8 janvier 2020 | International, C4ISR

$100M contract awarded to upgrade special ops comms

By: Chiara Vercellone

WASHINGTON — U.S. Special Operations Command has awarded L3Harris Technologies a $100 million contract to upgrade about 550 satellite ground stations that support military command, control and communications, according to a Jan. 6 news release.

Under the five-year contract, L3Harris will provide software and hardware to maintain and upgrade the Hawkeye III Lite very small aperture terminals, or VSAT.

“This agreement extends the service life of our customer's existing terminals and highlights the priority USSOCOM places on ensuring their deployed users are equipped with the latest in VSAT technology,” said Chris Aebli, president of global communication systems at L3Harris Technologies.

For its part, the U.S. Army has received 4,000 Hawkeye systems to date.

In 2017, L3Harris delivered 46 Hawkeye III Lite VSATs to the U.S. Air National Guard's Joint Incident Site Communications Capability teams and trained personnel to facilitate direct communications with the satellite terminals.

In 2019, USSOCOM awarded L3Harris an $86 million contract as part of a $390 million program that started in 2015 for handheld tactical radios that can be used with multiple channels for special forces.

https://www.c4isrnet.com/industry/2020/01/07/l3harris-receives-100m-contract-to-upgrade-special-ops-communication-capabilities/

Sur le même sujet

  • 5 ways the Army will keep pace in cyber and electronic warfare

    5 septembre 2018 | International, C4ISR

    5 ways the Army will keep pace in cyber and electronic warfare

    By: Mark Pomerleau The Army is making several changes to be in a better position to compete with adversaries in cyber, the electromagnetic spectrum and space. Russia and China have begun to organize all information-related capability — to include cyber, electronic warfare, information operations and space — under singular entities. Now, Army leaders, say the service must do the same. “Integrated formations will be innovative because they'll help us create novel approaches to problem solving by leveraging multiple skillsets,” David May, senior intelligence adviser at the Army Cyber Center of Excellence, said during a presentation at TechNet Augusta in August. May outlined five force design updates the Army is implementing. Four of those five updates will begin immediately to provide competitive edge in multidomain operations. 1. The widespread introduction of cyber and electromagnetic activities May said the Army will introduce cyber and electromagnetic activities, or CEMA sections, at every echelon from the brigade to service component commands. These sections will plan, synchronize and integrate cyber and EW operations as well as conduct spectrum management. At the Army's cyber school, effective Oct. 1, all previous electronic warfare personnel in the functional area 29 will transition into the cyber branch to serve as these CEMA planners. That's important because it moves those staffers out from working as a functional area specialist and into an operational branch, Maj. Gen. John Morrison, commander of the Cyber Center of Excellence, the home of the cyber school, told C4ISRNET during an interview at TechNet. May said Army leaders are expected to approve this plan in the next six weeks. Moreover, the update will not require any additional growth to the Army as it will reorganize existing workforce. 2. New electronic warfare platoons Electronic warfare platoons will be stood up within brigades residing inside military intelligence companies working in tandem with signals intelligence teams and double the Army's sensing capability in the electromagnetic spectrum, May said. Full article: https://www.c4isrnet.com/show-reporter/technet-augusta/2018/09/04/here-are-5-army-modernization-efforts-to-keep-pace-in-cyber-and-electronic-warfare

  • Four companies win contracts to build the Air Force’s Skyborg drone

    24 juillet 2020 | International, Aérospatial

    Four companies win contracts to build the Air Force’s Skyborg drone

    By: Valerie Insinna WASHINGTON — Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Atomics and Kratos will move forward in the Air Force program to build an AI-enabled drone wingman known as Skyborg. Each company Thursday was awarded an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract worth up to $400 million, but no seed money was immediately allocated as the firms will have to compete against each other for future orders. Through the Skyborg program, the Air Force wants to field a family of unmanned aerial systems that use artificial intelligence to adapt to battlefield conditions. The Skyborg drone should be cheap enough where the loss of aircraft in combat could be sustained, yet survivable enough so that it could move into a high-end fight and function as a wingman to manned fighter jets. “Because autonomous systems can support missions that are too strenuous or dangerous for manned crews, Skyborg can increase capability significantly and be a force multiplier for the Air Force,” said Brig. Gen. Dale White, who leads the Air Force's program office for fighters and advanced aircraft. “We have the opportunity to transform our warfighting capabilities and change the way we fight and the way we employ air power.” Air Force acquisition executive Will Roper has said that Skyborg could eventually become smart enough that, like R2-D2 in the Star Wars films, it can autonomously present information and conduct tasks to help decrease fighter pilot workload. The system learns from prior experiences how best to support human pilots. But in the near term, the Air Force wants to use the Skyborg program to integrate an autonomous air vehicle with open mission systems as a way to demonstrate that it can team with a manned fighter, the service said in a statement. “Autonomy technologies in Skyborg's portfolio will range from simple play-book algorithms to advanced team decision making and will include on-ramp opportunities for artificial intelligence technologies,” said Brig. Gen. Heather Pringle, the Air Force Research Laboratory commander. “This effort will provide a foundational government reference architecture for a family of layered, autonomous, and open-architecture UAS.” https://www.defensenews.com/unmanned/2020/07/23/four-companies-got-contracts-to-build-the-air-forces-skyborg-drone

  • Why GE plan to make fighter jet engines in India is a big deal

    22 juin 2023 | International, Aérospatial

    Why GE plan to make fighter jet engines in India is a big deal

    The aerospace unit of General Electric on Thursday announced it had signed an agreement with India's state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics to jointly make engines in India to power fighter jets for the Indian Air Force.

Toutes les nouvelles