14 janvier 2019 | International, Terrestre
By JOHN VANDIVER | STARS AND STRIPES
The Army is testing new combat boots at select boot camps in a push to better compete with the more comfortable commercial brands favored by many soldiers for their lightness.
The U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command Soldier Center in Natick, Mass., has developed prototypes that soldiers will wear at three different basic training and active duty sites during the next four months.
“Soldiers live in their boots and many will tell you that there is no piece of equipment more important to their lethality and readiness,” said Al Adams, a team leader at the Army's soldier center, in a statement. “A bad pair of boots will ruin a Soldier's day and possibly result in injuries, so we really believe that each of these prototype boots have the potential to improve the lives of Soldiers.”
The prototypes, which utilize more flexible types of leather and lighter outsoles, will be fielded to 800 new recruits at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., and Fort Jackson, S.C. Another 900 pairs will go to infantry soldiers at Fort Bliss, Texas.
The Army's soldier center team will custom-fit each pair and collect solider surveys on boot performance in the spring.
The prototypes are up to 1.5 pounds lighter per pair than those issued today.
“In terms of energy expenditure or calories burned, 1-pound of weight at the feet is equivalent to 4-pounds in your rucksack,” Adams said in a statement.
The prototypes in their current design would be the first significant change to the basic Army combat boot in years.
While there have been improvements to the Army's special footwear for jungle, mountain and cold weather locations, there is room for improvement in general-purpose boots issued to new recruits, the Army said.
“Most components of these combat boots have not been updated in almost 30 years,” Army footwear engineer Anita Perkins said in a statement.
Army surveys have found that satisfaction with the Army combat boot is lower than with commercial varieties. In a poll of 14,000 soldiers, the Army said it found that nearly 50 percent choose comfortable sneaker-like commercial boots over Army-issued ones.
The problem confronting Army officials is that commercial comfort can come with trade-offs. The Army said its ultimate aim is to bridge the comfort gap while maintaining durability and protection.
vandiver.john@stripes.com
Twitter: @john_vandiver
https://www.stripes.com/news/army-looks-to-give-its-old-combat-boot-the-boot-1.563985
6 avril 2021 | International, Aérospatial
March 30, 2021 - Citadel Defense has received a follow-on urgent contract award from the U.S. Department of Defense to protect servicemen and servicewomen from small drone threats. This press release...
18 juin 2019 | International, Aérospatial
By Jeremy Hsu Military pilots may soon have a new kind of wingman to depend upon: not flesh-and-blood pilots but fast-flying, sensor-studded aerial drones that fly into combat to scout enemy targets and draw enemy fire that otherwise would be directed at human-piloted aircraft. War planners see these robotic wingmen as a way to amplify air power while sparing pilots' lives and preventing the loss of sophisticated fighter jets, which can cost more than $100 million apiece. "These drone aircraft are a way to get at that in a more cost-effective manner, which I think is really a game-changer for the Air Force," says Paul Scharre, director of the technology and national security program at the Center for a New American Security, a think tank in Washington, D.C. Unlike slow-moving drones such as the Reaper and the Global Hawk, which are flown remotely by pilots on the ground, the new combat drones would be able to operate with minimal input from human pilots. To do that, they'd be equipped with artificial intelligence systems that give them the ability not only to fly but also to learn from and respond to the needs of the pilots they fly alongside. "The term we use in the Air Force is quarterbacking," says Will Roper, assistant secretary of the U.S. Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics and one of the experts working to develop the AI wingmen. "So the pilot is calling a play and knows how the systems will respond, but doesn't have to run the play for them." Training a robotic wingman Earlier this year, the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory took an important step in the development of the AI wingmen by announcing its Skyborg program focused on developing the AI necessary to control the drones. As part of the program, Air Force pilots are already flying simulated missions alongside the drones. Roper says drones like the XQ-58A Valkyrie, a 652-mph drone built by Sacramento-based Kratos Unmanned Aerial Systems with a projected manufacturing cost of $2 million apiece, could be AI-enabled and ready to fly within the next three years. "I wouldn't be surprised if the AI becomes tailored to individual pilots," Roper says. "They're actually training their own AI that augments their strengths and weaknesses." The U.S. military isn't alone in working to develop fighter drones. The Future Combat Air System is a $74-million, two-year deal between Germany and France aimed at building a next-generation fighter that would act as a flying command center for swarms of the fighter drones. And the Royal Australian Air Force has teamed up with Boeing to develop an AI-controlled drone with "fighter-like performance" that could accompany human-piloted aircraft or fly solo, Shane Arnott, director of Boeing Australia, says. The latter program plans for the first test flight to take place in 2020, with the goal of eventually selling the system worldwide. Partners or replacements? Given the rise of drones and AI, some experts question whether it makes sense to continue sending human pilots into harm's way. Why not have people on the ground or in an airborne command center give orders to swarms of combat drones — and let them carry out the mission on their own? "If you just make the human go fly in combat and their wingman is a drone, it doesn't change their risk profile at all — it only adds to their workload," says Missy Cummings, director of the humans and autonomy laboratory at Duke University and a former fighter pilot in the U.S. Navy. Scharre says the military still needs humans "forward in the fight" to guide combat drones. But he too sees a coming shift in the role of combat pilots — from flying a fighter jet and controlling its weapons systems to acting as a "battle manager" who decides what actions need to be taken by piloted and drone aircraft. That will likely include deciding when drones should use deadly force and selecting specific targets — decisions that the U.S. military is hesitant to hand over entirely to AI in part because research suggests AI is less skilled than humans at adapting to changing or uncertain situations. "A country that does not have pilots trained as good as we do might see appeal in shifting more and more of their mission to autonomous systems," Roper says. "Well, if they do that, I think we will have the advantage, because those autonomous systems acting alone will never be able to do what people teamed with machines are able to do." https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/robotic-fighter-jets-could-soon-join-military-pilots-combat-missions-ncna1014501
4 janvier 2019 | International, C4ISR
By: Mike Gruss The new year will likely bring a new secretary of defense, a renewed emphasis on changing how the Pentagon buys weapons systems and a continued focus on watching technological development by the Chinese government. C4ISRNET asked industry leaders what trends they expect to emerge in the battlefield landscape in 2019. Here's what they said: Accelerated acquisition “Right now, your toaster can tell your refrigerator that it needs to order more bread, but the world's most advanced military is still challenged to connect its huge array of systems. That's just not sustainable. Before the military can start tackling huge technological leaps like artificial intelligence, we have to change the way we develop weapon systems. I see 2019 as the point when the DoD really starts moving away from buying proprietary, stove-piped, closed hardware systems and instead looks to the commercial software world as a model for how we develop and integrate weapon systems. Focusing on commercial-style software development is how we'll be able to develop truly open, upgradeable, cyber-resilient systems quickly. And by quickly I'm saying weeks or months for a new system, not years or decades. The pace of technology is moving faster than ever before, especially in the software world. We need to accept that and move with it if we want to stay ahead.” — Todd Probert, vice president of mission support and modernization at Raytheon An increased need for a coordinated response “Today's environment is evolving to warfare coordinated across multiple domains driving our forces to be more adaptable and coordinated in our response. As this threat environment accelerates, we recognize that our customers require methods that will enable them to operate seamlessly and simultaneously across domains. We see C4ISR technologies as the foundation for managing and responding to these more complex missions on a shorter timeline. We will continue to invest in transformational technologies that will help make multidomain operations more predictive and more effective. This includes: Machine-to-machine communication across new and legacy datalinks; Fusion to enable information from several sources into one unified picture of the battlespace and reduce the data to decision timeline; Artificial intelligence to provide decision makers with the ability to react quickly to problems that demand fast-paced analysis and decision making. AI offers the technology to change the human role from “in-the-loop” controller to “on-the-loop” thinker who can focus on strategy versus the execution detail; ‘Algorithmic warfare' to support a partnership between humans and computer systems, exponentially increasing the pace of processing, exploitation, dissemination and C2 operations; and Advanced multi-level secure modeling and simulation to manage patterns of life and actionable changes. — Brent Upson, director of ISR Systems at Lockheed Martin A move to small form factor networking “In 2019 we expect the DoD to significantly increase its investment in small form factor networking, secure wireless and virtualization-enabled compute necessary to improve war-fighter mobility and situational awareness in tactical and expeditionary programs. Tactical communications programs have proven the efficacy of size weight and power (SWaP) reduction by moving to small form factor equipment, and the savings enable entirely new IT-enabled use cases at the network edge. In particular, tactical deployments of classified wireless using commercial technologies, data center services and storage, and defensive cybersecurity solutions will see sizable new adoption in 2019.” — Peggy Miller, chief executive officer at PacStar Audio for authentication “Audio will be the buzz word of 2019 for network solutions. Introducing audio as a security layer in IP video provides a new layer of overall security to physical security solutions. Audio technology allows security professionals to interact with people remotely, as well as provide an automated response to prevent situations from escalating to an incident by identifying aggressive voices, glass breaking and even gunshots. With this new audio technology and analytical capabilities, security professionals can proactively detect, interpret and respond to events and emergency situations.” — John Merlino, government business development manager at Axis Communications, Inc. Attacks on data in the cloud “In the past two years, enterprises have widely adopted the Software-as-a-Service model, such as Office 365, as well as Infrastructure- and Platform-as-a-Service cloud models, such as AWS and Azure. With this move, far more corporate data now resides in the cloud. In 2019, we expect a significant increase in attacks that follow the data to the cloud. With the increased adoption of Office 365, we have noticed a surge of attacks on the service — especially attempts to compromise email. One threat the McAfee cloud team uncovered was the botnet KnockKnock, which targeted system accounts that typically do not have multifactor authentication. We have also seen the emergence of exploits of the trust model in the Open Authorization standard. One was launched by Fancy Bear, the Russian cyber-espionage group, phishing users with a fake Google security app to gain access to user data. "Similarly, during the last couple of years we have seen many high-profile data breaches attributed to misconfigured Amazon S3 buckets. This is clearly not the fault of AWS. Based on the shared responsibility model, the customer is on the hook to properly configure IaaS/PaaS infrastructure and properly protect their enterprise data and user access. Complicating matters, many of these misconfigured buckets are owned by vendors in their supply chains, rather than by the target enterprises. With access to thousands of open buckets and credentials, bad actors are increasingly opting for these easy pickings.” — Sekhar Sarukkai, vice president of engineering, cloud at McAfee The expansion of technology to counter small drones "The ever-expanding proliferation of small UAS (sUAS) has resulted in a rapid rise in sUAS incidents, leaving security personnel starved for a holistic solution to this new and evolving threat. A hobbyist unwittingly flying near a flight line or a drone pilot with nefarious intentions present both risk and unmet challenges. Counter-sUAS (C-sUAS) technology is an essential tool for assessing airspace activity, understanding the severity of drone incursions, and informing new protocols to mitigate potential threats. With C-sUAS technology, security personnel can now observe a drone's behavior and deploy appropriate offensive or defensive countermeasures, which may include direct contact with the pilot or coordination with local law enforcement. In all cases, detection of sUAS activity is the critical foundation of any C-sUAS program. “2018 was a year of testing and evaluating. Rapid prototyping, experimental deployments, and government testing events validated that no single C-sUAS system is a one-size-fits-all solution. Moreover, C-sUAS technology must be flexible to meet the needs of each specific environment.” — Phil Pitsky, vice president of U.S. federal operations at Dedrone https://www.c4isrnet.com/industry/2019/01/02/heres-what-the-battlefield-tech-industry-predicts-for-2019/