Australia demonstrates 'hard kill' with first directed energy weapon, Fractl

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  21 décembre 2018 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

  Mattis out: Defense secretary says his views no longer aligned with Trump

  By: Leo Shane III and Aaron Mehta WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Thursday announced he will step down from that post by the end of the February, leaving a significant leadership void in President Donald Trump's Cabinet. In his resignation letter Thursday, Mattis told Trump he was making the move to allow the president to find “a secretary of defense whose views are better aligned with yours.” Mattis, a former Marine Corps general, is regarded highly among defense experts and is a well-respected military mind among lawmakers. On numerous occasions over the last two years, both Republicans and Democrats have lauded him as a calming presence within the turbulent Trump administration and a voice of reason for the sometimes impulsive commander in chief. He's also wildly popular among troops. A Military Times poll conducted in late September found that nearly 84 percent of troops had a favorable view of his work leading the armed forces. Among officers, the figure was almost 90 percent. But Mattis' relationship with Trump had appeared to sour in recent months as the president pushed for more aggressive military policies. Read Mattis' full letter here. Pentagon officials appeared caught unaware by sudden decisions made in the Oval Office on forming a new Space Force, sending troops to the southern U.S. border, and banning transgender recruits from the ranks. This week, Mattis and other top defense officials appeared to be surprised by Trump's plans for a rapid withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria. On Twitter Thursday, Trump hailed Mattis for “tremendous progress” on helping to rebuild the military, including “the purchase of new fighting equipment” and “getting allies and other countries to pay their share of military obligations.” He said a new secretary of defense would be announced in coming days. Expect the names of Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and Jack Keane, a retired Army general who was an early supporter for Trump, to pop up in discussions. In his resignation letter, Mattis said he was “proud of the progress that has been made over the past two years in ... putting the department on more sound budgetary footing, improving readiness and lethality in our forces, and reforming the department's business practices.” But he also took aim at several Trump policies that caused friction between the White House and the Pentagon. In the letter, Mattis wrote that he believes America “must be resolute and unambiguous in our approach to those countries whose strategic interests are increasingly in tension with ours.” That includes “treating allies with respect” and doing “everything possible to advance an international order that is most conducive to our security, prosperity and values.” He also specifically mentioned both the defeat-ISIS coalition of 74 nations and NATO as “proof” alliances that have benefited America, The timing of the resignation — just a day after Trump ordered the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria, reportedly over the objections of Mattis — is noteworthy, especially given Mattis' reference to the ISIS coalition in his letter. Appearing on CNN shortly after the announcement, Trump's senior adviser Stephen Miller did nothing to quell the idea that Mattis quit over the Syria decision, saying it is time for Trump “to get a new secretary of defense who will be aligned with the president” on a variety of issues, specifically calling out Syria and burden sharing among NATO allies. Miller also reiterated Trump's statements that it is time for Syria and Russia to take over the fight against ISIS, while railing against the decision of America to stay in Afghanistan and Iraq. When asked by CNN's Wolf Blitzer if the administration intended to leave those countries as well, Miller said “I have absolutely no policy announcements of any kind to make tonight, whatsoever.” For months, speculation has swirled around whether Mattis could survive into year three of the administration, particularly after Trump labeled him as “sort of a Democrat” during an interview in October. However, he appeared to solidify his position within the administration in the days leading up to the mid-term elections, with a full-throated support for the president's decision to send troops to the border. Mattis said the February leave date is designed to ensure a new defense secretary is in place well before September's changeover of the chairman of the joint chief of staff. Just two weeks ago, Trump announced that Gen. Mark Milley, the current army chief of staff, would be his nominee to replace current chairman Gen. Joe Dunford. The announcement, coming almost 10 months before Dunford's term was over, caught many by surprise, and now sets up the military for a wholesale leadership change in 2019. It also represented another pressure point between Trump and the secretary. Both Mattis and Dunford supported the candidacy of Gen. David Goldfein, the Air Force's top officer, but Trump picked Milley instead. Along with Dunford, all of the joint chiefs are in line to turn over in 2019, meaning a new secretary will also have a new group of the highest uniformed officials to work with. https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2018/12/20/mattis-out-defense-secretary-says-his-views-no-longer-aligned-with-trump

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  8 juillet 2019 | International, Aérospatial, C4ISR

  General Dynamics wins $217M contract for the Air Force’s network

  By: Cal Pringle General Dynamics Information Technology will provide the Air Force's 480th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Wing with network technology through a contract worth up to $217 million, according to a June 26 news release from the company GDIT already works for the Air Force to provide network support for the service's Distributed Common Ground System), a contract the company has held for 20 years, the report said. That program is the Air Force's primary ISR planning, collection, processing and exploitation, analysis and dissemination weapon system. GDIT developed and implemented the initial design for the global network that supports the system, the report said. As a result of the contract, the program's operations center will receive network administration, network engineering, information assurance, computer network defense, systems administration, computer network defense, systems administration, project management and C4ISR engineering, according to the report. The company will also work to help modernize the network, the release said. https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/it-networks/2019/07/05/general-dynamics-wins-217m-contract-for-the-air-forces-network/

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  10 janvier 2020 | International, C4ISR, Sécurité

  How tensions with Iran could test a new cyber strategy

  Mark Pomerleau In 2018, the Department of Defense began following a new philosophy for cyber operations to better protect U.S. networks and infrastructure. Known as “defend forward,” the approach allows U.S. cyber forces to be active in foreign network outside the United States to either act against adversaries or warn allies of impending cyber activity that they've observed on foreign networks. After the U.S. military killed an Iranian general in a Jan. 2 drone strike and after national security experts said they expect Iran might take some retaliatory action through cyber operations, the specter of increased cyber attacks against U.S. networks puts Cyber Command and its new approach front and center. “This Iran situation today is a big test of the ‘defend forward' approach of this administration,” James Miller, senior fellow at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and former undersecretary of defense for policy, said at a Jan. 7 event hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations. “Will [Cyber Command] take preventative action? Will they do it in a way that our allies and partners support and that can be explained to the public?” While Iran fired several missiles Jan. 7 at a base in Iraq where U.S. troops lived as an initial response to the drone strike, many national security experts expect Iran could continue cyber actions as further retaliation for the strike. Iran could also ratchet up its cyber operations in the United States following the collapse of portions of the 2015 nuclear deal between the United States, Iran and five other nations to curb Iran's nuclear weapons capability in return for sanctions relief. Over the past 12 months, the White House and Congress streamlined many of the authorities used to conduct cyber operations to help cyber forces to get ahead of threats in networks around the world. One such provision in last year's annual defense policy bill provides the Pentagon with the authority to act in foreign networks if Iran, among other named nations, is conducting active, systematic and ongoing campaigns of attacks against the U.S. government or people. Cyber Command declined to comment on what, if anything, they were doing differently since the drone strike. Some experts, however, have expressed caution when assessing how well this defend forward approach has worked thus far given it is still relatively new. “The jury is very much still out here,” Ben Buchanan, assistant professor and senor faculty fellow at Georgetown University, said at the same event. “We don't have a lot of data, there's been a lot of hand-wringing ... about these authorities and about how Cyber Command may or may not be using them. I just don't think we've seen enough to judge whether or not ... [it is] meaningfully changing adversary behavior.” Others have also expressed reservations about how effective Iran can even be in cyberspace toward U.S. networks. “Iran is a capable cyber actor, Iran is a wiling cyber actor. That means Iran will conduct cyberattacks,” said Jacquelyn Schneider, Hoover fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. “It's not like they have this capability and they've been deterred in the past and maybe now they're going to turn it on. I think they've been trying this entire time.” Complicating matters further could be other actors trying to take advantage of U.S.-Iran imbroglio for their own interests. Priscilla Moriuchi, senior principal researcher and head of nation-state research at threat intelligence firm Recorded Future, said over the past several months, there have been reports of Russian state-affiliated actors hijacking Iranian cyber infrastructure to conduct operations masquerading as Iranians. “That creates its own uncertainty,” she said at the same event. “Another level of potential what we call inadvertent escalation if a country perceives that they are attacked by Iran but in reality, it” wasn't. https://www.fifthdomain.com/dod/2020/01/09/how-tensions-with-iran-could-test-a-new-cyber-strategy/