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October 16, 2023 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

South Korea to hold largest defence show in bid to boost global sales | Reuters

South Korea will kick off its largest-ever defence exhibition this week, as the country seeks to turbocharge its arms sales and showcase a rare appearance by a U.S. nuclear-capable bomber.

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/south-korea-hold-largest-defence-show-bid-boost-global-sales-2023-10-16/

On the same subject

  • US buys additional 248 JLTVs from Oshkosh

    July 6, 2020 | International, Land

    US buys additional 248 JLTVs from Oshkosh

    By: Aaron Mehta WASHINGTON — The U.S. government has placed a new $127 million order for 248 Joint Light Tactical Vehicles from Oshkosh, the company announced Wednesday. The award would provide JLTVs for the U.S. Army, Marine Corps and State Department. “The JLTV was designed to provide our troops with unmatched mission capabilities,” George Mansfield, vice president and general manager of joint programs for Oshkosh Defense, said in a statement. “And while adversaries, terrains, and tactics have all evolved immensely since the vehicle's conception, the JLTV's flexible design allows the light tactical vehicle fleet to evolve at a similar pace.” This contract is the third order placed in the last seven months for JLTV production. A $407.3 million package for 1,240 vehicles to the U.S. Marine Corps, Slovenia and Lithuania was awarded in February. In December, the company received a $803.9 million award for 2,721 vehicles for the American military and ally Montenegro. Oshkosh beat out Humvee-maker AM General and Lockheed Martin in 2015 to build the replacement for the Humvee for both the Army and the Marine Corps. The low-rate initial production contract was worth $6.7 billion, and the entire program is estimated to be worth $30 billion through 2024. Since a production contract was awarded in 2015, Oshkosh says it has delivered 7,500 total vehicles to the U.S. and partners abroad. In its fiscal 2021 budget request, the Army asked for $894.4 million to buy 1,920 JLTVs. However, that number is down from what had initially been projected by the service; as part of the “night court” process, designed to reprioritize the service's investments and projects, the Army is stretching its planned JLTV buy out in order to reinvest dollars to modernization priorities. https://www.defensenews.com/land/2020/07/01/us-buys-another-248-jltvs-from-oshkosh/

  • Coast Guard needs help with IT infrastructure, cloud consolidation

    June 19, 2019 | International, Naval, Other Defence

    Coast Guard needs help with IT infrastructure, cloud consolidation

    by Jackson Barnett The U.S. Coast Guard is seeking input on an IT infrastructure consolidation plan that will help migrate part of its system to the cloud to ensure operators around the world have access to critical networks. The request for sources is the first step in what appears to be a plan for the Coast Gaurd to contract with the private sector on IT infrastructure transformation. The idea is to shift IT services to an “Infrastructure Managed Services” model, one that would contract out infrastructure services to private companies to assist in cybersecurity and network optimization. The move spawned from the Coast Guard's fiscal 2018-22 Strategic Plan, which calls for greater cyber strength and efficient IT infrastructure. “The security environment is also affected by the rising importance of the cyber domain – where adversarial nation states, non-state actors, and individuals are attacking our digital infrastructure and eroding the protections historically provided by our geographic borders,” the strategic plan states. The challenge to secure and re-structure the Coast Guard's networks and IT infrastructure span global operations, different security classifications and many data centers, according to the request. The networks support more than 54,000 users worldwide at 823 global sites. The current networks are based on a slew of Microsoft operating systems, some more than a decade old. The Coast Guard has been watching the development of Department of Defense's JEDI cloud contract, Adm. Karl Schultz said in August. Now, the Coast Guard hopes to migrate some of its data to the cloud while keeping some of it on the government servers it operates. “USCG recognizes it must partner with Industry” the request states. https://www.fedscoop.com/coast-guard-cloud-it-consolidation-procurement/

  • The Army wants a self-directed combat vehicle to engage enemies

    December 7, 2018 | International, Land, C4ISR

    The Army wants a self-directed combat vehicle to engage enemies

    By: Adam Stone While the commercial world tiptoes toward the notion of a self-driving car, the military is charging forward with efforts to make autonomy a defining characteristic of the battlefield. Guided by artificial intelligence, the next-generation combat vehicle now in development will have a range of autonomous capabilities. Researchers at Army's Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center (CERDEC) foresee these capabilities as a driving force in future combat. “Because it is autonomous, it can be out in front to find and engage the enemy while the soldiers remain safely in the rear,” said Osie David, chief engineer for CERDEC's mission command capabilities division. “It can draw fire and shoot back while allowing soldiers to increase their standoff distance.” Slated to come online in 2026, the next-gen combat vehicle won't be entirely self-driving. Rather, it will likely include a combination of autonomous and human-operated systems. To realize this vision, though, researchers will have to overcome a number of technical hurdles. Getting to autonomy An autonomous system would need to have reliable access to an information network in order to receive commands and relay intel to human operators. CERDEC's present work includes an effort to ensure such connections. “We need resilient comms in really radical environments — urban, desert, trees and forests. All those require new and different types of signal technologies and communications protocols,” David said. Developers also are thinking about the navigation. How would autonomous vehicles find their way in a combat environment in which adversaries could deny or degrade GPS signals? “Our role in this is to provide assured localization,” said Dr. Adam Schofield, integration systems branch chief for the positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) division. In order for autonomous systems to navigate successfully, they've got to know where they are. If they rely solely on GPS, and that signal gets compromised, “that can severely degrade the mission and the operational effectiveness,” he said. CERDEC, therefore, is developing ways to ensure that autonomous systems can find their way, using LIDAR, visual cues and a range of other detection mechanisms to supplement GPS. “We want to use all the sensors that are on there to support PNT,” Schofield said. In one scenario, for example, the combat vehicle might turn to an unmanned air asset for ISR data in order to keep itself oriented. “As that UAV goes ahead, maybe it can get a better position fix in support of that autonomous vehicle,” he said. Even as researchers work out the details around comms and navigation, they also are looking to advances in artificial intelligence, or AI, to further empower autonomy. The AI edge AI will likely be a critical component in any self-directed combat vehicle. While such vehicles will ultimately be under human control, they will also have some capacity to make decisions on their own, with AI as the software engine driving those decisions. “AI is a critical enabler of autonomy,” said CERDEC AI expert Dr. Peter Schwartz. “If autonomy is the delegation of decision-making authority, in that case to a robotic system, you need some confidence that it is going to make the right decision, that it will behave in a way that you expect.” AI can help systems to reach that level of certainty, but there's still work to be done on this front. While the basics of machine learning are well-understood, the technology still requires further adaptation in order to fulfill a military-specific mission, the CERDEC experts said. “AI isn't always good at detecting military things,” David said. “It may be great at recognizing cats, because people post millions of pictures of cats on the internet, but there isn't an equally large data set of images of adversaries hiding in bushes.” As AI strategies evolve, military planners will be looking for techniques that enable the computer to differentiate objects and actions in a military-specific context. “We need special techniques and new data sets in order to train the AI to recognize these things in all different environments,” he said. “How do you identify an enemy tank and not confuse that with an ordinary tractor trailer? There has to be some refinement in that.” Despite such technical hurdles, the CERDEC team expressed confidence that autonomy will in fact be a central feature of tomorrow's ISR capability. They say the aim is create autonomous systems that can generate tactical information in support of war-fighter needs. “As we are creating new paradigms of autonomy, we want to keep it soldier-centric,” David said. “There is filtering and analyzing involved so you don't overwhelm the user with information, so you are just providing them with the critical information they need to make a decision.” https://www.c4isrnet.com/unmanned/2018/11/30/the-army-wants-a-self-directed-combat-vehicle-to-engage-enemies

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