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  June 9, 2021 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

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  March 24, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  Post-Brexit Defense Review Challenged By Costs And Coronavirus

  Tony Osborne Post-Brexit Britain is taking its first steps toward understanding its place in the world and the military capabilities it may need to ensure it can hold onto that status. A review, described by Prime Minister Boris Johnson as the most extensive of its kind since the end of the Cold War, is examining the UK's foreign, defense, security and development policies. And it is proceeding despite the challenges and costs surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. Although it will examine the work of several government departments—notably the Foreign Office, the Defense Ministry and the Department for International Development—considerable focus is likely to be on defense. It has the largest budget of those under the microscope and an oft-criticized procurement process that some in government are eager to overhaul. The process will run in parallel with the government's comprehensive spending review. That assessment decides UK government spending for the next three years and will deliver its findings potentially as early as this summer. Some critics argue that is simply too soon for a thorough analysis of Britain's future defense needs. “If you are to have a strategy that is worth the name, you must address ends, ways and means together. . . . If you do not do the whole package, including the money, together, then you do not have a strategic review,” Jock Stirrup, a former chief of the Royal Air Force (RAF) and UK Defense Staff, told parliamentary defense committee hearings on March 17. The 2020 review represents a break from the traditional defense-led Strategic Defense and Security Review (SDSR) usually held every five years. Some analysts contend the 2020 edition could shape defense capabilities for decades to come. Jack Watling, Land Warfare research fellow at the London-based Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) says the review would have to make “hard choices” but that these would “determine the trajectory of the UK's defense capabilities for a generation.” He notes that for a post-Brexit Britain looking to expand its trading and security partners, future conflicts may be difficult to avoid. “Security and trade partnerships are closely intertwined. . . . If ‘Global Britain' means diversifying our economic partnerships, it will be necessary to build meaningful security ties as well,” Watling says. The UK must look at its role in the Euro-Atlantic alliance and in the Great Power competition, in addition to other global issues and homeland security, Defense Minister Ben Wallace told Parliament. The review will also “place prosperity and manufacturing at its heart,” he added. The assessment comes at a challenging time for Britain's defense and its equipment-procurement plans. The National Audit Office recently warned that for a third consecutive year there will be shortfalls in the budget. The ministry's plans call for the spending of £183.6 billion ($214 billion) over the next 10 years, equivalent to 42% of the ministry budget during that period. Auditors say the Defense Ministry has a shortfall of at least £2.9 billion over that period, but this could be as high as £13 billion. Although the UK is expanding its intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities with the upcoming arrival of the General Atomics Protector unmanned aircraft system and deliveries of the Boeing P-8 Poseidon maritime patroller—two of which have already arrived—capability gaps in the ISR mission are imminent. The planned retirement of the RAF's long-suffering Boeing E-3D Sentry fleet has been pushed to December 2022. But the Boeing E-7 Wedgetail, the 737-based platform planned as its replacement, is not due to enter service until the end of 2023, potentially leaving a yearlong capability gap. The RAF also plans to retire its Raytheon Sentinel radar-reconnaissance platform in March 2021. It got several reprieves after its Afghanistan duties ended, but its departure would leave the UK without a standoff ground-moving-target-indicator and synthetic aperture radar platform. Several commitments made in the 2015 SDSR, such as the UK's decision to commit all 138 Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighters across the lifetime of the program, have also not been budgeted, auditors note. Current plans forecast only the costs of the first 48 aircraft. The government says that “decisions on future numbers and aircraft variants will be taken at the relevant time,” but it is unclear whether this will be considered in the review. The British government is aiming to maintain the target of 2% of GDP set by NATO for all allies. Defense ministers have said they will fight to meet that share, and more if needed, although the UK has a history of not fully funding post-review defense portfolios. “It is not a ​review designed to cut costs,” says Jeremy Quin, minister for defense procurement. “It is a review designed to ensure we know what we are doing in the world and that [this is achieved] through really effective equipment.” Along with defining capabilities required for land, sea and air, the review is also likely to conclude that the UK should make additional investment in both the cyber and space domains. https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/post-brexit-defense-review-challenged-costs-coronavirus

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  April 20, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR

  Four technologies Japan and the US should team on to counter China

  Aaron Mehta WASHINGTON — The U.S. and Japan need to expand their collaboration on defense technologies in the future, with a specific focus on four technologies that can help counter the rise of China, according to a new report released Friday by the Atlantic Council. The report also highlights the ongoing discussions about U.S. involvement in Japan's next domestic fighter program as a high-stakes situation that could dictate industrial cooperation between the two nations for years. “The most important component of cooperation on defense capabilities is direct coordination and collaboration on emerging technologies and capabilities,” write authors Tate Nurkin and Ryo Hinata-Yamaguchi, identifying unmanned systems, hypersonic/hyper-velocity missiles, and the defense applications of AI as three key areas where the U.S. and Japan need to start working together on. “These three areas are at the center of the intensifying U.S.-China military-technological competition. They are key to challenging or upholding military balances and stabilizing imbalances in and across key domain-area competitions — strike versus air and missile defense or undersea — on which regional and, over time, global security is at least partly based,” the authors note. Specifically, the authors identify four project areas that both fit into U.S. strategy and Japan's regional interests, while also matching industrial capabilities: Swarming technology and the loyal wingman: For several years the Pentagon has been investing R&D funding into the development of drones that can be slaved to a fighter jet, providing a “loyal wingman” controlled by the one pilot. Drone swarms are another area of heavy investment. Both concepts fit for Japan, whose Ministry of Defense expressed interest in both concepts going back as far as 2016. Unmanned underwater vehicles and anti-submarine warfare capabilities: China has invested heavily in submarines over the last decade, both manned and unmanned. The U.S. has also begun investing in UUV capabilities, but while Japan's IHI has developed a domestic UUV, the MoD has yet to go all in on the capability. The authors note it is a logical area of collaboration. AI-enabled synthetic training environments: The U.S. and Japan ran a joint synthetic training exercise in 2016, but the authors would like to see development expanded in the future. “Given both countries' need to accelerate training, their shared competency in machine learning and virtual and augmented reality, and a highly fractured simulation and training market, there is potential for a collaborative program to develop a synthetic simulation and training capability, to stress the specific operational contingencies to which US and Japanese forces will have to respond,” they write. Counter-unmanned systems: The entire world seems to be investing in weapons to counter unmanned systems, but the authors see a solid spot for the two nations to find workable technologies together. Japan's acquisition group is currently testing a “high-power microwave generation system” for this mission. That all sounds good on paper, the authors acknowledge, but there are very real challenges to increasing technology development between the two countries. Japan's modernization priorities are best viewed through a defensive lens, designed to protect the island nation. That's a contrast to America's posture in the region, which tends more towards force projection. In addition, Japan lags in military space and cyber operations compared to the U.S., making cross-domain collaboration challenging in several areas. Those negotiations have also been impacted by “different perceptions of the nature of joint technology research,” the authors write. “U.S. defense officials have ‘emphasized operational concepts and capability requirements as the basis for collaboration,' while Japanese officials have ‘continued to focus on technology development and industrial base interests.'” Other challenges include Japan's 1 percent-of-GDP cap on defense spending, as well as the state of Japan's defense industry, which until 2014 was focused entirely on serving the Japanese government's needs. Hence, the industry, while technically very competent, is also relatively small, with limited export experiences – and Tokyo has an interest in protecting that industry with favorable contracts. Meanwhile, U.S. firms have concerns about “potentially losing revenue, transfer of sensitive technologies, and the potential replacement of US companies with Japanese ones in critical supply chains,” the authors write. Some of those issues have come to the forefront in the ongoing discussions about what role American firms can play in Japan's ongoing fighter development program. Japan recently rejected an offer by Lockheed Martin of a hybrid F-22/F-35 design, stating that “developing derivatives of existing fighters cannot be a candidate from the perspective of a Japan-led development.” Getting the F-3 deal right will have long term implications for how the two nations develop capabilities together, the authors warn, quoting defense analyst Gregg Rubinstein in saying “Successfully defining a path to U.S.-Japanese collaboration on this program could make the F-3 an alliance-building centerpiece of cooperative defense acquisition” while failure to do so could “undermine prospects for future collaboration in defense capabilities development.” Putting aside the internal issues, any collaboration between the U.S. and Japan has to be considered through the lens it will be see in Beijing and, to a lesser extent, Seoul. “Even marginal differences in perception produce limits to the parameters of U.S.-Japan joint development of, and coordination on, military capabilities. Especially provocative programs like joint hypersonic-missile development will be viewed as escalatory, and will likely generate a response from China,Russia, and/or North Korea that could complicate other trade or geopolitical interests that go beyond Northeast Asia,” the authors warn, noting that China could attempt to exert more pressure on the ASEAN nations as a counterweight. Additionally, South Korea would likely “see substantial U.S.-Japan collaboration not through an adversarial lens, but certainly through the lens of strained relations stemming from both historical and contextual issues, further complicating U.S.-Japan-Republic of Korea trilateral cooperation.” https://www.c4isrnet.com/global/asia-pacific/2020/04/16/four-technologies-japan-and-the-us-should-team-on-to-counter-china/