24 juillet 2020 | International, Aérospatial

Four companies win contracts to build the Air Force’s Skyborg drone

WASHINGTON — Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Atomics and Kratos will move forward in the Air Force program to build an AI-enabled drone wingman known as Skyborg.

Each company Thursday was awarded an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract worth up to $400 million, but no seed money was immediately allocated as the firms will have to compete against each other for future orders.

Through the Skyborg program, the Air Force wants to field a family of unmanned aerial systems that use artificial intelligence to adapt to battlefield conditions. The Skyborg drone should be cheap enough where the loss of aircraft in combat could be sustained, yet survivable enough so that it could move into a high-end fight and function as a wingman to manned fighter jets.

“Because autonomous systems can support missions that are too strenuous or dangerous for manned crews, Skyborg can increase capability significantly and be a force multiplier for the Air Force,” said Brig. Gen. Dale White, who leads the Air Force's program office for fighters and advanced aircraft. “We have the opportunity to transform our warfighting capabilities and change the way we fight and the way we employ air power.”

Air Force acquisition executive Will Roper has said that Skyborg could eventually become smart enough that, like R2-D2 in the Star Wars films, it can autonomously present information and conduct tasks to help decrease fighter pilot workload. The system learns from prior experiences how best to support human pilots.

But in the near term, the Air Force wants to use the Skyborg program to integrate an autonomous air vehicle with open mission systems as a way to demonstrate that it can team with a manned fighter, the service said in a statement.

“Autonomy technologies in Skyborg's portfolio will range from simple play-book algorithms to advanced team decision making and will include on-ramp opportunities for artificial intelligence technologies,” said Brig. Gen. Heather Pringle, the Air Force Research Laboratory commander. “This effort will provide a foundational government reference architecture for a family of layered, autonomous, and open-architecture UAS.”

https://www.defensenews.com/unmanned/2020/07/23/four-companies-got-contracts-to-build-the-air-forces-skyborg-drone

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14 septembre 2021 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

Le budget défense atteindra près de 41 milliards d'euros en 2022
L'enveloppe budgétaire allouée à la défense en 2022 sera de nouveau en hausse pour atteindre près de 41 milliards d'euros, comme prévu par la Loi de programmation militaire (LPM), contre 39,2 milliards d'euros en 2021, a indiqué lundi la ministre des Armées, Florence Parly, lors de son discours de rentrée devant les personnels du ministère. « Depuis 2017, ce sont 26 milliards d'euros de plus qui auront été investis dans notre défense et nos armées. C'est considérable. C'est même historique. Et c'était nécessaire », a-t-elle souligné. D'une enveloppe globale de 295 milliards d'euros sur sept ans, la LPM 2019-2025 prévoit une nette hausse du budget défense après des années de déflation. Les hausses les plus importantes (+3 milliards par an) sont prévues à partir de 2023. « Il faudra continuer à se battre jusqu'au bout de cette Loi de programmation militaire qui doit nous emmener jusqu'en 2025 », a insisté Florence Parly. Le Figaro et Ensemble de la presse du 14 septembre
8 avril 2021 | International, Aérospatial

Elbit America buys sonobuoy maker Sparton from Cerberus
The U.S. arm of Israel’s Elbit Systems has completed its $380 million purchase of Sparton, a critical supplier of sonobuoys to the U.S. Navy and allies.
20 janvier 2021 | International, Naval, C4ISR

Leonardo Seaspray AESA Maritime Radar to be Integrated on GA-ASI MQ-9B SeaGuardian
Rome January 18, 2021 - General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) is working with Leonardo to integrate the Leonardo Seaspray 7500E V2 radar into the centerline radar pod of its MQ-9B SeaGuardian remotely-piloted aircraft system (RPAS). The integration of this market-leading radar onto the SeaGuardian will enable persistent maritime ISR and is available to our international customer base. GA-ASI's MQ-9B is revolutionizing the long-endurance RPAS market by providing all-weather capability and compliance with STANAG-4671 (NATO airworthiness standard for Unmanned Aircraft Systems). These features, along with an operationally proven collision-avoidance radar, enables flexible operations in civil airspace. SeaGuardian has a multi-mode maritime surface-search radar with Inverse Synthetic Aperture Radar (ISAR) imaging mode, an Automatic Identification System (AIS) receiver, and a High-Definition - Full-Motion Video sensor equipped with optical and infrared cameras. This sensor suite, augmented by automatic track correlation and anomaly-detection algorithms, enables real-time detection and identification of surface vessels over thousands of square nautical miles. The Seaspray 7500E V2 radar is well-suited to the SeaGuardian mission set, using Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) technology to detect, track and classify hundreds of maritime contacts. The integration will also include an Open Mission Systems (OMS) approach, which enables the SeaGuardian and its sensor suite to offer operational and sustainment flexibility to end users. Numerous countries use Leonardo Seaspray E-scan radars and the company has utilized operational feedback from these customers to expand and optimize the radar's suite of advanced modes. These include Leonardo's patented small target detection capability, allowing it to spot extremely difficult targets such as submarine periscopes and shipwrecked individuals at long range, even in very stormy seas. A key discriminator of Leonardo's E-scan radars is their high reliability and fault tolerance that allows effective operation throughout a mission even if a number of individual radar modules fail. The Seaspray greatly enhances the capabilities of the MQ-9B and builds on the already close working partnership between GA-ASI and Leonardo. Earlier this year GA-ASI announced the completion of initial integration work of Leonardo's SAGE electronic surveillance unit onto the SeaGuardian, equipping the aircraft with the ability to gather intelligence information on maritime and land-based radar emitters over a wide area. Customers will be able to choose from a wide assortment of sensors and payloads on the SeaGuardian platform, with both Seaspray and SAGE as off-the-shelf sensor options. View source version on Leonardo: https://www.leonardocompany.com/en/press-release-detail/-/detail/18-01-2021-leonardo-seaspray-aesa-maritime-radar-to-be-integrated-on-ga-asi-mq-9b-seaguardian

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Four companies win contracts to build the Air Force’s Skyborg drone

Sur le même sujet

Elbit America buys sonobuoy maker Sparton from Cerberus The U.S. arm of Israel’s Elbit Systems has completed its $380 million purchase of Sparton, a critical supplier of sonobuoys to the U.S. Navy and allies.

Elbit America buys sonobuoy maker Sparton from Cerberus
The U.S. arm of Israel’s Elbit Systems has completed its $380 million purchase of Sparton, a critical supplier of sonobuoys to the U.S. Navy and allies.