These two countries are teaming up to develop AI for cybersecurity

On the same subject

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  August 4, 2020 | International, Land

  Pandemic lengthens delay in US Army’s M113 vehicle replacement program

  By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — The coronavirus pandemic has caused another delay for the U.S. Army's plagued M113 replacement program, which has struggled with manufacturing problems as the BAE Systems-made Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle entered low-rate initial production, according to the company's second quarter fiscal 2020 earnings briefing released last week. The company had to delay delivery of the first LRIP vehicles by roughly four to six months, moving delivery from March to July. But as BAE prepared to move ahead on delivery, the pandemic hit, bringing with it another delay of roughly a month, which pushed the vehicles' delivery date to August. The AMPV program entered LRIP in January 2019, but the program office indicated last year that delivery of the first vehicles would be delayed by two months and the completion of production qualification testing would be delayed by seven months due to tooling and assembly line challenges at BAE's facility in York, Pennsylvania. Because of the issues, the Army's AMPV budget request in FY21 showed the program took a hit. The service indicated it would buy 32 vehicles instead of the 143 planned for the fiscal year, and the program's budget was cut from $445 million to $193 million. The Army and BAE developed “a production approach that would allow us to incorporate efficiencies during LRIP that modernize manufacturing and increase the overall throughput of the program,” Amanda Niswonger, a BAE spokeswoman, told Defense News in an Aug. 3 statement. “This included installing new technology and processes such as robotic welding, digital X-ray, and advanced machining. And we worked closely with the Army to update and refine manufacturing processes to incorporate the most modern weld and inspection technology,” she said. “These changes had an impact on our delivery timeline which was not reflected in the original delivery schedule, but continues to meet the Army's fielding schedule.” The service and BAE had formalized the schedule change just as COVID-19 hit the U.S., which affected a large number of manufacturing facilities and supply chains globally. “We have worked tirelessly to mitigate the impacts from COVID-19 with our employees, supply network, and customer base to keep our manufacturing sites operational and continue to receive parts as needed,” Niswonger said. “Unfortunately we could not overcome all the challenges and our first delivery has slipped one month.” https://www.defensenews.com/land/2020/08/03/pandemic-causes-latest-delay-in-us-armys-m113-replacement-program/

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  January 16, 2020 | International, Aerospace

  JUST IN: Defense Department to Stand Up New Counter-Drone Office

  By Yasmin Tadjdeh The Pentagon will soon stand up a counter-unmanned aerial system office that will be headed by the Army, said the Defense Department's top weapons buyer Jan. 14. Following the Dubai Air Show in November, Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Ellen Lord visited numerous locations across the Middle East including U.S. military installations in Iraq and Afghanistan. “The thing that was really top of everybody's mind were counter-UAS,” she said during a meeting with reporters hosted by George Washington University's Project for Media and National Security in Washington, D.C. “We see that small UAS are becoming a more popular weapon of choice ... [and] we need to be agile and pivot to that challenge.” Pentagon leaders recently decided to designate the Army as the executive agent for counter-drone technologies, Lord said. The new office will be stood up in Arlington, Virginia, in the Crystal City neighborhood. It will be staffed by around 60 people. “We are just finishing off on the policy that directs the activities,” she said. The office will examine the many counter-UAS efforts across the Defense Department and come up with three to five systems that are best for the military writ large and make sure they are effectively leveraged, Lord said. The Defense Department is bringing together a number of organizations, including the office of the director of operational test and evaluation and Defense Digital Service, to work on the effort. Robert Behler, the head of DOT&E, has a group conducting independent tests and evaluation of currently fielded systems, Lord noted. “Come April we will have that evaluation completed and written up. And that coincides [with] when we want to make some decisions about downselecting ... to the three to five systems that would be utilized,” she said. The department is examining a variety of sensor modalities and defeat mechanisms. “One size does not fit all,” Lord said. “You need a system with multiple sensors ... or defeat systems. And the key is really the command-and-control and then the communication across theater.” The office aims to thwart both small and large adversary UAS, she added. Countering rogue and enemy drones has long been an objective for the Defense Department, but recent high-profile events have thrown the technology into the spotlight. That includes an alleged Iranian attack on Saudi Aramaco facilities in September using unmanned aircraft. “One of the challenges is that we know that the adversary is very agile and updates their [tactics, techniques and procedures] ... very quickly,” Lord said. “We are looking at a very nimble system where we can push patches in the same day, if you will, so that we again can stay ahead of" the threat. The Pentagon is gung-go about tackling the issue, and senior leadership involvement and funding are increasing, she noted. In terms of the industrial base, counter-UAS is one of the acquisition and sustainment office's four key focus areas, Lord said. Others include microelectronics, 5G networks and hypersonics. The department plans to establish a hypersonics "war room." “We just decided last week that we would stand up a hypersonics war room to begin to look at the defense industrial base and begin to have different companies [come] in,” Lord said. The technology is the Pentagon's top research-and-development priority and it plans to buy large numbers of systems when they are mature enough to be fielded. Last week, Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy said missile manufacturers and other suppliers need to do more to boost their hypersonics manufacturing capability. “What we need to see is industry step up,” he said Jan. 10 during remarks at the Brookings Institution. “They've got to come forward and ... first and foremost, invest the time to work with our national lab network to understand how we've come forward with these technologies. But they're going to have to make investments to be able to produce these at scale.” https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2020/1/14/just-in-defense-department-to-stand-up-counter-drone-office

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  December 7, 2018 | International, C4ISR

  Germany Develops Offensive Cyber Capabilities Without A Coherent Strategy of What to Do With Them

  BY MATTHIAS SCHULZE Germany has traditionally prioritized defense over offense in cyberspace. That's now beginning to change. There is a reoccurring debate in German national security and foreign policy whether Germany suffers from “Strategieunfähigkeit”—an inability to develop and implement strategy. The historic trauma of two lost World Wars created a pacifist culture that always struggled with formulating national security interests and defining strategy. The so-called “culture of reluctance” regarding the use of hard power has bled into Berlin's thinking about cyber issues, especially as it rushes to develop capabilities without an overarching strategy on how to use them. Until recently, Germany has prioritized defense over offense in cyberspace. The Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), Germany's cybersecurity agency, has a strictly non-military defensive mandate and is a vigilant advocate of strong encryption and full disclosure of zero-day vulnerabilities to vendors. Germany's foreign intelligence agency (BND) has historically had a relatively small cyber espionage budget. Germany's defensive posture began to shift in 2015, after the internal network of the German Bundestag was successfully compromised by Russian state-backed operators. That led the country to revise its cybersecurity strategy, issuing a more offensive-minded document in 2016. It called for the development of cyber teams in the intelligence agencies. It also might have been a contributing factor to the creation of a specialized agency, called the Central Office for Information Technology in the Security Sphere (ZITiS), to develop innovative techniques to break into encrypted devices, develop exploits and malware for real time interception and accessing data at rest, as well as identify or purchase zero-days to support offensive capabilities. As Germany rolled out its 2016 strategy, the German military (Bundeswehr) centralized its cyber capacity by consolidating around 14,000 soldiers and IT personnel into a unified cyber command (CIR), loosely modelled on U.S. Cyber Command. CIRwants to achieve full operational capacity by the early 2020s and plans to perform strategic and tactical cyber operations against enemy assets. Usage scenarios include disrupting enemy military assets, battlefield support and reconnaissance on adversary IT assets. Full article: https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2018/12/germany-develops-offensive-cyber-capabilities-without-coherent-strategy-what-do-them/153227