News

By: Stephen Losey The 552nd Maintenance Group at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma has issued strict new rules on who can check out tools after several recent “minor lapses” in keeping track of them. In an emailed statement Monday, 552nd Air Control Wing spokesman Ron Mullan said the lapses in tool accountability did not cause any mishaps. However, the lost tool incidents led the 552nd to impound two aircraft to make sure they were safe before returning them to full flying status. “The 552nd Air Control Wing employs a multitude of standard procedures regarding activities in and around aircraft to ensure safety," Mullan said. ”Occasionally, despite sound procedures, we identify emerging trends which cause us to review and adjust these procedures as needed to maintain the highest standards of safety." The 552nd Maintenance Group supports the wing's 28 E-3 Sentry, or AWACS, aircraft. The wing's official website said those planes are worth a total of $8.4 billion. “Ensuring the safety, health and welfare of the men and women of the 552nd Air Control Wing is always a top priority and essential to mission effectiveness,” wing commander Col. Geoffrey Weiss said in a Thursday email. “Therefore, I have asked our maintenance group commander and his team to review tool checkout and accountability procedures and make necessary changes to ensure our ground and flight operations remain fully safe and effective across the full range of our mission responsibilities.” Full Article: https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2018/08/14/tinker-cracks-down-on-tool-checkouts-after-lapses-lead-to-impounded-aircraft/

By Oriana Pawlyk If Dan Sullivan could use small drones to keep an eye in the sky over U.S. air bases, he would. But that may be a future strategy to survey wildlife lurking near military airfields, posing a risk to aircraft. Drones would negate the need for airmen to suit up and wade through swampy areas around bases to look for animals. And "if your drone is equipped with a forward-looking infrared, at night it could pick up deer, hogs, coyotes ... and having that drone pick up heat flying around, that would be a great asset for a BASH program," Sullivan, the Air Force's wildlife biologist and the Bird/Wildlife Aircraft Strike Hazard chief, said in a recent interview with Military.com. While drone use remains debatable in terms of safety and vulnerabilities, Sullivan said there is a growing need for them and other technologies as wildlife finds refuge near installations that house major aviation operations. But for now, he said, he'll settle for having more airmen trained in spotting bothersome wildlife and how to safely confront it. "I'm looking to institute a more in-depth training [program] here at the [Air Force Safety Center], more for folks that are boots on the ground." 'A Little War' Sullivan, who oversees the BASH program, which is headquartered at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico, said he sees the "threat" of wildlife increasing because the U.S. has some of the best wildlife conservation programs in the world. Full Article: https://www.military.com/defensetech/2018/08/14/need-new-tech-grows-air-forces-bird-strike-mission-expands.html

By: Valerie Insinna WASHINGTON — Lockheed Martin will design a second hypersonic weapon prototype for the U.S. Air Force, the service announced Monday. Although final terms have not been established, the contract could be worth up to $480 million for the critical design review, testing and production readiness support of the Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon, or ARRW. Lockheed is already working on a separate hypersonic weapon for the Air Force under the Hypersonic Conventional Strike Weapon program, or HCSW, and this newest award sets it up to become a hypersonics-manufacturing powerhouse at a time when the Defense Department is deeply interested in the technology — and is investing funds to match that interest. “We are going to go fast and leverage the best technology available to get hypersonic capability to the warfighter as soon as possible,” Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson said in a statement announcing the contract. The Air Force wants to move both ARRW and the HCSW to a flying prototype as soon as possible, with 2021 cited as the goal date. By signing off on an undefinitized contract action, Lockheed and the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center will be able to begin working on the program as the parties settle the final terms and price of the contract. Full Article: https://www.defensenews.com/air/2018/08/14/lockheed-nabs-another-big-hypersonic-weapons-contract/

By Second Lieutenant Kathleen Soucy The challenges of operating an aircraft in the North are numerous. “The first challenge is, without a doubt, weather,” says Capt Colin Wilkins, a CC-130J Hercules pilot with 436 Transport Squadron, during a planned flight to Canadian Forces Station (CFS) Alert. “Weather can be very unpredictable up North–and change rapidly.” In order to mitigate risks associated with extreme weather conditions, the aircrew follows a “plan procedure for cold weather operations,” said Cpl Yassabi Siwakoti, an aviation technician. This even includes a special procedure to start and shut down the aircraft when it is extremely cold, involving the removal and storage of batteries inside the aircraft. Located 1,834 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle, just 817 kilometres from the North Pole, Canadian Forces Station (CFS) Alert is the most northerly permanently inhabited location in the world. Full Article: https://www.skiesmag.com/news/flying-up-north/

MDA Press Release Canada's role and potential involvement in the growing new space economy requires a commitment from the Government of Canada for a new space strategy, the group president of MDA, a Maxar company, said in a speech to the Aerospace, Defence and Security Expo. “The most pressing question is whether Canada will participate, or not, in the international space community's next big exploration project,” said Mike Greenley, group president of MDA. “The United States, Europe, Japan and Russia are currently planning a return to the Moon in the 2020s. NASA will build a small space station that orbits the Moon, as a base for lunar exploration and as a gateway to explore deeper space. The international community expects Canada to participate in this mission and to provide advanced AI and robotics–our traditional and strategic role.” Greenley said the international community expects and wants Canada to participate. Full Article: https://www.skiesmag.com/press-releases/mda-president-notes-opportunities-challenges-for-canadas-next-role-in-space/

MONTREAL – The head of flight simulator company CAE Inc. said Tuesday U.S. President Donald Trump's appetite for defence spending is a boon to the Montreal-based company, as newfound access to contracts tied to top-secret missions pave the runway for more revenue. “On the defence side, budgets continue to be on the rise worldwide, and in the U.S. they are at historical highs,” president and CEO Marc Parent told shareholders at an annual general meeting Tuesday. On Monday, Trump signed a $716-billion defence spending bill for 2019, an $82-billion increase from 2017 and a dramatic upswing from most Obama-era military budgets. CAE's acquisition of Virginia-based Alpha-Omega Change Engineering earlier this month opens the hatch to “top-secret missions,” mainly out of the U.S., Parent told reporters. An agreement between the U.S. government and a CAE subsidiary allows a proxy board made up of two American generals and a military contractor executive to oversee the high-security contracts, he said. “That opens up an extra $3 billion of potential market for us. So that brings our total addressable market in the world to $17 billion,” Parent said. As to what the classified missions involve, he said only, “You can speculate all day long.” Parent defended how CAE potentially stands to benefit amidst heightened military spending south of the border, more combative language from the White House and the creation of a new armed services branch focused on fighting wars in space. Full Article: https://www.680news.com/2018/08/14/flight-simulators-ceo-says-bigger-u-s-armed-forces-budgets-are-a-boon/

By Ellen Nakashima The Pentagon has a new goal aimed at protecting its $100 billion supply chain from foreign theft and sabotage: to base its weapons contract awards on security assessments — not just cost and performance — a move that would mark a fundamental shift in department culture. The goal, based on a strategy called Deliver Uncompromised, comes as U.S. defense firms are increasingly vulnerable to data breaches, a risk highlighted earlier this year by China's alleged theft of sensitive information related to undersea warfare, and the Pentagon's decision last year to ban software made by the Russian firm Kaspersky Lab. On Monday, President Trump signed into a law a provision that would bar the federal government from buying equipment from Chinese telecommunications firms Huawei and ZTE Corp., a measure spurred by lawmakers' concerns about Chinese espionage. “The department is examining ways to designate security as a metric within the acquisition process,” Maj. Audricia Harris, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said in a statement. “Determinations [currently] are based on cost, schedule and performance. The department's goal is to elevate security to be on par with cost, schedule and performance.” The strategy was written by Mitre Corp., a nonprofit company that runs federally funded research centers, and the firm released a copy of its reportMonday. “The major goal is to move our suppliers, the defense industrial base and the rest of the private sector who contribute to the supply chain, beyond a posture of compliance — to owning the problem with us,” said Chris Nissen, director of asymmetric-threat response at Mitre. Harris said the Pentagon will review Mitre's recommendations before proceeding. She added that the Department of Defense, working with Congress and industry, “is already advancing to elevate security within the supply chain.” Testifying to Congress in June, Kari Bingen, the Pentagon's deputy undersecretary for intelligence, said: “We must have confidence that industry is delivering capabilities, technologies and weapon systems that are uncompromised by our adversaries, secure from cradle to grave.” Security should be seen not as a “cost burden,” she told the House Armed Services Committee, “but as a major factor in their competitiveness for U.S. government business.” The new strategy is necessary, officials say, because U.S. adversaries can degrade the military's battlefield and technological advantage by using “blended operations” — hacking and stealing valuable data, manipulating software to sabotage command and control systems or cause weapons to fail, and potentially inducing a defense firm employee to insert a faulty component or chip into a system. “A modern aircraft may have more than 10 million lines of code,” Mitre's report said. “Combat systems of all types increasingly employ sensors, actuators and software-activated control devices.” The term “Deliver Uncompromised” grew out of a 2010 meeting of senior counterintelligence policy officials, some of whom lamented that the Defense Department was tolerating contractors repeatedly delivering compromised capabilities to the Pentagon and the intelligence community. Addressing the security issue requires greater participation by counterintelligence agencies, which can detect threats against defense firms, the report said, and ideally, the government should establish a National Supply Chain Intelligence Center to monitor threats and issue warnings to all government agencies. Ultimately, the military's senior leaders bear responsibility for securing the supply chain and must be held accountable for it, the report said. The Defense Department, although one of the world's largest equipment purchasers, cannot control all parts of the supplier base. Nonetheless, it has influence over the companies it contracts with as it is the principal source of business for thousands of companies. It can shape behavior through its contracts to enhance supply-chain security, the report said. Legislation will be needed to provide incentives to defense and other private-sector companies to boost security, Mitre said. Congress should pass laws that shield firms from being sued if they share information about their vulnerabilities that could help protect other firms against cyberattacks; or if they are hacked by a foreign adversary despite using advanced cybersecurity technologies, the report said. Contractors should be given incentives such as tax breaks to embrace supply chain security, the report suggested. The Department of Homeland Security is addressing the security of the information technology supply chain through its newly established National Risk Management Center. “What we're saying is you should be looking at what vendors are doing to shore up their cybersecurity practices to protect the supply chain,” said Christopher Krebs, DHS undersecretary for the National Protection and Programs Directorate. The National Counterintelligence and Security Center, an agency of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that coordinates the government's counterintelligence strategy, said in a report last month that software-supply-chain infiltration has already threatened critical infrastructure and is poised to endanger other sectors. According to the NCSC, last year “represented a watershed in the reporting of software supply chain” attacks. There were “numerous events involving hackers targeting software supply chains with back doors for cyber espionage, organizational disruption or demonstrable financial impact,” the agency found. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/the-pentagon-is-rethinking-its-multibillion-dollar-relationship-with-us-defense-contractors-to-stress-supply-chain-security/2018/08/12/31d63a06-9a79-11e8-b60b-1c897f17e185_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.265ce85b6eb1

Airbus's Zephyr solar-powered drone flew for 25 days straight during a test-flight over Yuma, Arizona beginning on July 11, 2018. The flight represented a record for aircraft endurance, breaking the previous 14-day record also set by a Zephyr back in 2015. The long flight has big implications for military surveillance. Drones like Zephyr could loiter over a low-intensity battlefield far longer than current drones can do. The latest high-endurance Reaper drone maxes out at 40 hours in the air. The propeller-driven Zephyr belongs to a class of aircraft known as “high-altitude pseudo-satellites,” or HAPs. Flying as high as 70,000 feet for weeks or even months at a time, HAPs perform many of the same missions that low-orbiting satellites do. “The main HAP applications are in telecommunications and remote sensing, both civilian and military,” Flavio Araripe d'Oliveira, Francisco Cristovão Lourenço de Melo and Tessaleno Campos Devezas wrote in a 2016 paper. Compared to comms satellites, HAPs have the advantages of lower latency and the ability to land for maintenance or reconfiguration, d'Oliveira, de Melo and Devezas explained. For surveillance missions, HAPs unlike satellites can linger over a particular area and could produce images with better resolution, since they fly lower than satellites do. HAPs could be more vulnerable to enemy defenses, however. Where satellites orbit many hundreds of miles over Earth, beyond the reach of most conventional weaponry, Zephyr — so far the only HAP undergoing realistic testing — attained a maximum altitude of 70,000 feet, well under the ceiling for modern air-defense missile systems such as the Russian S-300. Also, the drone is slow, with a cruising speed of just 20 miles per hour. Zephyr and similar pseudo-satellite drones could be best-suited for operations over lightly-defended territory. In 2016, the U.K. ministry of defense bought three Zephyrs for around $6 million apiece in order to evaluate them for potential use by the military and other government agencies. “Zephyr is a cutting edge, record-breaking piece of kit that will be capable of gathering constant, reliable information over vast geographical areas at a much greater level of detail than ever before,” then-defense secretary Michael Fallon said in a statement. Airbus is still refining Zephyr, in particular its power-consumption. During daytime, the lightly-built solar-powered drone — which features an 82-foot wingspan and yet weighs just 165 pounds — can fly as high as 70,000 feet while also charging its batteries. After the sun goes down, Zephyr runs on batteries ... and slowly loses altitude. During the record-setting Yuma flight, the drone dipped as low as 50,000 feet at night. The challenge for Airbus is to balance weight and power-consumption to produce the optimal flight profile for a particular task. “You have to find the right equation between flying altitude plus battery life, maintaining this or that power,” said Alain Dupiech, an Airbus spokesperson. It's unclear just how long Zephyr could stay aloft under the right conditions. The drone's lithium-ion battery eventually dies, forcing it to land for maintenance. But battery technology is advancing rapidly, driven in part by consumer demand for electric cars, d'Oliveira, de Melo and Devezas wrote. In the short term, a maximum endurance of several months is not inconceivable. But longer flights might not be particularly useful for surveillance and comms missions, Dupiech said. “At this stage, most of those missions are not calling for a year and half up there.” Airbus has scheduled Zephyr's next test flight for October in western Australia. http://warisboring.com/new-spy-drone-flies-non-stop-for-a-month/

By: Seth J. Frantzman JERUSALEM — For the first time, the National Defense Authorization Act includes a section on U.S.-Israel cooperation in countering unmanned aerial systems, in the fiscal 2019 version. The cooperation will identify “capability gaps” of the U.S. and Israel in countering UAVs and seek out projects to address those gaps to strengthen U.S. and Israeli security. The new cooperation envisions funding for research and development efforts and identifying costs that foresee close cooperation modeled on previous successful programs that Israel and the U.S. have collaborated on, including missile defense and anti-tunneling initiatives. Israel and the U.S. have been at the forefront of air defense cooperation for decades. U.S. Reps. Charlie Crist and Mike Johnson introduced in February a bill titled “United States-Israel Joint Drone Detection Cooperation Act.” Parts of the bill were included in the NDAA passed in both houses of Congress in July. “I am honored to have our bill included in the NDAA and to see it signed into law by President [Donald] Trump. This is an important step not only for our strongest ally in the Middle East but for the United States as well,” Johnson said in July. The president signed the NDAA into law on the afternoon of Aug. 13. The initiative foresees “joint research and development to counter unmanned aerial vehicles [which] will serve the national security interests of the United States and Israel.” Included as Section 1272 of the final NDAA presented to the president on Aug. 3, the cooperation contains five parts, including identification of the capability gaps that exist, identifying cooperative projects that would address the gaps, assessing the costs of the research and development, and assessing the costs of procuring and fielding the capabilities developed. Reports on the cooperation will be submitted to the congressional defense committees, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The threat of drones has increased in recent years. On Feb. 10 an Iranian-made drone entered Israeli airspace near the northern town of Beit Shean. It had flown from the T4 air base in Syria. Israel identified and tracked the drone from Syria and sent an Apache helicopter to shoot it down. The drone was revealed to be armed with explosives. Former Mossad chief Danny Yatom said in an interview in April that the drone was sophisticated and “an exact replica of the U.S. drone that fell in their territory,” referring to the American RQ-170 Sentinel, which was downed in Iran in 2011. Iran developed two drones based on the Sentinel, one called Shahed 171 and an armed version dubbed Saeqeh, which debuted in 2016. In 2012, Hezbollah used a drone to try to carry out surveillance of the Dimona nuclear reactor in southern Israel. “It's not the first time and it will not be the last,” warned Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Conflict Armament Research reported in March 2017 that kamikaze drones using Iranian technology were being used by Houthi rebels in Yemen against Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The UAE has sought to bring attention to this threat during the conflict in Yemen, in which a Riyadh-led coalition is fighting the Houthis. Drones were also used by the Islamic State group to attack U.S.-led coalition forces in Syria and Iraq. And Afghan officials reported an Iranian drone entered their airspace in August 2017. In September 2017, Israel used a Patriot missile to down a Hezbollah drone. Israel used Patriotmissiles twice to down Syrian UAVs near the Golan Heights demilitarized zone in July 2018. The U.S. reportedly used an F-15E Eagle to shoot down an Iranian-made Shahed 129 drone in June 2017 in Syria. The drone was heading for the U.S. base at Tanf, which is located in Syria near the Jordanian border. A systematic examination of the emerging drone threat is in the works. The U.S. Defense Department has been allocating resources to counter UAVs, with U.S. Central Command requesting up to $332 million over the next five years for efforts to counter drones. The U.S. Army has been looking for new missiles to defend against a variety of threats, including drones. This will include the Expanded Mission Area Missile and may include other Israel missiles such as the Tamir interceptor for use with a multimission launcher. https://www.defensenews.com/unmanned/2018/08/13/new-defense-budget-bill-foresees-us-israel-counter-drone-cooperation/