September 4, 2018 | International, Aerospace

The US Air Force is asking for hypersonic weapon ideas as a new arms race with China and Russia heats up

The US Air Force put out an open-ended request Thursday for hypersonic weapon concepts and development programs from qualified vendors with experience related to hypersonic platforms.
The call comes amid an escalating arms race with China and Russia, both of whom have been actively testing new hypersonic systems.
A hypersonic weapon is decidedly dangerous because its speed coupled with its unpredictable flight patterns make it almost impossible for existing air and missile defense systems to effectively intercept.
"The homeland is no longer a sanctuary," Air Force Gen. Terrence O'Shaughnessy, head of US North Command, saidrecently.

With rivals China and Russia rapidly developing hypersonic weapons able to penetrate defenses to deliver devastating strikes on their enemies, the US Air Force is preparing to enter the arms race in a big way, signaling that the US is not yet ready to cede its competitive advantage in advanced weaponry to adversarial competitors.

The Air Force posted a contracting announcement online Thursday calling for qualified vendors experienced in hypersonic aerodynamics, aerothermal protection systems, advanced hypersonic guidance, navigation and control, solid rocket motors, and so on to assist the service in research on "hypersonic weapon rapid development, production and sustainment."

The multi-award contract, as The Drive first reported, appears to be an open-ended request for any and all hypersonic concepts and development programs.

The Air Force awarded Lockheed Martin a contract in August for an Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW), a hypersonic weapon and the second such contract offered by the Air Force this year. The service awarded a contract to Lockheed in April for a Hypersonic Conventional Strike Weapon (HCSW).

The Air Force reportedly has four different hypersonic weapons programs in the works for the B-52, according to The Drive, as well as submarine-launched and ground-launched systems in development. And, there could certainly be more.

The newfound interest in hypersonic weaponry comes after repeated warnings from senior military officers suggesting that the US was losing its edge to peer competitors. "China's hypersonic weapons development outpaces ours... we're falling behind," Adm. Harry Harris, the former head of US Pacific Command (now called Indo-Pacific Command), said in February.

The head of US Strategic Command warned in March that the US needs to bolster its defenses, explaining to the Senate Armed Services Committee that the US does not "have any defense that could deny the employment of such a weapon against us." The recently-signed 2019 National Defense Authorization Act approves investments in America's missile defense capabilities in the face of certain emerging threats from US rivals.

"The homeland is no longer a sanctuary," Air Force Gen. Terrence O'Shaughnessy, head of US North Command, said recently. "We're in a changing security environment. We used to think about the sanctuary we had with oceans and friendly countries to our north and south, but that's changing with adversaries that are actually able to reach out and touch us now."

In the beginning of August, China tested the Xingkong-2 (Stary Sky-2) hypersonic experimental waverider vehicle able to fly at speeds as high as Mach 6. The hypersonic aircraft reportedly has the potential to be used as a hypersonic strike platform capable of carrying conventional and nuclear payloads and evading modern air and missile defenses.

China, which has made the development of hypersonic systems a national priority, called the test a "huge success."

Russia has also been experimenting with advanced hypersonic systems. For instance, Russia is expected to deploy its Avangard hypersonic boost-glide vehicle on the country's Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile within the next year or so. The Russians are also developing the hypersonic Kinzhal (Dagger) cruise missile, which could be ready for combat by 2020. While the weapon has only been tested on a MiG-31 fighter, Russia reportedly intendsto mount the weapon on a strategic bomber.

https://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-air-force-asking-for-hypersonic-weapon-ideas-2018-9

On the same subject

August 8, 2019 | International, Security

The Air Force sends good guys in to hack its cloud
By: Andrew Eversden The Air Force invited ethical hackers into its IT networks again this spring, allowing good guys the chance to infiltrate its enterprise-wide Air Force Common Computing Environment in search of vulnerabilities, the white hat hacking company Bugcrowd announced Aug. 6. The bug bounty program, done in a partnership with Bugcrowd and the Air Force's CCE program office, found 54 vulnerabilities. Bug bounties work under the assumption that the customer, in this case the Air Force, will now close the loopholes the hackers found, making the system more secure. The CCE cloud uses Amazon Web Services and Microsoft's Azure commercial cloud. The service plans to migrate more than 100 applications to that cloud environment, Bugcrowd executives said. The largest payout from the bug bounty totaled $20,000. The event ran from March 18 to June 21 at Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts. Casey Ellis, Bugcrowd founder and CTO, said it was the first time Bugcrowd has worked with the Air Force. The Air Force has completed several other white hat hacking events with the firm HackerOne. Ellis said that moving to the cloud from on-premise environment represents a “paradigm shift” for many organizations. Penetration testing is an important part of keeping that environment secure, he said. Bugcrowd conducted such tests in six phases: source code analysis, AWS environment testing, Azure environment testing, black box network authentication assessment, social engineering engagement and Air Force portal testing. Bugcrowd declined to discuss how many vulnerabilities were found throughout each stage of the process. According to a news release from the Air Force from April, the CCE currently houses 21 Air Force applications and "has room for countess more.” The computing environment allows the Air Force to have a cloud to host its applications that reside on its Global Combat Support System, which is a centralized, cohesive enterprise resource planning system. The Air Force said in the April release that each migration costs $446,000 and that the service has spent more than $136 million on the program since 2016. https://www.fifthdomain.com/dod/air-force/2019/08/06/the-air-force-sends-good-guys-in-to-hack-its-cloud/
April 19, 2021 | International, Naval

Babcock awarded Asset Availability Service contract continuing in-service support to Phalanx Close Weapon System
Phalanx CIWS is a rapid-fire, computer-controlled radar and 20mm Gatling gun system and is the Royal Navy’s primary defence for ships against the threat of anti-ship missiles.
November 5, 2020 | International, C4ISR, Security

Pentagon research office wants innovative tools to spot influence campaigns
Andrew Eversden WASHINGTON — A new broad agency announcement shows that the Pentagon's top research arm wants to work with industry to develop technology that can track adversarial influence operations across social media platforms. The announcement from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for a project called INfluence Campaign Awareness and Sensemaking (INCAS) will use an automated detection tool to unveil influence operations online. “INCAS tools will directly and automatically detect implicit and explicit indicators of geopolitical influence in multilingual online messaging to include author's agenda, concerns, and emotion,” the BAA reads. The BAA comes as the federal government seeks solutions to defend against foreign influence campaigns, particularly surrounding political campaigns, that aim to sow discord among Americans with inflammatory messages. “The US is engaged with its adversaries in an asymmetric, continual, war of weaponized influence narratives. Adversaries exploit misinformation and true information delivered via influence messaging: blogs, tweets, and other online multimedia content. Analysts require effective tools for continual sensemaking of the vast, noisy, adaptive information environment to identify adversary influence campaigns,” the BAA reads. Through the project, DARPA seeks to improve upon current social media tools to track influence operations. The current tools, the solicitation reads, requires a major manual effort in which analysts have to sift through “high volumes” of messages and decide which ones are relevant and gaining traction, using tools for digital marketing. “These tools lack explanatory and predictive power for deeper issues of geopolitical influence,” the solicitation reads. “Audience analysis is often done using static, demographic segmentation based on online and survey data. This lacks the flexibility, resolution, and timeliness needed for dynamic geopolitical influence campaign detection and sensemaking.” The program has five technical areas. Technical area one focuses on using automated influence detection to enable analysts to analyze influence campaigns. The second area will “dynamically segment" the population that is responding to influence campaigns, and identify “psychographic attributes relevant to geopolitical influence,” such as “worldviews, morals and sacred values.” The INCAS tool's third technical area will assist analysts in linking influence indicators and population response over time across several platforms, in order to capture influence campaigns as they evolve over time. The fourth area will create infrastructure to provide data feeds from online sources to the other three technical areas, and the final technical area will conduct technology evaluations and will not be competed as part the the BAA. DARPA expects multiple awards for technical areas one and two, and single awards for technical areas three and four. Abstracts are due Nov. 17, 2020, with proposals due Jan. 8, 2021. Awards will be made around July 2012 using standard procurement contracts or Other Transaction Agreements. https://www.c4isrnet.com/artificial-intelligence/2020/11/03/pentagon-research-office-wants-innovative-tools-to-spot-influence-campaigns/

All news

The US Air Force is asking for hypersonic weapon ideas as a new arms race with China and Russia heats up

On the same subject

Babcock awarded Asset Availability Service contract continuing in-service support to Phalanx Close Weapon System Phalanx CIWS is a rapid-fire, computer-controlled radar and 20mm Gatling gun system and is the Royal Navy’s primary defence for ships against the threat of anti-ship missiles.

Babcock awarded Asset Availability Service contract continuing in-service support to Phalanx Close Weapon System
Phalanx CIWS is a rapid-fire, computer-controlled radar and 20mm Gatling gun system and is the Royal Navy’s primary defence for ships against the threat of anti-ship missiles.