US Space Command’s Shaw sees need for rapid, responsive launch

On the same subject

• 

  February 7, 2019 | International, Aerospace

  Safran inaugure sa plateforme de recherche sur les aubes de turbines avancées à Gennevilliers

  Gennevilliers, le 6 février 2019. Safran inaugure la nouvelle plateforme de recherche sur les aubes de turbines avancées pour moteurs d'avions et d'hélicoptères en présence de Florence Parly, ministre des Armées, d'Ursula von der Leyen, ministre de la Défense allemande et de Philippe Petitcolin, Directeur Général de Safran. La plateforme de recherche sur les aubes de turbines avancées de Safran Tech, centre de Recherche et Technologie du Groupe, rassemble les compétences d'une trentaine d'ingénieurs et doctorants, dans un b'timent de 3 000 m2 doté d'équipements de haute technologie, pour mener l'ensemble des travaux de développement des futures aubes de turbines à très haute performance. Conception multi-disciplinaire, fonderie mono-cristalline, noyaux céramiques par fabrication additive, barrières thermiques, circuits de refroidissement, digitalisation des procédés, micro-perçage auto-adaptatif, contrôles non destructifs avancés utilisant l'intelligence artificielle sont quelques exemples des domaines d'expertise et d'innovation mis en oeuvre au sein de la plateforme. Les nouvelles aubes de turbines réalisées sur cette plateforme seront intégrées sur les moteurs actuels du Rafale afin d'améliorer la disponibilité opérationnelle des aéronefs et diminuer le coût du maintien en condition opérationnelle ainsi que le coût de production. Les technologies développées par la plateforme intègreront également le futur moteur militaire à haute performance de Safran Aircraft Engines dans la perspective du Système de Combat Aérien du Futur franco-allemand (SCAF). La plateforme développe également des technologies qui seront utilisées sur les moteurs civils et les moteurs d'hélicoptères. A cette occasion, Florence Parly, ministre des Armées et Philippe Petitcolin, Directeur Général de Safran ont signé le renouvellement de la convention de soutien Action PME, en présence de trois PME, Alliance Outillage, Chesneau et MSC Scanning, fournisseurs notamment de la plateforme de recherche. Le site de Gennevilliers, en activité depuis 110 ans, est l'un des sites historiques du Groupe. Situé à une quinzaine de kilomètres au nord-ouest de Paris, il regroupe, sur 15 hectares en bord de Seine, les activités de forge, de fonderie et d'usinage de pièces aéronautiques de Safran Aircraft Engines réparties en trois centres d'excellence industrielle : pour les aubes de turbines, les aubes de compresseurs et les pièces tournantes. https://www.safran-group.com/fr/media/safran-inaugure-sa-plateforme-de-recherche-sur-les-aubes-de-turbines-avancees-gennevilliers-20190206

• 

  March 20, 2020 | International, Naval, C4ISR

  The Navy will test pushing new software to ships at sea

  By: Mike Gruss The Navy plans to test next year whether it can push new software — not just patches but new algorithms and battle-management aids — to its fleet without the assistance of in-person installation teams. Navy officials plan to send the first upgrades to the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln's C4I systems for a test in early 2021, officials said during a March 3 media roundtable at the West 2020 trade show in San Diego. Today, Navy teams frequently deliver security patches to ships, but that process does not allow for new capabilities. The reason is because service officials fear that one change to the ship's software could have unintended consequences, creating a cascading effect and inadvertently breaking other parts of the system. But in recent years, Navy officials have embraced the idea of digital twins, which are cloud-based replicas of the software running on a ship's systems. This setup allows Navy engineers to experiment with how new code will react with the existing system. It also helps software developers work on the same baseline and avoid redundancies. Ultimately, the setup offers Navy officials a higher degree of confidence that the software they're uploading will work without any surprises. The Navy completed its first digital twin, the Lincoln, in fall 2019 and has started building a digital twin of the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt. Eventually Navy leaders expect to complete a digital twin of all the service's ships. However, only those in the fleet that have already been upgraded to a certain version of the Navy's tactical afloat network, known as the Consolidate Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services program, or CANES, would be eligible for the over-the-air updates. “In the Information Warfare community, software is a weapon,” Rear Adm. Kathleen M. Creighton, the Navy's cybersecurity division director in the Office of the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Information Warfare, told C4ISRNET in a March 17 statement. “If we were to ask a warfighter if it would be valuable to conceptualize, order and receive additional kinetic capability at sea, of course the answer would be yes. The same is true of software. “In an ever-dynamic warfighting environment, the ability to improve, add to, or build new capabilities quickly has extraordinary value. We believe our sailors on the front line are the best positioned to tell us what they need to win. That is what we are trying to accomplish. Put the warfighter's perspective at the center of the software we deliver and do it iteratively at speed.” In this case, think of a capability update for a ship much like downloading a new app on a smartphone. Today, some ships in the fleet can receive security updates for applications they've already downloaded, but they cannot download new applications. Navy officials expect that to change. The new capability would arrive as an automatic, over-the-air update or come pierside, but would not require an installation team as is the case today. “Anytime there's a new capability or a new change, we're just going to do it the same way that you get that done on your smartphone,” said Delores Washburn, chief engineer at the Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific, which is leading the change. “What we will be able to [do] now is do a rapid update to the ships.” Navy engineers hope to be able to push the updates as quickly as war fighters need them. “We're going to try to go slowly here because, again, we're having to tackle simultaneously cultural, technical and operational problems,” said Robert Parker, the deputy program executive officer for command, control, communications, computers and intelligence. The Navy plans to test this new arrangement by installing a set of software, performing an update and then fairly quickly pushing that update to the ship. https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/it-networks/2020/03/19/the-navy-will-test-pushing-new-software-to-ships-at-sea/

• 

  August 13, 2020 | International, Naval

  Shipyards Not At Risk, Despite DoD Warning It Needs $$ To Save Them

  A DoD paper for Congress suggests COVID could shut down shipyards, but Navy officials and analysts say there is little risk. By PAUL MCLEARYon August 12, 2020 at 4:04 PM WASHINGTON: A top Navy official today tried to clarify a Pentagon information paper leaked last week which warned that “at least one” of the seven shipyards that churns out ships for the Navy could close unless Congress handed over billions more to the service. As part of an $11 billion package the Pentagon is requesting from Congress to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on the defense industry, the Navy is requesting $4.7 billion in part to ward off the chances “at least one” of the big seven shipyards shutting down. The paper, which has been delivered to lawmakers on Capitol Hill, also warned of over 100,000 lost jobs across shipyards and factories that make aircraft and other weapons for the military. But the Navy's top acquisition executive told reporters today that the wording continued in the paper might leave too much out. “The words could be taken out of context,” James Geurts said. “There probably should be the word ‘temporarily' in there.” If a shipyard started to see a significant portion of its workforce test positive for COVID, “we might have to temporarily close down the shipyard for a period of time until we got it under control. Not that we would have to shut down a shipyard permanently.” The memo contains no such caveats, however. It flatly states a shipyard could close unless the Navy gets the funding boost. Asked where the paper came from, and who it was intended for, DoD spokesman Christopher Sherwood told me via email the department “provided informational material to our oversight committees when asked about the impacts COVID-19 has had on the Defense Industrial Base and our suppliers.” The Navy has gone to great lengths to help its shipyards weather the COVID storm, pumping $130 billion into its supplier base this year in upfront payments, spending that is 25% higher than at this point last year. But some yards have experienced pain keeping to schedule, with uncertain futures ahead as the Navy looks to change its fleet mix in the coming years to better compete with China and Russia. Mark Cancian, a defense expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, acknowledged that all Navy shipyards “have a backlog of work, including Bath Iron Works, which was the subject of speculation about closing.” Bath, already six months behind on building seven destroyers in dock, is stumbling to the conclusion of a six-week strike by 4,300 shipbuilders which will likely make those delays even longer. Likewise, the Mississippi-based Austal is looking at the end of the road for its contract to build dozens of aluminum Littoral Combat Ships in a few years, which would likely mark the end of the Navy's interest in buying aluminum hulls. That shipyard “would be at more risk” Cancian said. Neither shipyard is any worse off than the others due to COVID-related shutdowns, however, making the Pentagon's point that yards could shut and require COVID relief funds to keep going, an argument that finds few adherents. There's little doubt COVID is slowing down both ship construction and repair, “but that doesn't mean the Navy doesn't need the ships anymore,” said Bryan Clark of the Hudson Institute. “It just means everything takes longer, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the shipyards are going to close.” Clark noted that while Bath is in a bad spot with delays to its destroyer work that will be compounded by the strike, the Navy still needs it to build destroyers in the future, since relying on Huntington Ingalls as the nation's only shipyard that can build the ships is too risky. Add to that the likelihood that the Navy will move toward buying more numerous small cruisers, unmanned ships, and smaller platforms for Marines and away from small numbers of large destroyers and amphibious ships in the future, means there will be more contracts, and work to go around later this decade. The service is still on track to deliver its much-delayed 30 year shipbuilding plan and force structure assessment this fall, in which several options like a new class of destroyers, a new class of smaller frigates, and smaller hospital ships will all likely find their way into the plans. https://breakingdefense.com/2020/08/shipyards-not-at-risk-despite-dod-warning-it-needs-money-to-save-them/