US Air Force receives first new Compass Call electronic warfare plane

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  August 14, 2020 | International, C4ISR, Security

  Northrop Grumman Awarded DARPA Gamebreaker Contract

  Linthicum, Md. – August 12, 2020 – Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE: NOC) was recently awarded a contract from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Strategic Technology Office (STO) for the Gamebreaker program. This innovative program seeks to develop and apply artificial intelligence (AI) to existing real-time strategy games to break a complex model or create an imbalance. Northrop Grumman will use this opportunity to evaluate and develop technology to improve flexible planning, optimization and discovery in products that operate dynamic environments. “Using AI to exploit engagement models can help to enable intelligent systems that could in turn enhance military strategy,” said Susan Wilson, director, intelligent mission capabilities and advanced technology laboratory, Northrop Grumman. “We are exploring how we may be able to use this methodology in the future.” Northrop Grumman's Gamebreaker team includes Hazardous Software and Slitherine Software's Matrix Games. Working closely together, this partnership will use advanced AI techniques to model and break balance within a highly complex simulator environment called “Command: Modern Operations”. “Hazardous Software Inc. (HSI) is excited to continue our partnership with Northrop Grumman,” said Christopher Hazard, CEO, Hazardous Software. “Building upon our 13 years of history modeling dynamic adversarial scenarios and leveraging the Diveplane machine learning platform, HSI's approach to Gamebreaker complements Northrop Grumman's longstanding experience and technology capabilities.” “Command Professional Edition is the only wargame being analyzed by DARPA in the Gamebreaker program,” said Iain McNeil, CEO, Slitherine Software. “We are very interested to see how the AI behaves and if it manages to identify loopholes that need assessment, or it comes up with innovative strategies that are applicable to the real world.” Hazardous Software Inc. (HSI) creates technology that enables and incentivizes people to operate strategically in uncertain environments, regardless of whether it is a game, a simulation, or a real-life event. HSI leverages its unique capabilities in counterfactual reasoning and through understandable artificial intelligence via its relationship with Diveplane Corporation, a company it spun out in 2017. Matrix Games specializes in COTS physics-based simulations and strategy video games. Through careful research and development, commercial simulations are turned into modern and powerful programs that are able to replicate complex military operations, from tactical and operational to analytical. Matrix Games, utilizing the Flashpoint Campaigns Sim, has now been appointed to year 2 of the ATHENA Prototype Project by DEFENSE ENERGY CENTER OF EXCELLENCE (NSTXL) on behalf of the United States Army Future Studies Group. The company is also a “single source” contractor and research and development supplier of the UK Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl). Northrop Grumman solves the toughest problems in space, aeronautics, defense and cyberspace to meet the ever evolving needs of our customers worldwide. Our 90,000 employees define possible every day using science, technology and engineering to create and deliver advanced systems, products and services. View source version on Northrop Grumman: https://news.northropgrumman.com/news/releases/northrop-grumman-awarded-darpa-gamebreaker-contract

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  July 5, 2018 | International, Aerospace

  Tightening Chest and Tingling Fingers: Why Are the Military’s Fighter Pilots Getting Sick?

  BY LARA SELIGMAN On June 28, a young U.S. Navy officer flying in a two-seater electronic warfare jet in the skies over Washington State suddenly felt a tightness in his chest and tingling in his extremities. He instantly recognized his symptoms as signs of hypoxia, or oxygen deprivation. The jet, an EA-18G Growler from a training squadron out of Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, diverted to a local airport, and made an “uneventful” landing, according to Navy spokesman Cmdr. Scot Cregan. The crew member, an electronic warfare officer in training, was transported to a hospital for medical treatment. Both the pilot and the trainee officer survived, but the incident, the latest in an alarming string of similar episodes, could have been deadly. Across the U.S. military fleets, pilots and aircrew are experiencing a dramatic surge in so-called physiological episodes, which leave aviators disoriented and shaken. At worst, these unexplained incidents can be fatal — the Navy has linked four F/A-18 fighter pilot deaths over a span of 10 years to the events. The continuing mystery over the pilots' sickness is part of a deeper concern about the military's aviation readiness, as the rate of fatal aircraft crashes recently reached a six-year high. It also raises larger questions over the ability of the world's largest and best-funded military to resolve a basic problem that appears primarily limited to the United States. The Navy considers the physiological episode problem its “number one aviation safety priority.” From 2009 to 2016, the rate of such events increased almost eightfold in the F/A-18 and EA-18G — a version of the two-seater F/A-18 — fleets, from 16 to 125 incidents. In the Navy's T-45 training fleet, the spike is even more significant: In 2009, the Navy reported just one such incident, but in 2016, the number was 38. Most recently, two aviators endured a harrowing landing after the temperature inside their Growler cockpit suddenly plunged to as low as -30 degrees. A mist formed in the cockpit, covering the instruments and windows with ice and rendering the pilots almost completely blind. The aircrew had to turn on the emergency oxygen supply. The crew and ground-based controllers managed to work to land the aircraft safely. But both the pilot and the electronic warfare officer suffered “severe blistering and burns on hands” due to frostbite. The Navy believes the incident was caused by a failure of the environmental control system, a series of pipes and valves that regulates airflow to the air conditioning and oxygen systems. The Air Force has a similar oxygen problem. In 2010, Capt. Jeff Haney died when an engine bleed-air malfunction caused the control system on his F-22 stealth fighter to shut off oxygen flow to his mask. Since then, the episodes have continued in almost every aircraft type, including the A-10 attack jet, the T-6 trainer, and the new F-35 fighter. The most recent incidents have not yet been directly linked to fatalities. But in a sign that the military recognizes the severity of the problem, in the past year both the Navy and Air Force have grounded fleets in response to these events: the Navy's T-45s in April 2017, the Air Force F-35s at Luke Air Force Base in June 2017, part of the Air Force's A-10 fleet in November 2017, and the T-6s in November 2017 and again this February. Neither service has identified a single point of failure or a solution to these episodes despite years of investment — a fact that has not gone unnoticed by prominent lawmakers. “What's occurring in the Navy is absolutely unacceptable,” said Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), chairman of the Armed Services Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces, in 2017. “This is absolutely critical for our pilots.” “I have no doubt the Navy is taking that issue seriously,” said Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, during an event in Washington in 2017. But, “I don't understand why we can't figure out what's causing the oxygen problem.” In May, Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), introduced legislation to create an independent National Commission on Military Aviation Safety in response to the surge in deadly crashes over the last year. Some, but not all, of these incidents were related to hypoxia. Meanwhile, NASA has waded into the fray. After completing a congressionally mandated review of the Navy's investigation into the F/A-18 and EA-18G incidents, which faulted both the Navy and manufacturer Boeing, the agency is embarking on a new study of how pilots breathe while flying high-performance aircraft. The services continue making incremental changes to the aircraft design, flight gear, and maintenance procedures in an effort to mitigate the risk to aircrew. In the T-45, at least, these modifications have reduced the number of incidents, according to Rear Adm. Sara Joyner, who until recently led the Navy's physiological episode investigation. Rear Adm.-select Fredrick Luchtman currently leads the effort. But other Navy and Air Force fleets continue to see physiological episodes at alarming rates. “More work remains to be done, and this will remain our top safety priority until we fully understand, and have mitigated, all possible PE [physiological episode] causal factors,” said Rear Adm. Roy Kelley, commander of Naval Air Force Atlantic, in congressional testimony June 21. https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/07/03/tightening-chest-and-tingling-fingers-why-are-the-militarys-fighter-pilots-getting-sick/

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  January 26, 2022 | International, Aerospace

  US approves $2.2 billion sale of C-130J aircraft to Egypt

  The State Department has also OK'd the possible $355 million sale of air defense radar systems to the key Middle East ally.