Back to news

June 19, 2018 | International, C4ISR

Strict export regulations may be costing US industry billions in foreign sales

WASHINGTON ― A new RAND report assessing the proliferation of unmanned aerial vehicles suggests existing export controls for drones may hurt the U.S. more than it helps.

Limiting U.S. drone exports has left a hole in the global market for the technology, especially in historically U.S.-dominated Middle East markets, which has been readily filled by U.S. competitors — specifically China and Russia. The Trump administration recently unveiled a new set of export policies regarding military technology in an attempt to facilitate the transfer of military technology, but the changes do not change the status of drones under the Missile Technology Control Regime, or MTCR.

How does the MTCR work?

The MTCR is a voluntary export control consortium of 35 nations designed to prevent signatories from proliferating longer-range cruise and ballistic missile technology. The arms control regime was extended to UAVs because early iterations of drones were considered a subset of cruise missile technology due to their active guidance system.

The regime divides missiles into two categories. Category I items are capable of delivering a 500 kg payload more than 300 km. The sale of category I systems is restricted by a “strong presumption of denial,” meaning they are only exported in rare circumstances. The MQ-9 Reaper, RQ-4 Global Hawk and MQ-4 Triton are well-known unmanned systems that fall under this category.

Over the past several years, U.S. partners such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia and UAE were denied requests to purchase American drones, and have since turned to China to purchase comparable systems.

Trump administration officials have been attempting to alter the regime by adding new languagethat would drop any vehicle that flies under 650 kilometers per hour to category II systems. This would make all but the most advanced U.S. systems available for international sale. For example, the MQ-9 Reaper clocks in with a cruise speed of 230 mph or 370 kph, according to an Air Force facts sheet.

Drone proliferation

RAND found that 10 nations operate category I drones, and more than 15 operate near-category I systems that register just below the MTCR's payload and distance restrictions. The report says increased proliferation rates are due to a handful of countries, specifically China, Israel and the United Arab Emirates, who are not party to the MCTR.

More countries are expected to procure drones, which pose a “growing threat to U.S. and allied military operations,” the report says. While category I systems can deploy missiles and other guided munitions, their main threat lies in “their ability to conduct intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) operations against U.S. forces prior to hostilities,” according to RAND. “Adversaries that would otherwise have difficulty detecting U.S. force deployments, monitoring U.S. operations, and maintaining targeting data on U.S. units can employ UAVs to maintain situational awareness of U.S. capabilities”

The report identifies Russia, China and Iran as unfriendly nations that will seek to utilize drones to complicate U.S. military operations.

For example, China and Saudi Arabia recently agreed to set up a UAV manufacturing plant in Saudi Arabia for up to 300 new UAVs, and Italy will receive 20 Hammerhead UAVs from the UAE. The coproduction of regional drone factories “could further exacerbate the proliferation of large UAVs to the degree that these systems are exported to other nations,” according to RAND, and that hurts U.S. industry.

A U.S.-sized hole

Voluntarily restricting U.S. drone exports have allowed competitors to establish themselves in a market Rand expects to “grow from about $6 billion in 2015 to about $12 billion in 2025.”

RAND expect export controls to have a negative impact on the U.S. industrial base, something those in industry already know.

“What you are enabling the competition to do is not just to sell some hardware,” Linden Blue, General Atomic's chief executive, told reporters during an Aug. 16, 2017 roundtable at the company's headquarters in Poway, California. “You're enabling it to build a customer base for at least 20 years, I would say. You're enabling them to build a logistics system. It will take them many years to get to where we are right now, but you're helping them start out. They should be very thankful.”

https://www.defensenews.com/newsletters/unmanned-systems/2018/06/18/strict-export-regulations-may-be-costing-us-industry-billions-in-foreign-sales/

On the same subject

  • Land Systems Integration Team Is Leader in Model-Based Systems Engineering

    August 5, 2019 | International, Naval

    Land Systems Integration Team Is Leader in Model-Based Systems Engineering

    By C. Michaela Judge, Naval Information Warfare Center Atlantic Public Affairs CHARLESTON, S.C. (NNS) -- The Land Systems Integration (LSI) Division at Naval Information Warfare Center (NIWC) Atlantic continues to be an enterprise leader in Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) for their work on land systems modernization and integration. MBSE is an engineering approach that utilizes a common, digital tool suite allowing all team members – from engineer to sponsor – to have awareness, line-of-sight and an understanding of the interaction between the various moving parts across the systems engineering and project lifecycle. LSI's Vehicular Technology Transition (VTT) team incorporates the full range of MBSE techniques into their systems engineering projects to support the Marine Corps and has had great success in continuing this approach in their daily work. “What makes LSI and our team specifically successful is the depth of knowledge in implementation of using the MBSE Tool Suite,” said Tim Turner, VTT team lead. “Our engineering work isn't radically different than any other engineering groups across the Command; it's how we're putting the data in the system and making it transparent to everyone that needs to have access to it.” Though engineers have been performing systems engineering in some capacity for decades, using this model-based approach provides an added advantage to deliver effective and timely solutions to the warfighter. “Our MBSE Tool Suite is a set of seamlessly integrated engineering lifecycle management tools that work together as one,” said Jacob Witmer, VTT team Military GPS User Equipment (MGUE) project lead. “We use these tools to manage requirements and architectures, plan projects, track changes, manage quality, and provide an enterprise library management system where you catalog, organize, use, reuse, manage, and report on any type of software, technology, or business asset.” In the vehicle transition domain, the VTT team utilized MBSE techniques to solve real-world challenges for the warfighter. Most recently, they used MBSE to conduct global positioning system (GPS) integration work conducted on the Joint-Light Tactical Vehicle, the MGUE Program's lead platform. “When we look at all of the people our team has to work with on this integration project, we have to manage a lot of different data, to include where the trucks are manufactured, where GPS is managed, the performance level of the GPS card, the truck integration and more,” said Witmer. “There are a lot of players, managing a lot of data in a lot of different formats from different geographic parts of the country. That's really what the MBSE Tool Suite is designed to do – manage, connect and link the data to see how they impact each other.” One cost-avoidance benefit of using the MBSE Tool Suite, in time and man-hours, includes the ability to quickly build reports. “We can build 150-page project requirements documents in three minutes because the data is already in the Tool Suite,” said Ryan Longshore, VTT team technical lead. “There is an investment in time and energy upfront in loading the data, but a report that would take 30 to 90 days is done in a matter of minutes and everything from that project is captured in the report.” The team's use of MBSE is not only essential to connecting and maintaining data across a project, but also a necessary resource in developing physical models and solutions in a fraction of the time previously needed to fulfill a warfighter requirement. “Our team works within the Systems Integration Laboratory (SIL) to design and test on multiple vehicular platforms,” said Turner. “The lab allows us to execute MBSE across all team functions, from mission thread to risk analysis or program management.” The team maintains physical models for all of the vehicle platforms they support. When a requirement from a sponsor arrives, the team can use tools within the SIL to design and print a three-dimensional piece of hardware and test it on an existing model before they touch a physical vehicle. The team conducts engineering, mechanical and software-related integration testing and design work all within the laboratory. “It's all about testing upfront, learning upfront, failing faster and learning from it and moving on and improving on the design,” said Turner. As the team designs and tests within the lab, they also update the MBSE Tool Suite is to capture lessons learned, integration challenges and real-time project data for all team members to access. “The beauty of the suite being so integrated is that it doesn't matter what type of systems engineering methodology a project uses, the tools can be tailored to meet a myriad of engineering processes and organizing the data by methodology saves countless hours in digging around trying to find historical artifacts,” said Witmer. The team can now complete an integration project that previously took 18 to 36 months as quickly as six to nine months, without sacrificing quality, thanks to the value of MBSE. With VTT and other teams reaping the benefits of MBSE, NIWC Atlantic created a training and workforce development path to work toward a Command-wide adoption of this method. Communities of interest, industry engagements and training events on MBSE methods are a few of the efforts implemented to date. The VTT uses these training approaches, to a smaller-scale, to continue to encourage MBSE implementation and help employees understand the power of using a model-based approach to apply agility in executing warfighter solutions. “We're seeing the benefits and through MBSE my team has the flexibility to fail fast and learn a lot upfront,” said Turner. The team's success with the MBSE Tool Suite is a Command-wide example of how the transparency and connectivity of engineering data help to provide integration solutions to NIWC Atlantic customers with a high confidence of success. As a part of Naval Information Warfare Systems Command, NIWC Atlantic provides systems engineering and acquisition to deliver information warfare capabilities to the naval, joint and national warfighter through the acquisition, development, integration, production, test, deployment, and sustainment of interoperable command, control, communications, computer, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, cyber and information technology capabilities. https://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=110447

  • Foreign training programs could become a priority in Biden administration, experts say

    February 5, 2021 | International, Aerospace

    Foreign training programs could become a priority in Biden administration, experts say

    Augusta Saraiva, Medill News Service As the world witnessed President Joe Biden take his oath of office on Jan. 20, he vowed to “repair our alliances and engage with the world once again” as a “strong and trusted partner for peace, progress and security.” At the Pentagon, that could mean foreign military training programs, some of which came under attack during the Trump administration, could regain their previous status as what former Defense Secretary Mark Esper called a “critical long-term investment.” These programs were harshly criticized in December 2019 when a Saudi trainee at the Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida, killed three sailors and injured eight more in what the FBI deemed a terrorist attack. The shooter was part of the International Military and Education Training initiative, a State and Defense Department joint initiative that, alongside other programs, brings around 6,000 members of foreign militaries to train at U.S. military facilities each year. In the aftermath of the shooting, the Pentagon forbade international military students and their families from possessing firearms and ammunition. And as a result of strong calls from Florida Republican politicians for the Pentagon to reassess foreign military training programs, Esper ordered a review of the programs shortly after the Pensacola incident, but also said he supported them, generally. Even before the incident, the DoD had proposed a 10 percent decrease on the IMET for fiscal year 2020, which began in September 2019. The Senate, however, approved the original budget of almost $115 million. Over the last four years, the Trump administration took other steps to decrease the role of foreign military training programs. In 2019, it shut down a program to train Afghan pilots after nearly half of its participants were found to have deserted. And in an effort to crack down on Islamic militants, the U.S. blocked Pakistani military members from participating in IMET for over a year between 2018 and 2019. Despite the changes in priorities under President Donald Trump, international military training programs continue to be a key pillar of U.S. foreign policy. In 2020, the DoD trained over 31,000 foreign military students in its schoolhouses. It also deployed 55 military advisers to 13 ally countries. Renanah Joyce, a postdoctoral fellow at the International Security Program at Harvard University, said that DoD “has taken steps to improve its assessment, monitoring and evaluation of foreign military training programs, but still really struggles to answer pretty basic questions about the return on investment.” “One of the one of the reasons why the U.S. government chronically struggled to answer questions about the return on investment is that it tries to achieve so many things with the same tool,” Joyce said, adding that the Biden administration should “think really carefully about not to treat training as sort of a silver bullet, but to think clearly about what the most important strategic goals are.” To change this landscape, in 2020, the Senate Committee on Appropriations recommended that the State Department implemented a more detailed IMET monitoring and evaluation plan, as well as maintain a record of each participant's “subsequent military or defense ministry career and current position and location post-program.” It also urged the inclusion of more women in IMET. This revamp is likely to continue under Biden, who is also likely to continue treating foreign military training programs as a key component of U.S. foreign policy, experts say. “Of all things to be cut in the United States defense budget, this will likely not be one of them, primarily, because it seems very clear from Biden's appointees that the new administration is very concerned with shoring up relations with partners and allies,” said Jonathan Caverley, a professor of strategy at the Naval War College. With the rise of military competition China and the U.S., however, military training programs are likely to experience a pivot in the composition of its student body, Caverley says. The Biden administration is likely to focus on “competition with China, rather than confrontation,” and that could translate into more training for members of Asian militaries. “Rather than force on force, it's more of a competition in third party locations, very similar to the Cold War,” he said. “You will see that fewer trainees will come from Afghanistan, from Iraq, from various countries in the Gulf, and you'll see much more of an emphasis on Asian states.” The Pentagon declined to comment on the future of the programs at this point. https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2021/02/03/foreign-training-programs-could-become-a-priority-in-biden-administration-experts-say/

  • Saab heads EU industry push for a drone collision-avoidance kit

    February 23, 2021 | International, Aerospace

    Saab heads EU industry push for a drone collision-avoidance kit

    The European Detect and Avoid System is meant to ensure unmanned and manned aviation can co-exist safely in the same airspace.

All news