February 6, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, C4ISR

The Navy's Surprise Unmanned Fighter Is a Glimpse of War's Near Future

In a surprise announcement, the U.S. Navy revealed on Tuesday that it had successfully flown tests involving unmanned versions of the EA-18G Growler electronic attack fighter. The tests involved a single manned EA-18G controlling two unmanned versions of the same aircraft, opening up the possibility that the U.S. Navy could fly armed unmanned aircraft sooner than originally thought.

The test, conducted by the U.S. Navy and Boeing, was undertaken by the U.S. Navy's flight test wing at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland. According to a C4ISRNET, a single EA-18G Growler controlled two unmanned Growlers in the air.

The test is notable for several reasons. One, the Navy was not known to be working on unmanned systems other than the MQ-25 Stingray, a future drone tanker set to join the fleet in the mid-2020s. Second, the ability to convert a manned fighter such as the EA-18G Growler into an unmanned aircraft was also previously unknown.

The EA-18G Growler is an electronic attack airplane. The EA-18 is based on the F/A-18F Super Hornet, has a crew of two, and is designed to escort Super Hornets on high risk air strikes. The Growler carries both a jamming pod designed to interfere with enemy radars and communications, preventing enemy air defenses from acquiring inbound aircraft and coordinating their attacks. The Growler also carries HARM anti-radar missiles, which detect the probing beams of enemy air defense radars and follow them to their source, destroying them. Without radars to guide them, many types of air defense missiles become unusable in combat.

The Growler's electronic warfare mission is particularly high risk, placing the jet and its crew between the strike fighters it escorts and enemy missiles. That makes it a good candidate for the unmanned mission, where the loss of an aircraft won't result in the loss of a crew.

The Growler and the Navy's main strike fighter, the Super Hornet, share 90 percent of their parts and systems. This makes it simpler to maintain both aircraft and allows the Growler to keep up with Super Hornets on missions. It also likely means that the Super Hornet can be unmanned, and possibly controlled by other Super Hornets.

This test also reinforces the Navy's seriousness about unmanned aviation. The service caught considerable flak in the 2010s after testing the X-47B unmanned aerial vehicle—and then promptly shelved it. The service greenlighted the new MQ-25 Stingray carrier-based drone, but made it a tanker instead of a fighter or strike aircraft. Now we know that there's been an interest in unmanned aviation all along. But instead of building new unmanned aircraft, the Navy decided to leverage its fleet of hundreds of manned aircraft, devoting resources into converting them into unmanned platforms.

Now it seems unmanned aircraft will almost certainly be an important weapon in the Navy's arsenal for future missions. Although drones can be controlled by crews on the ground on the other side of the planet, enemy electronic attack forces will be doing their best to interfere with U.S. forces, attempting to jam communications between a drone and its controllers. A manned aircraft could control multiple drones, providing instructions through unjammable short range communications.

For now, it's still important to have a human around.

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April 2, 2019 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security, Other Defence

Défense européenne : arrêtons de déclamer, détaillons !
(B2) Il ne se passe pas de mois désormais sans qu'un dirigeant en responsabilité au niveau européen ne présente une idée ‘nouvelle' pour faire avancer l'Europe de la défense. En soi, c'est intéressant, cela anime le débat. Mais il serait nécessaire d'en savoir plus. Une foison d'entreprises On a mis en place une coopération structurée permanente. Puis est venue une initiative européenne d'intervention, dérivée d'une idée présentée par Emmanuel Macron il y a 18 mois, en septembre 2017. Ensuite sont venues plusieurs déclarations franco-allemandes (à Meseberg en juin 2018 et Aix-La-Chapelle en janvier 2019) qui ont évoqué une nouvelle solidarité militaire entre les deux pays et un conseil de sécurité de l'UE. Puis sont venues des déclarations de plusieurs leaders européens — tels le Français Emmanuel Macron, l'Allemand Angela Merkel, l'Espagnol Pedro Sanchez — annonçant un projet, « à terme », d'armée européenne (1). Des dirigeants de premier plan. Enfin, Emmanuel Macron a souhaité mettre en place un nouveau traité de défense avec non seulement l'Allemagne mais aussi le Royaume-Uni définissant une nouvelle clause de défense mutuelle et ce fameux Conseil de sécurité européen. Sans oublier le fameux porte-avion commun, que voudrait développer la CDU d'Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer. Cesser de mettre en bouche et expliquer Il serait peut-être désormais temps que les idées cessent d'être mises en bouche, mais qu'on arrive à saisir ce qu'elles recouvrent exactement. Paris et Berlin n'ont pas tout à fait peut-être la même idée du Conseil européen de sécurité ni de la défense européenne, il serait intéressant que ces nuances soient clarifiées pour que le débat puisse s'engager concrètement. Il serait aussi intéressant d'avoir un peu de cohérence dans tout ce feu d'artifice d'idées merveilleuses. Expliquer : une nécessité démocratique Les responsables politiques devraient prendre l'habitude, dans leurs grands discours, d'accompagner ceux-ci d'une petite notice explicative, détaillant en quelques phrases, comment leurs belles idées doivent être comprises. Cela aurait un intérêt : éviter des incompréhensions, permettre au débat de s'engager, faire avancer les projets. Cela aurait un avantage : clarifier si on est dans l'effet de manche, l'agitation ou le projet, l'action. Cela répondrait tout simplement à une nécessité démocratique. https://www.bruxelles2.eu/2019/03/31/arretons-de-declamer-detaillons/
August 17, 2020 | International, Land, C4ISR

‘No lines on the battlefield’: Pentagon’s new war-fighting concept takes shape
By: Aaron Mehta WASHINGTON — For most of this year, Pentagon planners have been developing a new joint war-fighting concept, a document meant to guide how the Defense Department fights in the coming decades. Now, with an end-of-year deadline fast approaching, two top department officials believe the concept is coalescing around a key idea — one that requires tossing decades of traditional thinking out the window. “What I've noticed is that, as opposed to everything I've done my entire career, the biggest difference is that in the future there will be no lines on the battlefield,” Gen. John Hyten, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during an Aug. 12 event hosted by the Hudson Institute. The current structure, Hyten said, is all about dividing areas of operations. “Wherever we go, if we have to fight, we established the forward edge of the battle area, we've established the fire support coordination line, the forward line of troops, and we say: ‘OK, Army can operate here. Air Force can operate here,' ” Hyten explained. “Everything is about lines” now, he added. But to function in modern contested environments, “those lines are eliminated.” What does that mean in practice? Effectively, Hyten — who will be a keynote speaker at September's Defense News Conference — laid out a vision in which every force can both defend itself and have a deep-strike capability to hold an enemy at bay, built around a unified command-and-control system. “A naval force can defend itself or strike deep. An air force can defend itself or strike deep. The Marines can defend itself or strike deep,” he said. “Everybody.” That “everybody” includes international partners, Hyten added, as the U.S. operates so often in a coalition framework that this plan only works if it can integrate others. And for the entire structure to succeed, the Pentagon needs to create the Joint All-Domain Command and Control capability currently under development. “So that's the path we've been going down for a while. And it's starting to actually mature and come to fruition now,” Hyten said. The day before Hyten's appearance, Victorino Mercado, assistant secretary of defense for strategy, plans and capabilities, talked with a small group of reporters, during which he noted: “We had disparate services [with] their concepts of fighting. We never really had a manner to pull all the services together to fight as a coherent unit.” Mercado also said the war-fighting concept will directly “drive some of our investments” in the future and tie together a number of ongoing efforts within the department — including the individual combatant command reviews and the Navy's shipbuilding plan. “I can tell you there's some critical components [from those reviews] — how you command and control the forces, how you do logistics; there are some common themes in there in a joint war-fighting concept,” he said. “I can tell you if we had that concept right now, we could use that concept right now to influence the ships that we are building, the amount of ships that we need, what we want the [combatant commands] to do. “So this war-fighting concept is filling a gap. I wish we had it now. Leadership wishes we had it now,” he added. “It would inform all of the decisions that we make today because now is about positioning ourselves in the future for success.” Like Hyten, Mercado expressed confidence that the concept will be ready to go by the end of the year, a deadline set by Defense Secretary Mark Esper. But asked whether the department will make details of the concept public when it is finished, Mercado said there is a “tension” between informing the public and key stakeholders and not giving an edge to Russia and China. “I think there is an aspect that we need to share of this joint war-fighting concept,” he said. “We have to preserve the classified nature of it. And I think I have to be careful what I say here, to a degree.” https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2020/08/14/no-lines-on-the-battlefield-the-pentagons-new-warfighting-concept-takes-shape/
June 16, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

La Commission européenne lance des projets industriels de défense
La Commission européenne a lancé le 15 juin 16 projets industriels de défense pan-européens et trois projets technologiques de rupture. Ils vont bénéficier de 205 millions d'euros de financements à travers un Fonds pilote pour la défense EDIDP (programme européen de développement industriel de la défense) doté de 525 millions d'euros au total sur la période 2019/2020 : technologies portant sur les drones, sur le spatial (réseau de communications et technologie militaires pour satellites), sur les missiles anti-chars, sur les véhicules terrestres sans pilote et sur la cyber. Sur les 19 projets, dont neuf sont des projets PESCO (Coopération structurée permanente), 24 États membres sont représentés à travers leurs entreprises (223 concernées, dont 83 PME). De nouveaux projets européens devraient être signés en fin d'année, dont le drone MALE européen Eurodrone (100 millions d'euros) et le projet de communications militaires interopérables ESSOR (37 millions d'euros). La Tribune du 15 juin 2020

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