2 avril 2019 | International, Terrestre
By: Jen Judson
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army on Friday issued a request for proposals to competitively build next-generation combat vehicle prototypes.
The RFP opens up competition for industry to provide optionally manned fighting vehicle prototype designs. From that pool, the Army will choose — in the second quarter of fiscal 2020 — up to two teams to build 14 prototypes.
The OMFV is intended to replace the Bradley Fighting Vehicle starting in 2026 and is designed to better operate in future environments that would allow soldiers to maneuver to a position of advantage and “to engage in close combat and deliver decisive lethality during the execution of combined arms maneuver,” an Army statement reads.
Some of the threshold requirements for OMFV are a 30mm cannon and a second-generation forward-looking infrared system, or FLIR. Objective requirements are a 50mm cannon and a third-generation FLIR.
“The OMFV must exceed current capabilities while overmatching similar threat class systems,” Brig. Gen. Ross Coffman, the director for the Next-Generation Combat Vehicle Cross-Functional Team, said in the statement. “It must be optimized for dense urban areas while also defeating pacing threats on rural terrain.”
The NGCV CFT is part of a new four-star command, Army Futures Command, that is designed to modernize the force. NGCV is the second-highest modernization priority for the Army just behind long-range precision fires.
After working with industry through a multitude of engagements and testing several draft RFPs with ambitious requirements, Coffman believes the Army has both the threshold requirements for the vehicle as well as the right objective requirements as the service heads toward the release of the final RFP.
“We put out a very aggressive draft RFP,” Coffman told reporters March 27 at the Association of the U.S. Army's Global Force Symposium, because the CFT knew it was not obtainable in its entirety.
The draft RFP was meant to stretch goals and objectives and to inspire feedback to ultimately write requirements that are attainable, Coffman explained.
The Army's current approach to enter into a rapid prototyping effort truncates what could be a two- or three-year technology-maturation and risk-reduction phase, Maj. Gen. Brian Cummings, the program executive officer for Ground Combat Systems, noted in the statement.
“It is about being able to prototype and field required capabilities on an accelerated schedule to get capability into soldiers' hands quickly,” he said.
The Army's acquisition chief, Bruce Jette, approved a rapid prototyping approach for the OMFV in September 2018, which requires a prototype demonstration in an operational environment within five years, according to the statement.
The prototypes will go through “rigorous” operational testing and soldier assessments.
The Army plans to downselect to one vehicle for low-rate initial production following the assessments and testing.
Several companies have come forward either with clear plans of what they would like to offer or declaring they will participate in the competition.
German company Rheinmetall announced last fall that it would team up with Raytheon to provide its new Lynx combat vehicle. It's also possible its Puma vehicle, which is co-manufactured with German defense firm Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, could be submitted. BAE Systems showed what it could do with a CV90 vehicle at the Association of the U.S. Army's annual show in the fall, and General Dynamics European Land Systems turned heads at AUSA with a Griffin III technology demonstrator equipped with a 50mm cannon.
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MacDill officials consider the base fortunate to have avoided the worst of the storm, but ordered personnel not to return for now while roads are cleared.
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European Union defense ministers have approved new collaborative projects meant to boost the bloc's military capabilities in air, space and drone operations.
6 août 2020 | International, C4ISR, Sécurité
Mark Pomerleau Members of the National Guard from New England states concluded a two-week cyber exercise that sought to test the cyber skills of guardsmen and critical infrastructure operators. Cyber Yankee 2020, which took place July 21-31 in New Hampshire, involved more than 200 National Guard members and their civilian counterparts from across New England states, along with some active-duty partners and participants from local, state and federal agencies. In its sixth year, there was less attendance than previous years due to the coronavirus pandemic, but several were able to participate remotely. “Cyber Yankee is primarily a hands-on keyboard cyber incident response exercise for National Guard soldiers and airmen in FEMA Region 1, which are the six New England states,” said Lt. Col. Woody Groton, a member of the New Hampshire National Guard and the director for Cyber Yankee, according to a Facebook post by the New Hampshire Air National Guard. Groton said in a video that the exercise is primarily focused on the electrical and water sector. The exercise is “a great training opportunity for us to work with those people who would actually own the network that we would potentially respond on and for our soldiers and airmen to get that experience and for the engineers from those various entities, they get the training in working with us,” he said. The Guard units within the various states are a critical resource to defend against cyberattacks when they overwhelm localities. “If a large-scale attack happened against a power company, water company, or any other critical department around the state, we would be able to get activated and help them mitigate the threat,” Capt. Frederick Bond, 103rd Air Control Squadron cyberspace operator and exercise Team 3 lead from the Connecticut National Guard, said in a release. “It's similar to when a storm comes and we help remove fallen trees or shovel snow from roofs to help get critical infrastructure going again.” The friendly blue team had to deal with simulated attacks from an opposing red team. Social media posts were used to simulate a real internet environment, where forces must sift through the noise and discern what information is needed to make decisions and identify threat actors. In one case, these actors defaced a public website. “We found some discrepancies including website, it looks like it may have been defaced. The team is digging into finding the source of that defacement and then making steps to correct it,” Master Sgt. Eric Lewis, a blue team member in the New Hampshire Air National Guard, said in a video. Other actions tested included protecting computer files from being stolen or manipulated. “We received intel that potential threat actors may be using a certain capability to transfer files,” said Senior Airman Stephen LaLuna, 103rd Communications Flight cyber systems operations specialist with the Connecticut National Guard. “We see the traffic that's using it, that sets off a flag on our end to look deeper into that. If we determine it is malicious, we send it up the chain with our findings and recommendations to block it.” Officials explained that one of the most critical aspects of these training events is the partnerships built between Guard units, critical infrastructure operators and government entities so that when a crisis breaks out, everyone is acquainted. “We have built enduring partnerships with state government and the critical infrastructure sector. Something that if we did have a major cyberattack against one of those, we would be ready to respond and already know each other,” Groton said. Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified Lt. Col. Woody Groton. He is with the Army National Guard. https://www.c4isrnet.com/cyber/2020/08/03/new-england-guardsmen-test-their-skills-in-cyber-yankee-2020