July 6, 2018 | International, C4ISR
By: Kelsey Atherton
As the Pentagon's latest budget slouches towards Washington, a $716 billion beast waiting to be born, it is time to take a closer look at how the robots in the budget survived the various committees and drafts. As expected, the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act is a boon for drones, allocating funding for nearly three times as many uncrewed vehicles as in previous years. Most of those new drones are small, cheaper models, which is a trend reflecting in the other big spending increased in this budget: the Pentagon is set to spend almost twice as much on countering other drones in 2019 as it spend on that same in 2018.
The Association of Unmanned Vehicles System International has provided an in-depth look at how exactly the 1.4 percent of the defense budget allocated to drones is spent, detailing the minute differences in the comparatively meager $9.6 billion allocation. From the AUVSI's report:
Separating the President's Budget request by domain, we see that air is receiving the largest funding support with the budget for unmanned aircraft reaching almost $7 billion in FY2019, followed by $1.5 billion for counter unmanned systems (C-UxS), $1.3 billion for unmanned maritime vehicles and $0.7 billion for ground robotics. From FY2018 to FY2019, the budget for C-UxS technologies almost doubles. Figure 2 also shows the number of unique projects and sub-projects that involve unmanned systems relative to the domains in which they are operating. Cross-domain operations of air and ground unmanned vehicles are supported by the largest number of projects. Over 60 percent of these efforts are funded by the U.S. Army. The U.S. Navy is also working to provide solutions for interoperability and teaming of unmanned vehicles across multiple domains as they support over half of the projects involving operations in all domains (air, ground, and maritime).
For the counter-drone mission, the Pentagon is splitting $1.5 billion between over 90 different projects, ranging from modifications to existing missiles and anti-air systems to directed energy weapons to electronic warfare software. The largest share of the 2019 budget for counter-UAS is set to go to the Army's Indirect Fire Protection family of systems, though the most interesting projects aren't always the budget headliners.
Buried further down the spending list is DARPA's “Multi-Azimuth Defense Fast Intercept Round Engagement System” (MAD-FIRES) project, which a projectile as agile and useful for interception as a missile, but cheap enough to be fired and fielded like a bullet. There's also a submunitions project from the Air Force to “Exploit the signatures of ISR targets; capture and catalog multi-spectral signatures on asymmetric threat Unmanned Aerial Systems.” That project is dubbed “Chicken Little,” perhaps with the explicit goal of making the sky fall.
What the diversity of counter-drone programs, and drone programs generally, in the new Pentagon budget show is that this is still a young field, one with drone types and countermeasures all in flux. It's likely that future years will see more spending on counter drone tools, but it's also equally likely that the range of countermeasures will shrink as people fighting learn first-hand what does and doesn't work.
June 16, 2024 | International, Land
The G7 will use annual interest from $325bn in frozen Russian assets to pay off interest on a $50bn loan for Ukraine’s war effort.
June 22, 2018 | International, Aerospace
By: Sebastian Sprenger COLOGNE, Germany ― A multibillion dollar program to replace the German military's Tornado aircraft is nearing another round of decisions that could narrow the field of bidders. The due date for a “quality gate” review, as the wide-ranging analysis is called in Bundeswehr jargon, has been on the calendar for this month. But officials now say the exercise could last through the summer. The discussions are principally about realizing an extended service life for the 1970s-era Tornados, though exactly by how long remains to be seen. Closely linked to that question is an examination of what potential follow-on aircraft are best suited to pick up the legacy planes' roles in a variety of life-span scenarios. Officials emphasize that no decision has been made on who will build the new planes to replace roughly 90 Tornados. A formal competition is expected to begin later this year or early 2019 among those aircraft types still deemed suitable by the government at that time. In the running is the Eurofigher Typhoon, Lockheed Martin's F-35, and Boeing's F-15 and F-18. The Typhoon is made by a European consortium of Airbus, Leonardo and BAE Systems. Defence Ministry officials have said they prefer the Eurofighter option, arguing that keeping the European aircraft industry busy will be key in strengthening the continent's defense capabilities. That goes especially for the Franco-German alliance in charge of developing a combat-capable aerial drone and, later, a sixth-generation Future Combat Air System. Some in the Luftwaffe, the German air force, are rooting for the F-35. The affinity partly stems from personnel exchanges with the U.S. Air Force, giving German pilots some exposure to the marquee American defense program. All companies delivered their formal offers to the Defence Ministry in April, coinciding with the ILA Berlin air show. Lockheed Martin staged a sizable promotional showing at the event for its F-35, mixing promises about the jet's advanced capabilities with a professed obliviousness to the political minefield of Europe's economic powerhouse that is Germany weighing a U.S. aircraft at this time. As German analysts continue to crunch the numbers on the Tornado-replacement effort, Reuters reported this week that Berlin requested information from the Pentagon in April about what it would take to certify the Eurofighter to deliver nuclear weapons. NATO policies for nuclear burden-sharing dictate that German pilots will carry American atomic bombs in case of a war on the continent. The Luftwaffe has set aside a number of Tornados for that purpose, and any follow-on aircraft will have to be configured to carry out the mission. While the Pentagon has no say over which jet Germany will eventually pick, officials in Washington must approve the integration of American nuclear bombs on the aircraft. Citing sources on both sides of the Atlantic, Reuters reported that the process could take up to 10 years and that the F-35 was in line for the nuclear weapons integration before the Eurofighter would be considered. A wait time of seven years could conflict with Berlin's plan to begin phasing out Tornados starting in 2025. But according to officials, that's where the fine-tuning of the “quality gate” could come into play, making it possible to alter the timing accordingly. “We are confident that Eurofighter Typhoon can deliver all the capabilities the German Air Force requires and perform all the roles that are currently performed on Tornado for Germany,” a Eurofighter spokesman said. “This of course includes the nuclear role.” https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2018/06/21/germanys-fighter-jet-race-could-start-dropping-bidders-this-summer/
August 19, 2020 | International, Aerospace
Nathan Strout WASHINGTON - The U.S. Space Force will begin sharing valuable space situational awareness data with the United Kingdom as part of Operation Olympic Defender, the service announced Aug. 14. Under a recently signed agreement, the Space Force will share it's Standardized Astrodynamics Algorithm Library with the U.K.‘s Ministry of Defense. SAAL is a collection of the Space Force's understanding of orbital physics and algorithms that helps the service predict the trajectories of objects on orbit. “Aggressive actions in space must be deterred through a multinational, coordinated effort, allowing for the defense and protection or our collective capabilities,” said Maj. Gen. DeAnna Burt, USSF director of Operations and Communications, in a statement. “Sharing the SAAL with our coalition partners enables greater cooperation and coordination between the U.S. and our Allies.” The agreement comes as part of Operation Olympic Defender, an American-led coalition of space-faring allies working together to deter hostile actions in space, strengthen deterrence against hostile actors and address the growing issue of orbital debris. Operation Olympic Defender was officially taken over by U.S. Space Command in May and is located at the Combined Space Operations Center at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. The U.K. was the first nation to join Operation Olympic Defender and is the first to receive access to the SAAL. Under the new arrangement, that nation's Space operations Center will now be better able to collaborate with the Space Force, sharing algorithms and data to better predict orbital trajectories. The Space Force is looking to share the SAAL with more partners within Operation Olympic Defender. According to the announcement, the Secretary of the Air Force's International Affairs Office, SPACECOM and the Space Force have recognized a new framework that will allow other coalition partners to begin receiving SAAL. SPACECOM has signed a number of space data sharing agreements with other countries in recent months. https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/space/2020/08/18/space-force-to-begin-sharing-technical-space-data-with-uk/