19 février 2019 | International, C4ISR

FLIR set to add Endeavor Robotics to its unmanned future

By:

A camera is never just a camera anymore. For FLIR — the company whose bread and butter may be lenses and images but whose product is best thought of as an intelligence add-on more than any pedestrian photography — was never just about the camera.

FLIR's cameras and sensors have been incorporated into vehicles for decades, a platform on platforms. But in the past two years, FLIR has moved to acquire robotics companies of its own. A new deal, announced Feb. 11, 2019, is set to have FLIR acquire Endeavor Robotics.

In November 2016, FLIR acquired Prox Dynamics, maker of the sparrow-sized Black Hornet micro-drone. It was FLIR's first foray into its own unmanned vehicles. In January 2019, FLIR acquired drone-maker Aeryon Labs, which produces vehicles that weigh less than 20 pounds for a number of militaries across the globe.

“Now with Endeavor, we've started down that path of executing our inorganic phase of our growth strategy for unmanned,” said David Ray, president of the Government and Defense Business Unit at FLIR. “What that does is it allows us to have a platform to move the customer's vision forward for this whole notion of manned-unmanned teaming. It's driving an open architecture, an environment where you can have both manned vehicles and unmanned really cooperating and delivering missions like never before.”

Endeavor Robotics is the largest get by FLIR of the lot. FLIR is set to buy Endeavor for $385 million — almost twice as much as FLIR paid for Aeryon Labs, and nearly three times as much as it spent on Prox Dynamics.

With Endeavor Robotics comes a whole host of tracked unmanned ground vehicles, including the infantry-deployable (and -tossable) FirstLook, and the larger and heavier PackBot and Kobra. These robots can incorporate a variety of sensors from FLIR, for everything from video and infrared to chemical detection. Being in-house means FLIR can experiment and explore more fusion of its various platforms.

“With our Black Hornet we can have a reconnaissance system that is connected to a vehicle,” Ray said, “a tank or whatever it may be, where you could actually launch Black Hornet aircraft from another vehicle. As we enhance our sensors across both, we're able to bring that power to bear in terms of layered surveillance.”

While FLIR is still relatively new to robotics, it's used to working across sectors. FLIR sensors have been used by the military, government, law enforcement and in the security space, and have had to stay competitive with commercial companies. Lessons learned from an application in nuclear reactor security might be applicable to a sensor on an explosive ordnance disposal robot. Those updates and lessons have stayed fixed to the specific sensor. With the new robotics companies acquired by FLIR, it can adapt its vehicles and sensors in a more holistic way.

“Our latest Black Hornet III is able to operate in GPS-denied environments,” Ray said. “And so the beauty of Endeavor being part FLIR is we can go look at how we take an investment and enhancements we've made and see what it takes to go transfer that into a vehicle. The ultimate goal is being able to build world-class R&D and generate world-class capability, and then be able to expand that across multiple platforms.”

FLIR's past, present and future remain very much about the core business of providing sensors for others to incorporate. Also in that future we can anticipate FLIR adapting and designing its own vehicles around its sensors. That means looking at the way the data collected by those sensors can be turned into everything from useful navigational information for an autonomous system on the vehicle, to vital information relayed by tablet to soldiers commanding the robot nearby.

https://www.c4isrnet.com/unmanned/2019/02/15/flir-set-to-add-endeavor-robotics-to-its-unmanned-future

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  • US Air Force chief of staff: Our military must harness the potential of multidomain operations

    14 décembre 2018 | International, Aérospatial

    US Air Force chief of staff: Our military must harness the potential of multidomain operations

    By: Gen. David Goldfein Faced with the seemingly impossible task of solving the puzzle of the German military coding machine commonly known as “Enigma” during World War II, British mathematician Alan Turing and his team used a new kind of technology. They built a computing machine that foreshadowed the age of software and algorithms, breaking a code that the Germans changed every 24 hours. Turing's legacy is profound, in war and peace. Today, anyone who has spent time on the internet or social media can't help but have noticed the speed by which algorithms help companies direct targeted advertisements to us — in seconds and minutes — based on their ability to track online interests and behaviors. It is no overstatement to say that the same kind of intuitive speed in understanding and directing information is what our military needs in order to win future wars. This new kind of warfare will require us to defend against and attack foes on land and sea as well as in the air, space and cyberspace. In military parlance, the term for this is “multidomain operations,” an ungainly phrase that has nonetheless become a major focus for each of the military services, including my own, the U.S. Air Force. The term is in vogue now for good reason: Whoever figures out how to quickly gather information in various “domains” and just as quickly direct military actions will have the decisive advantage in battle. Figuring out how to master multidomain warfare will be difficult, but do it we must. History has many lessons here. One analogy I like dates to the American Revolution. As British military forces were preparing to attack Lexington and Concord, patriots devised a simple system to alert Colonial troops. They hung lanterns in the Old North Church in Boston — one if by land, and two if by sea. But how many lanterns would the patriots have hung if the British decided to conduct multidomain operations and attack from both the land and the sea? This would have created a dilemma because they would have to choose to either divide their force and defend both approaches or choose one to defend. However, the patriots had no need to worry about this because the British did not have the ability to control a split force using both land and sea approaches. Without a suitable command-and-control system, a military force cannot effectively take advantage of multidomain operations. Fast forward to today. Having the ability to credibly attack enemies independently by land, sea, air, space or cyberspace — or all at once — creates untenable dilemmas. I'd like our adversaries to always be in the lantern-buying business. Developing the systems, training and methods by which to practice this new brand of warfare will require extraordinary focus from our military. We will have to master and apply quantum computing, artificial intelligence, hypersonic flight, and new concepts for command-and-control that will need to span the globe. In order to build this capability, we will have to develop a new ethos that allows for experimental failure, just as the private sector has done in order to bring us smartphones, robotics and many other cutting-edge technologies that define the speed and precision of modern life. America's new National Defense Strategy correctly focuses the bulk of our nation's efforts on what is called great power conflict, the potential for war with formidable foes like Russian and China. We have known for some time that both are building militaries that harness AI, quantum computers, hypersonic flight and the ubiquitous threat from cyberattacks. To build a military capable of defending and deterring against such threats, it is imperative that the United States learn to fight and defend from beneath the ocean to the outer reaches of space, and everywhere in between. Last month the Air Force kicked off the inaugural Doolittle Wargame, named for the World War II hero Jimmy Doolittle, who led the daring air raid on Tokyo in 1942 that helped turn the tide of war in the Pacific. That mission personified multidomain warfare in that it was launched from an aircraft carrier hauling heavy bombers, something the Japanese were not expecting and were not prepared for. The Doolittle Wargame is the start of our efforts to learn how to harness the potential for extremely fast, unpredictable warfare from the heights of air and space to the expanses of cyberspace. If we can pull this off, it may redefine conventional deterrence in the 21st century. Gen. David Goldfein is the chief of staff for the U.S. Air Force. https://www.defensenews.com/outlook/2018/12/10/us-air-force-chief-of-staff-our-military-must-harness-the-potential-of-multidomain-operations/

  • Défense spatiale : les grandes lignes du rapport

    17 janvier 2019 | International, Aérospatial

    Défense spatiale : les grandes lignes du rapport

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  • US Army pursues alternatives for a Stryker-based active protection system

    21 août 2018 | International, Terrestre

    US Army pursues alternatives for a Stryker-based active protection system

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"We have learned that that system probably is not as mature as originally envisioned, so the contractor had some difficulty getting to the point they were ready to start characterization, and then we had some, I will call it, friction on the test range.” At the time, Iron Curtain had roughly three weeks of testing left to wrap up government characterization. Dean said the program office would be ready to generate final reports and bring it to the Army for a decision in the March time frame. In April, the Army released a sources-sought notice looking for other APS solutions for Stryker and also received, in fiscal 2018, $25 million to qualify a fourth system as part of the interim APS program being called the Expedited Active Protection Systems activity. According to Givens, the program office has completed the installation and characterization phase of the ExAPS activity, but “we are currently awaiting an Army decision on the next phase of activity for Iron Curtain.” In January, Col. Glenn Dean, the program manager for Stryker, who also manages the service's effort to install APS on combat vehicles, told Defense News that Iron Curtain's delay was partly due to a decision to replace the radar originally intended for the APS. “We've had some other issues," he said. "We have learned that that system probably is not as mature as originally envisioned, so the contractor had some difficulty getting to the point they were ready to start characterization, and then we had some, I will call it, friction on the test range.” At the time, Iron Curtain had roughly three weeks of testing left to wrap up government characterization. Dean said the program office would be ready to generate final reports and bring it to the Army for a decision in the March time frame. In April, the Army released a sources-sought notice looking for other APS solutions for Stryker and also received, in fiscal 2018, $25 million to qualify a fourth system as part of the interim APS program being called the Expedited Active Protection Systems activity. According to Givens, the program office has completed the installation and characterization phase of the ExAPS activity, but “we are currently awaiting an Army decision on the next phase of activity for Iron Curtain.” The Army's evaluation process of additional systems is expected to come in the form of a live-fire “rodeo” — for lack of a better term — where the service has invited a small number of the RFI respondents with the most promising potential solutions to have their APS capability put to an initial limited test against a set of threats defined by the Army, according to a source familiar with the effort. The respondents are required to fund the demonstration primarily at their own cost, but some Army funding will be used to conduct the tests. At least two companies have been invited to participate in the rodeo, the source said. One those companies is likely Germany's Rheinmetall. The company has advocated hard for the Army to also qualify its Active Defense System, and the Army admitted, prior to receiving FY18 dollars, that it would want to qualify ADS if it had the funds. Full article: https://www.defensenews.com/land/2018/08/20/army-pursuing-possible-alternatives-for-a-stryker-based-active-protection-system

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