RTXs Raytheon awarded $1.2 billion contract to provide additional Patriot air and missile defense systems to Germany

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  June 16, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land

  Nuclear modernization speeding up as arms control on the brink: report

  By: Aaron Mehta   WASHINGTON — Overall nuclear warheads in the world decreased in 2019, but broad modernization efforts by the biggest nuclear countries — along with a degradation of arms control agreements around the world — could mean a dangerous mix for the future, according to an annual report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, or SIPRI. The organization estimated that at the end of 2019, nine countries possessed a total of 13,400 nuclear warheads, down from the 13,865 estimated in SIPRI's previous report, which in turn was a drop from 14,465 the year before. The reductions were primarily due to numbers dropping under the New START nuclear agreement between Russia and the U.S., which experts largely expect not to be renewed at the start of the new year. Russia is the largest holder of nuclear warheads, according to SIPRI's numbers, with 6,735 total, of which 1,570 are deployed. The U.S. follows at 5,800, with 1,750 deployed. The two countries account for over 90 percent of the world's nuclear arsenal. The United Kingdom (250 total, 120 deployed) and France (290 total, 280 deployed) are the other two nations believed to have deployed nuclear warheads. China (320 total), India (150 total), Pakistan (160 total), Israel (90 total) and North Korea, (30-40 total) round out SIPRI's list. Both the U.S. and Russia are engaged in expensive, widespread modernization efforts of its nuclear arsenal. America is upgrading both its legacy nuclear warheads with new designs, as well as updating its fleet of nuclear-capable bombers, submarines and ICBMs. Earlier this year, the Pentagon deployed for the first time the W76-2, a low-yield variant of the nuclear warhead traditionally used on the Trident submarine launched missile, and early design work is being done on another new submarine launched warhead design, known as the W93. Russia, meanwhile, has spoken openly about developing hypersonic weapons that could be nuclear equipped and has invested in novel weapons such as the Status-6, an underwater drone that could be equipped with a nuclear warhead. Moscow has also vocalized new deployment plans for its weapons and on June 2 made official a policy that it may use nuclear weapons in response to a conventional attack. Those investments by the world's two nuclear superpowers come against a backdrop of the collapse of numerous arms control agreements. 2019 saw the formal end of the Intermediate Range and Shorter Range Missiles (INF) treaty, and in May the U.S. announced its intention to withdraw from the Open Skies arms control verification agreement. The last major arms control agreement between Russia and the U.S. is New START, which is set to expire in February of 2021. In recent weeks the U.S. has announced its intention to start negotiations on a new arms control agreement that would include China. However, Chinese officials have repeatedly and categorically denied that it would be willing to join such an agreement, and experts largely view any efforts to create a trilateral nuclear arms control pact as a New START replacement are non-starters, leading to widespread agreement among analyst that New START is likely doomed under the Trump administration. “The deadlock over New START and the collapse of the 1987 Soviet–US Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate Range and Shorter Range Missiles (INF) Treaty in 2019 suggest that the era of bilateral nuclear arms control agreements between Russia and the USA might be coming to an end,” said Shannon Kile, Director of SIPRI's nuclear disarmament, arms control and non-proliferation program. “The loss of key channels of communication between Russia and the USA that were intended to promote transparency and prevent misperceptions about their respective nuclear force postures and capabilities could potentially lead to a new nuclear arms race.” https://www.defensenews.com/smr/nuclear-arsenal/2020/06/14/nuclear-modernization-speeding-up-as-arms-control-on-the-brink-report/

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  December 17, 2018 | International, Naval

  Australia, Naval Group conclude sub negotiations

  By: Nigel Pittaway MELBOURNE, Australia – Australian Defence Minister Christopher Pyne confirmed that the Australian government has finally concluded negotiations for the formal signing of a strategic partnering agreement for 12 large conventionally-powered attack submarines from Naval Group. Australia is acquiring the vessels under its $50 billion (U.S. $36.12 billion) Project Sea 1000 (Future Submarine) to replace its existing fleet of six Collins Submarines from the early 2030s. The subs will be the ‘Attack' class with the lead vessel named HMAS Attack. They will be fabricated in Australia to a design previously known as the Shortfin Barracuda 1A. Recent local media reports have suggested that negotiations between the parties had stalled, placing the government's timeline for the Collins replacement in jeopardy, but Pyne said on Thursday the program was still on track. “There's been a lot of ill-informed mythmaking around the negotiations but I'm very happy to say today the negotiations are complete,” Pyne said during sod-turning event at the site of the Future Submarine Construction Yard at Osborne in South Australia. “The strategic planning agreement will be signed in February next year and we can continue to get on with the submarine project, which has been under the design and mobilization contract for the last two years.” Declining to provide details of the intricacies of the agreement due to their commercial nature, Pyne said the negotiations were officially concluded at an Australian Government National Security Committee meeting in Melbourne on Dec. 10. “Suffice to say the Australian government's interests, the Australian taxpayer's interests, have been taken care of,” he said. “Naval Group Australia will deliver 12 regionally-superior submarines on time and on budget.” Australia's Chief of Navy, Vice Adm. Mark Noonan, also denied reports of an emerging capability gap between the retirement of the first Collins submarines and the Attack boats entering service, which some analysts have suggested might require a ‘Plan B' to be formulated. “I don't believe that's the case,” he told reporters. “We've got a very solid plan to ensure that there is no gap in our nation's submarine capability, and there is a very advanced plan that will see a number of our current Collins class submarines going through a life of type extension program, which will ensure that capability gap doesn't exist.” https://www.defensenews.com/global/asia-pacific/2018/12/14/australia-naval-group-conclude-sub-negotiations/

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  November 7, 2018 | International, Naval, C4ISR

  The chief of naval research on AI: ‘If we don’t all dogpile on this thing, were going to find ourselves behind’

  By: Jill Aitoro Most of us are comfortable with Suri, or Alexa, or “Hey, Google.” But many will tell you artificial intelligence and autonomy in the context of military operations is a whole a different animal. That said, if you ask Rear Admiral David Hahn, one factor remains the same: the need for trust. Understand the algorithm and the consequences, he argues, but then relinquish (some) control. He shared his vision of AI in the military in an interview following the Defense News Conference in September. Much of the discussion around artificial intelligence and autonomy involves the proper role of machine versus human. Where do you stand? We're at an inflection point for what technology will allow us to do. For artificial intelligence that could be brought to bear in the military context, there has been anexpectation that the human is always going to be in control. But as the sophistication of these algorithms and the sophistication of the application of the tools now out there mature, and are brought into the operational space, we need to get at a place of trust. [We need trust] between the algorithm, what's behind that curtain, and our ability as the humans to agree that the decision or the space that it's going to operate in – the context in which its making that decision – is understood by us. And that more and more is going to have to happen at machine speed, because when machines are interacting with machines, we're going to have to comfortably move from a human in the loop to a human on the loop. That doesn't mean it's an unsupervised act; it means we understand it well enough to trust it. So, there is relinquishing of control? There is, but there are clearly pieces of our system today where we do that. That happens when you let your car park itself – you relinquish that control and trust that the machine is not going to run into the grocery cart behind you or the car next to you. That's already part of the conversation. And as we get more used to machines performing, and performing accurately over and over and over, our ability to trust these machines [increases], if we understand the algorithm and the consequence. It's not ‘I just ran into a shopping cart' if the consequence we're talking about is the release of weapons, or something along those lines; but we've gotten to the point where we're comfortable [because of our understanding of the technology]. We had similar conversations in recent years on cybersecurity, in terms of confidence in the technology, whether we could be sure networks are properly protected, and accepting a degree of risk. Has progress there helped with progress in AI? I think it's helping and it will continue to drive us toward this human-machine teaming environment that we all see coming. There are clearly pieces of our system that make us uncomfortable. But we see more and more, that if we don't take the action to allow it to occur, we might as well have not even created the tool. It's a shift in culture, beyond policy. Is that happening yet? Or is it too soon to expect that? I don't think we're too early, and I think it's happening. And it's going to be one of those things where we didn't know it was happening, then we find ourselves there. Ten years ago, the App Store opened. Can you imagine a world without the App Store and what that's enabled you to do in your daily life with your smartphone? The young people today are almost at a point where there was never a world without a smartphone, there was never a world without an App Store. If you start at that point, this is not a big leap. It's happening around us, and we just need to find a way to keep up. Looking ahead, 5 or 10 years, how do you see AI being used in an operational capacity? The limiting factor is not going to be the tools. To borrow a phrase, the ‘democratization' of the tools that are associated with developing AI capabilities will allow anybody to work on the data. Our challenge will be whether we have harnessed our own data and done it in a way where we can make the connections between relevant data sets to optimize the mission effect we could get by applying those tools available to everybody. That's our challenge. And it's a challenge we'll need to figure out within each service, amongst the services in the joint environment, from that joint environment into the same space with partners and allies, from the DoD or military into the industrial base, all while moving seamlessly across academia, and [keeping in mind how] the commercial industry plays. If we don't all dogpile on this thing, were going to find ourselves behind in this great power competition in a very important space. So, establish a playbook so to speak? And recognize that as soon as we've established that playbook, it will change. https://www.c4isrnet.com/it-networks/2018/11/06/the-chief-of-naval-research-on-ai-if-we-dont-all-dogpile-on-this-thing-were-going-to-find-ourselves-behind