Why Did Boeing Opt To Fully Redesign The KC-46 Remote Vision System?

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  November 8, 2019 | International, Aerospace

  Lockheed nets $184.5M for organic depot level repairs on F-35s

  BySommer Brokaw Nov. 7 (UPI) -- Lockheed Martin has been awarded $184.5 million repair capabilities on a production lot of F-35 aircraft operated by the Pentagon and other non-Department of Defense program participants. The contract, announced Wednesday by the Department of Defense, tasks Lockheed with establishing organic depot level repair capabilities for the F-35 aircraft under a previously awarded low-rate initial production Lot 11 contract. The work, to support the Air Force, Marine Corps, Navy and non-DoD participants, is expected to be complete by March 2023. Half of the work will be done in Fort Worth, Texas, where Lockheed is headquartered, with the rest at locations across the United States. Among the aircraft systems and parts the company will be working on are common components, conventional controls, surfaces and edges, electrical/mechanical activation, firewall shutoff valve, radar, wing flap actuator system, hydraulic power generation system, arresting gear, standby flight display, fuel system fan, alternating current contractor module and rudder pedals, according to a Pentagon press release. The F-35 aircraft uses advanced sensors "packaged within a supersonic, long-range, highly maneuverable fighter," according to Lockheed Martin, which allows the stealthy fifth generation aircraft to serve simultaneously in attack and intelligence-gathering roles. Last month, the Pentagon and Lockheed Martin reached a $34 billion deal for 478 F-35s as the price per aircraft dropped. A Lockheed Martin statement noted the deal lowered the cost of an F-35-A, the U.S. Army's variant of the aircraft, below $80 million, in Lot 13 and Lot 14, representing a 12.8 percent reduction from Lot 11 costs, and an average of 12.7 percent savings across all of the combat aircraft's variants from Lots 11 to 14. https://www.upi.com/Defense-News/2019/11/07/Lockheed-nets-1845M-for-organic-depot-level-repairs-on-F-35s/9821573147758/

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  March 19, 2020 | International, C4ISR

  L3Harris is building an AI tool to help process imagery

  By: Nathan Strout L3Harris is building a new platform that will help analysts in the military use artificial intelligence to identify objects in large imagery data sets. “In general, there's a big challenge with the amount of remote sensing data that's coming down, whether that's from space or airborne assets,” explained Will Rorrer, principal of business development for geospatial at L3Harris Technologies. “So there's lots of imagery and other data types coming down from above, so much so that it really can't be looked at in its entirety — certainly not exploited in its entirety — by traditional means (with) purely human analysts. And so things like counting objects in imagery, monitoring different places, that's where there's a natural adoption of machine learning type of techniques,” he continued. L3Harris officials declined to share who the end customer for their product will be or the exact value of their multimillion dollar contract, which was issued by the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center. It's no secret that the Department of Defense and the intelligence community are eager to use artificial intelligence tools to sift through the vast torrent of data created by an ever increasing number of sensors and pick out the most important information for human analysts. For its platform, L3Harris is focusing on creating the training data and workflows that will enable a machine learning tool to process data for the Department of Defense and provide deliverable intelligence. Machine learning platforms are essentially made of three parts: the training data the neural network will learn from, the machine learning algorithm itself, and then how the platform integrates into other Department of Defense systems. L3Harris will be working on what Rorrer calls the front end and the back end of the AI platform. “A lot of AI/ML technologies can be ported into that middle category,” he said. “Neural network applications that have been developed in commercial space can be brought in if we can address the front end and the back end of that in DoD space.” For nearly 30 years, L3Harris has been incorporated advanced modeling and simulation capabilities to test out new payloads and optical systems, using computers to plot out how the atmosphere and other factors will impact their technologies. Now the company plans to use those modeling and simulation tools to develop the training data that will teach a machine learning algorithm how to solve complex DoD problems, such as identifying a threatening object within satellite imagery. “All of that summed up—we make very good fake imagery,” said Rorrer. “ We've taken that technology that was essentially developed for another reason and pivoted (to using it) as a source of synthetic training data for these neural net applications.” Synthetic training data can be especially important for developing DoD or intelligence community AI applications, since there's often not enough real world imagery of the threats they're focused on, said Rorrer. L3Harris believes that they can create fake imagery that looks enough like the real thing that when real imagery is fed into the algorithm it can find the objects it's supposed to. https://www.c4isrnet.com/intel-geoint/2020/03/18/l3harris-is-building-an-ai-tool-to-help-process-geoint/

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  June 15, 2020 | International, C4ISR, Security

  Army releases $1B cyber training request

  Mark Pomerleau The Army released its highly anticipated request for proposals June 11 for a contract that could be worth as much as $1 billion to provide cyber training for the Department of Defense. The Cyber Training, Readiness, Integration, Delivery and Enterprise Technology (TRIDENT) is a contract vehicle to offer a more streamlined approach for procuring the military's cyber training capabilities. The Army is running the contract on behalf of the joint force. The largest part of that contact will be the Persistent Cyber Training Environment (PCTE). PCTE is an online client in which members of U.S. Cyber Command's cyber mission force can log on from anywhere in the world for training and to rehearse missions. Cyber Command leaders have said this element is one of the organization's most critical needs. Currently, no integrated or robust cyber training environment exists. To date, two companies have announced their teams that will be pursuing the contract. ManTech and General Dynamics announced late last year they are joining forces to compete for the opportunity. Raytheon announced at the end of April that it will also compete for the contract. In its announcement, it said it is partnering with Red Hat and VMware. Responses are due Aug. 6. https://www.fifthdomain.com/dod/cybercom/2020/06/12/army-releases-1b-cyber-training-request/