Germany, nine other nations push ahead with joint air defence procurement | Reuters

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  6 août 2019 | International, Aérospatial

  F-35 talks to US Army’s missile command system, says Lockheed

  By: Jen Judson HUNTSVILLE, Alabama — The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter demonstrated its ability to send data to the U.S. Army's Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System during the Orange Flag Evaluation 19-2 at Palmdale, California, and Fort Bliss, Texas, in June. F-35 manufacturer Lockheed Martin announced in an Aug. 6 statement that the jet, in a live demonstration, sent track data to the IBCS through the F-35 ground station and “F-35-IBCS adaptation kit.” The Northrop Grumman-developed IBCS was able to “receive and develop fire control quality composite tracks during the exercise, leveraging the F-35 as an elevated sensor," the statement added. The capability is seen as important in multidomain operations because it would be able to detect threats that are tough for ground-based sensors alone to pick up. “This demonstration represents a significant growth in capability for the Army IAMD program and Army for multi-domain operations. The capability creates additional battlespace awareness, and the ability to track incoming targets and take action, if necessary,” Scott Arnold, Lockheed's deputy of integrated air and missile defense, said in the statement. “The F-35, with its advanced sensors and connectivity, is able to gather and seamlessly share critical information, enabling greater joint force protection and a higher level of lethality of Army IAMD forces.” But the demonstration isn't only about the F-35′s ability to contribute as a sensor in the air and missile defense architecture, but also about the IBCS' ability to bring in sensor data from a variety of platforms. The IBCS was originally developed as the brains of the Army's future air and missile defense system, but its potential mission continues to grow as the service works to tie other sensors to IBCS to create a layered defense. The service is also working to tie in radars and sensors for its Indirect Fire Protection Capability as well as its Maneuver Short-Range Air Defense system. The idea now is for the IBCS to tie into any sensor or shooter the Army brings into its framework. The F-35 ground station has been sent to White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, to continue F-35 integration testing during IAMD developmental testing. The Army's IBCS program experienced delays as it added capabilities to its defensive framework to protect against everything from ballistic missiles and cruise missiles to unmanned aircraft to rockets, artillery and mortars. But it is now the top priority for the Army's cross-functional team dedicated to air and missile defense. The team is tasked with modernizing capabilities under Army Futures Command. IBCS will undergo a limited user test next spring ahead of a production decision in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2020. https://www.defensenews.com/land/2019/08/06/f-35-talks-to-army-missile-command-system/

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  18 novembre 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  EUROJET signs contract with NETMA for provision of 56 new EJ200 engines for the German Air Force

  Hallbergmoos, Wednesday, November 11, 2020 - EUROJET Turbo GmbH (EUROJET), the consortium responsible for the EJ200 engine installed in the Eurofighter Typhoon, today signed a contract with the NATO Eurofighter & Tornado Management Agency (NETMA) to provide 56 new EJ200 engines for the German Air Force. The contract, signed in Munich, between General Miguel Ángel Martín Pérez, General Manager of NETMA, and Gerhard Bähr, CEO of EUROJET, covers EJ200 engines for a new order of Tranche 4 Typhoon fighter aircraft. Production of the engine modules will be carried out locally by the four partner companies of the EUROJET consortium; Rolls-Royce, MTU Aero Engines, ITP Aero and Avio Aero. As partner for the German Air Force, final assembly of the engines will take place at MTU Aero Engines with deliveries to the German customer scheduled to begin in 2023. Commenting on the finalisation of the contract Mr Bähr stated: “This contract signature is a clear statement of confidence in the platform and of the performance and sustainability of the EJ200 engines which power it. In addition, it also demonstrates a high level of confidence in the consortium and its European industrial base, and will secure highly skilled workplaces in the aerospace industry in the coming years.” ABOUT EUROJET: The EUROJET consortium is responsible for the management of the EJ200 engine programme. EUROJET's shareholders comprise Rolls-Royce (UK), MTU Aero Engines (Germany), ITP Aero (Spain) and Avio Aero (Italy). The engine represents outstanding and innovative technology and continually demonstrates its exceptional performance in the Eurofighter Typhoon. With its unprecedented performance record, combined with multi-role capability and highest availability at competitive life-cycle costs, the EJ200 engine is perfectly set to meet air force requirements, both of today and the future. Since delivery of the first production engine in 2003, well over a thousand EJ200 production engines have been delivered to Air Force customer fleets of nine nations, and the EJ200 engine has achieved in excess of 1 million engine flying hours. View source version on EUROJET Turbo GmbH : https://www.eurojet.de/2020/11/11/eurojet-signs-contract-with-netma-for-provision-of-56-new-ej200-engines-for-the-german-air-force/

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  7 décembre 2018 | International, Terrestre, C4ISR

  The Army wants a self-directed combat vehicle to engage enemies

  By: Adam Stone While the commercial world tiptoes toward the notion of a self-driving car, the military is charging forward with efforts to make autonomy a defining characteristic of the battlefield. Guided by artificial intelligence, the next-generation combat vehicle now in development will have a range of autonomous capabilities. Researchers at Army's Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center (CERDEC) foresee these capabilities as a driving force in future combat. “Because it is autonomous, it can be out in front to find and engage the enemy while the soldiers remain safely in the rear,” said Osie David, chief engineer for CERDEC's mission command capabilities division. “It can draw fire and shoot back while allowing soldiers to increase their standoff distance.” Slated to come online in 2026, the next-gen combat vehicle won't be entirely self-driving. Rather, it will likely include a combination of autonomous and human-operated systems. To realize this vision, though, researchers will have to overcome a number of technical hurdles. Getting to autonomy An autonomous system would need to have reliable access to an information network in order to receive commands and relay intel to human operators. CERDEC's present work includes an effort to ensure such connections. “We need resilient comms in really radical environments — urban, desert, trees and forests. All those require new and different types of signal technologies and communications protocols,” David said. Developers also are thinking about the navigation. How would autonomous vehicles find their way in a combat environment in which adversaries could deny or degrade GPS signals? “Our role in this is to provide assured localization,” said Dr. Adam Schofield, integration systems branch chief for the positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) division. In order for autonomous systems to navigate successfully, they've got to know where they are. If they rely solely on GPS, and that signal gets compromised, “that can severely degrade the mission and the operational effectiveness,” he said. CERDEC, therefore, is developing ways to ensure that autonomous systems can find their way, using LIDAR, visual cues and a range of other detection mechanisms to supplement GPS. “We want to use all the sensors that are on there to support PNT,” Schofield said. In one scenario, for example, the combat vehicle might turn to an unmanned air asset for ISR data in order to keep itself oriented. “As that UAV goes ahead, maybe it can get a better position fix in support of that autonomous vehicle,” he said. Even as researchers work out the details around comms and navigation, they also are looking to advances in artificial intelligence, or AI, to further empower autonomy. The AI edge AI will likely be a critical component in any self-directed combat vehicle. While such vehicles will ultimately be under human control, they will also have some capacity to make decisions on their own, with AI as the software engine driving those decisions. “AI is a critical enabler of autonomy,” said CERDEC AI expert Dr. Peter Schwartz. “If autonomy is the delegation of decision-making authority, in that case to a robotic system, you need some confidence that it is going to make the right decision, that it will behave in a way that you expect.” AI can help systems to reach that level of certainty, but there's still work to be done on this front. While the basics of machine learning are well-understood, the technology still requires further adaptation in order to fulfill a military-specific mission, the CERDEC experts said. “AI isn't always good at detecting military things,” David said. “It may be great at recognizing cats, because people post millions of pictures of cats on the internet, but there isn't an equally large data set of images of adversaries hiding in bushes.” As AI strategies evolve, military planners will be looking for techniques that enable the computer to differentiate objects and actions in a military-specific context. “We need special techniques and new data sets in order to train the AI to recognize these things in all different environments,” he said. “How do you identify an enemy tank and not confuse that with an ordinary tractor trailer? There has to be some refinement in that.” Despite such technical hurdles, the CERDEC team expressed confidence that autonomy will in fact be a central feature of tomorrow's ISR capability. They say the aim is create autonomous systems that can generate tactical information in support of war-fighter needs. “As we are creating new paradigms of autonomy, we want to keep it soldier-centric,” David said. “There is filtering and analyzing involved so you don't overwhelm the user with information, so you are just providing them with the critical information they need to make a decision.” https://www.c4isrnet.com/unmanned/2018/11/30/the-army-wants-a-self-directed-combat-vehicle-to-engage-enemies