Russian Su-57 Jet Controls Su-35 Aircraft ‘Swarm’ in Teaming Experiment

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  June 19, 2019 | International, Aerospace

  Raytheon wins $234 million US Navy contract for 23 Joint Precision Approach and Landing Systems

  Raytheon Company PARIS, June 17, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Raytheon (NYSE: RTN) won a four-year $234 million initial low-rate production contract from the U.S. Navy to outfit all of its nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships with 23 Joint Precision Approach and Landing Systems. JPALS is a GPS-based precision landing system that guides aircraft to precision landings in all weather and surface conditions. "The U.S. Navy understands how JPALS contributes to their mission success and safety of its people," said Matt Gilligan, vice president of Raytheon's Intelligence, Information and Services business. "Other military services could also benefit from the system's ability to safely land both fixed and rotary-wing aircraft in almost any low-visibility environment." Since 2018, U.S. Marine Corps F-35B Lightning II fighter pilots have used JPALS to guide them onto the USS Wasp amphibious assault ship during deployed operations in what U.S. Navy Captain B. Joseph Hornbuckle III, program manager, Naval Air Traffic Management Systems Program Office called 'the most difficult conditions on Earth." Earlier this year, F-35B pilots participated in two demonstrations of a new expeditionary version of the JPALS system that brings the same precision capability from sea to shore. The proof-of-concept events showed how the GPS-based system could be reconfigured into a mobile version to support landings in a traditional airport setting. Expeditionary JPALS fits in five transit cases and could be repackaged for a variety of small transit vehicles transportable by C-130. Once on the ground, the system can be fully operational in under 90 minutes. To learn more about JPALS visit us here. About Raytheon Raytheon Company, with 2018 sales of $27 billion and 67,000 employees, is a technology and innovation leader specializing in defense, civil government and cybersecurity solutions. With a history of innovation spanning 97 years, Raytheon provides state-of-the-art electronics, mission systems integration, C5I™ products and services, sensing, effects and mission support for customers in more than 80 countries. Raytheon is headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/raytheon-wins-234-million-us-navy-contract-for-23-joint-precision-approach-and-landing-systems-300869596.html

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  December 4, 2019 | International, Aerospace, C4ISR

  The US Air Force wants to network all its weapons together. Will simulators be included?

  By: Valerie Insinna ORLANDO, Fla. — As the U.S. military prepares for the release of its fiscal 2021 budget request, Air Force leaders have made clear that a massive financial hike is needed for multidomain command-and-control efforts to connect weapon systems across the joint force. As part of that initiative, it will also be critical for the military to link together simulators so service members can replicate combat on a massive scale, Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Stephen Wilson said during a speech Tuesday at the Interservice/Industry, Training, Simulation and Education Conference. “I know you spent a lot of time yesterday about how to connect and integrate simulators from across our various weapons systems. I can't overstate how important that is,” he said. “Individual weapon system simulators can help our men and women become proficient tacticians, but it's their ability to integrate and connect that will differentiate us against a peer threat. And no one is going to win alone." Wilson said the Air Force plans to spend “a lot of money in this next five-year defense plan” on multidomain command and control, but he did not detail how much funding the service might ask for, or whether that sum will include investments in technology to network together simulators. The service is still in the earliest stages of identifying how to connect its aircraft and space assets with the joint force to fight advanced, near-peer threats like Russia and China. The same goes for its aircraft simulators, which are largely detached from each other. An Air Force program called Simulator Common Architecture Requirements and Standards, or SCARS, will start to transform the simulation enterprise and make it more interconnected, said Col. Phillip Carpenter, the Air Force's senior materiel leader for the simulators program office. “It's an effort to make the entire portfolio more modular, more open-system,” he told Defense News in an exclusive interview. “I'm not going to say [SCARS] is the solution to all of our problems,” but it will “help lay that groundwork so that we become much more interoperable across the board.” Under SCARS, the Air Force wants to create a common, open architecture for its simulators that will impose stricter cybersecurity standards and make it easier for the service to update simulators with new capabilities or threat information. The goal, Carpenter said, is to have a fleet of simulators that can remotely receive software updates, much like a smartphone. The Air Force released a SCARS request for proposals in December 2018 for a 10-year contract worth up to $900 million, according to Bloomberg. The service intends to award a contract for SCARS in 2020 and has received a lot of interest from industry, Carpenter said. Carpenter was clear that SCARS — at least how it is currently conceived — will not enable the Air Force to carry out the type of scenarios Wilson spoke about: large-scale, simulated air operations involving simulators of many different airframes. To achieve that, “we need to work on some of the security pieces so that we can allow multilevel security or some of these other aspects that would allow totality of these systems to participate and fight like they would actually fight in a real world,” Carpenter explained. But Carpenter believes there is potential for other parts of the Air Force — like its space, cyber and intelligence community — or even the other services to adopt SCARS or an architecture that is compatible with it. “I think there is great potential for SCARS to be more than something for just aircraft simulators,” he said. “If somebody is off building a system outside of our portfolio, if it's built to a common standard, I think that would effectively make all the systems, whether they're in our portfolio or not, more interoperable.” https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/itsec/2019/12/03/the-us-air-force-wants-to-network-all-its-weapons-together-will-simulators-be-included

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  August 25, 2024 | International, Aerospace

  When it comes to military AI, there is no second place

  Opinion: Our guest opinion writer argues that AI must be prioritized across military programs and platforms, or else America risks losing the AI race to China.