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  10 juin 2022 | International, Aérospatial

  British $2.5 billion research push targets space sensors, hypersonic tech

  A mission to monitor space weather would bring the first U.K.-based satellite launch later this year.

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  10 février 2020 | International, Naval

  Defense Secretary Mark Esper on how the Navy can get to 355 ships

  By: Aaron Mehta and David B. Larter WASHINGTON — Despite expected cuts to shipbuilding programs in the fiscal year 2021 budget request, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper is committed to a bigger, but much lighter, naval force, he said in an exclusive interview with Defense News. In the wake of reports that the Navy may cut shipbuilding in its upcoming budget request, Esper said he is “fully committed” to building a fleet of 355 ships or larger. But to get there, the Navy is going to have to fundamentally reshape itself around smaller ships that can be more quickly bought than the large, exquisite designs the service now relies on — a shift that could have big implications for both the industrial base and the carrier force. Such a plan would mark a departure from the current Navy force structure assessment that calls for twice the number of larger ships over small surface combatants: 104 large, 52 small. But inverting that structure is essential to building a bigger, more deadly fleet that lives within the constraints of future budgets that the Pentagon expects to remain largely flat, Esper said. To get there, the Navy must push hard on fielding lightly manned ships, Esper said, an effort that has been a major focus of Naval Sea Systems Command's Unmanned Maritime Systems Program Office in recent years. The first step, though, is getting through the process of figuring out what the fleet should look like. “What we have to tease out is, what does that future fleet look like?” Esper said. “I think one of the ways you get there quickly is moving toward lightly manned [ships], which over time can be unmanned. “We can go with lightly manned ships, get them out there. You can build them so they're optionally manned and then, depending on the scenario or the technology, at some point in time they can go unmanned. “To me that's where we need to push. We need to push much more aggressively. That would allow us to get our numbers up quickly, and I believe that we can get to 355, if not higher, by 2030.” Cuts versus growth In addition to the reported cut of a Virginia-class submarine out of the FY21 budget, it is expected that other cuts may be coming in the short term for the Navy. Late last year, a memo from the White House's Office of Management and Budget to the Defense Department, obtained by Defense News, outlined a series of cuts over the next five years that OMB contends would shrink the size of the fleet. The cuts outlined in the OMB memo included cutting a submarine, a next-generation frigate and a Flight III Arleigh Burke-class destroyer from the 2021 budget. On Thursday, Bloomberg reported that the Navy intends to request eight ships in its 2021 budget, which would be four fewer than was requested in 2020, but that the budget restored the missing Arleigh Burke. The Navy contends that even with the cuts, the service is still on a path to growth. In a recent interview with Defense News, acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly said the budget documents that leaked were not final. Esper noted that his stamp on the 2021 budget was relatively limited, given he took office in August, at which point most of the service budget work had already been completed. “The services have already developed their budgets at that point,” Esper said. “So now it's at OSD level. As you know, at this point I was able to go through budgets, free up money. I was able to move some money around, but, to me, my big impact will be on the upcoming budget.” Lighter Navy Esper's backing of a larger Navy built on the backs of lightly or optionally manned ships echoes calls by Modly to get to a fleet of 355 ships in the next 10 years, and is in line with recent statement by the Navy's top officer, Chief of Naval Operations Michael Gilday. At the USNI Defense Forum in December, Gilday said the Navy needed to change the way it built its ships. “I know that the future fleet has to include a mix of unmanned,” Gilday said. “We can't continue to wrap $2 billion ships around 96 missile tubes in the numbers we need to fight in a distributed way, against a potential adversary that is producing capability and platforms at a very high rate of speed. We have to change the way we are thinking.” Congress, however, has been reluctant to back the push for more unmanned ships, believing that the Navy hasn't done enough work on how the concept of operations would work or how they'd support them. Esper said his office would be taking a leading role in bringing Congress to the table on a new fleet design. “DoD will run this ... I want to invite some of our congressional interested parties in, certainly from the defense committees, to observe the process and watch what we're doing and how we're going about it,” Esper said. “That's part of what I want to do, is to invite folks in.” Retired Navy and defense officials will also be involved in the planning and outreach process to make sure the department is on the right track, Esper continued. “We talk about the gray beards as validators, folks who make sure that nobody's putting their finger on the scale, that we've considered all factors,” Esper said. “I want it to be that type of process, if we can get there.” Expanding the fleet with more small, lightly manned ships will also increase opportunities for smaller shipyards to enter the shipbuilding industrial base, a proposal that may be attractive for congressional members in an election year. The secretary stressed that “the United States must have an expanded and healthy industrial base with modern shipyards” to make such a reality happen, adding that “I think we can actually expand the number of shipyards in the United States and highly skilled workers [as well] around the country to ensure adequate capacity.” In terms of planning, Esper said the Pentagon's Office of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE), along with the Navy, will be conducting a series of war games and exercises in the coming months in order to figure out the way forward. But any major decisions will be based around the completion of a new joint war plan for the whole department, which the secretary said should be finished this summer. “I think once we go through this process with the future fleet — that'll really be the new foundation, the guiding post,” Esper said. “It'll give us the general direction we need to go, and I think that'll be a big game changer in terms of future fleet, for structure, for the Navy and Marine Corps team.” The Carrier Question As the Defense Department looks to craft a lighter Navy, the obvious question is: What will become of the Navy's 11 super carriers? Defense Department officials such as Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Mike Griffin have publicly questioned whether ground-based hypersonic missiles might more effectively deter China than an aircraft carrier that he believes is increasingly vulnerable. Esper said he's not sure what the ultimate answer is on aircraft carriers – but rejected the idea there is a binary choice to be had. “This discussion often comes down to a binary: Is it zero or 12?” Esper said. “First of all, I don't know. I think carriers are very important. I think they demonstrate American power, American prestige. They get people's attention. They are a great deterrent. They give us great capability.” The Navy may have to think about new ways of building carriers, however, if they are going to stay relevant in the future, Esper said. As an example, he pointed to what Japan is doing with its F-35B jump-jet models, which have been tested for use on lighter ships previously designed for use with helicopters. “There are various ways to do carriers,” Esper said. “So, we can talk numbers or we can talk the sizes of carriers, right? There's been discussion in the past about: do you keep building big carriers or do you go to smaller carriers, Lightning carriers? Acting Secretary Modly and I have talked about that. “I think this gets into the future fleet designs we look at. That will be one element that we look at.” https://www.defensenews.com/breaking-news/2020/02/09/defense-secretary-mark-esper-on-how-the-navy-can-get-to-355-ships

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  18 septembre 2018 | International, C4ISR

  Pentagon spending could lead to consolidation of cybersecurity industry

  By: Justin Lynch Spurred in part by Russia's campaign of hybrid warfare in Ukraine, the Pentagon will purchase more electronic warfare equipment, a move that could lead to consolidation in the cybersecurity industry, an analyst said in a new report. Russia's use of electronic warfare combined with conventional combat tactics during its 2015 invasion of Ukraine exposed how the Department of Defense needed to increase its spending on cybersecurity, Brad Curran, an analyst at Front & Sullivan told Fifth Domain. Greater use of offensive cyber and electronic weapons by Russia means that the U.S. is expected to boost defense of its communications systems, and possibly look to increase its own offensive weapons. A September report from Frost & Sullivan projected a 2.9 percent compound annual growth rate in cybersecurity spending from the Pentagon through 2023. Securing electronic communications “is a high priority,” Curran said. The Defense Department is “just getting started” and it will be “a continuous effort to make sure our combat networks are secure.” The focus could benefit firms like Raytheon, which have invested heavily in electronic warfare, Curran said. Curran said that government purchases of enterprise systems will likely stay the same or even shrink because many of the acquisitions are meant to boost efficiency. One example is the government's investment in the cloud. But he predicts an increase in purchases of electronic warfare and offensive cyber capabilities, which will favor larger defense firms. The result will be consolidation of the cybersecurity industry among the biggest companies. During the Black Hat conference, one cybersecurity firm described the industry as “cut-throat” and added they expected industry consolidation because of purchases from the largest contractors. In 2017, the Pentagon awarded more than $1.22 billion to cyber contractors. That money went to 69 prime contractors and 50 different companies. The Pentagon's 2019 budget request for cybersecurity totals $3.6 billion, according to the report, half of which is dedicated to operations and management. The Air Force has the largest share of cybersecurity programs, at $2.19 billion. Booz Allen Hamilton was the top recipient of public contracts from the Pentagon in 2017 with a total of $115.4 million in awards, according to the report. In August, the Pentagon awarded Booz Allen Hamilton a $91 contract to manage cybersecurity for the Ballistic Missile Defense System. But while artificial intelligence will be an area that the U.S. government focuses its investments on the future, Curran said it is not currently a major factor in acquisition. “The future is AI but right now it is more of a concept," he said. https://www.fifthdomain.com/industry/2018/09/17/pentagon-spending-could-lead-to-consolidation-of-cybersecurity-industry