14 avril 2020 | International, Aérospatial
Lee Hudson
The U.S. Army is aggressively upgrading its legacy AH-64 Apache, CH-47 Chinook and HH-60 Black Hawk fleets, but is encountering some delays in these efforts related to the spread of the novel coronavirus.
These platforms will continue to be in the service's inventory for many years to come and the Army must continue making them relevant as the Pentagon pivots to Joint All-Domain Command and Control, Patrick Mason, program executive officer for aviation, told Aerospace DAILY.
The majority of Mason's team is teleworking and monitoring COVID-19's effect on production, engineering work and supply chain flow. The Army acknowledges issues related to COVID-19 may not materialize until the summer or fall because the supply chain currently has sufficient inventory, he said.
“Obviously, this is an incredibly unique and unprecedented time that we're dealing with right now,” Mason said.
The Army intends to introduce the Gen III Day Side Assembly, formerly known as the Modernized Day Sensor-Assembly (MDS-A), into the Boeing AH-64E Apache Version 6 (V6) kit this fall. During operational testing users were impressed with the technology's clear picture for target acquisition and the ease of locating a designation site made possible through electro-optical/infrared fusion.
“The good thing about the way we've architected this program is that the production line will be switched to V6, and then we'll also have the ability to upgrade any of the V4s into the V6 configuration,” Mason said.
The service has not determined the number of aircraft that will be equipped with the new V6 kit off the production line or retrofitted. The V6 kit includes upgrades for a Gen III Day Side Assembly, fire control radar frequency interferometer, and an expanded manned-unmanned teaming capability.
“It's just another example of the kinds of technology that we can insert into these legacy platforms,” Mason said.
The service expects industry to integrate a multispectral targeting capability into Future Vertical Lift platforms, he added.
The Army is also planning to outfit the Apache and General Atomics MQ-1C Gray Eagle with air-launched effects in the mid-2020s. Mason's unmanned aircraft system program office is conducting a technology assessment while Army Futures Command is leading demonstrations, he said.
The service funded the effort by issuing an other transaction agreement through the Aviation and Missile Technology Consortium. It will run through year's end. Mason anticipates by 2021 the service will have a better idea of which technologies will compose the initial increment for air-launched effects.
The next upgrades on tap for the Boeing CH-47 Chinook are additional software loads for the digital flight control system and the common avionics architecture system. These are slated for June, but because of COVID-19 the timetable may shift, Mason said.
“We're trying to monitor and understand exactly what we're going to be able to do as we get into June,” he said.
The Army does not want to speculate on when these upgrades will wrap up because this is based on unit availability and the requirement not to interfere with operations and training.
The service is still plugging ahead with Block II flight testing in Mesa, Arizona, to support the special operations community.
“We have some disruption obviously due to COVID and the pandemic,” Mason said.
The limited user test is scheduled to begin in March 2021 at Fort Bliss in Texas, but it may be delayed if not enough progress is made in flight testing. The flight testing in Mesa is not paused, but the team is not generating a sufficient number of sorties because of travel restrictions imposed on government workers in response to COVID-19. The crews comprise both government and industry personnel.
The Army is reaping substantial cost savings by upgrading UH-60Ls to the V model for about $12 million per unit instead of buying a new UH-60V for roughly $21 million in fiscal 2020 dollars.
Mason's team partnered with the Corpus Christi Army Depot to convert the aircraft and is completing the initial tranche intended to field the first unit next year, he said. The Army intends to upgrade 760 L models to the V configuration.
“It's a very unique and cost-effective way to increase the capability of the L models,” he said.
Mason's team is unable to conduct user assessments, which is delaying full-rate production. The Army anticipates the effort will enter full-rate production in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2020. This is two quarters behind the previous schedule because the team is experiencing travel restriction delays related to COVID-19.
15 juillet 2022 | International, C4ISR
Berlin placed the order for an undisclosed number of receivers in 2020 as a Foreign Military Sale (FMS) fulfilled through U.S. Space Systems Command (SSC).
30 septembre 2020 | International, C4ISR, Sécurité
Drew Schnabel The U.S. Department of Defense is set to adopt an initial zero-trust architecture by the end of the calendar year, transitioning from a network-centric to a data-centric modern security model. Zero trust means an organization does not inherently trust any user. Trust must be continually assessed and granted in a granular fashion. This allows defense agencies to create policies that provide secure access for users connecting from any device, in any location. “This paradigm shift from a network-centric to a data-centric security model will affect every arena of our cyber domain, focusing first on how to protect our data and critical resources and then secondarily on our networks,” Vice Adm. Nancy Norton, director of the Defense Information Systems Agency and commander of the Joint Force Headquarters-Department of Defense Information Network, said at a virtual conference in July. How does the Pentagon's AI center plan to give the military a battlefield advantage? The Pentagon's artificial intelligence hub is working on tools to help in joint, all-domain operations as department leaders seek to use data to gain an advantage on the battlefield. Andrew Eversden To understand how the DoD will benefit from this new zero-trust security model, it's important to understand the department's current Joint Information Environment, or JIE, architecture; the initial intent of this model; and why the JIE can't fully protect modern networks, mobile users and advanced threats. Evolving DoD information security The JIE framework was developed to address inefficiencies of siloed architectures. The goal of developing a single security architecture, or SSA, with JIE was to collapse network security boundaries, reduce the department's external attack surface and standardize management operations. This framework helped ensure that defense agencies and mission partners could share information securely while reducing required maintenance and continued infrastructure expenditures. Previously, there were more than 190 agency security stacks located at the base/post/camp/station around the globe. Now, with the JIE architecture, there are just 22 security stacks centrally managed by the Defense Information Systems Agency to provide consistent security for users, regardless of location. “This paradigm shift from a network-centric to a data-centric security model will affect every arena of our cyber domain, focusing first on how to protect our data and critical resources and then secondarily on our networks,” Vice Adm. Nancy Norton, director of the Defense Information Systems Agency and commander of the Joint Force Headquarters-Department of Defense Information Network, said at a virtual conference in July. To understand how the DoD will benefit from this new zero-trust security model, it's important to understand the department's current Joint Information Environment, or JIE, architecture; the initial intent of this model; and why the JIE can't fully protect modern networks, mobile users and advanced threats. Evolving DoD information security The JIE framework was developed to address inefficiencies of siloed architectures. The goal of developing a single security architecture, or SSA, with JIE was to collapse network security boundaries, reduce the department's external attack surface and standardize management operations. This framework helped ensure that defense agencies and mission partners could share information securely while reducing required maintenance and continued infrastructure expenditures. Previously, there were more than 190 agency security stacks located at the base/post/camp/station around the globe. Now, with the JIE architecture, there are just 22 security stacks centrally managed by the Defense Information Systems Agency to provide consistent security for users, regardless of location. Initially, the JIE was an innovative concept that took the DoD from a highly fragmented architecture, in which each agency managed its own cybersecurity strategy, to an architecture in which there is a unified SSA. However, one of the early challenges identified for the JIE was managing cloud cybersecurity as part of the SSA. The components in the JIE — the Joint Regional Security Stacks family's internet access points and cloud access points — have traditionally focused on securing the network, rather than the data or user. As more DoD employees and contractors work remotely and data volumes increase, hardware cannot scale to support them. This has created ongoing concerns with performance, reliability, latency and cost. A cloud-first approach In response, the DoD leverages authorized solutions from the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, and it references the Secure Cloud Computing Architecture guidance for a standard approach for boundary and application-level security for impact Level 4 and 5 data hosted in commercial cloud environments. The purpose of the SCCA is to provide a barrier of protection between the DoD Information Services Network and the commercial cloud services that the DoD uses while optimizing the cost-performance trade in cybersecurity. Defense agencies are now exploring enterprise-IT-as-a-service options to move to cloud, and reduce the need for constant updates and management of hardware. Through enterprise-IT-as-a-service models, defense agencies will be able to scale easily, reduce management costs and achieve a more competitive edge over their adversaries. Before the pandemic hit, defense agencies were already moving to support a more mobile workforce, where employees can access data from anywhere on any device. However, a cyber-centric military requires security to be more deeply ingrained into employee culture rather than physical protection of the perimeter. The next evolution to secure DISA and DoD networks is to embrace a secure access edge model with zero-trust capabilities. The SASE model moves essential security functions — such as web gateway firewalls, zero-trust capabilities, data loss prevention and secure network connectivity — all to the cloud. Then, federal employees have direct access to the cloud, while security is pushed as close to the user/data/device as possible. SP 800-27, zero-trust guidance from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, provides a road map to migrate and deploy zero trust across the enterprise environment. This guidance outlines the necessary tenants of zero trust, including securing all communication regardless of network location, and granting access on a per-session basis. This creates a least-privilege-access model to ensure the right person, device and service have access to the data they need while protecting high-value assets. As the DoD transforms the JIE architecture to an as-a-service model with zero-trust capabilities, defense agencies will experience cost savings, greater scalability, better performance for the end user and war fighter, improved visibility, and control across DoD networks — and ultimately a stronger and more holistic cybersecurity capability moving forward. https://www.c4isrnet.com/opinion/2020/09/29/the-dod-needs-data-centric-security-and-heres-why/
16 mai 2024 | International, Sécurité