US Army’s 5-4 ADAR and 2CR take part in CALFEX in Poland

On the same subject

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  June 20, 2023 | International, Other Defence

  Raytheon rebrands as RTX

  The name change is the latest of several adjustments undertaken by the military tech company in recent years.

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  January 11, 2019 | International, Aerospace

  UK F-35s Clear IOC For Land-Based Ops; UK Spending Big on Defense

  By PAUL MCLEARY WASHINGTON: The UK is ready to start deploying the first batch of its new F-35 fighter overseas the country's top defense official said Thursday, while introducing a slew of new cruise and attack missiles for its Typhoon jets. The announcement of Initial Operational Capability (IOC) for nine F-35Bs comes weeks after the Royal Navy performed its first F-35 landings aboard the new Queen Elizabeth-class of aircraft carrier, built specifically to accommodate the F-35B. The head of Lockheed Martin UK, Peter Ruddock, noted that the IOC pertains to “land-based aircraft.” That seems sensible given that Joint Strike Fighter operations from the carrier just began. But questions surround the overall health of the UK's military, as it embarks on an expansive modernization program that is facing brisk headwinds in the form of an uncertain withdrawal from the European Union and looming budget shortfalls in the coming years. On Thursday however, Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson stood in front of a hangar full of F-35s and Typhoons at the RAF Marham air base, which has just undergone a major facelift to accommodate the F-35 — including new runways and a training center — to declare a new era in UK power projection. “The incredible F-35 jets are ready for operations, a transformed Typhoon has the power to dominate the skies into the 2040s and we continue to look even further into an ambitious future,” he said. “The RAF has long shown Britain at its great and global best, and today it lifts our nation to even greater heights.” Alongside the F-35 were Typhoon jets, soon to be equipped with a slew of new capabilities developed under the three-year, $540 million Project Centurion. Chief among them is the Storm Shadow air-to-ground cruise missile which boasts a range of 350 miles, the precision guided air-to-air Meteor missile with a 62-mile range, and the air-to-ground Brimstone precision attack missile. All of the missiles are made by Paris-based defense firm MBDA, a joint venture between European defense leaders Airbus, BAE Systems, and Leonardo. Air Marshal Sir Stephen Hillier, chief of the Air Staff, added: “The successful integration of Storm Shadow, Brimstone and Meteor on Typhoon completes and enhances the transition of world-class capabilities” from the retiring Tornado jets, which will “offer a step-change in our ability to employ air power around the world.” After the HMS Queen Elizabeth makes its first deployment in 2021, it will be followed two years later by the HMS Prince of Wales, bringing to a close a gap in carrier capability that Britain has experienced since retirement of the Invincible and Ark Royal. Royal Navy officials have said they're eager to get back into carrier operations, which will allow the UK to project power with fifth generation aircraft across the Middle East, Pacific, and in the Arctic, which is emerging as a major flash point as Russia and China rush to push assets north. The deployments will come as a welcome relief for the US Navy, which is struggling with maintenance on its own 11-carrier fleet. The American ships have been strained over the past 17 years of war in the Middle East and growing tensions with China in the Pacific. But the uncertainties over Brexit hangs over all of these plans. “Our nation is moving into a new era outside the EU, and our huge achievements in air capability make our commitment to a role on the world stage clear to both our allies and our enemies,” Williamson said. The UK's Director for Strategic Planning Will Jessett told reporters in Washington earlier this week that the MoD's ability to pump money into new defense programs will be affected by any deal reached between Britain and the rest of Europe, since their defense industries are intertwined. “Amongst the reasons we started to face this affordability delta in 2017 were because exchange rates did fall, relative to where they were in 2015,” he said. If we get a [Brexit] deal that's OK, I can imagine, personally, exchange rates not just stabilizing but somewhat improving. If not, it is by definition going to add further pressure into this.” He hastened to add, however, “that's not what we're planning for at the moment.” In November, the UK's National Audit Office estimated that the Ministry of Defense's defense plans will exceed allocated budgets by an average of 3.7 percent over the coming decade, which would lead to shortfalls of between $8 billion and $18 billion over that timeframe. https://breakingdefense.com/2019/01/uk-f-35s-clear-ioc-for-land-based-ops-uk-spending-big-on-defense

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  July 30, 2020 | International, C4ISR

  How Army network modernization efforts ensure equipment works with allies

  Andrew Eversden A critical piece of the U.S. Army's network modernization push is ensuring its systems work with allies. In future battles, the Army will not fight alone; it will be joined by coalition partners, as well as other U.S. services. As the Army moves to improve its integrated tactical network, it must ensure that its network tools work with coalition and service partners The Army recently completed a critical design review of Capability Set '21 a set of new network tools that will be delivered to soldiers next year. The service is in the first phase of procuring the new capabilities. A “key factor” involved in delivery to soldiers at the battalion level and below is a move to a 75 percent “secure but unclassified” network that provides improved communication between coalition partners, said Col. Garth Winterle, project manager for tactical radios at the Army's Program Executive Office Command, Control, Communications-Tactical. “We're moving off of an all-secret network to one that's a lot more flexible and actually encourages coalition interoperability,” Winterle said. One opportunity to test interoperability was Defender Europe 2020, which was meant to be one of the largest European exercises involving both the U.S. Army and NATO allies, but had to be scaled down due to the coronavirus pandemic. Still, the Army was able to test interoperability. There were a series of pre-Defender Europe exercises to assess capabilities “to inform future network design,” according to Justine Ruggio, director of communications for the Network Cross-Functional Team at Army Futures Command. These assessments included several pieces of Capability Set '21, including communications exercises and validation exercises with the Army's fielded Command Post Computing Environment software, Tactical Server Infrastructure and Commercial Coalition Equipment “to enable the use of the Mission Partner Environment, which allowed all participants to share classified information during the exercise, including the Polish and U.K.,” Ruggio said. During the pre-Defender Europe tests, “we were able to bridge the Polish and U.K. unit into an integrated command structure using our secret releasable network and create that common command-and-control picture,” Col. Lesley Kipling, the mission command lead and Army National Guard liaison officer to the Network CFT, said in an interview with C4ISRNET. Secret but releasable information is classified at the secret level and can be released to certain coalition partners who have sufficient clearance from their home country. An exercise scheduled for next year, called Warfighter 21-4, will allow for additional interoperability assessments with U.K. and French forces. According to Ruggio, one focus area will be on interoperability using the Network CFT's DevOps model to iterate the Command Post Computing Environment, continue to assess Commercial Coalition Equipment and evaluate the Mission Partner Environment. The event will be aligned with Capability Set '23, the next iteration of network tools. Kipling added that the cross-functional team and its partners are “continuing” to work on policies and training for properly connecting to a coalition network “so that it's not learning on the fly, but that these procedures and policies are codified in a way that they can be standardized and any user can execute whenever they're put in a situation,” she said. Brig. Gen. Joseph Papenfus, chief Information officer and deputy chief of staff of the G6 of U.S. Army Europe, said that the scaled-back nature of Defender Europe did affect network interoperability testing because soldiers were unable to come over from the United States. That means that U.S. Army Europe will focus heavily on European partners during the smaller exercises, Papenfus said, including validating network integration and establishing a secret but releasable network with NATO. “Every opportunity that we have to see how a piece of equipment works within the larger set of the network, we take advantage of that,” Ruggio said. https://www.c4isrnet.com/yahoo-syndication/2020/07/29/how-army-network-modernization-efforts-ensure-equipment-works-with-allies/