July 18, 2023 | International, Other Defence
The United States will announce a new pledge to buy $1.3 billion worth of military aid for Kyiv in its conflict with Russia in the coming days, two U.S. officials said.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/us-announce-13-bln-military-aid-ukraine-sources-2023-07-18/
November 21, 2023 | International, Security
There was a revelatory moment on the weekend as Defence Minister Bill Blair attempted to bridge the gap between rhetoric and reality over the Liberal government’s spending plans for his department and the Canadian military.
April 1, 2020 | International, Land
By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — Oshkosh Defense has won a $346 million award to modernize the U.S. Army's fleet of heavy tactical vehicles, according to a March 30 company statement. The company will recapitalize Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Trucks (HEMTT) and Palletized Load System (PLS) trucks with updated technology and safety features. Under the contract, Oshkosh will also build new PLS trailers. Upgrading heavy tactical trucks aligns with the service's need to support operations across multiple domains against near-peer adversaries. “Whether they're hauling rocket launchers and missile defense systems, or transporting mission-critical equipment, the HEMTT and the PLS will continue to be an integral part of the U.S. Army and U.S. Army Reserve heavy vehicle fleets for years to come,” said Pat Williams, the company's vice president and general manager of U.S. Army and Marine Corps programs. “As the military pivots its focus to near-peer adversaries, they can be confident that the [family of heavy tactical vehicles] fleet will continue to serve as a key enabler for combat missions.” Oshkosh has already recapitalized more than 13,700 HEMTTs and 3,400 PLS for the U.S. military since 1995. The company supplies tactical vehicles across the services, including heavy, medium and light. Oshkosh has long held lucrative contracts to supply the services and foreign partners with medium tactical vehicles; it had won a contract to provide a new variant of the vehicle but has yet to begin delivering to the Army. Navistar Defense recently sued the Army over its continued purchase of Oshkosh's family of tactical vehicles without competition, but the U.S. Court of Federal Claims ruled in favor of the service and Oshkosh. Oshkosh also provides the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle to the Army, Marine Corps and Air Force. The vehicle reached full operational capability last year after overcoming some design issues. The future is unclear for the Oshkosh-manufactured JLTV as the Army looks to compete for future lots of the vehicle, according to the service's fiscal 2021 five-year budget plan. https://www.defensenews.com/land/2020/03/31/oshkosh-wins-contract-to-modernize-armys-heavy-tactical-vehicles/
January 23, 2020 | International, Aerospace, C4ISR
By: Valerie Insinna WASHINGTON — The first field test of the U.S. Air Force's experimental Advanced Battle Management System in December was a success, with about 26 out of 28 capabilities showing some semblance of functionality during a recent exercise, the service's acquisition chief said Tuesday. But the service will seek to be more ambitious during a second demonstration in April, which will focus on space and bring in elements from U.S. Space Command and U.S. Strategic Command, said Will Roper, the Air Force's assistant secretary for acquisition, technology and logistics. "I am thrilled to say that 26 out of 28 things work. That is too high of a success rate at this point in time, but I'll take it. We should be taking more risk than that,” he told reporters during a roundtable. The three-day test took place at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, and involved a potential cruise missile attack on the United States simulated by QF-16 drones. Through the exercise, Air Force F-22 jets, Air Force and Navy F-35 fighters, the Navy destroyer Thomas Hudner, an Army unit equipped with the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, as well as special operators shared data in real time in ways the services cannot currently do in an operational environment. What will ABMS eventually look like? That's still a mystery, even to the Air Force, which wants to test different solutions for connecting platforms, crunching data and sending it to other assets with the goal of eventually fielding what works and abandoning what doesn't. “We gave the team the goals of: Pull what you can together in three and a half months to see how far we can stretch, how quickly we could achieve something,” said Air Force chief architect Preston Dunlap, who manages the ABMS effort. “We were quite happy actually, even with 10 percent solutions.” Here's a rundown of some notable successes so far, as well as major failures: The F-35 and F-22 were able to stealthily exchange data. Despite the two jets having advanced “sensor fusion” capabilities, the Air Force's two most advanced fighters can't really talk to each other. The F-35 uses the Multifunction Advanced Data Link, or MADL, to securely share sensitive information with other F-35s, while the F-22 has its own data link, the Intra-Flight Data Link, or IFDL. Even using a non-stealthy connection to share information has its limitations: While the F-35 can both transmit and receive data via the Link 16, which meets NATO standards, the F-22 currently can only receive data. However, the first ABMS test showed hopeful signs for fifth-generation fighter communication. The demonstration involved radio systems — built by F-35 prime contractor Lockheed Martin as well as Northrop Grumman, which manufactures key structures and mission systems for the aircraft, including MADL, Dunlap said. The demo also included Honeywell-made antennas built to speak across both MADL and IFDL, he added. Those systems were integrated onto a ground based rig that “look[ed] like a big piece of hardware with radios on it,” according to Roper. Then, the F-35 and F-22 flew over the system, exchanging data by bouncing it back-and-forth from the ground-based radios, Dunlap said. He noted that the test verified that existing technology can be used to overcome three obstacles: translating the F-35's MADL to the F-22's IFDL; moving data across the different frequencies; and securing the communication. "It was really herculean,” Dunlap said. "[The contractors] were excited by the speed of the acquisition team to get the ball going." During the next ABMS demo in April, the Air Force plans to stretch the capability by putting the translation system inside the unmanned Kratos XQ-58 Valkyrie for flight-based testing. “I also challenged the team to expand the amount of information translated between the different platforms so they can take advantage of new information on the displays,” Dunlap said. An AC-130 gunship connected with SpaceX's Starlink constellation. Although Dunlap did not provide much detail on this element of the exercise, he confirmed that the AC-130 was able to pass data through the constellation of small, high-bandwidth commercial internet satellites. The Air Force has shown interest in connecting its platforms to commercial broadband satellites through its Global Lightning experiment. A demonstration with Starlink and the KC-135 tanker aircraft is in the works, and the service also plans to evaluate equipment from Iridium, OneWeb and L3Harris. The Air Force created a cloud-based application for command and control. Typically, the service performs command and control from air operations centers — physical buildings where analysts sit in front of computers with specialized software that provides data from multiple assets, Dunlap said. Changes to software don't necessarily happen automatically, and they may require assistance from information technology experts. In the ABMS exercise, the Air Force demonstrated a cloud-based battle management and situational awareness application for the first time. It used a “CloudOne” system to host data up to the secret level, which will be a formative system underlying ABMS, Dunlap said. Both Amazon and Microsoft are involved in standing up the CloudOne technology, but Roper said the Air Force could use the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract vehicle for CloudOne if JEDI winner Microsoft provides better rates. The robot dogs were a swing and a miss. U.S. Special Operations Command brought the robots that are capable of augmenting surveillance operations to the ABMS field test, but operators couldn't figure out how to connect them with the other platforms involved in the exercise. “We had some robot dogs — apparently those exist — that can go and do patrol. We were never able to patch their feeds in,” Roper said. There's hope for cybernetic canines becoming part of ABMS in the future though. Roper added that the ABMS team would be welcome to try to integrate the robots in future exercises. https://www.c4isrnet.com/air/2020/01/22/the-us-air-force-tested-its-advanced-battle-management-system-heres-what-worked-and-what-didnt/