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  April 21, 2020 | International, Naval

  NATO’s ‘startup’ charts a bold future in maritime unmanned systems

  By: Michael D. Brasseur , Rob Murray , and Sean Trevethan Last December, at their meeting in London, NATO leaders declared: “To stay secure, we must look to the future together. We are addressing the breadth and scale of new technologies to maintain our technological edge, while preserving our values and norms.” These two sentences were, in part, a nod to a significant piece of work the alliance is undertaking within the broader mandate of alliance innovation — NATO's Maritime Unmanned Systems Initiative. Granted, on its own this sounds both technical and narrow within the context of emerging technology, a context that includes: artificial intelligence, data, space, hypersonic weapons, bio technologies, quantum research, autonomy and more. So why are maritime unmanned systems relevant now? Simply put, developing the numbers of manned submarines, aircraft and ships required to keep pace with potential adversaries is simply not economically viable (almost $3 billion per Virginia-class U.S. submarine). Not since the Cold War has NATO needed the volume of maritime forces to protect our seas and oceans from would-be foes. NATO's areas of interest are expanding. As climate change affects the Arctic, new maritime routes are being created, which Russia in particular is exploiting with its submarines and ships. This matters because it exposes a new flank on NATO's high-north periphery, and if left unchecked is a potential vulnerability whilst also being a potential opportunity; this, coupled with an increasing need to protect our undersea data infrastructure means NATO's geostrategic responsibilities continue to grow. Therefore, if allies are to reinforce NATO's maritime posture, deter Russian aggression, guard against Chinese activity, and protect both critical national infrastructure and our sea lines of communication, NATO must do things differently and at the speed of relevance. NATO's Maritime Unmanned Systems Initiative was agreed by 13 defense ministers in October 2018. Since then, the initiative's success has attracted the participation of three more allies and garnered significant interest from all of NATO's maritime nations. The political agreement struck in 2018 provided the mandate for NATO to bring together disparate strands of common work ongoing within nations. NATO, acting as a network, enabled allies to become greater than the sum of their parts. The focus is threefold: utilize world-leading research to increase allied interoperability between conventional forces and unmanned drones; establish new tactics for our sailors to truly leverage these technologies; and develop secure digital communications for military drones across all domains (air, sea and land). Addressing these priorities together will enable this effort to be scaled across the alliance, at pace. To date, the speed of this effort has been breathtaking. So much so that even the United States and the United Kingdom — two allies who have invested the most in this area — are using the NATO initiative as a catalyst for their own national efforts. The last 12-plus months has seen the creation of a NATO project office, a governance body, as well as the planning and successful execution of the world's largest and most complex maritime unmanned systems exercise off the Portuguese coast in September 2019. This event brought together the very best from our navies, industry, scientific institutes and academia. The results were hugely impressive, with many “world firsts” including maritime unmanned systems augmenting conventional forces through multiple scenarios. We now have vast swaths of insight and information to start achieving those three goals of improving interoperability, enhancing our tactics and developing secure communications. The goal of improving allied interoperability is actually about enhancing standards. A topic often overlooked at the policy level but critical to the DNA of the NATO alliance. Standards drive interoperability, which in turn drives readiness, which ultimately aids deterrence. As NATO leads the development of new technologies, so too must come new standards that our industries and military can implement. Open architectures will be key, but allies and industry need to realize that we need to solve problems — not address requirements. No perfect solution will ever be delivered on the first attempt. The alliance will need to both innovate and iterate on operations in order to maintain advantage. This may be a cultural shift to some acquisition purists who are used to developing complex warships over 20-plus-year time frames. However, the challenge remains our ability to scale. With this project we have an agile global team functioning across multiple national and allied bureaucracies, each with their own culture and ways of working. Through engagement and investment, this team is yielding disproportionate results. Indeed, 2019 demonstrated what can be done with some imagination, effort and focus. But continual growth at speed will require faith by allies to maintain the course. Such is the nature of true change and innovation. There is a lot to do, and the stakes are high. Near-peer competitors are once again very real. Despite the global lockdown caused by the new coronavirus, COVID-19, the initiative continues to progress through synthetic networks and simulation, driven by passion and intent. Our economy, our data and its infrastructure still need protecting, now more than ever. This effort strives to accelerate maritime unmanned systems into NATO's arsenal to patrol the vast swaths of ocean and offset evolving threats. Success will be seen because it is being built on allied nations' shared values and norms, the same values and norms that NATO leaders recognized in London last year. Michael D. Brasseur is the director of naval armaments cooperation for the U.S. mission to NATO. He is also the first director of NATO's “startup,” the Maritime Unmanned Systems Innovation and Coordination Cell. Rob Murray is the head of innovation at NATO Headquarters. Sean Trevethan is the fleet robotics officer of the British Royal Navy, working in the future capability division at Navy Command Headquarters in Portsmouth, England. https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2020/04/20/natos-start-up-charts-a-bold-future-in-maritime-unmanned-systems/

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  August 16, 2018 | International, C4ISR

  DARPA Wants to Make Underground Maps on the Fly

  The agency is challenging teams to build systems that chart caves, tunnels and underground urban infrastructure. Finding your way through caves and tunnels is both difficult and extremely dangerous, but the Pentagon's research office wants to build technology that can navigate underground environments while humans stay on the surface. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is finalizing teams for its Subterranean Challenge, or SubT, a three-year competition to build systems that can rapidly map and search often treacherous underground areas. The agency on Thursday awarded a $4.5 million contract to Virginia-based iRobot Defense Holdings and a $750,000 contract to Michigan Technological University to participate in the challenge. A third team, Scientific Systems Company Inc., joined the program on July 31 with a $492,000 contract. “Even under ideal conditions, these complex environments present significant challenges for subterranean situational awareness,” DARPA wrote in the program announcement. “However, in time-sensitive scenarios, whether in active combat operations or disaster response settings, warfighters and first responders alike are faced with a range of increased technical challenges, including difficult and dynamic terrains ... severe communication constraints, and expansive areas of operation.” Full Article: https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2018/08/darpa-wants-make-underground-maps-fly/150554/

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  June 14, 2019 | International, Aerospace

  House panel advances $733B defense budget bill over GOP objections

  By: Leo Shane III and Joe Gould WASHINGTON ― House lawmakers advanced a $733 billion defense policy bill on Thursday after nearly 21 hours of sometimes heated debate on the size of the Pentagon budget, the size of the country's nuclear arsenal and a host of other military priorities for next year. The 33-24 final vote by the House Armed Services Committee on the draft of the defense authorization bill marked one of the most divided stances from the committee in years, as Republicans voiced concerns with Democrats' priorities in the measure. The legislation, which sets military spending policy for the upcoming fiscal year, has been adopted by Congress for 58 consecutive years, usually by sizable bipartisan margins. Committee officials insist that's because the needs of the military usually rise above the partisan politics of Capitol Hill. But this year, the narrow passage out of committee illustrated the stark divide in defense policy between the two parties, and hints at a lengthy battle to come as the measure moves across Capitol Hill to the Republican-controlled Senate in the coming weeks. Committee Chairman Adam Smith, D-Wash., in recent days said he is committed to finding a palatable bill for both Republicans and Democrats. But during the marathon debate he repeatedly defended his party's plans for $733 billion in defense spending for fiscal 2020 as a responsible and sufficient mark. “By a reasonably comfortable margin, this is the largest budget we will have ever passed in Congress (for defense) and it's a significant improvement on where we were before,” he said before the committee vote. Smith had already set aside some of his own priorities in a bid to win support from the panel's hawkish Republicans, who are likely to influence their caucus when it comes time to vote the bill out of the House. Without that support, Democrats may struggle to gather enough votes from progressives in their own caucus, who have questioned even the lower level of spending. But Senate Republicans have already set their authorization bill draft at $750 billion, a mark recommended by the White House and defended by HASC ranking member Mac Thornberry, R-Texas. He said that the figure is needed to keep pace with military modernization and readiness needs. Thornberry's amendment included a lengthy laundry list of weapons and platforms left out of the bill. “I worry that we talk about this like it's just numbers we're pulling out of the air,” he said. “These are real things. An aircraft carrier gets delayed a year if $733 billion is the way it comes out.” The bill includes a 3.1 percent pay raise for troops next January — a point of agreement on both sides that Smith repeatedly referenced — and provisions for increased protections for sexual assault victims, increased oversight of military housing problems and parameters for a new Space Corps within the Air Force. But fights over the effects of climate change on national security, limitations on the use of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and a provision mandating gender integration in Marine Corps basic training further divided the committee. On a series of Republican amendments aimed at preserving funds for the nuclear arsenal — including one to protect deployment of low-yield nuclear weapons on submarines — Democrats repeatedly defeated Republican proposals. Similarly, the committee upheld several provisions designed to put a check on President Donald Trump's ability to shift resources from the Defense Department to the U.S. southern border with Mexico. Democrats have accused Trump of abusing his emergency powers to shift Department of Defense funds for the border and send thousands of troops there. In the committee debate, Republicans generally argued Trump is taking necessary and normal steps to secure the border given political resistance to addressing the issue. “I want everybody to understand we have been sending DoD assets to the border since the Alamo,” said Rep. Mike Rogers, who sponsored one of the amendments. “We have to do it in order to keep our border secure and deal with the humanitarian crisis.” The measure now shifts to the full House, where Smith and Democratic leadership will have to build a coalition of supporters to get the measure to negotiations with the Senate. That chamber will vote on its draft next week. Work on a compromise draft between the House and Senate is expected to last through most of the summer and fall. https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2019/06/13/house-panel-advances-733b-defense-budget-bill-over-gop-objections/