May 4, 2018 | International, C4ISR
By: Adam Stone
The arm of the U.S. Marine Corps charged with tackling emerging threats has inked a deal that it says will allow it to do more realistic testing.
“You want a sparring partner who reflects your adversary's capabilities,” said Lt. Col. Dan Schmidt, head of the field testing branch at the USMC Warfighting Lab.
Enter MD5, the National Security Technology Accelerator. The Marine lab will identify challenges, develop warfighting concepts and design wargames and experiments. MD5 also will provide a platform upon which to accelerate these evolving concepts.
Together the partners will support an Adaptive Threat Force Cadre, specially trained individuals who can share with their cohorts new and evolving response methodologies in the face of a wide range of threats.
While the Marine lab will bring a military sensibility to the table, MD5 offers a private-sector approach. It is represented in this collaboration by Quantico, Va. based training-solutions contractor Guard Unit.
“MD5 is designed to bring a commercial mindset to help solve problems in DoD,” said Zenovy Wowczuk, chairman of Guard Unit. “We bring technologists and other folks who haven't been standardized with DoD doctrine. They are private sector free thinkers, so they reflect the future adversary who also hasn't been indoctrinated into that mindset.”
Schmidt laid out a number of specific warfighting challenges the partners seek to address.
The partnership aims to tackle pervasive challenges in the information environment, issues around electronic warfare, cyber security, and command and control. The Marines want to look at technological fixes as well as organizational changes that could make the force more responsive to these threats.
“How do we dominate and operate effectively with decentralized execution in a contested information environment?” Schmidt said. “Maybe if we just change a little bit of how we train and organize, we can dramatically impact the way we execute. We have a whole year of experiments lined up to flesh that out.”
They also plan to look at hybrid logistics in support of future fighters. “We may have to spread out to greater distances with smaller units. Then you have to move blood plasma to the point of injury in a contested environment with contested networks. Now you are facing a whole new set of problems,” he said.
Hybrid logistics could resolve some of these issues by combining the planning skills of human experts with artificial intelligence, robotics and rich data tracking.
Another area of interest involves dense urban operations, an emerging combat scenario that brings my it myriad new concerns and challenges.
“We know that the Marine Corps will fight expeditionary wars in mega-cities and we are in the process of discovering the implications of that,” Schmidt said.
This exploration will likely dig deep into issues of networking, spectra and cyber strategy.
“You have tunnels and skyscrapers and all this electromagnetic density,” Schmidt said. “We are in the early stages of developing an urban campaign plan, which has to include a range of emerging technologies. Our ground combat element, our logistics, our electronic environment ― all will play into how we fight in this environment.”
MD5's close ties to industry could prove beneficial here. “We could pull in subject matter experts who have done city planning, who understand where the weak points are, and we could mount that data against the Marine Corps force to see how they react,” Wowczuk said. “We could pull from [off-the-shelf] technology to make it very difficult for the Marine Corps to do their job.”
Early collaborations between the Marine and MD5 already have proven out the powerful potential of a bringing commercial-side view to the fight. In one experiment, a mock adversary was able to cull social media to gather critical intelligence on Marine activities.
“We weren't used to that paradigm, where there is this rich environment of people on Snapchat taking pictures of us. They showed us just how easy it is to gather information, and from there we can devise new ways to protect some of our intelligence interests,” Schmidt said. “We would not have seen that without MD5. This is all about having an alternative perspective.”
August 5, 2022 | International, C4ISR
The Boulder, Colorado-based company produces a range of small space vehicles for customers at the U.S. Department of Defense and NASA, and its new 31,000 square foot plant is dedicated to building cubesats.
August 27, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security, Other Defence
By: Agnes Helou Correction: A previous version of this story misidentified the title and employer of Aram Nerguizian. He is a senior associate with the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. BEIRUT — Analysts are looking forward to potential cooperation among the defense industries of Israel and the United Arab Emirates, following the Aug. 13 announcement that the two countries are establishing full diplomatic relations in a U.S.-brokered deal. “It is monumental for both Israel and the UAE that they are now on an unprecedented path to normalization. How this might or might not affect the UAE defense sector in the short to medium term is far from certain,” said Aram Nerguizian, a senior associate with the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “There are certainly areas where industry in both countries will have a desire to collaborate, explore cost, and access sharing tied to research and development, let alone explore opportunities for equity and ownership in leading defense firms in both countries,” he added. Some of these opportunities to collaborate include cybersecurity and advanced defense systems. “Cybersecurity is one of the areas which could witness industrial cooperation between the UAE and Israel, and the latter have a strong edge in this area, also in unmanned autonomous systems, unmanned aircraft, missile defense, electronic systems and system integration. These are all areas where there is potential cooperation,” said Riad Kahwaji, a Dubai-based Middle East security and defense analyst who and serves as director of the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis. Opportunities are also stem from the fact that the two countries use similar platforms, like the F-16 fighter jet and Patriot missiles. And as both nations view Iran as a security threat, that common adversary could drive cooperation, Kahwaji noted. What about the F-35? Negotiations between the U.S. and the UAE for the latter's purchase of the F-35 fighter jet haven't significantly advanced since the Israel-UAE announcement, and Nerguizian doesn't expect that to move forward. “None of this, however, changes short- to medium-term Israeli and U.S. concerns tied to Israel's QME [qualitative military edge] and regional proliferation. Sharing access and ownership to a fifth-generation platform like the F-35 falls into that uncertainty. For now, it is clear that both Israel and the U.S. remain concerned and opposed to the UAE acquiring the F-35,” Nerguizian said. “Certainly, that can change from a U.S. policy perspective if the Trump administration weighs in, if it is reelected for a second term. However, doing so would go against Israel's larger concerns that have less to do with the UAE and more to do with concern that if the UAE gets the platform, it will only be a matter of time before Saudi Arabia and eventually Egypt seek to acquire it as well,” the analyst added. “That is not something Israeli policymakers are all too comfortable with in the here and now. I should caveat that how that dynamic evolves in the medium to long term is far more uncertain. Both Israel and the UAE have reasons to deepen mutual trust and cooperation beyond narrowly balancing or containing Iran. Whether that level of cooperation extends to the F-35 or similar so-called ‘game-changer' systems is not something we can clearly predict.” A domino effect Kahwaji told Defense News that the Israel-UAE deal — which required the Jewish state halt its contentious plan to annex occupied West Bank land sought by the Palestinians — could be a sign of improved relations to come among Mideast neighbors, particularly invovling Bahrain, Oman and Qatar. “However, any negative moves by Netanyahu, like reviving his plan to annex the West Bank, will be a setback that will definitely sway many countries from following the UAE's path and could definitely impact UAE-Israel relation in a negative way,” the military expert said. Whether there will be growth across the entire region's defense industries remains to be seen. “Irrespective of administration, regional defense industries in the Arab world will continue to struggle against U.S. congressional limits and rules tied to [the International Traffic in Arms Regulations],” Nerguizian said. “There is an assumption that a Trump reelection might lead to more executive if not more legislative action, but that assumption still has to be tested, as concerns about [intellectual property] transfers, [qualitative military edge] and proliferation continue to cut across U.S. party lines.” Josef Federman, Matthew Lee and Jon Gambrell of The Associated Press contributed to this report. https://www.defensenews.com/global/mideast-africa/2020/08/26/what-kind-of-industrial-cooperation-will-improved-israel-uae-relations-produce/
November 4, 2024 | International, Aerospace
The Air Force has rotated bombers through overseas deployments as part of task forces since 2018.