13 décembre 2019 | International, C4ISR
Andrew Eversden
There will be 14 early adopters of the Pentagon's controversial new enterprisewide general-purpose cloud, Defense Department CIO Dana Deasy said Dec. 12.
Deasy, speaking at the AFCEA NOVA Air Force IT Day, said parties eyeing a move to the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud are U.S. Transportation Command, Special Operations Command, Joint Special Operations Command and the Navy.
“What's really unique is the variety of the 14 early adopters allows us to test various principles on JEDI from the tactical edge all the way to the top secret — needing to use the cross-domain,” Deasy said. “So we're going to learn fairly quickly what it takes to actually now go from the strategic vision to the ability to stand it up and to bring it to life.”
Federal Times asked the Department of Defense to provide the other 10 components among the first movers. A DoD spokesperson didn't immediately respond.
Deasy reiterated what he told Defense News earlier in the week: that the unclassified JEDI environment will be ready in February, with the “secret” environment ready six months after that. There is also no specific timeline for the top-secret environment.
He said that there are meetings every two weeks where the JEDI team discusses the “60 to 70 services” that must be ready to go when the unclassified environment kicks off.
DoD awarded the JEDI contract to Microsoft over Amazon Web Services, which recently filed a protest in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims that relied heavily on interference allegations against President Donald Trump. The contract is potentially worth $10 billion over 10 years.
Throughout the entirety of the JEDI procurement, DoD has struggled to dispel the notion that the Pentagon's only cloud would be JEDI, when in reality the JEDI cloud is just one in a multicloud environment. Deasy took aim at that characterization in his address, highlighting that there are “something like” 10 more cloud contracts out for bids next year.
“The whole reason we started JEDI was we were not short on clouds,” Deasy said. “What we were short of was an enterprise capability ... all the way out to the tactical edge. ... There will always be a need for special-purpose clouds."
Once the JEDI cloud is set up, Deasy said, the next step is to look across the department at the various siloed cloud and ask “do they serve a unique purpose that is truly distinctly different than JEDI? Or is there overlap?” The Pentagon has signaled that it will move 80 percent of its systems to the JEDI cloud.
Consolidation is an option for overlapping clouds, but Deasy said the DoD won't know what to do specifically with the overlaps until the JEDI cloud is stood up.
The JEDI cloud environment will allow the DoD to significantly reduce the number of clouds it has, which the Congressional Research Services has estimated sits at more than 500. With the JEDI cloud, Deasy's ready to reduce that number by hundreds.
At the end of the day, “we sure in the heck don't need 100 clouds, we probably don't need 50 clouds, but we definitely need more than one or two clouds,” Deasy said.
11 mars 2021 | International, Aérospatial
Northrop Grumman's new Sky Viper sets up a chain gun vs. Gatling gun battle for the U.S. Army's 20mm cannon to be used on its future attack reconnaissance aircraft.
12 mai 2020 | International, Aérospatial
Valerie Insinna Months after the Air Force gave Raytheon the axe on the Three-Dimensional Expeditionary Long-Range Radar (3DELRR) program, the service has tapped three new companies to work on next-generation ground-based radars. Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Australian firm CEA Technologies were each awarded $500,000 on May 8 for a 3DELRR rapid prototyping effort known as “SpeedDealer,” the Air Force announced Monday. 3DELRR will replace the legacy AN/TPS-75 radar used to detect and track aerial targets flying at long distances. Raytheon had beaten Northrop and Lockheed for the contract in 2017 after a protracted competition that included multiple protests over the award. After schedule delays and technical challenges mounted, the Air Force announced in January that it was concluding its work with Raytheon on the program. Instead, the service would seek out off-the-shelf options from industry that could be fielded faster. “Each award provides $500,000 for the companies to demonstrate their radar system's capabilities, maintenance concepts and radar performance against operationally-relevant targets and conditions, no later than the end of September,” the Air Force said in a statement. The service would then determine whether a prototype is ready for integration or production, with additional contracts potentially awarded by the end of 2020. Initial operational capability of a production-ready radar could occur as early as fiscal year 2024, the service said. Despite a global pandemic, the program is already moving at a fast pace. After holding an industry day in February, the Air Force released a solicitation for the 3DELRR program on March 2, said Lt. Col. Matthew Judge, materiel leader. The three companies were selected less than a month from when industry proposals were due on April 15. “We are not starting over; this is not a new development contract,” said Col. Michael Harm, 3DELRR's senior materiel leader. “Through the information presented during our industry day and received in the companies' response to the solicitation, we were able to confirm that production-ready systems can be demonstrated this year.” Judge added: “We are excited to see what these three systems can do.” Lockheed and Northrop's work will be funded under a contracting mechanism known as an “other transaction authority,” which is typically used for prototype projects. As a foreign company, CEA has been granted a Foreign Comparative Test project award, the service said in a statement. Northrop Grumman will demonstrate its solution this summer, said Mike Meaney, the company's vice president for land and maritime sensors. “We are confident that our solution meets the Air Force's needs and is the most affordable, low-risk, and validated system available,” he said. “With successful completion of test demonstrations, a hot full-rate production line and opportunities for capability growth, we are confident that the Northrop Grumman solution is uniquely positioned to fulfill the Air Force 3DELRR mission need." https://www.c4isrnet.com/industry/2020/05/11/these-three-companies-got-money-to-prototype-new-ground-based-radars-for-the-us-air-force/
5 octobre 2023 | International, Aérospatial
Several local companies are already developing unmanned ground vehicles in the hopes their products will be combat-proven by the Turkish military.