emergency room staff are already down to handmade masks and are begging for supplies. The need is clear – top priority must be placed on vetting and publishing designs, finding out where the nation's supply chain can't satisfy projected demand, and the command and control required to match makers with the needs of the nation's first responders. For example, the Seattle Children's hospital was running critically low on masks several weeks ago and was desperate for help. Enter Rory Larson, a talented CAD designer who spent two caffeine fueled days and nights designing and testing a printable version of an N-95 mask with replaceable filters which were enthusiastically embraced by the hospital staff. His father, Garr, connected him with Jonathan Roberts, a veteran of Microsoft and Innovation Partners. Roberts helped scale the availability of the design, enlisted production partners and reached out to people who could help them leap over the many administrative hurdles — and set up a website. Now anyone with a printer can download the design and print their own masks. The military is already headed down this path. US Forces Korea tasked their science advisors from the Office of Naval Research and Army Futures Command to start an internal effort given the shortages of masks and other supplies in Asia. They designed, produced and disseminated a face shield for gate guards and are exploring the techniques for other medical shortfalls however the design and approval process is still problematic. One of their largest challenges is procedural – sharing military-manufactured equipment falls foul of all sorts of regulations and they will need process changes at a pace no earthly acquisition official could normally achieve. This problem is replicated across the defense enterprise as installations around the world wrestle with the red tape surrounding helping their neighbors and host countries. To help, the Department of Defense Manufacturing Innovation Institute for additive manufacturing (www.AmericaMakes.us) initiated a fast track certification process to breach the monolith of government approvals. ONR Global's Mark Buffum tells me that they are working with ONR/USFK legal to check that the validation coordination between the FDA and AmericaMakes will allow designs that have passed Clinical Review to be moved to production at DOD installations globally. The end state for now is a tested design placed on the NIH's 3D design exchange that is approved for manufacture. The government is working on the dispensations needed to take a mask printed on a Navy ship in Korea, an Army logistics train in Iraq, or an Air Force base in Colorado. Similarly, 3D makers near Active Duty/Reserve/National Guard installations should be integrated into their supply chain. If worst case scenarios come to pass and civilian logistics fail then we have an exercised plan to connect military supply and transport capabilities to the manufacturers and vice versa. Much as the Royal Navy executed the plan to flag and man the Little Ships during Dunkirk, we must figure out how the military can leverage local, regional, and national maker capabilities to get those printers humming. A case in point is the Belgian chemical company Solvay, partnering with Boeing, to leverage its extensive expertise in thermoplastic materials—and especially medical-grade plastics—to support various efforts aimed at fighting the pandemic. Their support centers located around the world are ready to support material selection, manufacturing support, relevant testing and regulatory certifications. They are offering to put makers in touch with their extensive network of distributors, molders and machine shops.Additionally, Boeing is working with Solvay to design/produce more durable face shields for healthcare workers. Boeing announced last week it would be shifting some of its manufacturing capacity, including its in-house 3D printing, to produce thousands of face shields per week for medical workers. At the local level, community leaders like Todd Spain are talking to their local hospital to determine shortfalls, and are working with a regional maker group, Colorado Makers Unite (MakerUnite.co) to produce their own masks and ventilator adapters to protect the staff and enable equipment sharing. They are prepared to make anything their first responders need. One of the biggest roadblocks is the administrative state: the only readily available plastic is not approved for medical use, the approved plastic is on a 3-week wait list and costs 10X more, shipping of vital feed-stock and machines is not on the prioritized list, and the usual hurdles of liability, etc.... One can only imagine the potential legal hurdles to using something that hasn't been tested in countless lawsuits unless a company gets regulatory relief. A partnership with the local National Guard unit or military installation could bring their concerns to light and allow the Defense Department to take on the job of connecting the capability to the population and while providing emergency protection from the trial bar. We must move heaven and earth to give the brave people trying to build an ad hoc network of 3-D mask makers our best and ensure that the “small ships” of the 3-D printing world and its makers are allowed to give it their best shot. I can only hope that history looks back at this time with wonder that we were able to pull it off. John Quigg, a retired Army officer, was one of America's first cyber warriors. He is a senior advisor to Spurrier Capital Partners, a New York investment bank, and a senior staffer at Johns Hopkins' Applied Physics Lab. https://breakingdefense.com/2020/04/covid-19-help-fleets-of-innovators-make-3d-printed-face-masks

• 

  September 3, 2019 | International, Security

  What’s changing in the cyber domain? We ask industry experts

  By: Andrew Eversden “What are you talking about now in cybersecurity that you weren't talking about six months ago?” Fifth Domain posed this question to cybersecurity experts at Black Hat, a cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, that ran from Aug. 3-8. With the cyber domain rapidly evolving, we wanted to know how conversations within the cyber community are changing. Some pointed to a new focus on utility systems and web-connected devices that sit on critical infrastructure. “It's only a matter of time until there's another major disruption in an electric utility somewhere in the world, probably not in the U.S., but elsewhere,” Sergio Caltagirone, threat intelligence director at Dragos, said at the conference Aug. 5. “But oil and gas has the higher likelihood of a major destructive and loss-of-life event. And I think most people did not realize how close to that we actually were.” Caltagirone was referring to the TRISIS event, malware that struck industrial control systems at a Saudi Arabian petrochemical plant and could've caused physical harm. He said that in the aftermath of that attack, threat researchers diving into the details realized just how bad it could've been. “We started finding a lot of stuff which hadn't been found before,” Caltagirone said. “Which made us realize very quickly how close that space is to a major event.” Dave Weinstein, chief security officer at Claroty, pointed to an “explosion” of devices connected to the internet of things.. “It's really a product of this general consensus among industrial organizations that the benefits exceed the costs in terms of embracing this type of digital transformation," Weinstein said Aug. 8, adding that organizations must be “mindful” of these devices and have a plan to mitigate their potential vulnerabilities. Brian Costello, a senior vice president at Flashpoint, told Fifth Domain on Aug. 8 that he is more often than before focusing on targeted cyberattacks from bad actors. That's a shift away from “campaign-based” attacks that tracked. There's “more planning out, more scoping out of targets and taking long-term planning to go after [a] particular target with a specific asset in mind,” Costello said. Along that same vein, Julian Zottl, a senior cyber architect at Raytheon, said he's noticing more inclusion of all-source intelligence in threat analysis. “We're looking at ... all the sources and trying to figure out indicators,” Zottl said Aug. 7. “[We're] even trying to do predictive analytics now, where it's like, ‘Oh, we see this threat might be coming.' I think that's something that we're starting to talk about more and more.” Several cybersecurity professionals interviewed by Fifth Domain said the U.S. government is moving away from the classic cyber kill chain and over to the MITRE ATT&CK framework, which dives deeper into potential threats to information security. “They used to think the hackers would just come in to steal secrets, conduct espionage and then leave,” said Tom Kellermann, chief cybersecurity officer at Carbon Black and a former commissioner on the Commission on Cyber Security for then-President Barack Obama. “In fact, they're maintaining persistence in these systems. They're manipulating the integrity of data and then they're using federal government agencies themselves and personnel's devices themselves to target anyone who implicitly trusts that person, that agency, that department.” he told Fifth Domain on Aug. 6. Chris Kennedy, chief information security officer at AttackIQ and a former official with the Treasury Department and the Marine Corps, said these new frameworks in use along with federal continuous monitoring programs allow for more attacker emulation, essentially simulating the attack agencies could face. “Agencies are starting to realize the value of attacker emulation as a way to measure and benchmark the effectiveness of their security controls,” Kennedy said on Aug. 7. And with government agencies in different stages of cloud migration, agencies will need to learn how that fits into their cybersecurity posture. Marten Mickos, CEO of white hat hacking company HackerOne, said this a new discussion. He also said the conversation surrounding the use of ethical hackers in government environments has evolved: The word “hacker” is becoming more accepted. “I do think it signals a shift in mindset," Michos said. There's a realization that "those people who portray themselves as hackers are actually those who will rescue us, not those who will destroy us.” Despite all the changing technology and evolving threats, one aspect of cybersecurity remains set in stone, said M. K. Palmore, a field chief security officer for the Americas at Palo Alto Networks and a recently retired FBI cyber agent. “It's about adhering to cybersecurity fundamentals,” Palmore said. “That message hasn't changed regardless of my position or where I'm located.” https://www.fifthdomain.com/show-reporters/black-hat/2019/08/30/whats-changing-in-the-cyber-domain-we-ask-industry-experts