December 14, 2023 | International, Aerospace
October 21, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR
With artificial intelligence, every soldier is a counter-drone operator
With the addition of artificial intelligence and machine learning, the aim is to make every soldier, regardless of job specialty, capable of identifying and knocking down threatening drones.
While much of that mission used to reside mostly in the air defense community, those attacks can strike any infantry squad or tank battalion.
The goal is to reduce cognitive burden and operator stress when dealing with an array of aerial threats that now plague units of any size, in any theater.
“Everyone is counter-UAS,” said Col. Marc Pelini, division chief for capabilities and requirements at the Joint Counter-Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office, or JCO.
Pelini and Maj. Gen. Sean Gainey, JCO director, who spoke Thursday at the virtual Association of the U.S. Army conference, told reporters that the original focus was on smaller Tier I and II threats. But that has now extended to Tier III threats, traditionally covered by the Army's air defense community, such as Avenger and Patriot missile batteries.
Some of that work includes linking the larger threat detection to the smaller drones that now dot conflicts across the world, including the hot zone of the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict.
In June, the Department of Defense conducted a “down select” of existing or in-the-pipeline counter-drone systems from 40 to eight, as Military Times sister publication C4ISRNET reported at the time.
That was an effort to reduce redundancy in the flood of counter drone programs taken on in the wake of a $700 million funding push in 2017 to get after problems posed by commercially available drones being used more frequently by violent extremist organizations such as the Islamic State to harass, attack and surveil U.S. and allied forces.
Those choices, in the down select, included the following, also reported by C4ISRNET:
Fixed/Semi-Fixed Systems
* Fixed Site-Low, Slow, Small Unmanned Aircraft System Integrated Defeat System (FS-LIDS), sponsored by the Army
* Negation of Improvised Non-State Joint Aerial-Threats (NINJA), sponsored by the Air Force
* Counter-Remote Control Model Aircraft Integrated Air Defense Network (CORIAN), sponsored by the Navy
Mounted/Mobile System
* Light-Mobile Air Defense Integrated System (L-MADIS), sponsored by the Marine Corps
Dismounted/Handheld Systems
* Bal Chatri, sponsored by Special Operations Command
* Dronebuster, no sponsor, commercial off-the-shelf capability
* Smart Shooter, no sponsor, commercial off-the-shelf capability
* Forward Area Air Defense Command and Control (FAAD-C2), sponsored by the Army (includes FAAD-C2 interoperable systems like the Air Force's Air Defense System Integrator (ADSI) and the Marine Corps' Multi-Environmental Domain Unmanned Systems Application Command and Control (MEDUSA C2))
The four areas evaluated to determine which systems stuck around for use or further development were effectiveness, integration, usability and sustainment, Gainey said Thursday.
A kind of virtual open house with industry is planned for Oct. 30, in which JCO will evaluate what options are out there.
Some of what they're learning is being gathered through a consortium, of sorts, that involves regular meetings between service branch representatives during monthly sessions at the two-star level, Gainey said.
That goes into a real-time, updated “common threat library” that helps those in the field identify trends and changes that can be met across forces.
They use those sessions to share what each component is seeing in theater as far as drone use and changes. But it's more than simple intelligence gathering, he said.
They also form rapid response teams.
"My operations team works with the warfighters, [the] intelligence community” and others, he said. They “triangulate” common problems with drones and send the rapid response teams to the area of operations most affected.
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June 27, 2019 | International, Aerospace
Missileer Improvements Hit Mark, but Still More to Do
RACHEL S. COHEN Performance and professionalism in the Air Force's nuclear ranks has improved in the last few years following a spate of personnel issues, but there's always more work to be done to ensure the men and women who watch the arsenal are at their best, the service's top uniformed officer said this week. “I believe we've come a long way,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein said at a June 26 AFA Mitchell Institute breakfast. “We've all had to make sure that we keep our foot on the gas on this. I'm optimistic, but I'm not comfortable.” Nuclear operators have hit rough patches over the past several years: low morale and lost focus coupled with reports of drug use, weapons mismanagement, a proficiency test cheating scandal, and frequent staff turnover. In response, theservice launched programs to revamp training and regulations and to keep missileers in their jobs longer, rather than send them to other specialties after a few years. The Air Force has also made a conscious effort to offer bonuses, tout missileers' work, and visit the three nuclear missile bases spread across rural Wyoming, North Dakota, and Montana. Now, the service wants to develop its missile-managing employees' leadership skills at the same time as it develops new nuclear weapons and Northrop Grumman's B-21 bomber. Some airmen at Air Command and Staff College are taking a yearlong course focused on the nuclear enterprise in one effort to bolster leadership in those career fields. “One of the tasks I gave them was to ... give us some fresh thinking on, how do we do command and control if nuclear weapons were inserted into a conventional fight?” Goldfein said. “We built our nuclear command and control to be separate from our conventional command and control.” If the Russians deployed a low-yield, “tactical” nuclear weapon in combat, regional commanders would need the ability to integrate nukes into their otherwise conventionally armed battle plan. However, Goldfein emphasized that a “nuclear weapon is a nuclear weapon,” saying many don't believe there is such a thing as a tactical nuke. “Our command-and-control systems right now are not as agile as they need to be,” he continued. “This group of scholars have been doing some extraordinary work, writing papers and thinking about what is the command-and-control mechanism and how does that need to feed into [nuclear command, control, and communications]?” The Air Force's NC3 Integration Directorate has been mulling the idea of dual-use command and control for at least two years, and points to the concept as one of the most complicated security hurdles it faces in bringing the NC3 enterprise into the digital age. Goldfein argues efforts to modernize decades-old NC3 systems also need to dovetail with the Air Force's Advanced Battle Management System, envisioned as a network of conventional C2 assets spread across air, land, and space sensors and platforms, as well as with the push into commercial space capabilities. http://www.airforcemag.com/Features/Pages/2019/June%202019/Missileer-Improvements-Hit-Mark-but-Still-More-to-Do.aspx
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June 19, 2019 | International, Other Defence
15 extra pounds of gear can be the difference between life or death in a firefight, this Marine officer’s research says
By: Shawn Snow The weight being humped by grunts into a firefight with a sophisticated adversary like Russia or China could be the difference between mission success or going home in a body bag, according to one Marine officer's award-winning research. Marine Capt. Courtney Thompson said computer simulations she ran showed that just adding 15 pounds to the “bare essential” fighting load carried by Marines resulted in an additional casualty on the battlefield when Marines were pitted against competent shooters. The Corps' fighting load varies between 43 to 62 pounds depending on the level of body armor a Marine wears. Military body armor protection ranges from level II to IV. Thompson's simulations were run with level II body armor — protection capable of stopping a 9 mm round. The weight range includes a carried weapon. She told Marine Corps Times in an interview that the results of the simulations were “eye opening," especially in light of a 2017 government watchdog reported that detailed Marines and soldiers were carrying between 117 pounds to 119 pounds on average. When she ran the simulations and added more weight “casualties just went up,” Thompson said. And “the better the [enemy] shooter got, the more the difference in weight mattered." In a near-peer fight, Thompson said, Marines will need to move faster on the battlefield to survive and win. “The slower they are, the higher the chance they have of getting hit," she said. But it's not just about reducing a Marine's exposure time to being shot, smaller weight loads aid in more precise shooting and quicker target engagement times. A 2018 report from Washington D.C.-based think tank Center for a New American Security, explained that heavy combat loads “not only slows movement and increases fatigue” but decrease “situational awareness and shooting response times.” Moreover, a 2007 report from Naval Research Advisory Committee on Marine combat loads recommended an assault load of just 50 pounds. As the Corps focuses on the near-peer fight, the weight carried by Marines into battle is a topic that will need to be front and center for Marine commanders, Thompson said. Thompson's research, which won the Military Operations Research Society Stephen A. Tisdale Thesis Award at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, has the attention of officials at the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory — where the Corps has been exploring ways to boost combat power while also reducing the weight burden on grunts. Marine Corps Times has reached out to the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory for comments on this research. Marine Corps Systems Command said its “Gruntworks” team spoke with Thompson about her research. The team handles the integration of equipment for Marine rifle squads. Thompson, a combat engineer, said she came up with the idea after seeing how “gassed” her Marines got during training as a result of operations tempo and weight. “I thought if I could quantify weight in terms of casualties and probability of mission success, that's what the Marine Corps understands,” she said. Thompson's computer simulations relied on Australian human subject data and infantry demographics supplied by headquarters Marine Corps. The Australian data was used because of the Australian Defence Department's rigorous study on its tiered body armor system, Thompson explained. The Marine infantry data included physical fitness and marksmanship. The individual Marines within the simulated 13-man rifle squads “represented the average for that rank for all 0311s [Marine rifleman] in the Marine Corps,” she said. Thompson said she ran the simulations nearly a million times. Thompson's research showed that reducing the weight burden carried by grunts could save lives and win battles. But she didn't make any prescriptive adjustments to the Corps' combat gear load outs. She told Marine Corps Times that she didn't want to “limit” a battlefield commander's decision-making. The Corps' various fighting loads are broken down in its infantry training and readiness manual into four different groups, fighting load, assault load, approach march load and sustainment load. The load type is dependent on the mission at hand. Thompson's research was aimed at the fighting and assault loads. The fighting and assault loads include combat gear for the “immediate mission” and the “actual conduct of the assault,” respectively, according to the Corps' infantry manual. The assault load weight varies between 58 pounds and 70 pounds based on level of body armor. The weight range includes a weapon being carried. The training and readiness manual excludes the weight of a weapon in its gear break down. Thompson isn't calling for particular pieces of gear to be thrown off the packing list, but she said commanders should throw the entire list in a pack, wear it, and “see if it is a reasonable amount of weight.” The Corps is already making a number of changes to reduce weight. Some of those include a new lightweight helmet, lighter body armor for counterinsurgency conflicts and polymer ammunition. But Marines also are packing on weight with new tech like tablets and drones, which have been dished out to rifle squads. At the end of the day, Marine commanders have a delicate balance of weighing risk verse capability, and it wont be easy for commanders to forgo pieces of equipment on a mission to lighten packs, Thompson explained. A commander “can't prove the lives they saved” from taking a particular action, Thompson said. https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2019/06/18/15-extra-pounds-of-gear-can-be-the-difference-between-life-or-death-in-a-firefight-this-marine-officers-research-says/