Boeing announces new leadership at defense unit

Sur le même sujet

• 

  31 août 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  Orb Takes Flight

  By Kimberly Underwood The Air Force's Agility Prime program conducts first demonstration of electric vertical takeoff and landing, or eVTOL, aircraft. Last Thursday afternoon, leaders deemed the first demonstration of a flying orb by AFWERX's Agility Prime effort a success. The event was the first in a series of steps toward the U.S. Air Force fielding electric vertical takeoff and landing, or eVTOLs, by 2023. Held at Camp Mabry, near Austin Texas, with the Texas National Guard as hosts, the exhibition of LIFT Aircraft's Hexa eVTOL vehicle included the service's top brass. Secretary of the Air Force Barbara Barrett, new Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., and new Chief Master Sgt. of the Air Force JoAnne S. Bass were all on hand to see the new aircraft, flown by LIFT CEO Matthew Chasen. “It was really exciting,” said Col. Nathan Diller, USAF, AFWERX director and Agility Prime lead, “These demonstrations start to show some of the maturity of the vehicle. And the fact that LIFT was able to do all the preparations and do an on-time takeoff and have all the maintenance pieces together [was great].” Col. Diller, who is spearheading Agility Prime's Air Race to Certification, which aims to have a first series of initial eVTOL capability by December, spoke to SIGNAL Magazine on Saturday. In the coming weeks, Agility Prime will conduct more demonstrations like the LIFT Aircraft event, with a “handful of companies,” he said. “And when that testing gets to a level where we feel this learning campaign would bring military utility at cost, we can start to purchase hardware, data or potential services, such as flight test-as-a-service.” Following the demonstrations with the companies, they may proceed into a full test plan, using combined operational testing, the colonel added. For the demonstration, the service also had to achieve the appropriate regulatory approvals. To use the airspace for the basic maneuvering, they needed much lower altitudes than a conventional aircraft would use, and in an urban environment. “The FAA gave us authorization to operate, both manned and unmanned [aircraft] within a few miles of downtown Austin,” Col. Diller shared. “And the CEO of LIFT actually flew the aircraft, so he hopped into the orb. The Hexa has a very interesting architecture, and when you think of the reliability....and to hear the acoustics, that was something to see.” The Air Force leaders were really impressed, the colonel shared. “There is kind of this ‘ahh moment' where, there is actually something flying,” he said. “And then [you see] that it is actually a demonstration more of the maturity when you start to look at it, the maturity of the vehicle and the maturity of the technology. There was a build-up that allowed us to have the confidence to do that and operate at Camp Mabry. And given that is was Texas in August, with an air temperature of about 100 degrees, the colonel said it also was a test of the e-VOTL's operations in such as environment. Col. Diller added that it was quite something to see the eVTOL aircraft as well as the Guard's F-16s at Camp Mabry, and it put into perspective where the flying orb technology could play a role in urban air mobility. “The ability to fly one of those, with the advances in new aircraft controls, there are some interesting opportunities to think about pilot training in the future, and to think about who across our service might be able to fly these in the future,” Col. Diller pondered. https://www.afcea.org/content/orb-takes-flight

• 

  21 juillet 2021 | International, Terrestre

  Textron, General Dynamics picked for Marines' light armored vehicle prototype

  Textron Systems and General Dynamics Land Systems each will design a prototype model of a light armored carrier ordered by the U.S. Marine Corps.

• 

  6 septembre 2018 | International, C4ISR

  What’s standing in the way of multidomain operations?

  By: Daniel Cebul WASHINGTON — Mutlidomain operations are set to become standard for the U.S. armed services in the coming years, but technical, doctrinal and organizational hurdles remain. One impediment to multidomain operations involves issues in linking the service's disparate communication and information networks to share targeting data and communications. Rebecca Grant, a national security analyst with IRIS Independent Research, identified her “No. 1 problem" as “the communications architecture.” This stuff is not there yet," she said Wednesday at the Defense News Conference. "I'm less worried about the platforms, we've got some magnificent platforms. We've got to have that communication architecture. All the ability to do that is there, whether that's secure waveforms or the [radio frequency] links, but we have to take the plunge now, immediately, to go out and experiment with this next year.” The need for an integrated communications network was echoed by L3 Technologies' vice president of communications technology. “You need a network that can take all the networks we have right now, a systems-of-systems-level approach, that can tie these disparate networks together because you don't want to get rid of that install base because its too expensive to replace,” Keith Gentile said. Another challenge involves changing the services' doctrinal approaches to operations, especially as each branch becomes more dependent on one another. Gentile said that if the U.S. plans to quickly respond to enemy developments, doctrine surrounding operations in the domains must change. “There's a role mission and function issue that needs to be addressed when you talk about cross-domain or multidomain capabilities because each of the services operates in different domains," he said. "You got to go ahead and get away from the parochial pieces of service stovepipes, mission roles and functions — and realize you are talking about cross-domain capabilities.” Jaret Riddick, the director of the Vehicle Technology Directorate at the Army Research Laboratory, cited the service's recently stood-up Futures Command as one example of change within the services. “I would not downplay the steps the Army is making in standing up Futures Command. To take a four-star command and make the type of reorganization that has not happened since the early 1970s — I would not call that incremental,” he said. https://www.defensenews.com/smr/defense-news-conference/2018/09/05/whats-standing-in-the-way-of-multidomain-operations