27 novembre 2024 | International, Terrestre
I/ITSEC: Saab to showcase full Ground Combat training offer
The Ground Combat Indoor Trainer is a virtual training solution that offers a cost-effective and highly realistic way to train soldiers.
1 août 2018 | International, Terrestre, C4ISR
CAPITOL HILL: Can the Army unite its rival tribes to retake the high-tech high groundof modern warfare, the electromagnetic spectrum? Those are the stakes in the service's ongoing internal struggles over doctrine, organization, and an obscure but critical program known as TLIS, the Terrestrial Layer Intelligence System.
Army leaders see TLIS as a powerful synergy between Signals Intelligence (SIGINT), which eavesdrops on and locates enemy transmissions, and Electronic Warfare (EW), which jams those same transmissions and can be used for cyber warfare. But TLIS, as the “intelligence” in its name implies, began as a pure SIGINT system, before it absorbed the former Multi-Function Electronic Warfare (MFEW) program, and there's always the possible it might regress. At least some electronic warriors hear worrying rumors that the more powerful SIGINT branch wants to save money on TLIS by cutting back on its jamming capabilities, leaving it as a passive sensor rather than an active weapon.
This internal budget battle in the Army could cede the actual battlefield to high-powered Russian and Chinese jammers, electronic warfare advocates fear, with the same lethal consequences for US troops that Ukrainian forces have suffered since 2014.
“The intel people will finally be able to get rid of EW, again, by taking it over, again, and crushing it,” said Col. Jeffrey Church, who until his retirement last year was the most senior Electronic Warfare Officer (EWO) in the Army: There are no EW generals, in stark contrast to SIGINT and cyber. Church was also the last EWO to run the electronic warfare directorate on the Army's Pentagon staff: His immediate successor was an engineer — an expert on bridges and minefields, not electrons. Both the staff directorate and the EWO specialty have since been folded into Army cyber.
“Next,” Church predicted in a bitter post on LinkedIn, “they will cancel the intel portions of MFEW they insisted be written into the EW requirements (i.e. when MFEW was folded into TLIS) and thereby kill the MFEW program.”
“I don't think your article will affect anything for Army EW,” a weary Church told me. “The only thing that will is when a bunch of our soldiers get killed. Then the Army will act shocked by it and be compelled to bring EW into the force with real gear, real operators, real training and real EW leadership.”
Synergy or Tension?
From drones to foot troops, radio to radar, networks to GPS, everything in a 21st century military has to send and receive signals through the electromagnetic spectrum — which means everything can be detected, targeted, and disrupted. Russia and China have invested massively in electronic warfare since the end of the Cold War while the US disbanded most EW.
Today, while the Navy and Air Forcehave high-cost jamming aircraft — the EA-18G Growler and EC-130H Compass Call respectively — they're too rare, expensive, and over-powered to support small units on the ground. But the US Army's own arsenal consists almost entirely of short-range jammers that fit in backpacks or on Humvees, most of them designed to disable radio detonators for roadside bombs. Meanwhile Russia and China have fleets of heavy trucks packed with high-power EW gear that can scramble US signals hundreds of miles away.
The Army's original solution to this problem was called Multi-Function Electronic Warfare (MFEW), a common family of sensors and jammers meant to go on trucks, drones and manned aircraft — eventually. But the service decided to fold MFEW into the land-based TLIS and an as-yet-unnamed airborne counterpart instead.
“We are specifically looking at putting SIGINT, EW and cyber on the same platform, both on the ground and in the air,” Maj. Gen. Robert Walters told a July 18 forumorganized by the Association of Old Crows, an EW professional group. As commander of the Army's intelligence center at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., Walters is the Army's lead “proponent” for TLIS requirements, with the cyber center at Fort Gordon, Ga. in a significant supporting role.
There's a natural synergy here, Walters said. SIGINT finds the enemy signals and analyzes them, then cyber and electronic warfare can target the weak links in the enemy network. While he didn't say so out loud, that's how it's done by the current masters of the art, the Russians, whose SIGINT and EW officers often sit side by side in the same vehicle so they can quickly coordinate devastating electromagnetic maneuvers, as in Ukraine.
But there's also a tension between the two sides. Intelligence naturally wants to keep listening to the enemy signals to find out more, whereas cyber/EW warriors want to shut them down or use them to feed cyber weapons into. Now, you can try to shut down only the enemy's most secure networks so they have to use the ones SIGINT can easily crack. That's what the Russians did against the Ukrainians, forcing them off their military radios onto personal cellphones — but it's not easy to pull off.
Second, when EW turns on its jammers, their powerful signal doesn't just disrupt enemy transmissions: It also provides a big target for enemy missiles and artillery radars to home in on. At best, that means the combined SIGINT/EW unit has to relocate frequently, disrupting listening operations. At worst, it means the combined unit blows up in one shot.
(You can reduce the risk to your troops by putting the jammers on drones or ground robots operated from a distance by remote control, but that creates a new problem: The enemy can detect, decode and jam your communications with the robots).
So how well will the Army balance these tensions? Right now, said one well-connected electronic warfare expert, the intelligence branch is in the driver's seat, and “once again intel has defaulted back to SIGINT, which disappoints me.....It's not looking too good.”
This attitude may be overly pessimistic. But there's little cause for optimism in Army's unhappy history of internecine intramural rivalries and cancelled procurement programs.
Is Big Six Missing One?
The current Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, is trying to make a break with the service's dysfunctional past. He has named six modernization priorities, each with its own Cross Functional Team (CFT), led by a general who can pull in people from across the bureaucracy and put them in one room until they thrash out how to get things done. Those CTFs, in turn, will play a leading role in the new Army Futures Command being stood up in Austin.
But electronic warfare has no clear home in this new structure. Of the six priorities — 1) long-range artillery, 2) armored vehicles, 3) aircraft, 4) networks, 5) air & missile defense, and 6) soldier equipment, in that order — the closest fit is with Priority No. 4, the network. That covers all the computerized communication and data systems the Army uses to transmit orders and intelligence: Lose all those and you're back to carrier pigeons. So, understandably, the emphasis of the network Cross Functional Team is on defending the US network from jamming and hacking, not on attacking enemy networks with our own jammers and hackers.
A spin-off CFT on Precision Navigation & Timing has a similar defensive focus: How can US forces keep track of where everything is and when it has to happen if the enemy disrupts GPS? For that matter, the entire cyber center at Fort Gordon, despite having responsibility for electronic warfare, evolved when the old Signal Corps school took on a growing role in not just setting up communications networks but defending them. It's only recently taken on an offensive role, and primarily in cyberspace rather than electronic warfare.
So all these leading Army organizations have the same focus on defense. Their job is to keep the network working under attack. But defense is not enough on its own. A tank doesn't just need armor: It needs a gun. Maybe a network doesn't just need cybersecurity and resilience against jamming: It needs to be able to attack the other side's network.
A
rmy Secretary Mark Esper has made clear the Big Six priorities are unlikely to change, so don't expect him to add electronic warfare as Big No. 7 any time soon. But there is still some wiggle room to spin off subsidiary priorities with their own Cross Functional Teams. In fact, from the beginning, there've been eight Cross Functional Teams, not six: The network priority is also supported by that Precision Navigation & Timing CFT, while the soldier equipment CFT spun off a training simulations CFT.
Now, that eight-fold structure hasn't changed since the initial announcement in 2016. But there's no fundamental reason why the Army couldn't add a ninth CFT for electronic warfare, supporting the network priority area alongside the PNT team.
What this would take — besides a memo from Esper and Milley — would be a fundamental change in how the Army thinks about “the network,” as an offensive weapon instead of a mere technical function.
his is a philosophical shift. There's a longstanding tendency in Western militaries to focus on reducing what Clausewitz called the friction and fog of war, the innumerable minor mishaps, miscommunications, and misunderstandings that constantly impede military operations. The ambition to “lift the fog of war” reached its peak of hubris in the “transformation” movement before the invasion of Iraq, where the fog rolled in again unstoppably.
Eastern tradition, by contrast, has long seen fog and friction as not only obstacles but weapons: You want to reduce them for your own side, of course, but also to increase them for the enemy. Hence Sun Tzu's maxim that “all warfare is based on deception,” a concept the Russians have embraced with their doctrine of maskirovka and which seems well-suited to the information age.
So, instead of treating the network simply as an electromagnetic means to reduce our fog and friction, why not extend the concept to include electromagnetic means to increase the enemy's fog and friction? Instead of an asset to be defended, what if it's a weapon to attack?
s the Network a Weapon?
There are signs the Army is starting to think this way. At the Capitol Hill forum, Lt. Gen. Stephen Fogarty — current head of Army Cyber Command and former chief of the Cyber Center at Fort Gordon — even talked about the network as a “weapon” and (intentionally or not) echoed Sun Tzu.
“We've truly started to operationalize the Army networks,” Fogarty said. “That's the foundational weapons platform for a modern military.” Without the network, he said, you can't do persistent intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR); long-range precision fires (LRPF) with missiles and artillery; logistics; medical evacuation; or command and control (C2, what the Army now calls “mission command”).
Now, Fogarty's list is about how the network enables other parts of the Army, rather than the network taking the offensive itself. Still, calling the network a “weapons system” is a long way from the old-school Army view of it as a mere utility, a technical convenience the geeks set up in the back room so the real mencan go up front and fight.
Why is the network so fundamental, in Fogarty's view? Because, he said, “our ability to operate and defend that network is what gives our commanders the ability to do two things: to see the adversary and see ourselves.”
Once again, Fogarty is not talking about using the network to attack, only to “operate and defend.” Nevertheless, he's sounding an awful lot like Sun Tzu: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”
Or as Fogarty put it, with less elegance but more specificity: “In the multi-domain battlespace, not of the future but of today, against peer and near-peer adversaries, whoever has the ability to sense, understand, decide, and act faster than their opponent (will) enjoy decisive advantage.” (He's referring to an updated version of the classic OODA loop: Observe, Orient, Decide, & Act).
That requires bringing formerly disparate specialties together in new ways, said Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier, the deputy chief of Army staff for intelligence (G-2). “Our primary challenge is one of integration,” he told the AOC forum. “Future forces must integrate SIGINT, electronic warfare, and cyber capabilities to provide situational awareness” — i.e. know yourself, know your enemy — “and enable commanders to deliver kinetic and non-kinetic fires” — i.e. both physical attacks, like missiles, bombs, and shells, and intangible ones, like hacking and jamming.
This transition can be intellectually and culturally wrenching, Berrier admitted. “While the tribes have come together, there are still members of the tribes that are a little obstinate,” he said to laughter. For those who don't see the inherent benefits, however, Berrier added, “another reason we're doing it is that the Chief of Staff of the Army told us to do it.”
https://breakingdefense.com/2018/07/army-wrestles-with-sigint-vs-ew/
 
					27 novembre 2024 | International, Terrestre
The Ground Combat Indoor Trainer is a virtual training solution that offers a cost-effective and highly realistic way to train soldiers.
 
					13 janvier 2021 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
AIR FORCE The Boeing Co., Seattle, Washington, has been awarded a $1,687,359,008 modification (P00166) to contract FA8625-11-C-6600 for Lot Six production of KC-46 aircraft, subscriptions and licenses, and G081 flat file. The contract modification provides for the exercise of an option for an additional quantity of 12 KC-46 aircraft, data, subscriptions and licenses, and G081 flat file being produced under the basic contract. Work will be performed in Seattle, Washington, and is expected to be completed April 30, 2023. Fiscal 2020 aircraft procurement funds in the full amount are being obligated at the time of award. The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, is the contracting activity. AchieveIt Online LLC, Atlanta, Georgia (FA8612-21-D-0101); Aerocine Ventures Inc., Jackson Heights, New York (FA8612-21-D-0102); Aerovation Inc., Tucson, Arizona (FA8612-21-D-0103); AI.Reverie Inc., New York, New York (FA8612-21-D-0104); All Vision Technologies Inc., New York, New York (FA8612-21-D-0105); Allied Associates International Inc., Gainesville, Virginia (FA8612-21-D-0106); Aptima Inc., Woburn, Massachusetts (FA8612-21-D-0108); A-Tech Corp., Albuquerque, New Mexico (FA8612-21-D-0109); BlackHorse Solutions Inc., Herndon, Virginia (FA8612-21-D-0110); Charles River Analytics Inc., Cambridge, Massachusetts (FA8612-21-D-0111); CIS Secure Computing Inc., Ashburn, Virginia (FA8612-21-D-0112); Cognitive Space Inc., Manvel, Texas (FA8612-21-D-0113); TeleCommunication Systems Inc., Annapolis, Maryland (FA8612-21-D-0114); Concept Solutions LLC, Reston, Virginia (FA8612-21-D-0115); Crunchy Data Solutions Inc., Charleston, South Carolina (FA8612-21-D-0116); CrowdAI Inc., Mountain View, California (FA8612-21-D-0117); Danbury Enterprises LLC, Arlington, Virginia (FA8612-21-D-0118); Data Machines Corp., Ashburn, Virginia (FA8612-21-D-0119); Defense Architecture Systems Inc., Fulton, Maryland (FA8612-21-D-0120); DTC Communications Inc., Herndon, Virginia (FA8612-21-D-0121); Forcepoint Federal LLC, Herndon, Virginia (FA8612-21-D-0122); Intelligent Waves LLC, Reston, Virginia (FA8612-21-D-0123); Iron Bow Technologies LLC, Herndon, Virginia (FA8612-21-D-0124); KeyW Corp., Hanover, Maryland (FA8612-21-D-0125); Modus Operandi Inc., Melbourne, Florida (FA8612-21-D-0126); Sentenai Inc., Boston, Massachusetts (FA8612-21-D-0128); The Stratagem Group Inc., Aurora, Colorado (FA8612-21-D-0129); Technergetics LLC, Utica, New York (FA8612-21-D-0130); Technica Corp, Sterling, Virginia (FA8612-21-D-0131); RAFT LLC, Reston, Virginia (FA8612-21-D-0132); Enveil Inc., Fulton, Maryland (FA8612-21-D-0133); Sherpa LLC, St. Louis, Missouri (FA8612-21-D-0134); KIHOMAC Inc., Reston, Virginia (FA8612-21-D-0135); Kinnami Software Corpo., Braintree, Massachusetts (FA8612-21-D-0136); KPMG LLP, McLean, Virginia (FA8621-21-D-0137); and Perspecta Labs Inc., Basking Ridge, New Jersey (FA8612-21-D-0138), have collectively been awarded a ceiling $950,000,000 indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract to compete for future efforts associated with the maturation, demonstration and proliferation of capability across platforms and domains, leveraging open systems design, modern software and algorithm development in order to enable Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2). These contracts provide for the development and operation of systems as a unified force across all domains (air, land, sea, space, cyber and electromagnetic spectrum) in an open architecture family of systems that enables capabilities via multiple integrated platforms. The locations of performance are to be determined at the contract direct order level and are expected to be completed May 28, 2025. These awards are the result of fair and open competition. The initial delivery orders will be fully funded by fiscal year research, development, test and evaluation funds. The Air Force Life Cycle Management, Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, is the contracting activity. ARMY H&L Contracting LLC, Bay Shore, New York, was awarded a $30,628,978 firm-fixed-price contract to perform construction/rehabilitation of the seawall system at Montauk Point Lighthouse, Suffolk County, New York. Bids were solicited via the internet with five received. Work will be performed in Montauk, New York, with an estimated completion date of Feb. 1, 2023. Fiscal 2014 and 2020 civil construction funds in the amount of $30,628,978 were obligated at the time of the award. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, New York, New York, is the contracting activity (W912DS-21-C-0004). NAVY WR Systems Ltd., Fairfax, Virginia, is awarded a $19,191,662 non-commercial, cost-plus-fixed-fee, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for engineering and program support services in support of the Relocatable Over-the-Horizon Radar Life Cycle Management Department at the Forces Surveillance Support Center, Chesapeake, Virginia. The contract will include a 48-month ordering period with no options. The ordering period is expected to begin April 2021 and be completed by March 2025. Work will be performed in Chesapeake, Virginia (42%); Fairfax, Virginia (39%); New Kent, Virginia (6%); Corpus Christi, Texas (3%); San Juan, Puerto Rico (3%); Adelaide, Australia (1%); San Diego, California (1%); Dayton, Ohio (1%); Colorado Springs, Colorado (1%); Washington, D.C. (1%); Arlington, Virginia (1%); and Key West, Florida (1%). Fiscal 2021 operation and maintenance (Navy) funds in the amount of $10,000 will be obligated to fund the contract's minimum amount and funds will expire at the end of the fiscal year. One source was solicited for this non-competitive, sole-source requirement pursuant to the authority set forth in 10 U.S. Code 2304(c)(1) in accordance with Federal Acquisition Regulation 6.302-1, with one offer received. The Naval Supply Systems Command, Fleet Logistics Center, Norfolk Contracting Department, Philadelphia Office, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is the contracting activity (N00189-21-D-Z015). Container Research Corp.,* Aston, Pennsylvania, is awarded an $11,539,383 firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract. This contract provides for the procurement of up to a maximum quantity of 275 V-22 Mission Auxiliary Tank System storage containers for the Navy, Marines, Air Force and Foreign Military Sales customers. Work will be performed in Aston, Pennsylvania, and is expected to be completed in January 2026. No funds will be obligated at the time of award. Funds will be obligated on individual task orders as they are issued. This contract was not competitively procured pursuant to Federal Acquisition Regulation 6.302-1. The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Maryland, is the contracting activity (N00019-21-D-0006). Advanced Computer Learning Co. LLC,* Fayetteville, North Carolina, is being awarded an $8,207,152 single-award, firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for the development of curriculum material and the instruction on the use of unique networks in the Joint Staff Joint Tactical Operations Interface Training Program and the U.S. Message Text Formatting Training Program in support of the Joint Staff, Joint Interoperability Division at the Joint Multi-Tactical School. The contract will include an 11-month base ordering period with an additional three consecutive one-year ordering period options, which if exercised, will bring the total value to $33,207,839. The base ordering period is expected to begin in January 2021 and be completed by December 2021. If the option is exercised, the ordering period will be completed by December 2024. All work will be performed in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Fiscal 2021 operation and maintenance defense-wide funds in the amount of $10,000 will be obligated to fund the contract's minimum amount and funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was competitively procured with the solicitation posted on Navy Electronic Commerce Online and beta.SAM.gov as a service-disabled veteran-owned small business set-aside, with nine offers received. The Naval Supply Systems Command, Fleet Logistics Center Norfolk Contracting Department, Philadelphia Office, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is the contracting activity (N00189-21-D-Z014). DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY Alamo Strategic Manufacturing,** San Antonio, Texas, has been awarded a maximum $8,700,000 modification (P00008) exercising the second one-year option period of a one-year base contract (SPE1C1-19-D-1122) with two one-year option periods for knee and elbow pads. This is a firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract. Locations of performance are Puerto Rico and Texas, with a Jan. 16, 2022, ordering period end date. Using military services are Army, Air Force and Marine Corps. Type of appropriation is fiscal 2021 through 2022 defense working capital funds. The contracting activity is the Defense Logistics Agency Troop Support, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. *Small business ** Small disadvantaged business https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Contracts/Contract/Article/2469624/source/GovDelivery/
 
					26 septembre 2024 | International, C4ISR, Sécurité
Cloudflare uncovers SloppyLemming, an India-linked threat actor targeting Asian countries with sophisticated cyber espionage techniques and cloud-base