17 mars 2023 | International, Aérospatial

Air Force program for new F-35 missile will knock out at least one prime in FY24

Air Force's Stand-in Attack Weapon (SiAW) program has funded prototyping work with three short-term contracts first issued last year to Lockheed Martin, L3Harris and Northrop Grumman.

https://breakingdefense.com/2023/03/air-force-program-for-new-f-35a-missile-will-knock-out-at-least-one-prime-in-fy24/

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  • From the lab to the battlefield: Soldiers put new network tools to the test

    31 juillet 2020 | International, C4ISR

    From the lab to the battlefield: Soldiers put new network tools to the test

    Andrew Eversden The Army's new network tools, set to be deployed to units in 2021, were heavily influenced by a new factor: soldiers. Through exercises and training events, the Army's Network Cross-Functional Team received feedback on its design decisions for Capability Set '21, the set of new network tools set to be delivered to soldiers next year as part of the service's network modernization efforts. “This is the first time really in recent history that the network has really focused on soldier feedback. And it's important and it played a huge role in that,” said Col. Garth Winterle, project manager for tactical radios at the Army's Program Executive Office Command, Control, Communication-Tactical. The Army recently completed its critical design review of Capability Set '21 and is in the beginning stages of procuring network pieces for delivery. In the lead-up to making purchases, feedback from units helped show the differences between how the new network tools perform in the field versus in a lab. “Soldier ingenuity, leader know-how, the skill craft that our soldiers bring and the tradecraft they utilize in the field is a lot different than how we conceptualize it back here,” Col. Rob Ryan, deputy director of the Network CFT at Army Futures Command, said at a C4ISRNET event in June. Testing for the capability set has been ongoing in lab-run experiments and with limited field tests in the last few months. Through the field experiments, the Army modernization team received feedback from units on what volume of various capabilities the soldiers needed, what capabilities were usable and what “attributes” of each capability soldiers found to be more important than others, said Winterle. Disruptions caused by both the coronavirus pandemic and a deployment of the 82nd Airborne Division to the Middle East at the end of December forced the modernization team adjust its testing plans. Defender 2020, a massive exercise scheduled to take place in June with European allies, was altered. Army leaders had planned to use the event to test network equipment with allies. However, network tests are “back on the calendar” in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2020, Winterle said. “The design decisions that were made at critical design review are still up on the table for revision or reassessing after continual soldier feedback,” Winterle said. “This is a continual evaluation, continual process.” Maj. Gen. Peter Gallagher, director of the Network CFT, said in a June 9 webinar with industry that several testing events, like a Joint Warfighting Assessment and Defender 2020, were altered, as were combat training center rotations and other exercises. Those “are always great venues for us getting feedback from soldiers and leaders on improving the network design,” Gallagher said. Ryan said that the network team received feedback from soldiers during the development, build and delivery phases of network design. In forthcoming testing events, the Army wants to figure out how many radios are needed and where they need to be located, Winterle said. The service also plans to evaluate if it undervalued and overvalued certain capabilities. https://www.c4isrnet.com/yahoo-syndication/2020/07/30/from-the-lab-to-the-battlefield-soldiers-put-new-network-tools-to-the-test/

  • Defenture and Polish Defence Force sign contract for delivery of GRF platform

    6 novembre 2024 | International, Aérospatial

    Defenture and Polish Defence Force sign contract for delivery of GRF platform

    With this agreement, European interest in Defenture's mobility solutions continues to grow. 

  • This training tool could be the answer to stop mass cyberattacks

    9 juillet 2020 | International, C4ISR, Sécurité

    This training tool could be the answer to stop mass cyberattacks

    Mark Pomerleau At air bases across Europe, networks are under attack. Malicious hackers have gained access to sensitive systems, information, controls and critical infrastructure. But cyber operators from U.S. Cyber Command, in concert with Five Eyes partners, have been called in to thwart these attempts in real time. This was the main scenario for this year's capstone cyber training exercise put on by Cyber Command, Cyber Flag 20-2. The exercise, which took place June 15-26 and was exclusively defensive in nature, saw more than 500 participants and 17 teams participating from five countries across nine time zones, and it included America's National Guard, the U.S. Energy Department and the Five Eyes alliance — Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the U.S. Australia, however, did not participate during this iteration. Officials told reporters this week that the purpose of Cyber Flag 20-2 was to continue building the community of defensive cyber operations and to improve the overall capability of the Five Eyes countries to defend against cyber aggressors. The drill involved teams defending IT and operational security networks against a live, opposing force trying to disrupt, deny and degrade the air bases' operations. The networks under attack were industrial control systems simulated to generate network traffic for an aviation fuel farm, power grid, air traffic control radars and electronic access control systems. The attacks came in the form of malware that targeted devices responsible for fuel and power. But the unique aspect of this year's exercise, as C4ISRNET previously reported, was the use of a new remote cyber training tool called the Persistent Cyber Training Environment. PCTE is an online client that allows Cyber Command's cyber warriors, as well as partner nations, to log on from anywhere in the world to conduct individual or collective cyber training as well as mission rehearsal, which to date had not existed for the cyber force as it does for physical troops. The program is run by the Army on behalf of the joint cyber force. The platform not only allowed the exercise to continue as planned amid the coronavirus pandemic, but it enabled collaboration and simultaneous training across the world. A new way to train Officials say PCTE is providing Cyber Command with an entirely new way to train cyber forces, which previously was difficult given a lack of infrastructure and the time needed to set up ranges and scenarios. It also allows Cyber Command and military units to conduct more frequent training. Cyber Flag typically was Cyber Command's largest and only holistic tactical training event, held annually during June. For units, aside from Cyber Flag, there were no other ways to stay sharp on their skills unless they built their own environments. Now, Cyber Command plans to hold more exercises, with Cyber Flag 20-3 occurring in the fall. “The delivery of the Persistent Cyber Training Environment absolutely allows us to increase the frequency and the complexity of exercises that are conducted by the command itself,” Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger, director of exercises and training at Cyber Command, told reporters. “Going forward, I would expect you to see a series of exercises throughout the year where we are reaching out to the different teams to test their capabilities or to focus on specific issues that are of concern or interest to us. “Going forward, we're going to get the benefits of both those distributed exercises along with increasingly complex exercises as PCTE is instantiated across both the secret network and the top-secret network.” Scenarios and environments can be stored, saved, reused and modified if needed in the system for later exercises. Smaller units will also be able to leverage these scenarios to practice whenever needed. The PCTE virtual environment for this year's exercise included 25 interconnected ranges of more than 3,000 virtual machines — a high-fidelity network that simulated and emulated open internet traffic with more than 4,000 static websites that store and share data. The simulated air base networks created in PCTE had fully configured Windows active directory domains with over 100 nodes running more than 10 types of major operating systems, along with 35 simulated user control workstations actively surfing the internet and using Microsoft Office products to access, create and transfer files. Moreover, officials also explained PCTE can be integrated into larger, multi-combatant command-type exercises to simulate the cyber effects, such as Global Lightning and its companion Cyber Lightning. Global Lightning is an annual global exercise run by Strategic Command to test integration across several geographic and functional combatant commands. Cyber Lightning is Cyber Command's portion to the exercise. “We think that is the next evolution of the Persistent Cyber Training Environment and how we take to the tier 1 exercises, incorporate cyber effects. They're no longer white-carded,” Col. Tanya Trout, Cyber Command's PCTE director and acting director of the Joint Cyber Training Enterprise, told reporters. White carding involves telling exercise participants that a certain action has occurred. This was typical of cyber effects, given it was difficult to realistically simulate them, which diminished the training value in exercises because participants didn't experience the full breadth of these actions. Now, these activities can play a real role in exercises increasing the overall fidelity of training across the joint force and continuity of all operations of warfare. The system will also be able to be used for mission rehearsals. A Cyber Command official said the force can input prior operations, such as those used against the Islamic State group, to train against. Additionally, they'll be able to upload to the platform malware discovered in operations. The PCTE program office, which is in the prototyping phase despite delivering the first portion to Cyber Command in February 2020, also learned valuable lessons in Cyber Flag. Officials said the two-week exercise provided the program office with six months' worth of data it can use to make significant improvements. Prior to the February delivery, the program office leveraged several smaller-scale training events at the unit level to incrementally increase capabilities and scalability as well as help geographically dispersed teams prepare for tier 1 exercises like Cyber Flag. Overall, officials are happy with how the system performed in its first tier 1 exercise, pointing to little to no latency issues, though there were periodic improvement tickets. “What we found through the rapid development and use of the Persistent Cyber Training Environment is that we really have a unique capability to move forward with,” Mauger said. https://www.c4isrnet.com/dod/cybercom/2020/06/25/this-training-tool-could-be-the-answer-to-stop-mass-cyberattacks

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