May 19, 2024 | International, Security
Grandoreiro Banking Trojan Resurfaces, Targeting Over 1,500 Banks Worldwide
Grandoreiro banking trojan is back, targeting 1,500+ banks in 60+ countries. It now uses infected Outlook to spread phishing emails.
May 8, 2020 | International, Aerospace
US Air Force bails on Mattis-era fighter jet readiness goal
By: Valerie Insinna and Stephen Losey
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Air Force has officially abandoned a directive to get its F-35, F-22 and F-16 jets up to an 80 percent mission-capable rate after failing to meet that goal in fiscal 2019, the service's presumptive chief of staff indicated Thursday.
According to written responses by Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown ahead of his May 7 confirmation hearing, “the F-16 mission capable rate reached a high of 75% in June 2019, the F-22 mission capable rate achieved a high of 68% in April 2019 and the F-35 mission capability rate climbed to a high of 74% in September 2019.”
However, data obtained exclusively by Air Force Times and Defense News revealed the mission-capable rates for those three aircraft over the whole of FY19 — while, in some cases, an improvement over the previous year — fell well short of the 80 percent goal mandated by then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in October 2018.
And the overall rates for the year were lower — in some cases, much lower — than the high-water marks cited by Brown.
The Air Force's newest fighter jet, the F-35A conventional-takeoff-and-landing model, showed the most improvement, increasing from a mission-capable rate of about 50 percent in FY18 to 62 percent in FY19.
The F-16 mission-capable rate grew modestly, with the F-16C increasing from 70 percent in FY18 to 73 percent in FY19. The F-16D's mission-capable rate rose from 66 percent to 70 percent over that time period.
However, the F-22's mission-capable rate actually decreased from 52 percent in FY18 to 51 percent in FY19. This is likely due to the continued maintenance challenges after 17 Raptors were left behind at Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida, during Hurricane Michael in 2018, damaging a portion of the fleet.
Ultimately, Pentagon leadership decided not to renew the effort in FY20, Brown told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“The Office of the Secretary of Defense determined the FY19 80-percent Mission Capable (MC) Rate initiative is not an FY20 requirement,” wrote Brown, who is currently the commander of Pacific Air Forces.
Instead, the Air Force has returned to its usual practice of letting commanders set their own readiness objectives, with no definitive requirements for mission-capable rates, he said.
“We continue to balance near term readiness recovery with investment long-term combat capability,” Brown said. “While maintaining all of our aging fleets are difficult and expensive, we continuously examine emerging technologies, commercial best practices, and other methods to reduce the sustainment costs for our Air Force.”
Although the services tried to meet Mattis' 80 percent mandate, even after he resigned in December 2018, the goal was never popular among Air Force leadership.
If confirmed by the Senate as the uniformed head of the Air Force, Brown will replace Gen. Dave Goldfein, who argued that the readiness of the service's aircraft inventory could better be measured by other metrics.
In an interview with Air Force Times in August, Goldfein said readiness can truly be measured by how well the Air Force can carry out its missions, which requires more than mission-capable aircraft. It also requires trained and ready air crew, maintainers and other airmen as well as enough spare parts and resources, he said. Goldfein also cited increases in flying hours and pilot training as other indicators of progress.
Instead of driving toward an 80 percent mission-capable rate, the Air Force is implementing a new “strategic sustainment framework” that will aim to increase readiness by improving the service's repair network and expanding the use of conditions-based maintenance, Brown wrote in his response to the SASC.
The service's inspector general is also conducting a comprehensive classified review of readiness assessments across the Air Force, he said.
In his hearing, Brown reiterated the Air Force's need to grow to 386 squadrons over the long term. When asked by Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., whether the Air Force is now large enough to carry out the National Defense Strategy, Brown said: “To an extent.”
“In the immediate term, I think we are, but we've still got to be able to grow to the 386” squadrons, Brown said. “Anything less than 386 incurs risk.”
However, he acknowledged the Air Force may come close but might not completely meet that goal, which was first laid out by previous Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson. But the Air Force's improved capabilities, including making better use of unmanned platforms, will help make up some of that difference, he said.
“We may be a little bit smaller than 386, but we'll be more capable,” Brown said. “It's not just the manned platforms; it's also how we do manned-unmanned teaming. The XQ-58 Valkyrie [combat drone] is one of those systems that we can team up with, particularly some of our fifth-gen capability to increase our range, increase our awareness, to increase our strike capability.”
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April 21, 2020 | International, Aerospace
DARPA awards nine new contracts to foster drone swarm technology
Nathan Strout The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has issued nine new contracts to companies developing drone swarm technologies, the agency announced April 13. Through the agency's Offensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics program, or OFFSET, it hopes to foster technology developments that will enable 250 small unmanned air or ground robots to work together in support of the war fighter. The program works in five main areas: swarm tactics, swarm autonomy, human-swarm teaming, virtual environment and physical test bed. The agency has hosted multiple swarm sprints to encourage rapid innovation in one or more of those areas. The nine awards mark the fifth such swarm sprint, with this one focused on swarm tactics and physical test beds in an urban environment. “The urban environment presents compelling challenges such as tall buildings, tight spaces, and limited sight lines,” Timothy Chung, the OFFSET program manager in DARPA's Tactical Technology Office, said in an agency news release. “Enhancing the Swarm Physical Testbeds that tackle those unique challenges is a desired goal of the OFFSET program.” Four of the participants will be tackling the swarm tactics portion of the sprint, where they will be asked to solve problems such as “disrupting the opposition's decision making, obfuscating swarm intent, updating maps of a dynamic environment, and maintaining the swarm's communications indoors.” The remaining five performers will work on the physical test bed thrust area, which includes reducing deployment times, utilizing new navigation sensors, incorporating fixed-wing aircraft into the swarm and enhancing mobility for robotic, wheeled vehicles in urban settings. Participants will incorporate their technologies into the OFFSET swarm systems architecture to demonstrate their respective solutions, with field tests taking place in December 2020. The recipients are as follows: Thrust area: Physical test bed Michigan Technological University/Michigan Tech Research Institute Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory HDT Expeditionary Systems, Inc. Sentien Robotics Texas A&M University Thrust area: Swarm tactics Michigan Technological University/Michigan Tech Research Institute Charles River Analytics, Inc. Soar Technology, Inc. Northwestern University https://www.c4isrnet.com/unmanned/2020/04/20/darpa-to-foster-urban-drone-swarm-tech-with-nine-new-contracts/
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July 9, 2020 | International, Aerospace
US Air Force ready to test tech for new battle management system
Valerie Insinna WASHINGTON — The Air Force is ramping up its efforts to test and field a suite of new hardware and software that will become the military's command and control backbone. Since February, the Air Force has published three separate broad area announcements seeking technologies that could be funneled inside the Advanced Battle Management System, the service's effort to seamlessly connect all of the Department of Defense's equipment and pool together its data to form a complete picture of the battlespace. Then, in May and July, it awarded the first two mega-batches of ABMS contracts, with 46 companies in total winning $1000 and a chance to compete for more money down the road. “We want a wide variety of companies, and we definitely want fresh blood in the ABMS competition,” Will Roper, the Air Force's acquisition executive, told reporters on May 14. “There is a lot that can be contributed from companies that are commercially focused, that know a lot about data, that know a lot about machine learning and AI and know a lot about analytics. Those are going to be the most important parts of the Advanced Battle Management System.” ABMS is the Air Force's piece of the military's fledgling Joint All Domain Command and Control concept. The vision involves networking every shooter and sensor to a cloud computing environment and using artificial intelligence to ensure that relevant information is immediately sent to whichever platform needs it. In practice, that could look like compiling data from a Global Hawk drone and a naval destroyer to help cue a fighter jet to lock its missile on a nearby target. While the Air Force has some big picture ideas of the products that will comprise ABMS — such as cloud computing tools, machine learning technologies and apps — it hasn't set firm requirements or laid out exactly what products it needs to build out the system. Through the BAAs, the government plans on bringing in companies using different styles of contracts and agreements, which Roper said will allow startups, commercial tech firms and other nontraditional players to “find their fit with this mission.” Those companies will then bring their products and technologies for week-long field tests, held three times a year. The next phase of experiments is planned to start on Aug. 31. While the service had already performed one experiment with technologies that could become part of ABMS and had put several dozen companies on contract prior to May, the Air Force sees the broad area announcements as vehicles to capture a wider array of technology firms that may not already do business with the government, Roper said. Each BAA has multiple rolling deadlines, with the Air Force hoping to award contracts anywhere from four to six weeks after a company submits a proposal. The first announcement seeks out proposals for traditional indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contracts. The second solicits ideas and technologies through a two-step process, where industry would submit information about the concept before being invited to submit a formal proposal, which the service says will allow participation from contractors “who are unsure about how they want to proceed but want to share their idea.” The third announcement invites companies with existing products to join ongoing ABMS technology demonstrations — at no cost to the government — through cooperative research and development agreements. The service also held a series of industry days, starting May 13, to help answer questions about the effort, especially from businesses that don't usually work with the Defense Department. “We had over a hundred companies just in the first day, and we are expecting more than 300 before the end of this first event,” Roper said. “Three hundred companies for the first industry day ... is a good start. That's certainly broader than the number of defense primes that we have or even the major suppliers.” Each of the announcements specify seven broad areas where the service is seeking new technologies or ideas: Digital architecture, standards and concepts: The Air Force is looking for digital modeling and simulation technologies, trade studies and other standards development tools and processes that it can use to map out the entire ABMS architecture virtually and test how it would work in practice. Sensor integration: In essence, the service wants any hardware or software that will allow different equipment to share data. “A key interest of ABMS is the compatibility and interoperability capabilities through the use of open interfaces to enable improved control of systems and the processing of their data,” the service said in the BAA. Data: The Air Force is also interested in “cloud-based data repositories” that could pass information across domains to the different services. These libraries of data points will be “meta tagged,” analyzed and then fused using AI algorithms to help inform military decision makers. Secure processing: The service needs technologies that will be able to move the appropriate data across technologies with different security levels, ensuring that classified information stays protected while sharing what is feasible. It also includes deployment, training and support services for all devices and processing environments. Connectivity: These tools include line-of-sight and beyond line-of-sight communications networks, as well as technologies that can turn a platform into a data node, reduce latency, provide improved anti-jamming capabilities or other functions that improve the speed and breadth of communications gear. Applications: iPhone analogies have become Defense Department clichés at this point, but the Air Force is hoping to commission the design and development of apps to process, fuse and help present data to different audiences across domains. Effects integration: These involve networked weapons that can be integrated with existing platforms for a greater combined effect. “This includes, but is not limited to smart munitions and low-cost autonomous platforms” that can carry out functions such as data relay. The Air Force is slated to spend $300 million on the Advanced Battle Management System through fiscal year 2021, according to the Government Accountability Office, which has also warned that the nontraditional structure of the program could put it “at greater risk for schedule delays, cost growth, and integration issues.” Preston Dunlap, the Air Force's chief architect charged with overseeing the ABMS effort, said the the price of technologies will undeniably be an important criteria, and the service will try to reduce costs by using affordable and readily available commercial products whenever possible. “That's one of the core principles that we have to manage costs,” he said during a May 7 event hosted by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. “We're able to take advantage of the commercial pressures and marketplace to keep the costs down. That's different. Normally it's flipped. If we're the primary customer here, we've got to be very concerned about cost growth associated with that. Right now, in some sense, we're the small buyer.” While the Air Force will better be able estimate the total cost of ABMS as experiments go on, the current focus of the effort is figuring out how to inject innovative commercial tech into the military system as quickly as it becomes available, Dunlap said. “I'm less worried at the moment about some of those cost issues because if we're in that cycle we're probably not doing it right,” he said. https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/c2-comms/2020/07/08/us-air-force-ready-to-test-tech-for-new-battle-management-system/