Cyber as important as missile defences - ex-NATO general

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  15 juillet 2019 | International, Autre défense

  Army to Receive 7.62mm Squad Marksman Rifles as Early as Next Year

  By Matthew Cox Heckler & Koch Defense Inc. will soon begin delivering thousands of 7.62mm squad-designated marksman rifles to the Army to give infantry and other close-combat units a better chance of penetrating enemy body armor. H&K will deliver "between 5,000 and 6,000" variants of the G28 rifle, which the Army plans to issue as its new squad designated marksman rifle (SDMR), according to a July 12 H&K news release. Under the agreement, the rifles will be manufactured by H&K in Oberndorf, Germany, and will begin to arrive in the H&K-USA facility in Columbus, Georgia, early next year, according to the release. Once there, H&K-USA workers will install scopes and mounts purchased by the Army under a separate agreement. "This is a significant achievement for Heckler & Koch," H&K-USA's chief operating officer, Michael Holley, said in the release. "The HK SDMR system will add much-needed capabilities to virtually every squad in the Army. We are honored by this opportunity." The new SDMRs are part of an interim effort to make squads more lethal ahead of the Army's fielding of the Next-Generation Squad Weapon system sometime in 2022, service officials have said. In May 2017, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told Senate Armed Services Committee members that the service's current M855A1 Enhanced Performance Round will not defeat enemy body armor plates similar to the U.S. military-issue rifle plates such as the Enhanced Small Arms Protective Insert, or ESAPI. As a short-term fix, the Army selected the G28 as its M110A1 Compact Semi-Automatic Sniper System in 2016, to be used with the service's new 7.62mm enhanced performance round to give squads more penetrating power. In the past, the Army relied on the Enhanced Battle Rifle, or EBR, 14 -- a modernized M14 equipped with an adjustable aluminum stock with pistol grip, scope and bipod legs -- to fill the growing need by infantry squads operating in Afghanistan to engage enemy fighters at longer ranges. But the EBR is heavy, weighing just under 15 pounds unloaded. The M110A1 weighs about 11 pounds. In the long term, the Army is working with gunmakers to develop the new Next Generation Squad Weapon (NGSW) that is slated to fire a special, government-produced 6.8mm projectile that promises higher velocities at greater ranges, service officials say. The program is being designed to produce an automatic rifle version to replace the M249 squad automatic weapon and a carbine version to replace the M4 carbine. Army officials said recently that they expect to begin receiving prototypes of the NGSW in July and August and that the weapon could be fielded to units beginning in late fiscal 2020. https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/07/12/army-receive-762mm-squad-marksman-rifles-early-next-year.html

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  24 novembre 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  Pentagon expected to increase Space Force funding in coming years

  Nathan Strout WASHINGTON — U.S. Space Force leadership is confident the new service's budget will increase in the coming years as the Pentagon continues to prioritize spending on space systems, according to the head of the Space Force's main acquisitions body. “If you thought space was going to be a priority in a kind of one-and-done way, that's not clearly what's been happening, right?” Lt. Gen. John Thompson, commander of the Space and Missile Systems Center, said during the virtual 6th annual Schriever Space Futures Forum. “So three years in a row budgets have gone to the Hill with foundational changes to the space budget.” That's despite the fact that space systems and their supporting equipment are very expensive. “ Everybody knows the space enterprise is a really expensive one, even with the reductions in cost that we've seen over the past couple decades. Launch services, space vehicles, ground segments — everybody knows they ain't cheap, right?” Thompson said. The real shift in prioritizing spending on space came with the fiscal 2019 budget request, with the Pentagon declaring space a war-fighting domain. “I think we made some real progress. As we acknowledged space as a war-fighting domain, we had some really strong shifts in the budget,” Thompson said. For fiscal 2021, the Department of the Air Force requested $15.4 billion for the new Space Force. That's $800 million more than the $14.6 billion the department requested for that same enterprise in fiscal 2020, according to the Air Force's own calculations. “The '21 [Program Objective Memorandum] was another landmark event. It was not only the first POM approved by the Chief of Space Operations ... but during the cycle the Deputy's Management Action Group, [or DMAG] ... the folks that advise the secretary of defense on investment, continued to label space as one of the big strategic areas that DoD needs to address,” Thompson explained. And while the fiscal 2022 request has not been finalized or released yet, Thompson said it will include a marked increase in spending on space. “We plused up the space portfolio significantly to address users' needs,” he explained. “I can't give you the exact dollars and obviously it's all pre-decisional. But the DMAG and many other DoD leaders are clearly sending a message that across the [Future Years Defense Program], the importance of the space enterprise is growing and needs to grow further.” Even further out, Thompson noted the fiscal 2023 request will continue the military's trend of prioritizing space in the budget. “For the '23 POM, which many of you know we're already working, we're trying to take an unprecedented enterprise approach to where we take the force design that we need along with the operational requirements associated with it, and we pair that up with the acquisition programs that are required to deliver the war-fighting capability that Gen. [John] Raymond and our combatant command, Gen. [John] Dickinson, are absolutely demanding,” Thompson said. He added that the Space Force's funding strategy will balance innovation, international and commercial partnerships, and the need to rapidly provide capabilities to troops. Thompson pointed to the Space Force's recently released planning guidance as shaping that strategy. Thompson credited the Space Force's flexibility to maneuver within budget discussions to the service's lean staff, something that's been one of Raymond's top priorities in establishing the new branch of the armed services. “That collaboration, as many of you know, within the Department of the Air Force or in any large service, is really, really hard because so much of the budget is set,” he explained. “We as a service, though, have a little bit more trade space. The chief of space operations has a smaller, more nimble team. There's not as many spoons banging on highchairs demanding something that they've always been given. And so determining where to spend the next space dollar is really, really exciting, and it's a team effort between operators, acquirers and the entire small, nimble team that is Space Force.” https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/space/2020/11/20/pentagon-expected-to-increase-space-force-funding-in-coming-years/

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  9 avril 2018 | International, Aérospatial, Terrestre

  Missile Defense Review expected in May

  By: Aaron Mehta WASHINGTON ― The Trump administration's review of America's missile defense capabilities is now expected to be released in May. The Missile Defense Review, a strategy document designed to take a holistic view of America's missile defense posture, was expected to be released in February. But finally, it appears the document is nearing completion. Pentagon spokesman Tom Crosson, in response to an inquiry by Defense News, said that the review is “currently in development” and that “we expect to release the review sometime next month.” The review is expected to be unclassified. The review is part of a series of big-picture strategic documents that started with the December release of the National Security Strategy, followed by the January release of the National Defense Strategy, and continued with February's Nuclear Posture Review. Notably, the review was originally positioned as a “ballistic missile defense review,” but the term ballistic has since been dropped by the Trump administration ― something Tom Karako, a missile defense expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said was a wise choice. “The fact that the administration has dropped ‘ballistic' from the review's title indicates the document will probably employ a wider lens,” Karako wrote in a CSIS analysis Friday. “This could include a robust effort to better defend against Russian and Chinese cruise missiles, other maneuvering endo-atmospheric threats like hypersonic boost-glide vehicles (HGVs), and advanced short-range ballistic missiles.” Although no one has spelled out the direction of the review, there have been some hints given about where the administration intends to take missile defense. The FY19 budget request for the Missile Defense Agency, for instance, increased by $2 billion from previous funding levels, with an express focus on defeating a missile threat from North Korea. And Michael Griffin, the Pentagon's new head of research and engineering, has expressed support for investing in airborne missile defense capabilities. Jen Judson in Washington contributed to this report. https://www.defensenews.com/space/2018/04/06/missile-defense-review-expected-in-may