US Army to collaborate with SpaceLink on tactical communications network

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  October 9, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  Pentagon announces $600M in 5G experiments

  Andrew Eversden WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Defense announced $600 million in contracts for 5G experiments Thursday evening for projects at five military bases across the country. The long-anticipated awards are for a series of 5G experiments, including smart warehouses, advanced radars, and augmented and virtual reality capabilities. The awards are part of a Pentagon effort to work with commercial vendors to advance the 5G capabilities of both the department and industry. “The Department of Defense is at the forefront of cutting edge 5G testing and experimentation, which will strengthen our Nation's warfighting capabilities as well as U.S. economic competitiveness in this critical field," said Michael Kratsios, acting under secretary of defense for research and engineering, in a statement. “Through these test sites, the Department is leveraging its unique authorities to pursue bold innovation at a scale and scope unmatched anywhere else in the world. Importantly, today's announcement demonstrates the Department's commitment to exploring the vast potential applications and dual-use opportunities that can be built upon next-generation networks.” The DoD is setting up test beds at several bases where military leaders, industry and academia will work together on a broad range of experiments. The test beds are Hill Air Force Base, Utah; Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington; Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany, Georgia; Naval Base San Diego, California; and Nellis Air Force Base, Las Vegas, Nevada. According to Joseph Evans, the DoD's director of 5G, the department plans for the testbeds to be working in a year. “Each of the experiments has some aspect that's really new and exciting to us,” Evans told reporters. “In addition, it also provides an opportunity for industry to experiment and mature their technologies along those parallel tracks.” According to a DoD press release, the bases were chosen because of their access to spectrum, and mature fiber and wireless infrastructure. At Joint Base Lewis-McChord, the Pentagon will work with four vendors to experiment with 5G-enabled augmented and virtual reality goggles for mission planning, training and operations using mid-band spectrum. The vendors are GBL System Corp., AT&T, Oceus Networks and Booz Allen Hamilton. Evans told reporters that in year three of the work at the base the department wants a “brigade-sized deployment of the technology.” The department will also address 5G spectrum sharing challenges with cellular networks through an experiment at Hill Air Force Base. The project, according to a DoD press release, will “develop sharing/coexistence system prototypes and evaluate their effectiveness with real-world, at-scale networks in controlled environments.” The department is seeking to allow sharing or coexistence between airborne radar systems and 5G cellular technology in the 3.1-3.45 GHz band. Vendors for the spectrum sharing test bed include Nokia, General Dynamics Mission Systems, Booz Allen Hamilton, Key Bridge Wireless, Shared Spectrum Company and Ericsson. The Defense Department is also partnering with AT&T at Nellis Air Force Base for a distributed command and control testbed to enhance C2 survivability in combat. The telecom giant will eventually provide a mobile 5G environment with high capacity, low latency communications to meet the needs of a mobile combined air operations center. “We're basically trying to make our forces more survivable by taking command and control functions that have long been housed in single buildings and spread them out and make them make them mobile,” Evans told reporters. “So [we're] really trying to change the way our forces are deployed in the field.” The department will experiment with 5G-enabled smart warehouses at both Naval Base San Diego (NBSD) and Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany, Ga. The project in San Diego will focus on transshipment between shore facilities and naval units, while the Marines Corps project will center on vehicle storage and maintenance. Both projects will work “to increase the efficiency and fidelity of ... operations, including identification, recording, organization, storage, retrieval, and transportation of materiel and supplies,” a DoD press release said. Industry partners for the San Diego-based project are AT&T, GE Research, Vectrus Mission Solutions Corporation and Deloitte. AT&T will use cullar spectrum in the sub-6 GHz and millimeter wave bands, the DoD press release said. Partners at Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany, Ga. are Federated Wireless, GE Research, KPMG and Scientific Research Corporation. The Air Force also recently chose AT&T to provide 5G capabilities at three bases. The DoD is also in the process of choosing vendors for 5G experiments at seven more bases. According to Evans, the first solicitation release and industry day for the Navy and Marines Corps bases in that tranche will come in mid-October using the Navy's Information Warfare Research Project consortium. The Air Force and Army solicitations are expected to be rolled out through December through the National Spectrum Consortium, Evans said. https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/it-networks/5g/2020/10/08/pentagon-announced-600-million-in-5g-experimentation-contracts/

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  July 2, 2019 | International, Aerospace

  Strategic Air Bases Receive First Counter-UAS Systems

  RACHEL S. COHEN Several Air Force installations with strategic assets are now armed with systems to protect against small unmanned aircraft that might loiter nearby. Steve Wert, the Air Force's digital program executive officer helping to roll out counter-UAS systems, said the service had fielded initial capabilities to an undisclosed number of US Strategic Command and Air Force Global Strike Command sites. Speaking at an Air Force Life Cycle Management Conference recently in Dayton, Ohio, Wert described the new systems as “a command-and-control capability integrated with some detection and some jamming,” but did not mention kinetic attacks. “Much more work to do,” he said. “We're finding the typical problems you will find on some bases. In order to have a radar providing detection, you actually have to build a tower. Building towers is hard because you have to do environmental assessments.” The systems provide “a composite suite of options” to sense and defeat drones attempting to enter restricted airspace around nuclear, space, electronic warfare, long-range strike, and missile defense resources, Air Force spokeswoman Laura McAndrews said. “The concept of ‘tailored and layered defense' provides the ability to execute kinetic solutions, such as traditional ballistic rounds and capture nets, coupled with other countermeasures that disrupt the operator's ability to navigate drones in our restricted airspace,” she said. The Air Force and Army are also collaborating on using 40 mm ammunition with nets that deploy and wrap around the drones to bring them down. “We've had some recent success working with the Army on kinetic defeat, successful test round firings,” Wert said. “The idea of a net round is probably a good solution, but that system's becoming accurate enough where the training rounds are directly hitting UAVs, so very good results there.” In May, Pentagon acquisition chief Ellen Lord told reporters Defense Department officials were concerned that military personnel weren't aware of their options for addressing UAVs and the services weren't sharing their ideas. Combatant command representatives and acquisition officials meet each month to discuss the right way forward. That's generated a list of counter-UAS systems in the DOD with details on their maturity, how many are deployed, and how they are used, Lord said. The Air Force is also working toward laser and microwave weapons for that purpose. The FAA already regulates how and where small UAS are allowed to fly, though those rules are evolving in collaboration with the Pentagon, which called the issue a high priority earlier this year. “I really do think of these UAVs as something that's low-cost, it's easy to manipulate,” then-acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan told the Senate Appropriations Committee in May. “We need to develop the capabilities and the rules because, quite frankly, this airspace is shared by so many different authorities, so it's as much about rules to operate in space as it is the technologies to defeat them.” Over the past few years, Defense Department officials have pointed to instances of enemy combatants dispatching small drones for strike and intelligence-gathering in the Middle East and of unmanned aerial vehicles lingering near high-end aircraft. US Strategic Command did not answer how many little aircraft have been spotted lately or if the number is growing. "So far, they've been incidental activities,” STRATCOM boss Gen. John Hyten said at a 2017 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. "But the fact that they're occurring, and then if you watch what is happening overseas in the [US Central Command theater] with the use of lethal UAVs and the use of UAVs for surveillance on the part of a terrorist adversary, I'm very concerned that those same kind of UAVs could be employed against our weapon storage facilities, especially on the nuclear weapon storage facilities." Air Combat Command chief Gen. Mike Holmes in 2017 also noted two incidents that interfered with operations on the same day and required reports to Air Force leadership. Conventional military assets need similar policies and protections as STRATCOM has put in place over the past few years, allowing workers to track and engage drones when needed, he argued. "At one base, the gate guard watched one fly over the top of the gate shack, tracked it while it flew over the flight line for a little while, and then flew back out and left," Holmes said. "The other incident was an F-22 . . . had a near collision with a small UAS, and I don't have anything that I can do about it." http://www.airforcemag.com/Features/Pages/2019/July%202019/Strategic-Air-Bases-Receive-First-Counter-UAS-Systems.aspx

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  July 23, 2018 | International, Aerospace

  Remplacement des F-16 : quels impacts pour l’économie belge ?

  par Eurasiatimes La Belgique choisira-t-elle de remplacer ses avions de combat par les F-35 américains, sans aucune garantie de retombées économiques, ou fera-t-elle le choix de constructeurs européens qui s'engagent, au contraire, à créer des emplois et vivifier le tissu économique et industriel belge ? La Belgique doit prochainement remplacer sa flotte d'avions de combat, et son secrétaire d'Etat en charge du Commerce extérieur a sa petite idée sur la question. Pour Pieter de Crem, seuls les F-35 de l'Américain Lockheed Martin seraient à même de prendre le relai des antiques F-16 de la flotte belge, au motif que la Belgique doit « réaliser le meilleur achat en termes militaires et économiques. L'argument géographique ne compte pas. Ainsi, le fait d'être »un bon Européen » ne suffit pas », expédie le ministre. Les F-35 américains auraient « un très faible impact sur l'économie belge » L'argument des retombées économiques – un passage obligé dans ce type de négociations – du programme américain ne convainc pourtant pas. En témoigne une note interne des services de la Région de Bruxelles-Capitale, obtenue début juin par l'agence AFP. Un document selon lequel le gouvernement bruxellois suggère d'écarter la candidature du F-35 au profit de l'un de ses deux concurrents, le Typhoon d'Eurofighter, un consortium réunissant le Royaume-Uni, l'Allemagne, l'Italie et l'Espagne, et le Rafale de l'avionneur français Dassault. La note des services de Bruxelles évalue le « retour industriel possible » à « 4 milliards d'euros sur 20-30 ans », dont l'économie de la région bruxelloise profiterait à hauteur de « 5-10% ». « Le choix du partenaire sera important sur les retours économiques », poursuit le document, qui torpille les F-35 : « En effet, les experts aéronautiques avancent que l'avionneur américain, partenaire jusqu'ici semblant être privilégié par le gouvernement fédéral, n'est pas connu pour être très volontariste ni même actif en termes de retours économiques ». « Cela fait craindre un très faible impact sur l'économie belge ainsi que sur l'économie bruxelloise », conclut la note. Dans un paysage politique aussi complexe que celui de la Belgique, l'achat de nouveaux avions est décidé au niveau fédéral, mais les retombées économiques le sont au niveau régional. Mais au-delà de la sempiternelle opposition entre Flandre et Wallonie, « la première erreur du gouvernement belge est d'avoir dit qu'il voulait un avion sans obliger le marché à garantir des retombées économiques », estime le député Benoit Hellings, vice-président de la Commission de la Défense à la Chambre. De fait, seules de très hypothétiques collaborations en matière de recherche sont évoquées par l'Américain. « Il serait anormal qu'un contrat de plusieurs milliards ne débouche pas sur des emplois durables », s'inquiète le député Sébastien Pirlot, qui met aussi en garde contre l'explosion des coûts habituellement constatée avec les avions de Lockheed Martin. Alors qu'un F-35 coûte entre 80 et 100 millions de dollars, « les pays qui ont déjà eu le F-35 ont vu la facture monter jusqu'à 125 millions », ajoute le député. Typhoon, Rafale : des milliers d'emplois et des dizaines de milliards de retombées à la clé Au contraire du F-35, ses concurrents britanniques et français promettent des retombées économiques non négligeables pour la Belgique. Les Britanniques de BAE Systems promettent ainsi quelque 19 milliards d'euros de retombées et pas moins de 6 000 emplois créés localement. Le gouvernement anglais propose également d'installer deux centres de fabrication, l'un en Flandre et l'autre en Wallonie – malin –, ainsi que la construction de centres de formation, d'innovation et de cybersécurité. Quant au groupement français d'intérêt économique (Dassault Aviation, Thales et Safran), il évoque la création de 5 000 emplois « à haute valeur technologique » en Belgique, assortie de 20 milliards d'euros de retombées économiques sur une période de 20 ans. La France propose aussi à la Belgique un partenariat comprenant, outre la fourniture de 34 Rafales, « une coopération approfondie » dans les domaines militaire et industriel – et évoque la nécessité d'un geste hautement symbolique, à l'heure où l'Europe de la Défense, véritable serpent de mer, est en passe d'être relancée. Des promesses trop belles pour être vraies ? « On ne demande pas de nous croire les yeux fermés, explique Eric Trappier, le PDG de Dassault Aviation. On apportera les garanties de ce que nous affirmons aujourd'hui ». Autant d'arguments dont on espère qu'ils parviendront aux oreilles du gouvernement fédéral et du ministre Pieter de Crem. http://www.eurasiatimes.org/20/07/2018/remplacement-des-f-16-quels-impacts-pour-leconomie-belge/