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  August 1, 2019 | International, Aerospace

  France Creates Space Command To Help Bid To Be Third Space Power

  By Thierry Dubois Luch Olymp, a Russian satellite, is French Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly's favorite enemy. Last year, she revealed it had, in 2017, moved into close proximity to Athena-Fidus—a Franco-Italian satellite used for military communications—and tried to intercept its signal. The French military have kept a close eye on Luch Olymp. “I can't resist telling you the latest—it left a business card to another eight satellites belonging to various countries,” she says. The French government uses Luch Olymp as an example of the mounting threats against the country's space-based assets. A feeling of vulnerability was the basis for the government's decision, announced last year, to devise a space defense strategy. Now officially unveiled, it includes developing patrol satellites and space-based directed-energy weapons. The move confirms the trend for nations to consider space as an additional theater of operations for future conflicts. In the U.S., President Donald Trump signed off on a detailed plan on how to organize military space in February. The document, dubbed Space Policy Directive-4, proposes the creation of a sixth military service focused on space. The House and Senate are in agreement that a separate space service is necessary, but they are at odds on the details. Both chambers will enter conference this summer to hash out the specifics and are hopeful an agreement will be reached this fall. Last year, a report on worldwide threats to Congress stated that Russian and Chinese anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons would probably become operational within the next few years. “Both countries also are advancing directed-energy weapons technologies for the purpose of fielding ASAT weapons that could blind or damage sensitive space-based optical sensors, such as those used for remote sensing or missile defense.” Referring to China and the U.S., Parly says she believes in France asserting itself as the world's third space power. A space command with an initial 220 personnel will be created Sept. 1. One of its roles will be to establish French space doctrine. The operations center of the space command is to open in 2024 in Toulouse, where it is expected to benefit from local synergies with the space industry. As the space command will be part of the French Air Force, the latter is to become the Air and Space Force (Armee de l'Air et de l'Espace). The space command to be integrated into the air force will replace the existing Joint Space Command, created in 2010. The Joint Space Command did help French forces with their space ambitions, says Parly. However, it is believed not to be effective because of a lack of unity in the command chain and the development of a military space policy, as well as geographically scattered sites. “Space is a new front,” Parly says. She earlier requested the integration of cameras into the Syracuse 4A and 4B communications satellites, due to be launched in the early 2020s. The cameras will monitor the satellites' close environment. Parly wants to see nanosatellites patrolling in orbit as soon as 2023. They will be used to detect threats and may also carry high-power lasers. Such weapons, which may also be integrated into France's “valuable” satellites, will be able to “dazzle” a threatening spacecraft, says Parly. France is behind in high-power lasers, she admits, but she is confident the country's research laboratories and OEMs will catch up. In fact, aerospace research center ONERA has already conducted a test that temporarily made inoperative the optical sensors of an Earth-observation satellite at the end of its life. According to a report by two members of the French National Assembly, ONERA could build a system that would make such sensors inoperative permanently. ONERA is also taking part in the TALOS project. Launched last year by the European Defense Agency to create high-power laser beam weapons, TALOS is led by CILAS, an ArianeGroup subsidiary. Other ideas for “active defense” include repurposing systems currently developed under a European Space Agency program to remove debris from orbit, using a net or harpoon. France's military programming law for 2019-25 already includes €3.6 billion ($4 billion) for the renewal of satellites—such as launching the CSO Earth-observation satellites. Parly announced another €700 million will be added over that period. They will be used, among other expenditures, to create demonstrators. “Full capacity” of the space command is expected in 2030. On the ground, the existing Graves radar, which monitors low Earth orbit, will be upgraded in 2022. Parly has requested its successor deliver an initial operational capability in 2025, sooner than initially planned. Eventually, it will have to detect an object “the size of a shoe box” at 1,500 km (930 mi.). Debris is a concern, as well as illegal launches such as that of Swarm Technologies' picosatellites last year. The government is counting on European cooperation, especially with Germany and Italy, to make future surveillance equipment and weapons affordable. https://aviationweek.com/space/france-creates-space-command-help-bid-be-third-space-power

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  July 28, 2020 | International, C4ISR

  US Army begins experimenting with new network tools

  Andrew Eversden WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army's combat capabilities development team kicked off a monthslong experiment last week to test emerging technologies that could be added into the service's tactical network. The third annual Network Modernization Experiment at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey started July 20 and ends Oct. 2. NetModX provides an opportunity for the Combat Capabilities Development Command's C5ISR Center — or Command, Control, Communication, Computers, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Center — to perform field tests with emerging capabilities that have largely been tested in the lab. Field tests with simulated threat environments, as opposed to lab tests, are important because technologies react in unexpected ways due to realities like different types of trees or terrain. This year's theme for NetModX is mission command and command-post survivability, which means participants will focus on technologies that could be fielded in the Army's Integrated Tactical Network Capability Set '23 and Capability Set '25 — future iterations of network tools that the Army plans to deliver to soldiers every two years. In this year's test, the C5ISR Center is testing communications capabilities that allow for distributed mission command systems across the battlefield “and wider area,” said Michael Brownfield, chief of the future capabilities office at the C5ISR Center. “We've learned by watching our enemies fight, and we know that to survive on the battlefield, No. 1, they can't be able to see us,” Brownfield told C4ISRNET in an interview. “And No. 2, we have to distribute our systems across the battlefield to give them multiple targets and multiple dilemmas in order to survive.” NetModX is also testing network resiliency capabilities that could be delivered as part of Capability Set '23. Preliminary design review for the capability set is scheduled for April next year. To test the effectiveness of the resiliency projects the center developed in the lab, the C5ISR Center created a “state-of-the-art red cell” that attacks the network using enemy's tactics, techniques and procedures, according to Brownfield. The goal is to make sure the technology can withstand electronic attacks and allow for continuous operations in contested environments when in the hands of deployed soldiers. “What resiliency means to us is the network bends, it doesn't break,” Brownfield said. “And the commanders have the information they need and the coordination that they need to fight the battle.” A modular radio frequency system of systems is undergoing tests, and Brownfield says it will “revolutionize” the fight on the battlefield. The system automatically switches between primary, alternate, contingency and emergency, or PACE, radios by sensing if radio frequencies are being jammed. The system then responds by automatically switching radio channels to allow for seamless communications in a contested environment. Currently, “it's kind of hard to switch to alternate comms when the person you're talking to is on their primary, not their alternative comms,” Brownfield said. “And the process is very slow. It's human-driven.” Now, the automatic PACE system senses the environment in milliseconds, he said. At last year's experiment, which focused on network transport capabilities to support precision fires for multidomain operations, the center experimented with radios that could flip to new channels on their own, while launching brute force and other more sophisticated attacks against the radios to see how much stress they could handle before passing data became impossible. This year will be a little different. “This year, we're pairing different radios together and see how they can work to actually change the type of modulation schemes that we use to maneuver in cyberspace around for continuous operations while under enemy attack and under contested electronic warfare conditions,” Brownfield said. One of the top priorities for this year's experiment is allowing for projects leaders to bring their technology into to the field, no matter what stage of development they are in, to be tested in an “operationally relevant environment,” Brownfield said. The team then collects data on how the technology performs and puts it into a database where it can be queried to answer specific performance questions. “So we can ... ask the database questions like, ‘What was my latency with these two radios at this point in time,' and start to understand the true metrics of how the systems performed in the field,” Joshua Fischer, acting chief of systems engineering, architecture, modeling and simulation at the C5ISR Center, told C4ISRNET. He added that those involved are also looking at network throughput. https://www.c4isrnet.com/yahoo-syndication/2020/07/24/us-army-begins-experimenting-with-new-network-tools/

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  January 26, 2022 | International, Aerospace

  US Special Operations Command picks Anduril to lead counter-drone integration work in $1B deal

  Anduril will provide counter-drone services to U.S. Special Operations Command for the next decade.