US and Chile agree to cooperate on cyber security

On the same subject

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  December 29, 2024 | International, Land

  Canadian military fears maintenance issues will plague equipment sent to Latvia

  DND acknowledged a lack of storage and maintenance facilities at Camp Adazi in Latvia, but said fixes are underway.

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  October 21, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Land, C4ISR

  The Army and Air Force are finally on the same page with a plan to connect the military. What happens next?

  Valerie Insinna and Jen Judson WASHINGTON — After years of sometimes contentious discussions, the Army and Air Force have adopted a plan to work together on what they are now calling Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control — the idea that all of the U.S. military's sensors and shooters must be able to send data to each other seamlessly and instantaneously. The agreement, signed Sept. 29 by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Brown and Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville, paves the way for closer collaboration on “mutual standards for data sharing and service interfacing” that will ultimately allow the services to ensure that new communications gear, networks and artificial intelligence systems they field can connect to each other, reducing the risk of incompatibility. But much is still unknown, including the exact nature of the Army-Air Force collaboration and how much technology the services will be willing to share. Army Futures Command and the Air Force's office of strategy, integration and requirements are tasked with leading the joint effort, which will bridge the services' major avenues for CJADC2 experimentation — the Army's Project Convergence and the Air Force's Advanced Battle Management System. Over the next 60 days, the two services will formulate a plan to connect the Project Convergence and ABMS exercises, and ensure data can be transmitted along their platforms, said Lt. Gen. Clinton Hinote, who leads Air Force's strategy office. But that doesn't mean the services are on a path to adopt the same systems architecture, data standards and interfaces. “What the Army and the Air Force are agreeing to is, we're going to be able to see their data, they're going to be able to see our data. And as much as we can, we will come up with common standards,” Hinote said in an Oct. 15 interview. “But even if we can't come up with common standards, we realize that translators are going to be something that will be with us for a long time, and we will build the translators necessary to make sure we can share.” The main point of the discussions was to avoid redundancies, McConville told Defense News on Oct. in a generation, said Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy, who pointed to the formation of the AirLand Battle doctrine in the 1980s as the last time they worked together so intimately on a new war-fighting concept. “I'm very encouraged that we have the Air Staff and the Army Staff investing countless hours,” he said. “We're laying down the path to get there. And it really starts with cloud architecture, common data standards, and command-and-control systems that you can wire together so that they can share information at the speed of relevance. So that whether it's an F-35 [fighter jet] or an artillery battery, they communicate with each other to prosecute enemy targets.” Battle of the AIs The Army's and the Air Force's goals are roughly the same. The services want to be able to take data from any of the services' sensors — whether that's the radar of an E-3 early airborne warning aircraft or the video collected by an MQ-1C Gray Eagle drone — and detect a threat, fuse it with other information coming in from other platforms, use artificial intelligence to provide a list of options to commanders and ultimately send accurate target data to the weapon systems that will shoot it, all in a drastically shortened timeline. Over the past year, the Air Force held three ABMS demonstrations, with the most recent taking place Sept. 15-25 alongside U.S. Indo-Pacific Command's Exercise Valiant Shield. So far, the service has tested out technology that allows the F-35 and F-22 jets to send data to each other despite their use of different waveforms. It also test tech that connects an AC-130 gunship with SpaceX's Starlink constellation, and used a high-velocity projectile shot from a howitzer to shoot down a surrogate cruise missile. All of those demonstrations were enabled by 5G connectivity, cloud computing and competing battle management systems that fused together data and applied machine-learning algorithms. Meanwhile, during the Army's first Project Convergence exercise held in September, the service tested a prototype of the Extended Range Cannon Artillery, fused data through a new system known as Prometheus and used artificial intelligence to recommend options for shooting a target. A Marine Corps F-35 also participated in some tests, receiving targeting information that originated from a satellite, then passing on information from its own sensors to an Army AI system known as FIRES Synchronization to Optimize Responses in Multi-Domain Operations — or FIRESTORM. Joint Army and Air Force experiments could begin as early as March 2021, said Portia Crowe, the chief data officer of the Army's Network Cross-Functional Team at Army Futures Command. Crowe, who spoke during a Oct. 14 webinar hosted by C4ISRNET, did not elaborate on what would be tested. Much of the early collaboration between the Army's Project Convergence and the Air Force's ABMS will likely involve plugging in new technologies from one service and seeing if they can successfully send data to the other's nodes in the experiment, Hinote said. But that won't be “where the magic happens,” he noted. “The magic is going to happen in the flow of information, and then the development of that information into something that looks new” through the use of artificial intelligence. Felix Jonathan, a robotics engineer from Carnegie Mellon University, inputs data into an autonomous ground vehicle control system during Project Convergence at Yuma Proving Ground, Ariz., which took place Aug. 11-Sept. 18, 2020. (Spc. Carlos Cuebas Fantauzzi/U.S. Army) Though Project Convergence and ABMS are still in their infancies, the Army and the Air Force have adopted different philosophies for incorporating machine learning into the “kill chain” — the sensors and weapon systems that detect, identify and prosecute a threat. While the Air Force is largely experimenting with solutions made by contractors like Anduril Industries and Palantir, the Army is mostly relying on government-owned platforms created by government software coders. “One of the things that I see as being an incredibly interesting exercise — I don't know if this will happen this year or next year, but I'm sure it will happen — is let's compare what we were able to do in the government, using government civilians who are coders and who are programming these machine-learning algorithms to come up with the top three actions [to take in response to a given threat],” Hinote said. “And let's compare that to what [private] companies are doing and their intellectual property. And then, if that gives us insight, then what is the business model that we want to propose?” But as those technologies mature, Hinote said, the services must answer difficult doctrinal and technical questions: How much should the government be involved in shaping the responses given by the algorithm, and how does it balance that requirement with industry's ability to move fast? When an AI gives a commander a list of military options, who owns that data? And how can military operators know the underlying assumptions an AI system is making when it presents a threat to commanders and a set of options for countering it? If they don't understand why an AI system is recommending a course of action, should commanders feel comfortable using lethal force? “How do we know enough about the machine learning and algorithms so that their output is useful, but not a surprise to us? And if it is a surprise, how did it get to that surprise? Because if you don't know that, you're going to feel very weird about using it for lethal force,” Hinote said. “Right now we're kind of feeling our way down that path to see how much trust are we going to have in these algorithms, and developing trust is going to be something you're going to see over and over and over in both Project Convergence and ABMS onramps.” Major barriers The Army and the Air Force aren't the only military entities driving to make CJADC2 a reality. The Navy recently launched its own effort — Project Overmatch — and tapped Rear Adm. Douglas Small on Oct. 1 to lead it. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday has said it is the service's second-most important priority, falling behind only the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine. Coast Guardsmen simulate interdicting a jammer on a vessel in support of an Advanced Battle Management System experiment in the Gulf of Mexico on Sept. 3, 2020. (Staff Sgt. Haley Phillips/U.S. Air Force) In totality, the U.S. military will have at least three separate CJADC2 initiatives, each fielding their own hardware and software. There are good reasons for each service retaining their own programs, according to Hinote, as each domain presents unique challenges, and each service organizes itself differently to project power on land, at sea or in the air. “The Army has been very concerned over scale. They see each of their soldiers as being a node inside the network, and therefore you could have millions of nodes. And they're very concerned that if this was only Air Force-led, that the scale couldn't be reached — we would not have the ability to plug in all of those soldiers and nodes in the network,” Hinote said, adding that it's a valid concern. He added that the Air Force also has its challenges — namely the difficulty of sending data over long distances, and having to connect aircraft and sensors that may be far away from a target. But the result is three large, complicated acquisition programs that will need billions of dollars in funding — and potentially compete against each other for money. To further complicate the issue, the military's existing funding mechanisms aren't optimized for the fast-paced, iterative experimentation and procurement the services seek. One way to overcome this might involve creating a Pentagon-wide fund for CJADC2, and then split it among the services, Hinote said. Another option might include designating one service as the executive agent, giving that force organizing authority and the power of the purse. But both come with drawbacks. “[There are] different models out there, but none of them seem to really fit,” Hinote said. “And so we have been having talks with especially the appropriations defense [committees on] the Senate and House side on what would it look like for a modern military to buy a capability like this, and what would the taxpayers need for understanding that this is good stewardship. And that has not been decided.” https://www.c4isrnet.com/digital-show-dailies/ausa/2020/10/20/the-army-and-air-force-are-finally-on-the-same-page-with-a-plan-to-connect-the-military-what-happens-next/

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  October 12, 2018 | International, Aerospace

  To up fighter readiness levels, Pentagon looks to retire older planes and fix supply chains

  By: Aaron Mehta WASHINGTON — With Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis issuing new guidancedemanding readiness for tactical air assets increase in just one year, the Pentagon is openly acknowledging that older planes will have to be retired and cannibalized for parts to make it happen. The department will also look to overhaul how it handles its supply chain, according to the department's No. 2 official. In a September memo, first reported by Defense News, Mattis ordered the Air Force, Navy and Marines to get the Pentagon's fleets of F-16, F-18, F-22 and F-35 fighters to a minimum of 80 percent mission ready. That would represent a major jump in readiness over a short period of time, raising skepticism amongst analysts. From a pure numbers-on-paper standpoint, the easiest way for getting readiness rates up on the fleet would involve retiring older, less ready aircraft — essentially increasing the percentage of good-to-go planes by reducing the overall size of the fleets. Such a move may not be popular on the Hill, which routinely complains about the size of the military compared with previous eras. But it's a logical step being endorsed by both Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan and Gen. Robert Neller, the Marine Corps chief of staff. “You gotta get rid of airplanes. At some point, you gotta get rid of the old ones,” Neller told reporters Wednesday at a Defense Writer's Group event, when asked how he would hit that 80 percent mark. Neller added that such a move has to be part of a broader spectrum of moves, including better quality parts from vendors, being more efficient with maintainers, and adjusting the flying hours for pilots to make sure the wings aren't being worn off on jets. “It's not going to be a single thing, so we've got to do our part,” he added. Speaking to reporters at the AUSA conference the same day, Shanahan seemed to zero in on the oldest Navy jets as ones that could be retired. “Well, when you look at the size of the fleet of the F-18s, you got [F-18A models] out there, then you look at what it would take to restore them to a certain level of readiness, you might say it's much easier just to retire those,” he said. “So, I mean, there's a mix of answers.” “It probably doesn't make sense to generate a lot of activity to make something that is older more reliable, but when you think about the joint strike fighter and the hundreds of those that we're going to take, 80 percent should be the minimum, OK? It shouldn't be some aspirational goal, it should be the minimum.” However, he pushed back at the idea that anyone will “game the system” to get those readiness percentages up. Commercial practices In the memo, Mattis specifically notes the commercial aviation industry is able to maintain higher readiness rates and directs the service to look that way for inspiration. “I am confident in our department's ability to generate additional capacity from our current aircraft inventory, alongside the commercial aviation industry's sustainment of high availability rates,” Mattis wrote. “As we seek to achieve our goals, we can learn from industry's benchmarks for measuring speed, cost and mission capability, as well as its best practices for implementing a sustainable, Department-wide system.” Shanahan, who will be the overall leader of the readiness rate improvement efforts, is a longtime Boeing executive who worked directly on a number of commercial jet production programs. And to him, there are absolutely lessons that can be drawn from passenger aviation. “A jet engine is a jet engine; no one will convince me otherwise,” he said. “I've lived in both worlds, I've been on more airplanes than anybody in the United States, I know these things, OK?” The deputy said his focus was on helping the service develop “methods, systems and practices” that will lead to systemic changes in how maintenance is done and provide dividends for years to come. “When you look at the F-18s, this is the same size of fleet as Southwest has. It's not a super-large fleet, they're all basically the same,” Shanahan noted. “So how do we put in place, you know, the support practices and the parts so that people aren't working as hard?” The need to keep part quality and quantity up were on display just a day after Shanahan and Neller's comments. On Thursday, the Pentagon ordered a temporary stop to flying the F-35 as it investigated a fuel tube inside the engines of the fleet. That same day, an F-22 crashed on its side following a landing gear malfunction. During his talk with reporters, the Navy was singled out as already having committed to improving their methodologies. And he called out the need to “restructure” how both the Navy and Air Force handle their supply chains — something he said will ultimately bleed over into maintenance beyond the four selected jet fleets. “The real end game to me is as a department, how do we end up with a single sustainment system? And what was good about this is that once you get the F-18 right, it spills over into the P-8, because they're side-by-side, so [the P-8 maintainers] going to be like, ‘Those guys, they're working a lot less hard than we are and they're getting much better results, why don't we just do it that way?' “And then as people see the methods they apply to shipbuilding or ship maintenance,” he added. Shawn Snow of Marine Corps Times contributed to this report. https://www.defensenews.com/air/2018/10/11/to-up-fighter-readiness-levels-pentagon-looks-to-retire-older-planes-and-fix-supply-chains