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Le premier ministre Justin Trudeau a nommé un nouveau secrétaire parlementaire au ministre de la Défense: Serge Cormier, député d'Acadie-Bathurst au Nouveau-Brunswick et actuellement secrétaire parlementaire du ministre de l'Immigration, des Réfugiés et de la Citoyenneté, devient secrétaire parlementaire du ministre de la Défense nationale. Le premier ministre Justin Trudeau a également annoncé plusieurs autres changements parmi les secrétaires parlementaires. «Cette nouvelle équipe apporte avec elle une vaste expérience et un large éventail de compétences et de points de vue qui contribueront à la croissance économique et à la prospérité du Canada. Les secrétaires parlementaires appuieront leurs ministres respectifs en vue de produire des résultats concrets pour les Canadiens. Ils aideront également le gouvernement à continuer de faire croître l'économie et de renforcer la classe moyenne.», affirme le bureau du premier ministre dans le communiqué qui annonce ces changements. Les nominations entreront en vigueur le 31 août. Autre changement à noter, alors que Sherry Romanado, actuellement secrétaire parlementaire du ministre des Anciens Combattants et ministre associé de la Défense nationale, devient secrétaire parlementaire de la ministre des Aînés, Stéphane Lauzon, actuellement secrétaire parlementaire de la ministre des Sports et des Personnes handicapées, devient secrétaire parlementaire du ministre des Anciens Combattants et ministre associé de la Défense nationale. http://www.45enord.ca/2018/08/le-premier-ministre-nomme-un-nouveau-secretaire-parlementaire-a-la-defense/

By: Tara Copp NEW DELHI — The U.S. and India signed a critical defense information sharing agreement Wednesday that will allow each country greater access to each others' communications networks, but could not come to an agreement on India's planned purchase of Russia's S-400 air defense system. Mattis and Minister of Defense Nirmala Sitharaman signed the Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement, or COMCASA, which in practical terms will improve information network access and sharing so that in future weapons acquisition, secure communications links common in U.S. weapons systems, such as Link 16 in U.S. jets, can be included. Until now, those tactical communications capabilities have not been included in India's major weapons purchases. The two sides also agreed to enhanced defense cooperation, to include joint exercises on India's coast in 2019 and the establishment of a hotline between the U.S. and India. Mattis and Sitharaman then joined Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and India's minister of foreign affairs Sushma Swaraj to address Indian and U.S. media. The defense and diplomatic leaders said the agreements were the latest sign of a strengthened U.S.-India relationship, recently underscored through the U.S. renaming Pacific Command to Indo-Pacific Command. But the two sides did not come to a resolution on one of the higher-visibility issues between the two sides, India's planned purchase of five S-400 systems, in a deal worth an estimated $6 billion. Full article: https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2018/09/06/no-decision-on-s-400-as-us-india-sign-key-defense-agreement

By: Kelsey Atherton WASHINGTON — A killer robot by any other name is far more palatable to the general public. That may be part of the logic behind the Army Research Laboratory Chief Scientist Alexander Kott's decision to refer to thinking and moving machines on the battlefield as “mobile intelligent entities.” Kott pitched the term, along with the new ARL concept of fully autonomous maneuver, at the 2nd Annual Defense News Conference yesterday, in an panel on artificial intelligence that kept circling back to underlying questions of great power competition. “Fully autonomous maneuver is an ambitious, heretical terminology,” Kott said. “Fully autonomous is more than just mobility, it's about decision making.” If there is a canon against which this autonomy seems heretical, it is likely the international community's recent conference and negotiations over how, exactly, to permit or restrict lethal autonomous weapon systems. The most recent meeting of the Group of Governmental Experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems took place last week in Geneva, Switzerland and concluded with a draft of recommendations on Aug. 31st. This diplomatic process, and the potential verdict of international law, could check or halt the development of AI-enabled weapons, especially ones where machines select and attack targets without human interventions. That's the principle objection raised by humanitarian groups like the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, as well as the nations that called for a preemptive ban on such autonomous weapons. Kott understands the ethical concern, drawing an analogy to the moral concerns and tradeoffs in developing self driving cars. “All know about self driving cars, all the angst, the issue of mobility... take all this concern and multiply it by orders of magnitude and now you have the issues of mobility on the battlefield,” said Kott. “Mobile intelligent entities on the battlefield have to deal with a much more unstructured, much less orderly environment than what self-driving cars have to do. This is a dramatically different world of urban rubble and broken vehicles, and all kind of dangers, in which we are putting a lot of effort.” Full article: https://www.defensenews.com/smr/defense-news-conference/2018/09/06/fully-autonomous-maneuver-coming-to-the-battlefields-of-the-future

By: Daniel Cebul WASHINGTON — In the era of great power competition, the speed at which competing militaries are capable to innovate and evolve could determine who would win in a war. In light of the need for speed, military innovation experts at the Defense News Conference tackled the question of whether the Department of Defense can still move quickly to develop new technologies and capabilities. While the conversation surrounding innovation tends to revolve around the development of new technology, other organizational changes are arguably more important for military innovation. Col. Liam Collins, director of the Modern War Institute, said that while new technologies play a role, they are not the driving force of innovation. “Sure, there were technological innovations that were part of it, such as new signals intelligence capabilities, but it was really more of an organizational or doctrinal innovation in which technology played a part,” Collins said. “Technology facilitates those other innovations, which are really often the most critical and often the less studied [of] what we focus on.” One example of changes to organizational doctrine and behavior is the DoD's uptick in using other contracting authorities, or OTA. Shawn Black, vice president and general manager for electro-optical and infrared systems are Leonardo DRS, said that from the commercial side, these alternative contracting authorities are appealing because they move quicker and better communicate requirements. “They represent a faster procurement cycle. You are able to move through the process of responding to a solicitation and providing a proposal much quicker. There is more flexibility in the intellectual property provisions,” Black said. "[Leonardo] has seen much-improved communication with the acquiring organization as you move through the process. “Right up until the submission we are able to zero in right on what they are looking for.” So how fast are these alternative options able to pump out contracts? Mike Madsen, partner and head of Washington operations at Defense Innovation Unit, said his office is looking to “leverage the OT authority and put award prototyping contracts within 60 to 90 days." "The fastest we've been able to do is just under that, and we are averaging 100 days,” he added. Full article: https://www.defensenews.com/smr/defense-news-conference/2018/09/06/can-the-us-military-still-innovate-quickly

By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR. "It's establishing buy-in over the next three, four, five years from the institution (of the Army)," Gen. Murray said. "It's about establishing buy-in on Capitol Hill, because if I don't have buy-in there, this won't survive.” DEFENSE NEWS CONFERENCE: The Army's new Futures Command won't tear down the most failure–prone procurement system in the entire US military. Instead, both its commander and the Army's No. 2 civilian emphasize they want to be just “a little bit disruptive” and “work with the institution.” That will disappoint critics of the service's chronically troubled acquisition programs who saw the Army's much-touted “biggest reorganization in 40 years” as an opportunity to tear the whole thing down and start again. The necessary change to Army culture “is going to take time,” brand-new four-star Gen. John “Mike” Murray said here yesterday, “and I think you do that by being a little bit disruptive, but not being so disruptive you upset the apple cart.” “It's hard, Sydney, because you know, you have to work with the institution,” Undersecretary Ryan McCarthy told me after he and Murray addressed the conference. “You don't want to go in there and just break things.” Work Through The Pain Reform's still plenty painful, acknowledged McCarthy, who's played a leading role in round after round of budget reviews, cutting some programs to free up funding for the Army's Big Six priorities. The choices were especially hard for 2024 and beyond, when top priorities like robotic armored vehicles and high-speed aircraft move from the laboratory to full-up prototypes. “You've got a lot of people out investing, and they're all doing good things, but they weren't the priorities of the leadership,” McCarthy told me yesterday. “You have to explain to folks why you're doing what you're doing. You need them focused on the priorities of the institution” – that is, of the Army as a whole, as set by leadership, rather than of bureaucratic fiefdoms with a long history of going their own way. But what about the pushback from constituencies who see their priorities being cut, particularly upgrades to keep current platforms combat-ready until their replacements finally arrive? “If you don't accept the risk that you talked about, (if you don't) slow down or stop the upgrade of legacy systems, you never get to next generation equipment,” brand-new four-star Gen. John “Mike” Murray said here yesterday, “and I think you do that by being a little bit disruptive, but not being so disruptive you upset the apple cart.” In other words, funding for incremental upgrades will crowd out funding for potential breakthroughs. That's largely because the incremental approach looks lower-risk – right up to the point where the enemy fields something revolutionary that your evolutionary approach can't counter. Full article: https://breakingdefense.com/2018/09/a-little-bit-disruptive-murray-mccarthy-on-army-futures-command

By: Kelsey Atherton Air Force One's most important mission is to support managing an apocalypse. The daily function of the vehicles is, of course, regular transport of the president of the United States, an airborne White House that transports the functions of the executive branch to wherever it may travel. But it is as a command center in crisis, up to and including nuclear war, that the special modifications of highly customized Boeing 747s are most valuable. In all of that, it is the ability of the airplane to continue to communicate with people on the ground that matters most. On Sept. 6, the United States Defense Information Systems Agency awarded Viasat a contract worth $55.6 million a year to provide U.S. government senior leader and VIP aircraft with in-flight broadband and connectivity services. Valued at $559.8 million for the base year and seven follow-on years, the contract may, in a major crisis, prove that value in maintaining a consistent chain of command. Viasat first won a contract to provide the bandwidth in 2016. “The service enables an elite connectivity experience with the ability to use the in-flight broadband connection to stream full-motion high-definition video for en-route command-and-control (C2) missions,” says Viasat. It also, Viasat continues, allows the people on board the connected aircraft “to access real-time intelligence and other location-based, live-sensor data for critical decision-making and more.” With the broadband provided by the Viasat connection, a president on board Air Force One can receive the relevant intelligence reports, communicate with counterparts elsewhere in government and the military, and then respond to the crisis by crafting an appropriate response. Or even a tweet. https://www.c4isrnet.com/c2-comms/2018/09/06/viasat-is-now-responsible-for-internet-aboard-air-force-one

BY PATRICK TUCKER DARPA's new research in brain-computer interfaces is allowing a pilot to control multiple simulated aircraft at once. A person with a brain chip can now pilot a swarm of drones — or even advanced fighter jets, thanks to research funded by the U.S. military's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. The work builds on research from 2015, which allowed a paralyzed woman to steer a virtual F-35 Joint Strike Fighter with only a small, surgically-implantable microchip. On Thursday, agency officials announced that they had scaled up the technology to allow a user to steer multiple jets at once. “As of today, signals from the brain can be used to command and control ... not just one aircraft but three simultaneous types of aircraft,” said Justin Sanchez, who directs DARPA's biological technology office, at the Agency's 60th-anniversary event in Maryland. More importantly, DARPA was able to improve the interaction between pilot and the simulated jet to allow the operator, a paralyzed man named Nathan, to not just send but receive signals from the craft. “The signals from those aircraft can be delivered directly back to the brain so that the brain of that user [or pilot] can also perceive the environment,” said Sanchez. “It's taken a number of years to try and figure this out.” In essence, it's the difference between having a brain joystick and having a real telepathic conversation with multiple jets or drones about what's going on, what threats might be flying over the horizon, and what to do about them. “We've scaled it to three [aircraft], and have full sensory [signals] coming back. So you can have those other planes out in the environment and then be detecting something and send that signal back into the brain,” said Sanchez. The experiment occured a “handful of months ago,” he said. It's another breakthrough in the rapidly advancing field of brain-computer interfaces, or BCIs, for a variety of purposes. The military has been leading interesting research in the field since at least 2007,. And in 2012, DARPA issued a $4 million grant to build a non-invasive “synthetic telepathy” interface by placing sensors close to the brain's motor centers to pick up electrical signals — non-invasively, over the skin. But the science has advanced rapidly in recent years, allowing for breakthroughs in brain-based communication, control of prosthetic limbs, and even memory repair. https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2018/09/its-now-possible-telepathically-communicate-drone-swarm/151068

Par Michel Cabirol La France a lancé un plan pour réduire les dépendances de l'industrie d'armement aux composants américains qui entrent dans la fabrication de certains programmes français. La France veut réduire sa dépendance aux composants américains dans la Défense afin de ne pas gêner l'exportation de ses programmes, a déclaré jeudi la ministre des Armées Florence Parly. La France doit actuellement demander aux Etats-Unis la levée d'interdictions sur certains composants. "Nous avons besoin progressivement de nous désensibiliser par rapport à un certain nombre de composants américains, ce qui ne veut pas dire nécessairement pouvoir se désensibiliser complètement", a-t-elle expliqué lors d'une rencontre avec l'Association des journalistes professionnels de l'aéronautique et de l'espace (AJPAE). La France a d'ailleurs lancé un plan pour réduire les dépendances par rapport à ces composants américains. "Je ne donnerai pas d'exemple précis mais nous avons été confrontés, dans des échanges liés à des prospects exportations, à des difficultés. Et nous savons bien que ces difficultés sont liées en apparence à des questionnements stratégiques et en réalité souvent à des problèmes de concurrence commerciale. Il ne faut pas en être dupes", a-t-elle expliqué. Si un système d'armes contient au moins un composant américain sous le régime de la réglementation américaine ITAR, les Etats-Unis ont le pouvoir d'en interdire la vente à l'export à un pays tiers. Ainsi, ils ont récemment bloqué la vente de missile de croisière Scalp, qui devait armer le Rafale, à l'Egypte et au Qatar. En 2013, Washington avait déjà refusé une demande de réexportation de la France aux Emirats Arabes Unis de composants "made in USA" nécessaires à la fabrication de deux satellites espions français (Airbus et Thales). La visite de François Hollande aux États-Unis en février 2014 avait permis de régler positivement ce dossier. Lors de son audition en juillet dernier à l'Assemblée nationale, Florence Parly avait reconnu que "nous sommes à la merci des Américains quand nos matériels sont concernés". "Avons-nous les moyens d'être totalement indépendants des composants américains ? Je ne le crois pas. Cherchons-nous à améliorer la situation ? La réponse est oui", avait-elle déjà assuré en juillet. La France travaille notamment à désensibiliser les futurs programmes d'armement. Ainsi Florence Parly a affirmé que cette moindre dépendance serait cruciale pour la viabilité du futur programme d'avion de combat (SCAF). Cela passe pour Paris et Berlin d'avoir la capacité d'exporter ce futur système d'armes. Elle a estimé que les industriels devaient prendre en compte ce dossier en lançant des investissements en matière de recherche et de technologie pour être en mesure de fabriquer un composant analogue qui échapperait au dispositif ITAR. "Certains industriels l'ont compris", a-t-elle précisé. C'est le cas du missilier MBDA dans le cadre du développement du futur missile air-air MICA-NG. Ce programme, qui sera opérationnel en 2025, est développé en prenant en compte la contrainte ITAR. Ils seront ITAR Free, assure-t-on à La Tribune. Florence Parly a également rappelé la dépendance de la France pour les drone MALE Reaper. "Pour armer les Reaper, il faut une autorisation du Congrès américain. Est-ce satisfaisant ? Non. Mais aujourd'hui on n'a pas le choix", a-t-elle expliqué, faisant référence aux drones achetés aux Etats-Unis depuis 2013. Pour autant, l'armement des Reaper ne signifie pas que la France armera le futur drone MALE de reconnaissance et de surveillance en préparation pour 2025. "Dans les spécifications, il sera possible de l'armer, ce qui ne signifie pas qu'aujourd'hui la décision est prise sur la question de savoir s'il sera en définitive armé", a-t-elle souligné. https://www.latribune.fr/entreprises-finance/industrie/aeronautique-defense/reglementation-itar-la-france-veut-reduire-sa-dependance-aux-composants-americains-789612.html

By: Aaron Mehta WASHINGTON — Last December, Ellen Lord sat down with reporters and told them that the reorganization of the Pentagon's Acquisition, Technology and Logistics office would be a two-year process. Now, however, Lord believes her Acquisition and Sustainment office will beat that target, easily. “I believe we are going to be pretty squared away” by the first quarter of calendar year 2019, Lord told Defense News in an interview following her appearance at the second annual Defense News Conference. “I believe those last critical slots — a lot of [deputy assistant secretary of defense] slots, a few director slots — will all be filled by March of '19. We're excited to get going on the work,” she said. The AT&L reorganization included splitting the office into two new units — the undersecretaries of Acquisition and Sustainment, led by Lord, and of Research and Engineering, led by Mike Griffin. In July, Deputy Secretary of Defense Pat Shanahan released a memo — obtained first by Defense News — finalizing the structures of the new organizations. Full article: https://www.defensenews.com/smr/defense-news-conference/2018/09/06/as-reorganization-should-be-completed-a-year-ahead-of-time