The US Navy had cybersecurity wrong. Expect change.

On the same subject

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  July 16, 2019 | International, Land

  Soldiers Will Control Robotic Combat Vehicles in Upcoming Test

  By Matthew Cox Next year, the Army plans to have soldiers fire at targets using remote-controlled robotic vehicles as part of a three-phase effort to learn how autonomous combat vehicles can make small units more effective on the battlefield. During the operational test scheduled for next March at Fort Carson, Colorado, soldiers will operate from specially modified Bradley fighting vehicles known as Mission Enabler Technologies-Demonstrators, or MET-Ds, according to a recent Army news release.The tricked-out vehicles feature remote turrets for the 25mm main gun, 360-degree situational awareness cameras and enhanced crew stations with touch screens. The first phase of testing will include two MET-Ds and four robotic combat vehicles on M113 armored personnel carrier surrogate platforms. Each MET-D will have a driver and gunner, as well as four soldiers in its rear, who will conduct platoon-level maneuvers with two surrogate vehicles that fire 7.62mm machine guns, according to the release. "We've never had soldiers operate MET-Ds before," said David Centeno Jr., chief of the Emerging Capabilities Office at the Combat Capabilities Development Command's Ground Vehicle Systems Center. "We're asking them to utilize the vehicles in a way that's never been done before." One goal for the autonomous vehicles is to learn how to penetrate an adversary's anti-access/aerial denial capabilities without putting soldiers in danger. "You're exposing forces to enemy fire, whether that be artillery, direct fire," Centeno said. "So, we have to find ways to penetrate that bubble, attrit their systems and allow for freedom of air and ground maneuver. These platforms buy us some of that, by giving us standoff." In late fiscal 2021, phase two of the effort will have soldiers conduct experiments at the company level with six MET-Ds and the same M113 surrogates, as well as four light and four medium surrogate robotic combat vehicles (RCVs) provided by industry, the release states. "The intent of this is to see how an RCV light integrates into a light infantry formation and performs reconnaissance and security tasks, as well as supports dismounted infantry operations," Maj. Cory Wallace, robotic combat vehicle-lead for the Next Generation Combat Vehicle Cross Functional Team, said in the release. Phase three is scheduled for fiscal 2023 and will add four medium and four heavy purpose-built RCVs to the mix, the release states. "This is not how we're used to fighting," Centeno said. "We're asking a lot. We're putting a lot of sensors, putting a lot of data in the hands of soldiers. We want to see how that impacts them. We want to see how it degrades or increases their performance." The family of RCVs includes three variants. Army officials envision the light version to be transportable by rotary wing. The medium variant would be able to fit onto a C-130 Hercules aircraft, and the heavy variant would fit onto a C-17 Globemaster aircraft, according to the release. Critics of the effort say it sounds very similar to the Army's failed Future Combat Systems (FCS), an ambitious effort to design a new fleet of lightweight manned and unmanned combat vehicles and other platforms designed to dominate future battlefields. Army officials have argued that the technology FCS depended on did not exist. The service spent billions on FCS, only to see it fail when then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates killed the 27-ton Manned Ground Vehicles portion of FCS in the 2010 budget while criticizing the advanced design as ill-suited to survive current battlefield threats. Army officials believe that the service's new Mobile Protected Firepower (MPF) vehicle could influence the development of the heavy RCV, the release states. In December, the Army awarded MPF contracts to two firms to build 12 prototypes each and begin delivering them to the service in early 2020. The goal is to down-select to a winner by fiscal 2022 and begin fielding the first of 504 of these lightweight tanks sometime in fiscal 2025, officials say. The heavy RCV is being designed to provide the enemy-armor killing power of an MPF with even less armor since it doesn't have to protect soldiers, the release states "An RCV reduces risk," Wallace said. "It does so by expanding the geometry of the battlefield so that, before the threat makes contact with the first human element, it has to make contact with the robots. That, in turn, gives commanders additional space and time to make decisions." https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/07/15/soldiers-will-control-robotic-combat-vehicles-upcoming-test.html

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  September 29, 2020 | International, C4ISR

  Microsoft Positions Itself To Win Space Data Market With Azure Orbital

  KELSEY ATHERTON Offering Ground-Stations-as-a-Service means customers are only obliged to pay for the amount of time they actually need to use on the station. ALBUQUERQUE: Azure Orbital, the space-connections wing of Microsoft's cloud service Azure, launched last week. By offering Ground-Stations-as-a-Service, Microsoft wants to position itself as the bridge between the Pentagon and commercial satellites. Ground stations are vital infrastructure for satellite communication, the physical node that makes all the images and information they collect useful. With the advent of lower-cost satellites, and the expansion of small satellite constellations in low earth orbit, the space industry is moving away from a locked-in model, where specific vendors only grant access to their satellites through their ground stations. “Space is just so critical to everything we do here on earth,” says Frank Rose, a former assistant secretary of state for arms control who is now at Brookings. “Deploying additional capabilities, especially small satellites, in low earth orbit will definitely improve the resiliency of our national security space architecture.” Earlier this year, Microsoft Azure won the $10 billion JEDI contract for Pentagon cloud services. Offering Ground-Stations-as-a-Service means that the customers are only obliged to pay for the amount of time they actually need on the station. Cloud service providers already have a great deal of experience in flexible demand management and in processing the data received in their servers. That makes ground stations a natural outgrowth of existing cloud competences, the company argues. In June 2020, the Space Development Agency said that rentable ground stations make it easier for the military to piggy-back on existing commercial infrastructure. When it comes to constellations of small satellites, what companies are “trying to do is to optimize their processing architecture, trying to minimize how much compute you need to do on board because of the [Size, Weight and Power] constraints, which inevitably leads them to do more on the ground,” says Mikhail Grinberg, principle at Renaissance Strategic Advisors. Yet that principal doesn't apply evenly across all applications. “For some military applications, given resiliency requirements,” says Grinberg, “they're trying to do more networking processing on board, as opposed to having an open pipe that can be tapped into.” While Azure Orbital appears aimed at the space sector broadly, it is specifically cultivating ties to the Pentagon and the defense contracting community. Partners signed up at launch include Amergint, Kongsberg Satellite Services, Viasat, and US Electrodynamics, all of whom have long histories of working with the Pentagon. Of particular note is Azure Orbital's partnership with Kratos, a company already actively working to make low-earth-orbit satellite space viable for military applications. “Right now, the current national security space architecture is very vulnerable to other countries' Anti-Satellite capabilities, primarily China's and Russia's,” says Rose. “If we can proliferate this constellation of small satellites, we can improve the resiliency of America's national security space architecture.” The military is planning for low earth orbit satellites in the battle management layer, ones that will primarily be processing data on board, having access to commercial infrastructure through Ground-Stations-as-a-Service increases the likelihood that they can be used when needed. “For satellites in low earth orbit it might be days, three to four days before it's overhead again. That's the core problem,” says Brian Weeden of the Secure World Foundation. “One way you can solve that is by building a lot of ground stations.” “The more you have commercial guys doing infrastructure on the ground,” says Grinberg, “if you can partition the data right, you can provide more resiliency.” As part of its bid to build strong ties between Azure and the Department of Defense, Microsoft has specifically hired career professionals of the military and intelligence communities. In late, Azure hired Chirag Parikh from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. Parikh had previously served as the Director of Space Policy for the White House. William Chappell, CTO of Azure Global, announced Sept. 22nd that Azure Space had hired Stephen Kitay, former deputy assistant secretary of Defense for space policy, to head Azure's space industry division. It is, actively, a project to embed Microsoft in the infrastructure of orbit. By positioning itself as an intermediary between the space sector and its end users, Microsoft can become another almost-invisible piece of that same infrastructure. Azure Orbital would also offer Microsoft a greater role in other Pentagon satellite-based projects, like cloudONE and the Advanced Battle Management System. Being able to surge connections with sensors in orbits, on demand, makes space far more flexible for human commanders. “In the last 5 years, there's been a push from the military to move towards more common ground systems,” says Weeden. What remains to be seen is if the military will be comfortable with commercial companies operating those common ground systems, or if security concerns will instead preclude military traffic riding commercial channels. https://breakingdefense.com/2020/09/microsoft-positions-itself-to-win-space-data-market-with-azure-orbital/

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  October 16, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR

  The US Navy’s ‘Manhattan Project’ has its leader

  David B. Larter WASHINGTON – The US Navy's top officer has tasked a former surface warfare officer turned engineering duty officer to create a powerful, all-connecting network service leaders believe they will need to fight and win against a high-end foe such as China. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday tasked Rear Adm. Douglas Small to lead an effort that will “develop networks, infrastructure, data architecture, tools, and analytics that support the operational and developmental environment that will enable our sustained maritime dominance.” Calling the effort “Project Overmatch,” Gilday called it the Navy's top priority after the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine. “Beyond recapitalizing our undersea deterrent, there is no higher developmental priority in the U.S. Navy,” Gilday said. “All other efforts are supporting you. Your goal is to enable a Navy that swarms the sea, delivering synchronized lethal and non-lethal effects from near-and-far, every axis, and every domain.” In the past, Gilday has referred to the effort to field a powerful network as its “Manhattan Project,” harkening back to the rapid development of the atomic bomb in the 1940s. The urgency behind the effort to create this network highlights the growing sense of unease the Navy has around its position in the world as China builds towards its goal of achieving first-rate military power status by 2049. “The Navy's ability to establish and sustain sea control in the future is at risk," Gilday said in his letter. “I am confident that closing this risk is dependent on enhancing Distributed Maritime Operations through a teamed manned/unmanned force that exploits artificial intelligence and machine learning. I am not confident we are building the Naval Operational Architecture connecting and enabling this future force as quickly as we must.” The network is to connect with the Air Force's Joint All-Domain Command and Control effort, which the services are all lining up behind. Breaking Defense first reported the memo. Small started his career as a surface warfare officer but became an engineering duty officer in 1997. He has a background in electronic warfare and above-water sensors, as well as work at the Missile Defense Agency. In the Oct. 1 memo, Gilday has tasked him to report after 60 days, then every 90 days after that. In a separate memo to Vice Adm. James Kilby, the Navy's top warfighting requirements officer, Gilday said he wanted the Navy to develop both a concept of operations and a coherent kill chain based on an “any-sensor, any-shooter,” construct, an idea that would mean that any track obtained by any sensor can be passed to any ship or platform with a missile with which to kill it, something that would be enabled by Small's network. ‘We don't have and adequate net' In comments last year, Gilday said the Navy needed to move out with urgency to create a powerful network. “The biggest challenge for us is to join all the main command and control,” Gilday said. “We're building netted weapons, netted platforms, and netted [command-and-control] nodes, but we don't have an adequate net, and that's a critical piece.” The Navy has been working toward a concept of operations that links its ships, aircraft and unmanned platforms by way of communications relay nodes — such as small drones — or whole ships — such as the future frigate or high-tech aircraft like the E-2D Hawkeye. The idea is to spread the force out over a wide area, as opposed to clustered around a carrier, to put a maximum burden on Chinese intelligence and reconnaissance assets. This spread-out, networked force would connect the various shooters so that if any individual node in the network sees something to kill, any Navy or Air Force asset with weapons within range can kill it. This has led to a push for ever-longer-range missiles. But to make it work, all the pieces must be linked on a reliable communications network. The current architecture, according to the Navy, is insufficient for the job, given Chinese and Russian investments in electronic warfare that can interfere with communications. https://www.c4isrnet.com/naval/2020/10/14/the-us-navys-manhattan-project-has-its-leader/