US Army set to test combined cyber, jamming, signal intelligence tool

On the same subject

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  April 29, 2020 | International, Aerospace

  Will commercial and military launch programs ever be truly complementary?

  By: Kirk Pysher In a few months, the U.S. Air Force will choose two of the four competing space companies to provide five years of launches in the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program. One of the core objectives for this program is to increase affordability by leveraging the technologies and business models of the commercial launch industry. Is that a realistic expectation given the current commercial space market and historical precedents? Historically, the commercial launch market has seen significant variability. Launches of commercial communication satellite constellations began in the early 1970s with NASA serving as the launch provider. New launch providers began to emerge from the commercial world after the Commercial Space Launch Act of 1984 allowed the private sector to provide launch services. We then witnessed a remarkable growth in commercial space launches in the 1990s that peaked just before the turn of the century. Then, until about 2014, the commercial launch market stabilized at 20-25 commercial geostationary orbit satellites per year that were split essentially between three global launch suppliers. Since then, new entrants into the commercial launch market and pricing pressure from terrestrial-based communication systems have significantly impacted the viability of the commercial launch market, reducing profit margins and returns on investment across the board. The expected 20-25 commercial GEO missions is now in the range of 10-15 launches per year and is expected to remain at that level beyond the NSSL five-year period of performance. With new entrants into the commercial launch market, that 40-50 percent reduction in annual launch opportunities will now be competed among seven to eight global launch providers, putting further pressure on the viability of those launchers. Additionally, commercial launch revenue is also expected to decrease over that period by as much as 30 percent as satellite operators look to reduce their launch cost through shared launch, smaller spacecraft and reduced launch pricing. Given the projected commercial launch market and additional competition from new entrants, launch service providers will have difficultly building and maintaining viable commercial launch business plans, let alone having commercial launch-driven capital to invest in new technology. History has proven that no commercial launch service provider can succeed without having an anchor government customer. The commercial launch market simply has not been able to provide the stable, long-term demand needed to maintain affordable pricing, innovation and factory throughput for the Air Force to benefit from. History has also demonstrated that it is the Air Force with NSSL since 2003 that has provided the launch service providers with a stable number of launches. The defense and commercial launch markets have a fundamental difference. The former focuses strictly on satisfying national security mission requirements in space — needs that are driven by risk, strategy and geopolitical events regardless of vulnerabilities in commercial markets. The defense market began in the late 1950s with industry designing, developing and building launch vehicles for the U.S. government to place critical national security satellites into orbit. Early on, we saw a large number of launches in the beginning — peaking at more than 40 in 1966 — before activity levels decreased to level out by 1980. After more than 400 launches of defense-related satellites, the defense launch market finally settled into an average eight launches annually, whereas the commercial launch market is strictly tied to the ability of global satellite operators to close business plans and obtain institutional and/or private funding on new and replacement satellites. The global COVID-19 pandemic is a stark reminder of the vulnerability of all commercial markets. Airlines, aircraft manufacturers and commercial space companies are needing to seek tens of billions of dollars in government assistance; and private commercial space investors are also reassessing their risk postures, as is demonstrated by the recent OneWeb bankruptcy filing. Given the projected decline in commercial launch along with the historical precedents, there would be significant risk for the Air Force to expect to leverage benefit from commercial launch. In fact, I believe history has demonstrated that it is commercial launch that is able to leverage the benefits derived from the steady cadence of defense and civil government launches. The Air Force, in its role as anchor customer, needs to clearly understand commercial market dependencies and business cases of its key providers. With that understanding, the Air Force will mitigate any risk of critical national security missions being dependent on a finicky and fluctuating commercial market. Kirk Pysher is an aerospace executive with more than 20 years in the commercial launch market, serving most recently as the president of International Launch Services until October 2019. https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2020/04/28/will-commercial-and-military-launch-programs-ever-be-truly-complementary/

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  November 25, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  Four factors to consider in keeping NATO relevant

  By: Hans Binnendijk and Daniel S. Hamilton The NATO alliance survived four years of U.S. President Donald Trump due largely to strong congressional support and clever leadership by Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. After the bell ringing and fireworks end in European capitals to welcome President-elect Joe Biden, the alliance will need to realize that it can not go back to business as usual. The world has moved on during those four years and the alliance will need to continue to rejuvenate in order to remain relevant. That rejuvenation process will be enshrined in a new Strategic Concept, which should emerge over the next year or so. Stoltenberg already has a so-called reflection process underway designed to identify key areas where change is needed. Biden's foreign policy team will now weigh in. NATO's rejuvenation might unfold under what we call the “Four Cs.” We should want an alliance that is more coherent, more capable, more comprehensive in scope and with a more co-equal balance of contributions to the common defense. The return of Joe Biden alone will contribute to NATO's coherence, and reverse poisonous trans-Atlantic political relations. But the problem is deeper. Threat perceptions differ markedly across the alliance. There is broad lack of confidence in commitments to the North Atlantic Treaty, including its mutual defense Article V. There is democratic backsliding among several NATO members. Allies are facing off against each other in the Eastern Mediterranean. There are differing attitudes about Russian behavior around the Black and Baltic sea. There are differences about the endgame in Afghanistan. And there are uncertainties of how the alliance should address China's growing security role in Europe and the global commons. The new Strategic Concept will need to enhance coherence by reaffirming common democratic values and recommitting to the common defense. This will be the most important element of a new Strategic Concept. A review of the Strategic Concept can provide a process through which allies can assess mechanisms to uphold their mutual commitment to strengthen their free institutions, avoid straying from agreed democratic practices and prevent allies from confronting each other militarily. Second, the alliance needs to continue its efforts to strengthen its capabilities in two distinct areas: conventional military might and resilience against so-called hybrid or non-kinetic attacks. Since the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, NATO nations have begun to focus again on a major power competitor. Four NATO battlegroups are forward-deployed to the Baltic states and Poland. A small, very high-readiness force and a larger readiness initiative were undertaken to back up those battalions. A mobilization initiative was designed to make sure ready forces can forward-deploy quickly. But European defense budgets constrained by COVID-19 will put those initiatives in jeopardy. The Strategic Concept will need to prioritize those programs. The alliance must also more methodically address unconventional challenges to human security from Russia such as media disinformation, corrosive cyber operations, supply chain disruptions and energy intimidation. The Strategic Concept needs to design resilience programs so that alliance members can better protect the critical functions of our societies to such disruptive dangers. Next, the scope of NATO's mission needs to be more comprehensive. NATO's core tasks of collective defense, crisis management and cooperative security must be expanded to include countering challenges that contribute to global instability. Those challenges would range from managing global warming and pandemics through the refugee crisis to the rise of China. NATO has recently used its mobility and civil defense assets to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. NATO navies have contributed to saving the lives of refugees at sea. In addition, the consequences of a major ice melt will have a significant security impact in the Arctic, along urban coastlines and on further refugee flows. To remain relevant, NATO must begin to define its role in these areas. Stoltenberg has focused the alliance's attention on China. That nation is increasingly partnering with Russia in the military arena including defense industrial cooperation and joint exercises. It also has invested in European strategic infrastructure, created technology dependencies and used coercive diplomacy to stifle European voices. NATO's expanded role should include reducing those dependencies and developing much closer partnership ties with America's Asian allies. Finally, the new Strategic Concept should result in more co-equal trans-Atlantic distribution of military capabilities and responsibilities. This is less about traditional burden-sharing than it is about responding to two historical trends. Europe's response to the Trump years has been to seek greater strategic autonomy. China's military challenge has American planners focusing on Asia first. Many American friends of Europe are discussing a possible new division of labor, with the United States focusing more on China and European militaries focusing on Russia. This, however, could leave Europe poorly defended and open to coercion. The Strategic Concept will need to divine an elegant solution, perhaps with Europe accepting the responsibility to provide half of the capability needed to defend against a major Russian attack. NATO has remained history's strongest alliance precisely because it has adapted to new strategic conditions. It can do so again. Hans Binnendijk is a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council and formerly served as the U.S. National Security Council's senior director for defense policy. Daniel S. Hamilton is an Austrian Marshall Plan distinguished fellow and the director of the Global Europe Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center. https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2020/11/24/four-factors-to-consider-in-keeping-nato-relevant/

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  September 12, 2018 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR

  French joint chief calls for coordinated European force

  By: Pierre Tran SATORY ARMY BASE, France — Nations in Europe need to forge a more coordinated forceacross the continent, with each ready to step up to play a leadership role during conflict, said the French joint chief of staff. “The future of the defense of nations on the continent cannot be considered outside the European framework,” Army Gen. François Lecointre told the Summer Defense University, a two-day gathering of senior officers, parliamentarians and industry chiefs. “In the context of doubt over multilateralism, greater fragility of alliances and America's refocus of attention to the Indo-Pacific region, the European continent must confront — increasingly on its own — all kinds of threats: might, terrorism, hybrid, cyber and migration,” he said. That use of the term “might” referred to unspecified nations perceived to pose a threat to Western allies. That calls for a common vision in strategy and capability, with a country ready to take the role of a “leader nation,” he said. The aim is to build a “European strategic autonomy,” he added. The French armed forces minister, Florence Parly, came to the army base, just outside Versailles, west of the capital, and watched a dynamic display staged by the Army. The service fielded a Jaguar combat and reconnaissance vehicle, a VBCI infantry fighting vehicle carrying a squad of troops, a robotic vehicle carrying a wounded soldier, and a Leclerc main battle tank carried by a tank transport. France invites foreign officers and political leaders to the high-level annual gathering, organized by CEIS, a think tank and consultancy. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2018/09/11/french-joint-chief-calls-for-coordinated-european-force