1 juin 2023 | International, Aérospatial
Auditors: Future F-35 cooling needs unknown as DoD eyes engine upgrade
“Without defined [cooling and engine] requirements, the F-35 program is at greater risk of repeating prior missteps,” GAO said.
19 juin 2019 | International, Autre défense
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.
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6 mai 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval
NATO’s ‘startup’ charts a bold future in maritime unmanned systems
By: Michael D. Brasseur , Rob Murray , and Sean Trevethan Last December, at their meeting in London, NATO leaders declared: “To stay secure, we must look to the future together. We are addressing the breadth and scale of new technologies to maintain our technological edge, while preserving our values and norms.” These two sentences were, in part, a nod to a significant piece of work the alliance is undertaking within the broader mandate of alliance innovation — NATO's Maritime Unmanned Systems Initiative. Granted, on its own this sounds both technical and narrow within the context of emerging technology, a context that includes: artificial intelligence, data, space, hypersonic weapons, bio technologies, quantum research, autonomy and more. So why are maritime unmanned systems relevant now? Simply put, developing the numbers of manned submarines, aircraft and ships required to keep pace with potential adversaries is simply not economically viable (almost $3 billion per Virginia-class U.S. submarine). Not since the Cold War has NATO needed the volume of maritime forces to protect our seas and oceans from would-be foes. NATO's areas of interest are expanding. As climate change affects the Arctic, new maritime routes are being created, which Russia in particular is exploiting with its submarines and ships. This matters because it exposes a new flank on NATO's high-north periphery, and if left unchecked is a potential vulnerability whilst also being a potential opportunity; this, coupled with an increasing need to protect our undersea data infrastructure means NATO's geostrategic responsibilities continue to grow. Therefore, if allies are to reinforce NATO's maritime posture, deter Russian aggression, guard against Chinese activity, and protect both critical national infrastructure and our sea lines of communication, NATO must do things differently and at the speed of relevance. NATO's Maritime Unmanned Systems Initiative was agreed by 13 defense ministers in October 2018. Since then, the initiative's success has attracted the participation of three more allies and garnered significant interest from all of NATO's maritime nations. The political agreement struck in 2018 provided the mandate for NATO to bring together disparate strands of common work ongoing within nations. NATO, acting as a network, enabled allies to become greater than the sum of their parts. The focus is threefold: utilize world-leading research to increase allied interoperability between conventional forces and unmanned drones; establish new tactics for our sailors to truly leverage these technologies; and develop secure digital communications for military drones across all domains (air, sea and land). Addressing these priorities together will enable this effort to be scaled across the alliance, at pace. To date, the speed of this effort has been breathtaking. So much so that even the United States and the United Kingdom — two allies who have invested the most in this area — are using the NATO initiative as a catalyst for their own national efforts. The last 12-plus months has seen the creation of a NATO project office, a governance body, as well as the planning and successful execution of the world's largest and most complex maritime unmanned systems exercise off the Portuguese coast in September 2019. This event brought together the very best from our navies, industry, scientific institutes and academia. The results were hugely impressive, with many “world firsts” including maritime unmanned systems augmenting conventional forces through multiple scenarios. We now have vast swaths of insight and information to start achieving those three goals of improving interoperability, enhancing our tactics and developing secure communications. The goal of improving allied interoperability is actually about enhancing standards. A topic often overlooked at the policy level but critical to the DNA of the NATO alliance. Standards drive interoperability, which in turn drives readiness, which ultimately aids deterrence. As NATO leads the development of new technologies, so too must come new standards that our industries and military can implement. Open architectures will be key, but allies and industry need to realize that we need to solve problems — not address requirements. No perfect solution will ever be delivered on the first attempt. The alliance will need to both innovate and iterate on operations in order to maintain advantage. This may be a cultural shift to some acquisition purists who are used to developing complex warships over 20-plus-year time frames. However, the challenge remains our ability to scale. With this project we have an agile global team functioning across multiple national and allied bureaucracies, each with their own culture and ways of working. Through engagement and investment, this team is yielding disproportionate results. Indeed, 2019 demonstrated what can be done with some imagination, effort and focus. But continual growth at speed will require faith by allies to maintain the course. Such is the nature of true change and innovation. There is a lot to do, and the stakes are high. Near-peer competitors are once again very real. Despite the global lockdown caused by the new coronavirus, COVID-19, the initiative continues to progress through synthetic networks and simulation, driven by passion and intent. Our economy, our data and its infrastructure still need protecting, now more than ever. This effort strives to accelerate maritime unmanned systems into NATO's arsenal to patrol the vast swaths of ocean and offset evolving threats. Success will be seen because it is being built on allied nations' shared values and norms, the same values and norms that NATO leaders recognized in London last year. Michael D. Brasseur is the director of naval armaments cooperation for the U.S. mission to NATO. He is also the first director of NATO's “startup,” the Maritime Unmanned Systems Innovation and Coordination Cell. Rob Murray is the head of innovation at NATO Headquarters. Sean Trevethan is the fleet robotics officer of the British Royal Navy, working in the future capability division at Navy Command Headquarters in Portsmouth, England. https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2020/04/20/natos-start-up-charts-a-bold-future-in-maritime-unmanned-systems
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31 décembre 2024 | International, C4ISR, Sécurité
Raytheon, Ursa Major test long-range rocket motor for US Army
RTX’s Raytheon, in partnership with Ursa Major, has completed a missile flight test using their advanced long-range solid rocket motor.