US Air Force awards Boeing $2.3B contract for 15 more KC-46s

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  August 18, 2024 | International, Land

  Soldiers work with Marines as the Corps ramps up its air defenses

  Marines and soldiers are trading notes on how to defend their airspace in an increasingly complex and threatening battlespace.

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  November 18, 2019 | International, Land

  Here’s who will build the US Army’s heavy common robot

  By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army has chosen FLIR's Kobra robot to serve as its heavy version of the Common Robotic System that will be used for explosive ordnance disposal and other heavy-duty jobs. The production contract will run for a period of five years and could be worth up to $109 million. The Army wanted its Common Robotic System-Heavy, or CRS-H, to weigh up to 700 pounds and to carry a variety of sensors and payloads to support missions. “The Kobra [unmanned ground vehicle] delivers unmatched strength, power and payload support in an easy-to-operate robot package,” according to a FLIR statement sent to Defense News. Kobra has a lift capacity of 330 pounds and can stretch up to eleven-and-a-half feet to get at difficult-to-reach places, but it is also still nimble enough to climb jersey barriers and fit into the back of a standard utility vehicle, according to FLIR. FLIR's legacy business, Endeavor Robotics, won a contract in 2017 to provide the Army with a medium-sized UGV — the Man Transportable Robotic System Increment II. FLIR is delivering the Centaur UGV for the program. FLIR bought Endeavor Robotics in February, an acquisition that made sense because FLIR's camera and sensors — its bread and butter — have been used on countless manned and unmanned vehicles like those developed by the Massachusetts-based robotics company. FLIR also acquired Prox Dynamics in 2016, the Norwegian maker of the tiny micro-drone — the Black Hornet — that is now used as the Army's soldier borne sensor. Endeavor also competed for the CRS-Individual system — a man-packable robot that is less than 25 pounds — but lost to fellow Massachusetts-based robotics company QinetiQ North America in March. For the CRS-H program, FLIR beat out QinetiQ. Kobra is also participating in a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency effort to build a system-of-systems solution that can operate in subterranean environments. The company's solution consists of the Kobra robot that will enter subterranean environments carrying radio repeaters —based on the company's small, throwable FirstLook robots — and drop them off along the way to continue connectivity as it travels deeper underground. The system will also carry a four-legged robot supplied from Ghost Robotics to explore more rugged and difficult terrain as well as a quadcopter that will investigate vertical shafts and other hard to reach places. The winner of the challenge is expected to receive $2 million in 2021. The CRS-I and CRS-H programs are part of a larger Army program to streamline its robotics inventory. By necessity, during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army clamored to buy UGVs that could help provide a level of standoff between soldiers and the dangers faced on the battlefield, mostly improvised explosive devices. The Army procured roughly 7,000 UGVs and ended up with a petting zoo of robots from Talons to PacBots to Dragon Runners, to name a few. The service had roughly nine variants of robots used for explosive ordnance disposal, two robots for engineering battalions to conduct route clearance, two for Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) tasks and three for contingency and global response forces. The Army's way forward uses just a few common platforms where systems and sensors can be swapped out easily for different missions and which are all controlled using one universal controller. It's been the season for major headway in Army robotics programs across the board. The service is also underway with development of robotic combat vehicles in light, medium and heavy categories. The Army invited four teams to compete to build prototypes for its future light RCV last month: A Textron and Howe & Howe team, a team of QinetiQ and Pratt & Miller, HDT Global and Oshkosh Defense. And three teams were picked earlier this month to move on in the Army's competition for a medium-sized RCV: General Dynamics Land Systems, QinetiQ and the Textron and Howe & Howe team. The Army also awarded, at the end of last month, a contract to GDLS to provide the Squad Multipurpose Equipment Transport (SMET) unmanned vehicle. GDLS offered up its Multi-Utility Tactical Transport — or MUTT — in that competition. https://www.defensenews.com/land/2019/11/15/heres-who-just-won-a-contract-to-build-the-armys-heavy-robot/

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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