These new Army formations can reach across Europe to strike a target

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  July 21, 2020 | International, Aerospace, C4ISR

  With a new setup, the Air Force hopes to improve information warfare operations

  Mark Pomerleau The Air Force is realigning the cyber mission force teams it provides to U.S. Cyber Command as a way to have intelligence personnel work more closely with cyber operators. In the past, Air Forces Cyber was made up of cyber and intelligence personnel from 24th Air Force and 25th Air Force, respectively. However, the arrangement created difficulties with command relationships and oversight of teams since the intelligence operators served beneath a separate Air Force command with a separate commander. But in October, the Air Force decided to merge 24th and 25th Air Force into 16th Air Force/Air Forces Cyber, placing cyber, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, electronic warfare and weather capabilities under one commander, and creating the Air Force's first information warfare entity. The new organization also serves as the Air Force's component to Cyber Command. The new organization of teams moves intelligence forces from the 70th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Wing to the 67th Cyber Operations Wing. “We looked at the intelligence squadron and focused on the position descriptions that really were supporting the cyber mission force ... so that we can merge those intelligence professionals into the cyber operations squadron in order to build the mission elements that supported the combatant command requirements,” Col. Lauren Courchaine, commander of the 67th Cyberspace Operations Group, told C4ISRNET in an interview. Specifically, these teams are combat mission teams – the teams that conduct cyber operations on behalf of combatant commands mostly in the offensive sphere – and cyber support teams, which provide intelligence, mission planning and other necessary support work for combat mission team. Officials at the creation of 16th Air Force said the integration would allow the service to provide more robust teams to Cyber Command. This new structure - with cyber operators, developers and intelligence forces in the same room and read in on the same missions - provides a tighter mission thread, Courchaine said. In the past, she said, when cyber operators needed intelligence support, they'd have to ask their intelligence teammates who weren't always privy to the mission or technical context, which created gaps. “Now when you have those conversations with intelligence airmen, operators and developers all in the same forum, sometimes in the same room with the same whiteboard, you come to integrated solutions up front in early vice having to work through a process where that one piece of information, potentially out of context, is levied on the intelligence requirement to somebody that you don't know in another place ... to try to understand truly what the intelligence piece that you're looking for,” Courchaine, said. “When you fuse all of them together, I think the output is significantly better and drives that operationally speed, the agility and flexibility that [16th Air Force commander] Gen. [Timothy] Haugh is looking after.” The final realignment package is still at the Air Staff awaiting final approval with details regarding new units still to be determined, to include a new group activated under the 67th Cyberspace Wing and three new squadrons. Gaining insights from joint operations The team realignment also extends to Air Force cyber teams that serve under commanders of other services under different Joint Force Headquarters-Cybers. The way cyber operations are structured within DoD is individual services do not have their own offensive teams. Instead, these teams work through several organizations, each formally known as Joint Force Headquarters-Cyber that exist beneath Cyber Command, which in turn provide planning, targeting, intelligence and cyber capabilities to the combatant commands to which they're assigned. The heads of the four service cyber components also lead their respective JFHQ-C. These organizations oversee combat mission teams and combat support teams. Courchaine said the Air Force teams, those that conduct operations in Central Command under Joint Force Headquarters-Cyber and operations focused on China under Joint Force Headquarters-Cyber Fleet Cyber, can bring a global perspective a back to the service. These teams conduct operations on behalf of European Command, Strategic Command, Transportation Command and Space Command. In some theaters, with the high tempo of operations, such as Central Command, the approach allows the teams conducting operations to bring back lessons learned to their respective services. “You can see how these three areas will really converge and enable Gen. Haugh from a 16th Air Force perspective to not just be successful in aligning the forces appropriately but driving that return on investment where we're able to converge target sets globally ... to drive operations so that we can influence our adversaries in support of national security objectives,” she said. https://www.c4isrnet.com/cyber/2020/07/19/with-a-new-setup-the-air-force-hopes-to-improve-information-warfare-operations/

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  November 6, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  How COVID-19 Is Affecting The Defense Industrial Base

  Jen DiMascio The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated some of the risks that have always existed in the defense industrial base. Although government assistance and a robust Pentagon budget have helped offset initial trials, more challenges are looming. One of the biggest risks to the defense industrial base is that some companies serving the military are too heavily leveraged toward the commercial sector or too reliant on international companies, financial analysts told Aviation Week's DefenseChain Conference. “Some of these places are two weeks from bankruptcy,” says Chris Celtruda, managing principal at Destiny Equity Partners, says. Suppliers are beginning to falter because of a combination of factors, including the need to comply with cybersecurity standards, the pressure that prime contractors such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin have applied to them and their reliance on commercial business. A prime example is the recent bankruptcy of Impresa Aerospace, a Wichita-based company that made parts using computer numerical control machines as well as sheet metal parts and assemblies for Boeing and Lockheed military aircraft but was highly dependent on its work for the commercial Boeing 737 MAX. The U.S. federal Paycheck Protection Program helped delay some business failures, but others are inevitable, says Rick Nagel, managing partner of Acorn Growth. “The Impresa bankruptcy is an example of a lot more insolvencies we may see,” he adds. Weakness among niche companies could pose a problem for the Defense Department in the future. “I'm always amazed at how many critical systems have multiple single points of failure on major programs,” he says. At the Pentagon, officials have been working to keep essential suppliers afloat and to keep production moving through its sprawling international industrial base. For the U.S. Army, that has meant initial disruptions to Apache fuselage production in India and to the flow of generators from Mexico. The Pentagon and the State Department helped ease the stoppage, but the incident has caused them to review the full range of risks to its international supply chain. “I think that we can navigate through this, though it's certainly always going to be complex in today's global economy,” says Patrick Mason, deputy program executive officer for U.S. Army Aviation, adding that he is in the position of putting pressure on vendors to reduce cost, particularly to provide savings on multiyear aircraft contracts. One trend emerging along with the pandemic is a movement toward onshoring or reshoring overseas business for reasons of cybersecurity and the protection of the U.S. industrial base. As that happens, and as the commercial aviation market sags, Raanan Horowitz, president and CEO of Elbit Systems of America sees opportunity. “We are trying to position ourselves around some of those discontinuities,” Horowitz says, adding that the company likes going after opportunities that are not necessarily glitzy but hold value. “We are intensifying efforts toward looking at licensing, taking over orphan product lines and positioning ourselves to be part of the long-term solution.” Horowitz says Elbit is investing in U.S. infrastructure to capture new business. Industry officials see broad support for bringing more of the defense supply chain back to the U.S. The shift stems in part from the COVID-19-related economic downturn but also from longstanding concerns about China. In the fiscal 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, Congress passed restrictions on contracting with companies that use Chinese telecommunications equipment. Though companies first look for the best value, the threat posed by Chinese parts that either do not work or could transmit classified information back to China is an ongoing concern, says John Luddy, vice president for national security policy at the Aerospace Industries Association. “The concept of reshoring of supplies to better connect our allies and friends, both from a production standpoint and from an operational functionality and alliance standpoint, I think the volume is getting turned up on that a little bit,” he says. “There's also a strong impetus in Congress to look at exactly how vulnerable we are. That's going to be a more intense discussion in the year to come than it has been.” And that trend toward reshoring could have unintended consequences, warns Steve Grundman, founder and principal of Grundman Advisory. “I'm genuinely concerned that benign moves to secure our supply chain to prevent nefarious supplies and code [coming] into particularly our defense supply chain or commercial aerospace supply chain could slip very easily into protectionism,” Grundman says. “If you want to really put pressure on the defense budget, ask the defense industry to reshore the supply chain. https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/supply-chain/how-covid-19-affecting-defense-industrial-base

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  June 2, 2021 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  La France a enregistré 4,9 milliards d'euros de commandes d'armement en 2020

  En 2020, la France a enregistré 4,9 milliards d'euros de commandes d'armement en 2020, contre 8,3 milliards un an plus tôt, selon un rapport du ministère français des Armées remis mardi au Parlement, soit un recul de près de 41%, un phénomène lié aux effets de la crise sanitaire. Les récents succès du Rafale « sont cependant de bon augure pour l'année en cours », anticipent Les Echos. Cette baisse « ne traduit pas une tendance de fond », assure en effet le ministère, qui rappelle de récentes signatures d'importants contrats de vente de Rafale, à l'Egypte (30 exemplaires pour près de 4 milliards d'euros), à la Grèce (18 avions, dont 12 d'occasion) et la Croatie (12 Rafale d'occasion). Les Echos et Ensemble de la presse du 2 juin