US Air Force requests $156.3 billion in FY19, plans to retire B-1, B-2 fleets

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  October 3, 2023 | International, Security

  Slovakia shift, elections in Poland dampen support for Ukraine

  With Poland heading towards a general election on Oct. 15, the issue of Warsaw’s relations with Kyiv has found itself at center stage.

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  January 31, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  Silicon Valley investors to DoD: Dual-use tech is a bad strategy

  By: Jill Aitoro SIMI VALLEY, Calif. — Dual-use technology — that is, tech that can be adapted from the commercial market to serve the needs of the military — is core to the U.S. Department of Defense's innovation strategy. But those willing to put money toward big ideas argue it's the wrong approach. “In terms of how to build a startup and how to scale really fast, you can't have two missions,” said Katherine Boyle, an investor with venture capital firm General Catalyst, during a Defense News roundtable in California. “You can't be a 10-person startup saying: ‘OK, we're going to sell to the DoD, but we're also going to sell to these commercial customers, and it's just going to work out magically.'" For the second year in a row, Defense News hosted the roundtable to dig into Pentagon's efforts to engage with the commercial tech community — this year digging into the challenges and opportunities that come with investment in defense development. To the Pentagon, dual-use technology offers an attractive means of drawing new players into the military fold, while also leveraging the more rapid development that happens on the commercial side. But the model is evolving, said Mike Madsen, director of strategic engagement with the government's Silicon Valley outreach hub Defense Innovation Unit. With DoD, “it takes two years to get to a ‘yes,' when a lot of companies need a ‘no' in 30 days because they don't have the capital,” he said. “So we flipped it. Now we start with the DoD problem set and take it out to industry. And we've lowered a lot of the barriers to entry — we negotiate [intellectual property] for each contract, we negotiate auditability, we move quickly. We look to award prototype contracts in 60 to 90 days.” The approach also attempts to rebalance the gradual shift in research and development investments in the last couple of decades. As noted by Tom Foldesi, DIU's commercial engagement director, one-third of worldwide R&D was tied to the Department of Defense in the 1960s. That percentage has since tanked to 3.7 percent. A separate business line allows R&D to continue to iterate to the next generation of technology so the DoD can “go back to the cookie jar” and tap into the technology to solve future problems, Foldesi said. But to Trey Stephens, a partner at venture capital firm Founders Fund and a co-founder and executive chairman of Anduril Industries, the model ensures the large, traditional defense contractors continue to dominate as the small businesses only “dabble in defense.” It also means the DoD won't bear sole responsibility for the economic growth of these small tech startups. “Where I'm not on board is where a traditional defense company is being asked by the government to integrate dual-use capabilities as a way to prevent that oligopoly from being shaken,” he said. “We have to break this oligopoly. We can only do it if we find companies that are willing to own their responsibility for execution on programs.” To be clear, Stephens acknowledged cases where commercial technology companies can be primes. Lawsuit aside, he's “on board” with awarding the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract to a commercial business — Microsoft — “because the capability is similar enough.” Microsoft was awarded the Pentagon's JEDI cloud contract, but Amazon Web Services has asked a federal court to block the department and the company from beginning work on the project, according to a Jan. 13 court filing. In terms of new capabilities, Stephens advocates for turning the model on its ear: Enable startups to first development a solution to a problem faced within the DoD, then turn that around and sell it to commercial industries. “The commercial industry is oftentimes looking to the government for aspirational solutions to some of its hardest problems, whereas the inverse doesn't really work,” he said. General Catalyst, which counts The Honest Company, Snapchat and Airbnb among its portfolio of companies, has invested in two pure-play defense companies: Anduril, and Palo Alto machine-learning company Vannevar Labs. The latter is developing a product that would bring natural language-processing technologies to support counterterrorism missions. “We actually think this is a better model,” Boyle said. “If you're scaling rapidly, you have to be very focused on your customer set. And if you're going to have to sacrifice a customer, even if you're a multibillion-dollar company, you're going to sacrifice the one who's moving the slowest. And that's usually the government.” https://www.c4isrnet.com/smr/cultural-clash/2020/01/30/silicon-valley-investors-to-dod-dual-use-tech-is-a-bad-strategy/

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  March 10, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  Who were the largest major arms exporters in the last 5 years?

  By: Chiara Vercellone WASHINGTON — The United States was the largest exporter of major arms from 2015-2019, delivering 76 percent more materiel than runner-up Russia, according to a new study by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute think tank. The U.S. contributed about 35 percent of all the world's arms exports during that five-year time period, partly supported by the increased demand for American advanced military aircraft in Europe, Australia, Japan and Taiwan, said Pieter Wezeman, a senior researcher at SIPRI. The study found that the U.S. provided major arms — defined by the think tank as air defense systems, armored vehicles, missiles and satellites, among other materiel — to 96 countries in those five years, with half of the weapons going to the Middle East. From 2015-2019, Russia's major arms exports decreased by 18 percent; France's increased by 72 percent, making it the third largest exporter; and Germany's increased by 17 percent, making it the fourth largest exporter. Worldwide arms exports rose nearly 6 percent in 2015-2019 from 2010-2014, and increased 20 percent from since 2005-2009, SIPRI said. Arm exports to countries in conflict in the Middle East increased by 61 percent in 2015-2019 compared to 2010-2014, the study showed. Saudi Arabia, the country to which the U.S. exported the most arms, was the largest importer globally in 2015-2019. The kingdom's imports increased 130 percent compared to the previous five-year period. Armored vehicles, trainer aircraft, missiles and guided bombs were among the leading arms purchased by the kingdom. Despite attempts in Congress to restrict arms exports to Saudi Arabia, the delivery of major arms, including 30 combat aircraft ordered in 2011, continued in 2019 as the U.S. provided 73% of Saudi Arabia's imports. In May, U.S. President Donald Trump issued an emergency declaration to push through an $8 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries for precision-guided bombs and related components. In July, he said blocking the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia would “weaken America's global competitiveness and damage the important relationship [the United States] share with [its] allies and partners.” U.S. arms exports to Europe and Africa increased by 45 percent and 10 percent, respectively, in 2015-2019. U.S. arms exports to Asia and the Oceania region decreased by 20 percent, as a result of fewer arms exports to India, Pakistan, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan. Since 2018, the U.S. has exported almost 100 major weapons to international organizations like the United Nations, the African Union and NATO, the report said, noting that Russia did not send weapons to these organizations. Among the top 10 arms exporters outside Europe and North America, Israel and South Korea showed the biggest increase in exports. Israeli arms exports increased by 77 percent in 2015-2019 — a record for the country, according to the study. South Korea, which showed a 143 percent increase during that same time period, more than doubled its number of export clients. https://www.defensenews.com/2020/03/09/who-were-the-largest-major-arms-exporters-in-the-last-5-years/