27 février 2020 | International, Autre défense

Arms control decisions by Trump administration could be ‘imminent.’ Will China be involved?

MINOT AIR FORCE BASE, N.D. — With a major arms control agreement between the U.S. and Russia set to expire next February, members of the nonproliferation community have been watching for signs that negotiations may begin in earnest.

For those observers, some welcome news: Movement on the Trump administration's arms control plan is “imminent,” according to a senior defense official familiar with internal administration discussions.

However, what that looks like appears to be up in the air: a short-term extension of the New START agreement with Russia; something that involves nuclear-armed China; a combination of those two; or all parties walking away entirely.

“All the options are literally on the interagency table,” the official told Defense News on condition of anonymity.

The New START agreement, signed in 2010, is an arms control pact between Russia and the U.S. that restricts each country to a total of 1,550 warheads deployed on bombers, submarines and in underground silos. Following the dissolution of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, New START is the only major nuclear arms control agreement left between the two nuclear powers.

China has traditionally refused to sign onto arms control agreements. But Beijing has become a focus for those in Washington convinced that any new arms control agreement must include the Asian nation. China is estimated by the Federation of American Scientists to have 290 nuclear warheads, compared to more than 6,000 for Russia and the U.S. each, and the country is investing in nuclear modernization efforts.

Though top Chinese officials made clear that Beijing will not participate in trilateral talks, U.S. President Donald Trump in December expressed optimism that a deal could happen, saying Chinese officials “were extremely excited about getting involved. ... So some very good things can happen with respect to that.”

While traveling last week to tour the intercontinental ballistic missile fields at Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, Defense Secretary Mark Esper declined to speculate on the state of negotiations and what he would recommend Trump do. But he did indicate there would be a meeting at his level “soon” on the issue.

“If we proceed forward [with New START], we have to include Russia's new strategic weapons. They have to be included in the treaty. Number two, we should include Russia's nonstrategic nuclear weapons. They have nearly 2,000 of them,” Esper said. “Then I think we should put on the table: Can we bring China into the fold? We're trying to create strategic stability. It's hard to do that if you have a country of China's capacity and capability outside of that treaty.”

Speaking at Minot later, Esper added: “If we want to preserve strategic stability using arms control as a counterpart of that, as a tool in that toolkit, then China should be in as well.”

State of discussion

While some have theorized that the Trump administration is trying to run out the clock on negotiations, the official ascribed the slow public movement to myriad “distractions” around Washington that has sucked attention from Trump, Esper and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The official added that the outbreak of the coronavirus known as COVID-19, which originated in China, has made discussions with Chinese counterparts difficult.

There have been ongoing meetings on the issue at the assistant secretary level across the Defense Department, the National Security Council, the State Department and the National Nuclear Security Administration. “Ultimate decisions haven't been taken yet, but [a proposal] should be imminent,” the official said.

The first challenge, timewise, is the Feb. 5, 2021, expiration date for New START. Getting something done before then may be a challenge, especially if the goal is an expanded arms control agreement that loops in China, but “physically, you could do it because it doesn't require senate ratification, just a couple of notes signed by just getting everyone — the three sides — to agree to something,” the official said.

The question of New START's fate is complicated by the desire to loop in China on a new agreement. Administration officials have been working to develop a compelling case for how to convince Beijing to join a trilateral nuclear deal.

The argument largely comes in two forms. First, that if China does not sign onto a nuclear arrangement of some sort, it could lead Russia or the U.S. to consider growing their own arsenals — ensuring China's nuclear inferiority at a time when the Pacific power is racing to grow its stockpile.

The second argument is that great powers work on nuclear agreements together — and so joining one as equals with Washington and Moscow should appeal to Beijing's desire for recognition on the global stage.

Meia Nouwens, an expert on Chinese military affairs with the International Institute for Strategic Studies, says those two arguments are the most sensible ones to put forth to Beijing, particularly the appeal to China as a great power. She also speculated that if China's economy takes a downturn, it may find cooperating with the rules-based international system to be a “greater priority” than a China-first agenda.

But, Nouwens predicts, “it will require the U.S. and Russia to make the first steps though before China decides to agree to reducing what it views as an already significantly smaller Chinese nuclear arsenal. The trust isn't there.”

Rose Gottemoeller, who served as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security at the U.S. State Department during the Obama administration, before becoming deputy secretary general of NATO from 2016-2019, believes a careful calibration of what, exactly, is being negotiated will be key to any negotiation involving the Chinese.

“I think you can make a case for the Chinese to come to the table early on intermediate-range constraints of ground-launched missiles because they are staring at the possibility of a deployment of very capable U.S. missiles of this kind,” she said at a January event hosted by the Defense Writers Group.

“But I am concerned, they have so few warheads that if you put an emphasis on controlling their warheads, the incentive is for them to run the other direction rather than come to the table,” she added.

Gottemoeller also indicated that the question of extending New START is a separate one from trying to bring China into the arms control fold.

“The way the expansion program of New START is written, it's written so that it remains in place four to five years, so from '21 to '26, or until superseded by a new treaty. So it's not as if the administration is stuck with New START for another five years,” she said. “Go for it. Work on the new treaty. Get it done. And then New START would be superseded by the new treaty entering into force,” if ratified.

“Let's just get on with what we need to do in negotiating new treaties. I am concerned that there will be a lot of gamesmanship going on, and as I said, the Russians are excellent in that kind of game as well,” she added. “Let us not play around with leverage in this case, but simply extend the thing for five years and then get done what we need to get done, which is to negotiate these new treaties."

https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2020/02/26/arms-control-decisions-by-trump-administration-could-be-imminent-will-china-be-involved/

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17 juin 2019 | International, Aérospatial, Autre défense

iBASEt s’associe à Amazon Web Services pour lancer une plateforme de fabrication Cloud dédiée au marché de l’Aérospatiale et de la Défense
POSTED BY: AEROMORNING La plateforme conçue par iBASEt et hébergée gr'ce au Cloud Amazon offre une infrastructure de fabrication moderne, une amélioration de l'évolutivité et une réduction du coût de possession LE BOURGET (France), le 13 juin 2019 – iBASEt, fournisseur de solutions logicielles industrielles (MES/MMO, MRO, gestion de qualité et fournisseurs) annonce sa collaboration avec Amazon, dans le cadre du programme Usine intelligente d'AWS. Objectif : le lancement sur AWS d'une suite logicielle de fabrication numérique créée par iBASEt, basée sur le Cloud et dédiée aux fabricants du secteur de l'aérospatiale et de la défense. En coopération avec AWS, iBASEt fournit aux constructeurs de l'aérospatiale et de la défense une plateforme permettant d'exploiter des services natifs afin de créer et déployer rapidement toutes sortes d'applications et de gérer leurs mises à jour plus efficacement. Cette solution offre aux constructeurs du marché de l'Aérospatiale et de la Défense une visibilité et un contrôle accrus de leurs opérations avec un coût de possession réduit, une plus grande sécurité, une meilleure gestion des performances, une résolution des problèmes, des mises à jour logicielles automatiques et une mise en œuvre simplifiée, dans un secteur à la fois complexe et fortement réglementé. Sung Kim, directeur de la technologie chez iBASEt explique : « En travaillant avec AWS, sur la plateforme commerciale, nos clients bénéficieront d'un environnement Cloud capable d'accroître l'efficacité et le contrôle de leurs opérations de fabrication, mais aussi de leur continuité numérique. Conférant une puissante infrastructure, le Cloud permet d'exploiter toute une gamme de services natifs afin d'adapter différentes technologies de façon homogène, reliant les opérations et la gestion de la maintenance dans un flux de données intégré à la chaîne de valeur et au cycle de vie du produit ». Josef Waltl, directeur du segment mondial des logiciels industriels chez Amazon Web Services déclare : « Nous nous réjouissons de compter iBASEt dans notre réseau de partenaires AWS. La société iBASEt rejoint ainsi une liste de partenaires APN (AWS Partner Network) stratégiques, spécialisés dans les logiciels industriels. Ensemble, et au bénéfice des constructeurs de l'Aérospatiale et de la Défense, nous allons pouvoir conjuguer la puissante plateforme d'iBASEt dédiée aux processus de fabrication modernes aux avantages d'AWS Cloud. La solution de fabrication d'iBASEt tirera parti des meilleures pratiques d'AWS en matière de sécurité et de haute disponibilité, dans un environnement Cloud qui offre un déploiement rapide reposant sur des processus automatisés ». Le programme Usine intelligente d'Amazon aide les entreprises à se concentrer sur l'optimisation de leurs opérations de fabrication, sans se soucier de l'infrastructure nécessaire. Cette approche repose sur les services Cloud AWS IoT, l'Edge Computing (ou traitement des données à la périphérie), les data lake ainsi que des outils d'analyse avancés. L'objectif est d'améliorer les opérations de fabrication en capturant, harmonisant, analysant, visualisant et exécutant les silos de données de l'usine. Résultat : une amélioration des principaux indicateurs de performance tels que la qualité, la production et le taux de rendement global. AWS accompagne également les industriels dans l'utilisation de l'intelligence artificielle et de l'apprentissage automatique pour établir des analyses prédictives en temps réel. iBASEt a récemment annoncé la signature d'un accord avec la société aérospatiale Lockheed Martin (NYSE : LMT). En effet, le constructeur américain a choisi la suite logicielle de fabrication numérique d'iBASEt comme système d'exécution de la fabrication pour sa division aéronautique, laquelle conçoit et construit des avions militaires. Salon du Bourget iBASEt sera présent au 53ème Salon International de l'Aéronautique et de l'Espace du 17 au 23 juin 2019 stand B86. Le Salon du Bourget, événement centenaire, est le plus grand et le plus ancien salon aéronautique et spatial au monde. Depuis son lancement, le salon a été au cœur de l'évolution du marché mondial de l'aéronautique, dont il est devenu au fil des ans le plus important lieu de rencontre. A propos d'iBASEt iBASEt est l'un des principaux fournisseurs de solutions logicielles pour les industries complexes et hautement réglementées, telles que l'aérospatiale et la défense, les dispositifs médicaux, le nucléaire, l'équipement industriel, l'électronique et la construction navale. Le logiciel iBASEt de fabrication numérique rationalise et intègre les systèmes de gestion des opérations et d'exécution de production (MES/MOM), de maintenance, réparation et révision (MRO) et de gestion de qualité pour la production et de fournisseurs (EQMS). iBASEt est utilisé par plusieurs organisations industrielles leaders dans le cadre de leurs projets de fabrication numérique de produits. http://www.aeromorning.com/blog/ibaset-sassocie-a-amazon-web-services-pour-lancer-une-plateforme-de-fabrication-cloud-dediee-au-marche-de-laerospatiale-et-de-la-defense/
7 avril 2023 | International, Autre défense

ANALYSIS | NATO is getting ready to twist Canada's arm on defence spending | CBC News
NATO leaders' summits tend to be polite affairs ? but Sec.?Gen.?Jens Stoltenberg may have been needling Canada when he told foreign ministers recently the alliance sees the 2 per cent of GDP defence spending target "not as a ceiling but a floor."
7 mai 2019 | International, Naval

With billions planned in funding, the US Navy charts its unmanned future
By: David B. Larter WASHINGTON — With the U.S. Navy poised to dive headlong into a future of robotic ships, the surface fleet is preparing to map out how best it can employ new unmanned sidekicks against potential adversaries Russia and China. At the Coronado, California, headquarters of the Navy's top surface warfare officer, the staff is cobbling together a plan stand up a development squadron to experiment with new technology for which the Navy has requested $2.7 billion for the next five years. “That's happening,” Vice Adm. Richard Brown, the head of naval surface forces in the Pacific, said in a recent interview. “We're going to have large [unmanned surface vessels], we're going to have medium-displacement USVs. I've got Sea Hunter running around. I've got no place to put those things. That was the impetus behind the development of the Surface Development Squadron.” The Sea Hunter is an unmanned vessel developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The surface Navy is on the precipice of launching into a very different future than the Aegis fleet of the late 1970s, the 1980s and the post-Cold War era. It's a future that eschews the ballooning costs of packing evermore sophisticated strike, air defense, counter-electronic warfare, counter-surface and counter-submarine technologies into massive manned combatants that cost billions of dollars. The Navy wants to prepare for a future where off-board aerial, surface and subsurface drones with sophisticated sensors search for, detect and engage enemy combatants, submarines and aircraft with humans in the loop who are based on manned combatants that attempt to stay undetected. The problem is the Navy doesn't know how to do that or how it would introduce those technologies into a fleet that has for the most part fought the same way since the Cold War. “We've got to figure out command and control,” Brown said. “We've got to figure out the man, train and equip aspects — there's got to be an administrative commander in charge of them, got to be a guy who equips those things, got to be a guy who oversees the training of the people who interact with and use the USVs.” That is a tall order, and Brown and his staff are relying on the Surface Development Squadron, or SURFDEVRON, to figure it out. “Let's say I have a ship going over the horizon and it has three USVs it's operating with. I've got to have a ship that's manned and trained to operate those USVs, and that ship has to be equipped with the comms architecture, and I've got to make sure the USVs are manned, trained and equipped," Brown said. “Right now I don't even know what that looks like. We are going to experiment the hell out of it in the SURFDEVRON.” The development squadron, which mirrors similar efforts in the submarine and aviation communities, will also be responsible for developing the three new stealth destroyers, which the Navy sees as highly capable platforms that can be used to develop new concepts. Alongside the Zumwalt-class destroyers, the Navy plans to place the Sea Hunter under the auspices of SURFDEVRON, Brown said. Moving fast The development squadron aims to speed up the pace of experimentation in the fleet and empower the squadron's officers to integrate new technologies into naval platforms. This is crucial to the Navy's forthcoming “distributed maritime operations” concept meant to counter rising threats, primarily from China, in the vast expanse of the western Pacific. “The surface force has been key in the [distributed maritime operations] discussion because there is an incredible amount of firepower located on our ships,” Brown said. “But once you buy into a distributed maritime operations concept, you've got to experiment, you've got to work it out. And what better place to do that than the SURFDEVRON? ... You need platforms.” Providing the squadron with ships, such as the Zumwalt, the destroyer Michael Monsoor and the Sea Hunter, will allow ideas to flourish rather than die on the vine. “Someone has an idea for this new laser, it will take you two years to get the approval process,” Brown said. “Look at the laser we are trying to put on [the amphibious transport dock] Portland: We've been talking about that since I've been in this job. It's still not on there. “[With SURFDEVRON], I think we're talking about weeks to months — it's this idea of rapid acceleration of experimentation.” Too fast? The speed at which the Navy moved on efforts for unmanned surface vessels, as reflected in this year's budget proposal, raised questions about whether the technology pursued by the Navy is mature enough to be reliable in a fight. But with prototypes such as Sea Hunter already performing complicated tasks at sea, the state of technology is less a barrier that previous thought, said Bryan Clark, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and a retired submarine officer. The Navy's goals for the first large USVs are limited, Clark said, and developing the platforms makes sense. “The state of technology, especially for unmanned surface vessels, I don't think that's the issue,” he said. “The technology is mature enough to support what the Navy wants to do with these vehicles, especially the initial set of missions because they are going to be done in concert with manned platforms. So you'll have the ability to have people manage them as opposed to being independent steamers.” The way the Navy pursues USVs makes sense as well, Clark said. The service wants to buy eight large USVs, each about 2,000 tons with the ability to autonomously navigate waters. The drones would be equipped with enough space, power and cooling to host a variety of different systems. The service also plans to develop a smaller, medium-sized USV. “Is this 2,000-ton large surface vessel the right vessel?” Clark asked. “And I think given the fact that it's more or less a hull or a truck — that's how the Navy is looking at it — there's less risk of buyer's remorse to say: ‘Well, I wish I'd designed it very differently.' Because if it's a truck and it's got at least the space and weight [and] cooling you need, you can pretty much cover any [concept of operations] you might envision for it.” Another question is whether the Navy can develop a reliable communications network as a way to link to distant unmanned vessels. One benefit of distributing sensors is that detectable electronic signals are a considerable distance from the manned platform, meaning that platform has the advantage of active radars but without exposing itself to adversaries armed with signal-sniffing equipment. In a distributed construct, the drones spread out across an area while the manned ship passively receives the data at a distance. But it's a challenge to accomplish that in environments where an adversary such as China or Russia actively jams communications signals. However, it's a challenge the Navy must address, said Bob Work, the former deputy secretary of defense who championed unmanned technologies under the Obama administration. “This is like carrier aviation in the interwar period,” Work said. “This is an integration problem with systems that ultimately are going to change the way the Navy fights and considers combat power. The first thing is to get things into the fleet to test them and say: ‘How do these things work together?' ” Work said the Navy's concept of operations currently under development doesn't need to be the final word, but he added it's imperative the Navy begin experimenting. “It's very rudimentary right now — the medium-displacement surface vessels are the sensor guys, and the large surface vessels are more missile magazines. Hell, I can see all kinds of permutations, but for the first time we actually have platforms that are in the program that are being procured and will form the basis for fleet problems on human-machine surface action groups, human-machine undersea combat groups. I'm very excited about the way this is going," he said. “Are these the final ones? No, they'll change. But first the Navy had to commit to unmanned surface vehicles. People say, ‘Well, they'll never be able to talk to each other,' or that ‘under admiralty law, unmanned vessels are considered hazards to navigation.' And I'm just thinking: ‘Will you just stop?' Start thinking about how you work through those problems.” https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/navy-league/2019/05/06/with-billions-planned-in-funding-the-us-navy-charts-its-unmanned-future/

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