Romania aims to buy Abrams tanks, senior army official says

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  June 21, 2018 | International, Security

  Synthetic biology raises risk of new bioweapons, US report warns

  Ian Sample Report warns that swift progress in our ability to manufacture viruses is making us vulnerable to biological attacks The rapid rise of synthetic biology, a futuristic field of science that seeks to master the machinery of life, has raised the risk of a new generation of bioweapons, according a major US report into the state of the art. Advances in the area mean that scientists now have the capability to recreate dangerous viruses from scratch; make harmful bacteria more deadly; and modify common microbes so that they churn out lethal toxins once they enter the body. The three scenarios are picked out as threats of highest concern in a review of the field published on Tuesday by the US National Academy of Sciences at the request of the Department of Defense. The report was commissioned to flag up ways in which the powerful technology might be abused, and to focus minds on how best to prepare. Michael Imperiale, chair of the report committee, and professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Michigan, said the review used only unclassified information and so has no assessment of which groups, if any, might be pursuing novel biological weapons. “We can't say how likely any of these scenarios are,” he said. “But we can talk about how feasible they are.” In the report, the scientists describe how synthetic biology, which gives researchers precision tools to manipulate living organisms, “enhances and expands” opportunities to create bioweapons. “As the power of the technology increases, that brings a general need to scrutinise where harms could come from,” said Peter Carr, a senior scientist at MIT's Synthetic Biology Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. More than 20 years ago, Eckard Wimmer, a geneticist at Stony Brook University in New York, highlighted the potential dangers of synthetic biology in dramatic style when he recreated poliovirus in a test tube. Earlier this year, a team at the University of Alberta built an infectious horsepox virus. The virus is a close relative of smallpox, which may have claimed half a billion lives in the 20th century. Today, the genetic code of almost any mammalian virus can be found online and synthesised. “The technology to do this is available now,” said Imperiale. “It requires some expertise, but it's something that's relatively easy to do, and that is why it tops the list.” Other fairly simple procedures can be used to tweak the genes of dangerous bacteria and make them resistant to antibiotics, so that people infected with them would be untreatable. A more exotic bioweapon might come in the form of a genetically-altered microbe that colonises the gut and churns out poisons. “While that is technically more difficult, it is a concern because it may not look like anything you normally watch out for in public health,” Imperiale said. The report calls on the US government to rethink how it conducts disease surveillance, so it can better detect novel bioweapons, and to look at ways to bolster defences, for example by finding ways to make and deploy vaccines far more rapidly. For every bioweapon the scientists consider, the report sets out key hurdles that, once cleared, will make the weapons more feasible. One bioweapon that is not considered an immediate threat is a so-called gene drive that spreads through a population, rewriting human DNA as it goes. “It's important to recognise that it's easy to come up with a scary-sounding idea, but it's far more difficult to do something practical with it,” said Carr. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/jun/19/urgent-need-to-prepare-for-manmade-virus-attacks-says-us-government-report

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  August 18, 2020 | International, Naval

  In developing robot warships, US Navy wants to avoid another littoral combat ship

  By: David B. Larter WASHINGTON — As the U.S. Navy pushes forward with developing its large unmanned surface vessel, envisioned as a kind of external missile magazine that will tag along with larger manned surface combatants, a growing consensus is forming that the service needs to get its requirements and systems right before making a big investment. Congress has, for the second year in a row, slowed the development of the large unmanned surface vessel, or LUSV, in the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act. The language in this year's bill would essentially force the Navy to have a working prototype with all systems tested and fully integrated before using procurement dollars for the boats. In an exclusive July 16 interview with Defense News, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday said that while the marks were frustrating, he agreed with Congress that requirements must be concrete right up front. “The approach has to be deliberate,” Gilday said. “We have to make sure that the systems that are on those unmanned systems with respect to the [hull, mechanical and electrical system], that they are designed to requirement, and perform to requirement. And most importantly, are those requirements sound? “I go back to: Do I really need a littoral combat ship to go 40 knots? That's going to drive the entire design of the ship, not just the engineering plant but how it's built. That becomes a critical factor. If you take your eye off the ball with respect to requirements, you can find yourself drifting. That has to be deliberate.” Gilday has called for the Navy to pursue a comprehensive “Unmanned Campaign Plan” that creates a path forward for developing and fielding unmanned systems in the air, on the sea and under the water. Right now, the effort exists in a number of different programs that may not all be pulling in the same direction, he said. “What I've found is that we didn't necessarily have the rigor that's required across a number of programs that would bring those together in a way that's driven toward objectives with milestones,” Gilday told Defense News. “If you took a look at [all the programs], where are there similarities and where are there differences? Where am I making progress in meeting conditions and meeting milestones that we can leverage in other experiments? “At what point do I reach a decision point where I drop a program and double down on a program that I can accelerate?” ‘A lot of risk' According to the Congressional Research Service, the Navy's approach is to adapt a commercial design and put a bare-bones crew onboard while the service figures out how to move toward a fully unmanned system. “The Navy wants LUSVs to be low-cost, high-endurance, reconfigurable ships based on commercial ship designs, with ample capacity for carrying various modular payloads — particularly anti-surface warfare (ASuW) and strike payloads, meaning principally anti-ship and land-attack missiles,” the report read. But some very basic questions still need to be answered about how a large unmanned, or lightly manned, surface vessel might work, said Matthew Collette, an associate professor of naval architecture and marine engineering at the University of Michigan. “One of the biggest challenges people are realizing now is the machinery systems and keeping the systems operational for six months [over a deployment],” Collette said. “If you think about a ship today, there are daily machinery rounds and constant preventative maintenance. The Navy has its casualty reporting system, and the commercial world has something very similar. And over six months, that's a lot of work that's not getting done on the autonomous ship. “And there are two approaches to this that I've seen: One is you design it essentially like a space craft where you really limit what you do with the ship to make it as robust as possible and really accept that today that means less capability. We're just not going to be able to throw all the bells and whistles on that kind of a ship today. And for the smaller size ships, that's a good approach. “But the other approach is to try and monitor it and put in a lot of redundancy and figure out how we get this system reimagined so it can do a six-month deployment. And I can't really assess where we are with that at this point, I just don't have enough insight to know if that's six months away. Is it six years? Is it never reachable?” It's unclear that adapting an existing design will get the Navy where it needs to be, in large part because the Navy is going somewhere radically different from what the commercial offshore oil and gas or ferry industry is going, Collette said. “It's important to note that where the commercial industry is going is different from where the Navy wants to go,” Collette said. “In the commercial marine industry, you have a licensed captain ashore who is able to teleport to the ship whenever it needs human intervention. And we're really talking about short runs, like inter-European runs of six hours, 12 hours, and working their way out from there. “The Navy has really asked for a much harder, much more difficult problem. And you could see how something like the [extra-large unmanned underwater vehicle] as a technology trail that works toward this direction, but jumping toward something like large unmanned surface vessel, is a big, big step with a lot of risk.” https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2020/08/17/in-developing-robot-warships-us-navy-wants-to-avoid-another-littoral-combat-ship/

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  July 9, 2020 | International, Aerospace

  US Army’s Future Vertical Lift program will transform industry, so we must get it right

  By: Andrew Hunter and Rhys McCormick It is rare when technological innovation delivers change that fundamentally reshapes military operations. Helicopters made one of these rare breakthroughs after World War II. The ability to support land operations with vertical lift aircraft fundamentally changed how militaries moved on the battlefield. However, the shape of military operations supported by today's helicopters reflect their capabilities and limitations in terms of speed, range and lift capacity. The Army's Future Vertical Lift efforts are designed to reshape military operations by surpassing the limits imposed by today's systems. It is less commonly appreciated, however, that future vertical lift, or FVL, aircraft may do just as much to reshape the vertical lift industry as they do military operations. To deliver the capabilities FVL requires affordably — in development, production and sustainment — industry will have to leverage new design and production techniques that deliver critical components with high quality and moderate cost. Key parts such as rotor blades and rotor heads are big cost drivers. Designing these parts for FVL means redesigning the supply chains and manufacturing processes that produce them. For the smaller companies that make up the lower tiers of the supply chain, this will require them to fundamentally change how their production process works. We recently completed a study that looked at the implications of the Army's Future Vertical Lift project for the industrial base. What became clear in this review is that there are both opportunities and risks in making the transition to FVL. Substantial investment is required by both the Army and industry, and not everyone in industry will make it. However, this transition also offers significant opportunities to leverage emerging technologies such as additive manufacturing, robotics, artificial intelligence, digital twins and data analytics to achieve the Army's objectives. The Army's management will be key in ensuring that industry is able to get the most out of new design and production methods, reconfigured supply chains, and a reshaped workforce. The Army's key tools for managing the transition include its ability to provide an addressable market for the industrial base that attracts the necessary FVL investment, and its ability to align industry incentives with the Army's core goals. The addressable market for industry is not just the Army's future programs, but also the sustainment of legacy platforms. For much of the supply chain, the sustainment market is a huge part of their bottom line. The Army's total vertical lift-addressable market for industry is roughly $8-10 billion annually over the next decade. Although there are some concerns whether that level of spending is feasible while procuring two vertical lift programs simultaneously, previous research by the Center for Strategic and International Studies found that future attack reconnaissance aircraft and future long-range assault aircraft can be accommodated at historical Army modernization funding levels. Of that $8-10 billion annual vertical lift spending, operating and support costs will provide the largest share, while research and development as well as acquisition total a little more than $2 billion annually. Given the size of the addressable market, the biggest challenges and risks in transitioning to a new vertical lift industrial base are not among the big prime contractors, but among the smaller suppliers in the industrial base who can't be sure that investing in FVL today will generate the necessary returns tomorrow. Unlike the bigger prime contractors, these lower-tier suppliers have a much different risk appetite and may struggle with making the upfront investments to build components in new ways. Supporting the supply chain in making this transition is critical to meeting the Army's cost and schedule objectives, which highlights how important incentives are in the Army's approach. The Army's biggest incentive to industry is to provide predictability by keeping FVL program requirements consistent and clear through the development process so that industry can plan and invest. To date, the Army has done this. It should continue to do so. Additionally, the Army can incentivize industry to make upfront investments now that deliver cost savings later. Given that sustainment costs account for 68 percent of rotary-wing costs, these investments are critical. Furthermore, it is in the Army's interest to sustain competition throughout the development process as it moves closer to picking winners. Competition is the strongest incentive for industry. Finally, the Army should be cognizant that incentives will change as FVL moves from development to production, and its management approach will need to evolve. The Army has the key ingredients in place for FVL if it successfully guides the industrial base through this transition. While that is a tall order, our analysis of the Army's FVL plans suggests they begin on solid ground and are well-informed by the technological and affordability realities. One final factor in FVL's success will be sustaining congressional support by being clear and consistent in communicating and executing the Army's plans. https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2020/07/07/us-armys-future-vertical-lift-program-will-transform-industry-so-we-must-get-it-right/