27 septembre 2021 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
Contracts for September 24, 2021
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28 septembre 2020 | International, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
Air Force awards laser-armed RADBO contract to Parsons
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Air Force has awarded a nearly $40 million contract to Parsons to produce ground vehicles that can clear mines or unexploded ordnance from airfields — using a laser.
The package covers the procurement of 13 Recovery of Airbase Denied by Ordnance (RADBO) vehicles, as well as three spares. The system is made up of a Cougar MRAP, Parsons' three-kilowatt ZEUS laser weapon, and an arm assembly that can move debris or other objects out of the way.
The idea behind the RADBO is to allow airmen to clear threats from current or future airfields – hardly the laser warfare capability sought by Pentagon planners for decades, but still a potentially important step, as it represents the first DoD ground-based laser system to be ordered into full production.
The service awarded Parsons the sole-source contract on Sept. 23. Work will be performed in Huntsville, Ala., with a completion date of Sept. 2023. According to a 2018 video from the Air Force's Installation and Mission Support Center, the majority of development work on the RADBO design was done at the Army's Redstone Arsenal near Huntsville.
Parsons claims the ZEUS design can hit targets “more than 300 meters away from the vehicle and is powerful enough to detonate small submunitions from cluster bombs, land mines, general purposed bombs and thick-cased artillery rounds,” per a company announcement.
“This is Parsons innovation: delivering a game changing warfighting product,” Hector Cuevas, Parsons executive vice president of missile defense and C5ISR, said in a statement. “We're proud to partner with the Air Force in deploying this critical force protection and mission enabling technology that will greatly increase safe and effective explosive ordnance disposal operations.”
https://www.c4isrnet.com/industry/2020/09/25/air-force-awards-laser-armed-radbo-contract-to-parsons/
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15 mars 2021 | International, Aérospatial
Thales, Aeralis to Develop Advanced Modular Training Aircraft Simulator
Thales UK and Aeralis have entered into a Teaming Agreement to develop transformational AERALIS platforms. The development from Thales will take place alongside AERALIS' contract with the RAF's Rapid Capabilities Office to deliver research & development of an Advanced Modular Aircraft system. Aeralis is focusing on a UK-based development and production programme of a modular, and commercially driven aircraft system aimed at increasing capability whilst reducing through-life costs for customers. As they move to develop and certify a broad range of future aircraft systems to support the Royal Air Force's ambition to rationalise its future fleet, they will be working in parallel with Thales in the UK to ensure that the training systems required to teach pilots to fly AERALIS will be ready in conjunction with the modular aircraft system. AERALIS plans for its aircraft system to be offered as part of training solutions to customers across all aspects of both flying and operational training, and next-generation synthetic training devices and simulators will be a vital part of this process. With a well-established Training and Simulation division that designs and operates synthetic flight training simulators, such as those used at the RAF's Voyager and Atlas training facilities at RAF Brize Norton, Thales in the UK will bring to bear many of its latest training solutions to complement the AERALIS system. “We are therefore delighted to enter this further Teaming Agreement to realise our joint aspirations, which further support the Royal Air Force goals for their Project ASTRA journey towards a Next Generation Air Force,” Darryn (Daz) Rawlins OBE, Managing Director of Thales Training & Simulation, UK Domain. With both parties working with the RAF's Rapid Capabilities Office, Thales' Synthetic Training Equipment and aircrew training systems will complement AERALIS' development of its all-British modular aircraft system.
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31 décembre 2018 | International, C4ISR
Air Force begins to roll out special cyber defense teams
By: Mark Pomerleau The Air Force is beginning to build specialized cyber teams across the service whose primary mission is to defend local installations and critical mission tasks from cyberattacks. These teams will ensure that a particular wing or smaller organization can complete their mission from a cyber perspective, Maj. Gen. Robert Skinner, commander of 24th Air Force/Air Forces Cyber, told Fifth Domain in a November interview. For example, Skinner said if a wing has an F-16 unit that's responsible for offensive counter air or defensive counter air support, mission defense teams will understand those weapon system and everything that goes into making those air sorties successful as a way to defend that mission from a cyber standpoint. As an example, an eight-man team at the 2nd Weather Group within the 557th Weather Wing monitors the network and recently discovered several “bogus” account requests. The commander, Col. Patrick Williams, said the team was able to figure out that many of the requests were either bots or foreign requests that “had no business being on that network.” By working with the Network Operations and Security Center to eliminate that activity, the number of requests dropped by 80 percent, a huge win, Williams said. He added this was done with just a nascent mission defense team given that the teams are just being filled out across the major commands now. Skinner said each major command is at a different point in activating the teams. In addition, Air Force leaders said the service hopes to achieve efficiencies within its entire IT and cyber defense enterprise. The officials pointed to the Air Force's “enterprise IT as a service” pilot, which examines what efficiencies can be gained by having commercial companies conduct the IT services as opposed to having airmen maintain the IT infrastructure. One benefit of such a move could be that it frees up personnel to spend more time on cyber defense. “Our core strategic theme is moving from IT focused delivery into mission defense teams,” Bill Marion, deputy CIO of the Air Force, said during a keynote presentation in early December. Skinner said the service will likely be able to “re-mission” workers from their IT positions and assign them to these more active defensive roles such as mission defense teams. These mission defense teams are different from cyber protection teams that the Air Force, and other services, provide to U.S. Cyber Command. “In my eyes the [mission defense team] is a [cyber protection team] lite,” Skinner said. "We're very proud of our cyber protection team training and I think that the more of that I can get with our mission defense teams, the more successful they'll be and then our cyber protection teams can be really focused on the high end, the big threats that we'll run into in a peer competition and peer adversaries.” https://www.fifthdomain.com/dod/air-force/2018/12/27/air-force-begins-to-roll-out-special-cyber-defense-teams