22 mai 2024 | International, Naval
Pacific exercises help to shape US Army’s watercraft strategy
The Army needs watercraft in the Pacific and is shaping a strategy based on lessons learned from operations during major exercises in theater.
8 février 2021 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
German Defence Ministry punts key US defense-cooperation projects to the next government
COLOGNE, Germany — The German Defence Ministry will leave planned air defense investments and other high-profile programs involving U.S. vendors unresolved in the final months of the Merkel government, officials have told lawmakers.
A Feb. 3 list of “important” but unfunded programs, as officials wrote, includes several trans-Atlantic defense efforts that have been simmering for some time. As a result, American contractor behemoths Lockheed Martin and Boeing are left to wait until a new government re-litigates Germany's defense acquisition posture sometime after the Sept. 26 election.
Lockheed Martin, along with MBDA Deutschland, has been gunning for a contract on the TLVS missile defense program following more than a year of negotiations and several years of German-American co-development. The program's prospects turned dimmer last fall, as new requirements drove up costs. Unsurprisingly, TLVS now officially appears on the to-do list for the next chancellor.
Notably, a project aimed at defending against short-range aerial threats, like drones or mortar fire, is also lacking a budget, defense officials wrote to lawmakers.
Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer late last year reframed Germany's air defense requirements as needing greater focus on drone threats, as evidenced by the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. She said a wholesale evaluation of the entire weapons portfolio would determine the way ahead, including what systems the Bundeswehr needs to counter threats of different sizes from various distances.
Whatever happened with the review, it appears it did not spur an appetite to start something new soon. That leaves Germany's fleet of Patriot systems, along with a limited order of counter-drone systems made by Kongsberg and Hensoldt aimed at fulfilling Germany's commitment to NATO for 2023, as the baseline equipment for the time being.
Lockheed also must wait for what happens next in the Bundeswehr's heavy transport helicopter program, which is meant to replace the fleet of CH-53G models. The Defence Ministry effectively halted the acquisition process last fall after Lockheed and Boeing went over budget with their custom offers of the CH-53K King Stallion and the CH-47 Chinook, respectively.
German defense officials recently requested information from the U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency about buying more standard, and presumably cheaper, versions of the desired aircraft instead.
In response, Lockheed launched a formal protest, which is now on the docket of the Federal Cartel Office, as newspaper Die Welt first reported. Company officials said they want to get a ruling of whether Berlin walking away from the purchase altogether was in line with fair-competition rules.
German acquisition laws make it difficult for companies to protest when the government chooses not to award any contract at the end of a competition, said Christian Scherer, a public procurement expert with the law firm CMS Germany in Cologne. “Generally speaking, you can't force the government to buy anything,” he said. “But bidders might have compensation claims.”
Judging offers as economically unfeasible, for example, could qualify as a valid reason for the government to withdraw, Scherer told Defense News.
At the same time, there is a legal path if companies suspect abusive implementation of the rules, especially if the government's requirements remain the same, he added. Those rules exist to protect offerers against favoritism and other forms of manipulation. “You can't go ahead and compete the same thing with the intention to award the contract to your preferred bidder.”
Finally, Germany's long-term campaign of replacing its fleet of Tornado combat aircraft will remain untouched during the final months of the Merkel era, according to the Defence Ministry. Defense officials last spring settled on a mixed fleet of mostly Eurofighters plus a smaller number of Boeing-made Super Hornets for electronic warfare and nuclear missions.
The decision has morphed into something more akin to a mere recommendation that would require years to play out, leading Eurofighter maker Airbus to hold out hope that U.S. manufacturers can be entirely kept out of the business when all is said and done.
Tobias Lindner, a Green Party member of the Budget and Appropriations committees in the Bundestag, said the list of unfunded programs is “almost more interesting” than the acquisitions considered doable by the time the Bundestag session ends in late June.
With so many big-ticket programs in limbo (15 overall), Kramp-Karrenbauer could move to set priorities and cut needless projects. “Unrealistic announcements and promises weaken trust within the armed forces and with our allies,” Lindner said.
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13 janvier 2023 | International, C4ISR
US Army rolls out Google collaboration suite to 180,000-plus personnel
Asked if there have been any major hiccups or technical glitches, Army Undersecretary Gabe Camarillo said: "None that Iâve been made aware of. At all."
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17 décembre 2018 | International, C4ISR
Audit finds cyber vulnerabilities in US missile defense system
By: Geoff Ziezulewicz The Army, Navy and Missile Defense Agency are failing to take basic cybersecurity steps to ensure that information on America's ballistic missile defense system won't fall into nefarious hands, according to a Defense Department Inspector General audit released Friday. Investigators visited five sites that manage ballistic missile defense elements and technical information, but the names of the commands were redacted in the publicly released report. “The Army, Navy and MDA did not protect networks and systems that process, store, and transmit (missile defense) technical information from unauthorized access and use,” the declassified report states. Such inadequacies “may allow U.S. adversaries to circumvent (missile defense) capabilities, leaving the United States vulnerable to missile attacks,” the report states. They found officials failed to employ safeguards familiar to most people online in 2018, the latest development to raise questions about the U.S. military's cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Among the shortcomings: Administrators for classified networks had no intrusion detection and prevention systems in place to watch for cyberattacks, much less stop them, according to the report. At one site, officials said they had requested to purchase those cyber safeguards in December 2017 but nine months later it still hadn't been approved. “Without intrusion detection and prevention capabilities, (the site) cannot detect malicious attempts to access its networks and prevent cyberattacks designed to obtain unauthorized access and exfiltrate sensitive (missile defense) technical information,” the report states. Officials also failed to patch system flaws after receiving vulnerability alerts, one of which had first been identified in 1990 and had still not been fixed by April. Another vulnerability that could be exploited by an attacker was first identified in 2013 but also was never pathced, according to the report. “Countless cyber incident reports show that the overwhelming majority of incidents are preventable by implementing basic cyber hygiene and data safeguards, which include regularly patching known vulnerabilities,” the IG report states. “(Missile defense) technical information that is critical to national security could be compromised through cyberattacks that are designed to exploit these weaknesses.” Some facilities failed to force employees to use common access cards, or CAC, when accessing the classified system, a basic cybersecurity practice known as multi-factor identification. Instead, officials were able to access the sensitive information using just a username and password, the report states. Hackers use phishing and other tactics to exploit passwords and gain access to such systems. New hires are supposed to be allowed network access without a card for only their first two weeks on the job. But IG investigators found users on the systems without CAC cards for up to seven years. At one site, a domain administrator never configured the network to allow only CAC holder access. “Allowing users to access networks using single factor authentication increases the potential that cyber attackers could exploit passwords and gain access to sensitive (missile defense) technical information,” the report states. Investigators also found unlocked server racks at some locations, another key vulnerability to insider snoopers. “The insider threat risk necessitates that organizations implement controls...to reduce the risk of malicious personnel manipulating a server's ability to function as intended and compromising sensitive and classified data,” the report states. External storage devices held unencrypted data and some sites failed to track who was accessing data, and why. Other administrators told investigators that they lacked the ability to record or monitor data downloaded from the network onto these devices. Unless these officials enforce the encryption of such removed data and monitor its downloading and transferring, “they will be at increased risk of not protecting sensitive and classified (missile defense) technical information from malicious users,” the report states. Investigators also found that some supposedly secure sites were failing to even lock their doors. One location had a security door that hadn't worked for years. “Although security officials were aware of the problem, they did not take appropriate actions to prevent unauthorized personnel from gaining unauthorized access to the facility,” the report states. Other sites featured no security cameras to monitor personnel movement and security officers failed to conduct badge checks. While the report makes recommendations to fix the documented problems, officials for the inspected agencies offered no comments on the non-classified draft report of the audit. Friday's scathing IG audit marked the latest in a string of reports detailing shoddy cybersecurity throughout the armed forces and defense contractors. During the same week, the Wall St. Journal reported that Chinese hackers are targeting military systems and those of defense contractors working on Navy projects. Beijing-linked cyber raids have attempted to steal everything from missile plans to ship-maintenance data in a series of hacks over the past 18 months, the Journal reports. As a result, Navy Secretary Richard Spencer has ordered a “comprehensive cybersecurity review” to assess if the Navy's cyber efforts “are optimally focused, organized, and resourced to prevent serious breaches,” spokesman Capt. Greg Hicks said. The review will also look at authorities, accountability and if the efforts reflect and incorporate government and industry best practices, he said. “Secretary Spencer's decision to direct a review reflects the serious to which the DoN prioritizes cybersecurity in this era of renewed great power competition,” Hicks said. https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2018/12/14/audit-finds-cyber-vulnerabilities-in-us-missile-defense-system