July 30, 2024 | International, Naval, C4ISR, Security
VMware ESXi flaw CVE-2024-37085 actively exploited by ransomware groups to gain admin access and deploy malware.
https://thehackernews.com/2024/07/vmware-esxi-flaw-exploited-by.html
March 23, 2024 | International, Aerospace
The Air Force is planning to receive five EA-37B Compass Call electronic-warfare aircraft in 2025 as it moves forward with plans to retire its predecessor.
August 30, 2018 | International, C4ISR
By: Andrew Chuter LONDON — Britain is moving toward launching its own satellite navigation system in a response to moves by the European Union to freeze it out of the Galileo constellation over the country's divorce from the EU. The Conservative government in London announced Aug. 29 it was setting aside £92 million (U.S. $119 million) to undertake an 18-month study looking at the feasibility of designing and developing an alternative to the Galileo satellite system. The move is the latest development in a growing row between Britain and the EU after Brexit negotiators in Brussels told their U.K. counterparts they would only be allowed standard, third-party access to Galileo and would not receive data from the system's Public Regulated Service — an encrypted navigation service primarily designed for military users and resistant to jamming, interference and spoofing. The Brexit squabble has also snared Britain's fast-growing space industry, which has been excluded by the EU from bidding for further Galileo-related contracts. Paul Everitt , the CEO of ADS, the lobby group representing the U.K. space and defense industries, said the space industry here has played a “key role in creating the Galileo program, from early pathfinder spacecraft more than a decade ago, to encryption and ground control operations.” “The government's new investment to develop a national satellite navigation system, to make sure valuable U.K. capability continues to be supported, irrespective of the outcome of Brexit negotiations, is very welcome,” Everitt said. The British announcement comes just days after a European Space Agency rocket launched the last four of 26 Galileo satellites required to complete the €10 billion (U.S. $11.7 billion) satellite navigation network. Further spacecraft are scheduled to be launched as backups. The row between London and Brussels could have wider implications for Britain's security relations with the EU, according to analyst Sophia Besch with the Centre for European Reform. As the disagreement over Galileo gathered momentum earlier this year, the think tank tweeted: “#Galileo could set a dangerous precedent for #Brexit #defence negotiations in the future — or it could serve as a wake-up call for EU and UK negotiators argues @SophiaBesch.” Britain has invested about £1.4 billion in the Galileo system, and industry here has been a significant provider of technology in critical areas like encryption as Europe moved to obtain autonomy in navigation satellite systems alongside rival systems owned and operated by the U.S., Russia and China. In a July 29 statement , the British government said it wants to remain part of the Galileo program but will go it alone if it can't negotiate an acceptable agreement. “Without the assurance that UK industry can collaborate on an equal basis now and in the future, and without access to the necessary security-related information to rely on Galileo for military functions such as missile guidance, the UK would be obliged to end its participation in the project,” the statement said. Business secretary Greg Clark said Britain's position on Galileo has been consistent and clear. “We have repeatedly highlighted the specialist expertise we bring to the project and the risks in time delays and cost increases that the European Commission is taking by excluding U.K. industry," Clark said. “Britain has the skills, expertise and commitment to create our own sovereign satellite system, and I am determined that we take full advantage of the opportunities this brings.” The UK Space Agency is leading the study-phase work supported by the Ministry of Defence. Britain is due to lay out its wider plans for military space later this year when Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson is due to publish the long-delayed defense space strategy. The British government announced at the Farnborough Air Show last month that it is investing in building a space port in Scotland to launch spacecraft. Williamson, who is currently embroiled in a bitter fight with the Treasury and the Cabinet Office over the level of funding for Britain's cash-strapped military, said in a statement that the sector is one of his personal priorities. “The danger space poses as a new front for warfare is one of my personal priorities, and it is absolutely right that we waste no time in going it alone if we need an independent satellite system to combat those emerging threats,” he said. The cash for the satellite navigation study hasn't come from the MoD, but it has been allocated from the £3 billion Brexit readiness fund announced last year by the government. https://www.defensenews.com/space/2018/08/29/uk-eyes-alternative-to-galileo-satellite-system-as-brexit-row-widens
July 7, 2020 | International, Aerospace
Integrating missile defense – shooting down incoming missiles – with missile offense – destroying the launchers before they fire again – requires major changes in how the military fights. By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.on July 07, 2020 at 4:00 AM WASHINGTON: Don't try to shoot down each arrow as it comes; shoot the archer. That's a time-honored military principle that US forces would struggle to implement in an actual war with China, Russia, North Korea, or Iran, warns a new report from thinktank CSIS. New technology, like the Army's IBCS command network – now entering a major field test — can be part of the solution, but it's only part, writes Brian Green, a veteran of 30 years in the Pentagon, Capitol Hill, and the aerospace industry. Equally important and problematic are the command-and-control arrangements that determine who makes the decision to fire what, at what, and when. Today, the military has completely different units, command systems, doctrines, and legal/regulatory authorities for missile defense – which tries to shoot down threats the enemy has already launched – and for long range offensive strikes – which could keep the enemy from launching in the first place, or at least from getting off a second salvo, by destroying launchers, command posts, and targeting systems. While generals and doctrine-writers have talked about “offense-defense integration” for almost two decades, Green says, the concept remains shallow and incomplete. “A thorough implementation of ODI would touch almost every aspect of the US military, including policy, doctrine, organization, training, materiel, and personnel,” Green writes. “It would require a fundamental rethinking of terms such as ‘offense' and ‘defense' and of how the joint force fights.” Indeed, it easily blurs into the even larger problem of coordinating all the services across all five domains of warfare – land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace – in what's known as Joint All-Domain Operations. The bifurcation between offense and defense runs from the loftiest strategic level down to tactical: At the highest level, US Strategic Command commands both the nation's nuclear deterrent and homeland missile defense. But these functions are split between three different subcommands within STRATCOM, one for Air Force ICBMs and bombers (offense), one for Navy ballistic missile submarines (also offense), and one for Integrated Missile Defense. In forward theaters, the Army provides ground-based missile defense, but those units – Patriot batteries, THAAD, Sentinel radars – belong to separate brigades from the Army's own long-range missile artillery, and they're even less connected to offensive airstrikes from the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps. The Navy's AEGIS system arguably does the best job of integrating offense and defense in near-real-time, Green says, but even there, “different capabilities onboard a given ship can come under different commanders,” one with the authority to unleash Standard Missile interceptors against incoming threats and the other with the authority to fire Tomahawk missiles at the enemy launchers. This division of labor might have worked when warfare was slower. But China and Russia have invested massively in their arsenals of long-range, precision-guided missiles, along with the sensors and command networks to direct them to their targets. So, on a lesser scale, have North Korea and Iran. The former deputy secretary of defense, Bob Work, warned of future conflicts in which “salvo exchanges” of hundreds of missiles – hopefully not nuclear ones – might rocket across the war zone within hours. It's been obvious for over a decade that current missile defense systems simply can't cope with the sheer number of incoming threats involved, which led the chiefs of the Army and Navy to sign a famous “eight-star memo” in late 2014 that called, among other things, for stopping enemy missiles “left of launch.” But that approach would require real-time coordination between the offensive weapons, responsible for destroying enemy launchers, command posts, and targeting systems, and the defensive ones, responsible for shooting down whatever missiles made it into the air. While Navy Aegis and Army IBCS show some promise, Green writes, neither is yet capable of moving the data required among all the users who would need it: Indeed, IBCS is still years away from connecting all the Army's defensive systems, while Aegis only recently gained an offensive anti-ship option, a modified SM-6, alongside its defensive missiles. As two Army generals cautioned in a recent interview with Breaking Defense, missile defense and offense have distinctly different technical requirements that limit the potential of using a single system to run both. There are different legal restrictions as well: Even self-defense systems operate under strict limits, lest they accidentally shoot down friendly aircraft or civilian airliners, and offensive strikes can easily escalate a conflict. Green's 35-page paper doesn't solve these problems. But it's useful examination of how complex they can become. https://breakingdefense.com/2020/07/future-missile-war-needs-new-kind-of-command-csis/