State clears UK’s planned $1B buy of Joint Air-to-Ground Missile

On the same subject

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  July 15, 2022 | International, Aerospace

  German lawmakers greenlight $344 million support package for future P-8 fleet

  Questions are still swirling here about how many additional Poseidon aircraft, if any, the government will move to buy.

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  August 16, 2019 | International, Aerospace

  Air Force Tests Contraption That Can Turn Any Plane Into a Robot Plane

  Air Force scientists have announced that they had tested a robot kit that can turn virtually any plane into a self-piloting drone, through a program called ROBOpilot. Why is that important? For starters, planes and drones are expensive. The drone shot down over Iran last month cost $220 million. For years the military has rushed to fund fabulous, exquisite drones of all shapes and sizes. Some, like the $15 million MQ-9 Reaper from General Atomics, are cheaper than manned military aircraft. But the big ones are more expensive than many types of civilian sport aircraft. “Imagine being able to rapidly and affordably convert a general aviation aircraft, like a Cessna or Piper, into an unmanned aerial vehicle, having it fly a mission autonomously, and then returning it back to its original manned configuration,” said Dr. Alok Das, senior scientist with the Air Force Research Lab's, or AFRL's, Center for Rapid Innovation, in a statement. “All of this is achieved without making permanent modifications to the aircraft.” AFRL has partnered with DZYNE Technologies to produce the kit. The system interacts with flight controls just like a human pilot, pushing all the correct buttons, flipping the switches, manipulating the yoke and throttle and watching the gages. “At the same time, the system uses sensors, like GPS and an Inertial Measurement Unit [essentially a way for a machine to locate itself in space without GPS] for situational awareness and information gathering. A computer analyzes these details to make decisions on how to best control the flight,” AFRL said in a statement. Once the flight is done, the kit can be pulled out and the plane reconverted to one requiring a human pilot. On August 9, the system completed a two-hour test flight at Utah's Dugway Proving Ground. In theory, the same or a similar technology could be applied to expensive fighter aircraft. And the military has said that the next, sixth-generation fighter will be optionally manned. But the military has expressed reservations about allowing autonomous software to undertake lethal actions, so don't expect to see ROBOpilot doing combat missions anytime soon. https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2019/08/air-force-tests-contraption-can-turn-any-plane-robot-plane/159211/

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  February 5, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  Brexit turns up the heat on access rules to EU defense coffers

  By: Sebastian Sprenger COLOGNE, Germany — European leaders should modify rules to include Britain and the United States in their defense-cooperation efforts, ending a simmering dispute that could turn toxic over time, according to the director general of the European Union Military Staff. “We will find a way [on] how to engage the United States and other third-party states,” Lt. Gen. Esa Pulkkinen told Defense News in an interview in Washington last week. But he cautioned that the unresolved issue could become a “permanent” thorn in the side of relations with the United States, in particular. At issue are the conditions for access to the multibillion-dollar European Defence Fund and its associated collaboration scheme, the Permanent Structured Cooperation, or PESCO. The funds are meant to nurse the nascent defense capabilities of the continent's member states, with the idea that NATO would be strengthened in the process. Officials have left the door open for the U.K., which recently left the EU, as well as its defense companies to partake in individual projects, given the country's importance as a key European provider of military capabilities. But the exact terms have yet to be spelled out, requiring a balancing act between framing member states as primary PESCO beneficiaries while providing a way in for key allies. Defense officials in Washington previously criticized the EU initiative, complaining that it would needlessly shut out American contractors. European leaders countered that the program is first and foremost meant to streamline the bloc's disparate military capabilities, stressing that avenues for trans-Atlantic cooperation exist elsewhere. “EDF and PESCO isn't everything in the world,” Pulkkinen said in Washington. “We are not going to violate any U.S. defense industrial interests. “The defense industry is already so globalized, they will find a way [on] how to work together.” While European governments have circulated draft rules for third-party access to the EU's defense-cooperation mechanism, a final ruling is not expected until discussions about the bloc's budget for 2021-2027 are further along, according to issue experts. Officials at the European Defence Agency, which manages PESCO, are taking something of a strategic pause to determine whether the dozens of projects begun over the past few years are delivering results. Sophia Besch, a senior research fellow with the Centre for European Reform, said the jury is still out over that assessment. “The big question is whether the European Union can prove that the initiatives improve the operational capabilities,” she said. Aside from the bureaucratic workings of the PESCO scheme, the German-French alliance — seen as an engine of European defense cooperation — has begun to sputter, according to Besch. In particular, Berlin and Paris cannot seem to come together on operational terms — whether in the Sahel or the Strait of Hormuz — at a time when Europe's newfound defense prowess runs the risk of becoming a mostly theoretical exercise, Besch said. The EU members' ambitions remain uneven when it comes to defense, a situation that is unlikely to change anytime soon, according to a recent report by the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “The dispute around the concept of strategic autonomy has not led to any constructive consensus, and it will likely affect debates in the future,” the document stated. “Member states and the EU institutions will continue to promote different concepts that encapsulate their own vision of defense cooperation.” https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2020/02/04/brexit-turns-up-the-heat-on-access-rules-to-eu-defense-coffers