29 août 2024 | International, C4ISR, Sécurité
Russian Hackers Exploit Safari and Chrome Flaws in High-Profile Cyberattack
Russian hackers exploit patched Safari and Chrome flaws in attacks on Mongolian government websites, targeting mobile users.
11 janvier 2019 | International, Terrestre
Here’s how the Army acquisition chief plans to equip soldiers for the next war
By: Todd South
In the last year, the Army has embarked on several major modernization goals, creating cross-functional teams for major priorities and the new four-star Army Futures Command, the first such effort in decades.
Bruce Jette has served as the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, and during that time he helped shepherd the Army's efforts to modernize following almost two decades of war.
On Thursday, Jette sat down with reporters at a Defense Writers Group meeting to discuss the Army's ongoing modernization work.
Your office now coordinates with the recently created Army Futures Command and the cross-functional teams. What is a concrete example of how work in priority areas has changed with the addition of these new organizations?
I'll give you a prime example. In the past, we looked at air defense as systems. The way you do air defense [is], okay, I've got this altitude, that altitude and that altitude. I need a system that works at those altitudes. Okay, you told me to develop and build a system that can deal with a threat at this altitude, that altitude or another altitude.
They were standalone concepts. The integration of them in a battlespace was purely done at the operator level. So, when I deliver a system under that methodology, I give you the Patriot battery. [It] stands alone, all you've got to do is put fuel in the thing, a couple of soldiers, and the thing works.
So, we've taken a look at the overall threat environment. The threat environment has become more complicated. It's not just tactical ballistic missiles or jets or helicopters. Now we've got UAVs, we've got swarms, we've got cruise missiles, we've got rockets, artillery, mortar. I've got to find a way to integrate all of this.
So, using the cross-functional teams, the technical side has come back and said, “Listen, normally if you want to deal with some of the inbounds that are not missiles, things like rockets, artillery and mortars, the radars that come with the Patriot battery are not the same radars you need to see RAM. Oh, by the way, we were working on this thing for the air defense that's called Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System, delivering next December, systems that are deployable.”
So, I don't deliver you a Patriot battery anymore — I deliver you missile systems; I deliver you radars; I deliver you a command-and-control architecture. They all integrate, and any of the C2 components can fire any of the sets, leverage any of the sensor systems to employ an effector against any of the threats. This has positioned us to put artificial intelligence in the backside to optimize against the threat that we see in the aggregate.
What role does artificial intelligence play in the work that your office is doing, especially in Army technology?
AI is critically important. You'll hear a theme inside of ASA(ALT), “Time is a weapon.”
Undersecretary [of the Army] Ryan McCarthy has been active in positioning for being able to pick up on some of these critical new technology areas. AFC has responsibility to focus on AI for requirements and research. We've established a center at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for AI, and AFC has established a uniformed person and he's trying to put his arms around AI in an operational context and what has to go into the background.
Meantime, the undersecretary and I and ASA(ALT) are going to be establishing for the Army a managerial approach to this. We're trying to structure an AI architecture that will become enduring and will facilitate our ability to allocate resources and conduct research and implementation of those AI capabilities throughout the force. There are AI efforts ongoing, it's just that we need to organize for combat, so to speak.
So, here's one issue that we're going to run into. People get worried about whether a weapons system has AI controlling the weapon. And there are some constraints about what we're allowed to do with AI. Here's your problem: If I can't get AI involved with being able to properly manage weapons systems and firing sequences, then in the long run I lose the time window.
An example is let's say you fire a bunch of artillery at me, and I need to fire at them, and you require a man in the loop for every one of those shots. There's not enough men to put in the loop to get them done fast enough. So, there's no way to counter those types of shots. So how do we put AI hardware and architecture but do proper policy? Those are some of the wrestling matches we're dealing with right now.
Last year your office moved from an annual program review process to adding in monthly meetings to evaluate program progress. What's been the result of this change?
Much less pain. We have System Acquisition Review reporting. We report to Congress on our Major Defense Acquisition Programs every year, and we have to tell them how it's going. At each level, we have certification requirements. In that process of doing those reports, we do these program reviews.
I do basically a mini SAR review every six weeks with the entire Army staff senior leadership, with the secretary and chief present. If you figure out what's important and make a way to put metrics and reporting processes together, it makes it so much less painful.
We report regularly, we report often, we report any change. If any change occurs that I need [the Army secretary] to know about, if it's a significant one, he gets an email that day, then an information paper comes to follow up, and then we'll update him at the next briefing. And then if it's an issue that's an ongoing one, then we go ahead and ensure things are done. In some cases, he gets in the plane and has flown up to meet with the CEO of the company.
The [Army] secretary is very much about making us much more accessible to industry. Dinner every Monday night with a CEO of a company has been everything from a big defense contracting company to a second- or third-tier supplier. To know what did we do that we could do better, and what did we not ask for that we should be asking for? This much deeper involvement is making it much easier to keep on track.
How are new approaches, such as ‘racking and stacking' groups of Army acquisitions and programs, being evaluated by senior leadership?
We began something we call the deep dives. Funding is broken up into Program Element Groups, or PEGs, or groupings. Procurement is one of the PEGs. Money comes with different constraints on what we can and can't use it for. To manage those priorities and comply with the law, we have these PEGs. All procurement-style money gets managed through the equipping PEG.
Last year, the secretary and the chief and I sat and went through every single program and said, “why are we doing this?” Because the truth of the matter is programs have momentum. So, why are we doing that? Because we did it last year. Do we need it? Is it the most important thing? Should we reallocate that funding against something else?
We did this through all of the PEGs and prioritized all of the funding allocations for the Army. It was a very deliberate process we went through last year for the secretary and the chief to go through those things and prioritize where does the Army's operational effectiveness come from and are we properly funding and how much of that is just because of momentum and what should we do about it? We did that and a series of deep dive follow ups through the year.
None of that stuff's been announced, and I'm not going to be the one to do it. That's the secretary's prerogative. He's got to go over and talk with Congress, tell them why we're doing things and sort through those pieces before he starts putting out details of what got cut and what got skinnied down or what got plussed up.
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19 mai 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
Our nation’s defense supply chain imperative
By: Bill Brown, L3Harris Technologies The Department of Defense and defense industry have a long history of responding quickly and forcefully to crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic is no exception. Today, hundreds of thousands of dedicated defense workers remain at their posts – delivering mission-critical products and services to support our troops around the world, while also providing personal protective equipment and other supplies to first responders and health care workers here at home. However, this most recent crisis has re-exposed weaknesses in our defense industrial base – highlighting the need to significantly bolster the nation's vital supply chain. This serves as a call to action to develop a strategic, long-term approach across government and industry. We witnessed the fallout from the 2008-09 financial crisis. Thousands of suppliers shuttered or permanently shifted precious capacity to other verticals when defense budgets were indiscriminately cut following the Budget Control Act of 2011 and sequester of 2013. When budgets began to recover several years later, the damage was clear – longer lead times that in some cases doubled or more, and increased reliance on single-source and international suppliers for critical components, such as microelectronics. In 2017, President Trump signed an executive order and established a multi-agency task force to study supply chain resiliency. The task force identified five macro forces that create risk to the supply chain and national security preparedness including sequestration and the uncertainty of government spending, the overall decline of U.S. manufacturing capabilities and capacity, harmful government business and procurement practices, industrial policies of competitor nations, and diminishing U.S. STEM and trade skills. Task force members proposed a comprehensive set of risk-reduction actions – ranging from establishing sustained and predictable multi-year budgets and developing an adaptive acquisition framework, to directing investment to small businesses and diversifying the supplier base. Over the past two years, the government has made initial strides on a number of these fronts, including working to reduce U.S. reliance on foreign sources for critical rare earth minerals and decreasing the country's dependence on China and other international suppliers for semiconductors and related components. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic emerged before these and other task force initiatives gained serious traction and forced the DoD to refocus its near-term priorities. And the urgency escalated when we began to see the brutal impact the pandemic was causing in the commercial aerospace sector, an important vertical market for many defense suppliers. The department quickly designated defense suppliers as essential and increased progress payments, spurring larger defense contractors to accelerate payments to thousands of small business suppliers. These actions helped companies to continue operating, maintain their employment and hiring goals, and sustain critical spending on internal research and development (IRAD) to keep the innovation engine humming. At L3Harris, for example, we recommitted to investing nearly 4 percent of revenues in IRAD, hiring 6,000 new employees and maintaining our apprenticeship and internship programs to provide opportunities for the workforce of the future. The combined DoD and industry efforts demonstrate the power of a focused, collaborative approach to mitigate and address the damaging effects of the pandemic and to support the broader defense industrial base. Today, we are at a critical juncture. We have an opportunity to make the necessary strategic investments that could significantly strengthen our supply base for generations to come, including: · Ensure sustained/predictable budgets – stable, long-term funding helps companies better plan and encourages them to invest in staffing, technology and facilities needed for the country to maintain its technical superiority. Now is not the time to pull back the reins on defense spending. · Accelerate contract awards – shorter decision and acquisition cycles enable suppliers to invest in and deliver technologies faster than with traditional methods, and in the near term could help offset the impact of the commercial aerospace downturn. · Expand domestic supplier base – increasing domestic capabilities reduces vulnerabilities and increases access to critical components, such as rare earths and microelectronics, and over time can help reduce the proportion of sole/single-source supply. · Increase workforce investment – providing advanced STEM education opportunities drives innovation and productivity by enhancing critical skillsets for existing employees, while attracting, training and growing the workforce of the future. · Institutionalize process improvements – the COVID-19 pandemic forced government and industry to find new and more efficient ways to work. The challenge now – to make these advances permanent. These are not quick fixes. However, they provide a strong platform for a more resilient national defense supplier base, which is vital at a time when near-peer adversaries continue to invest heavily in new technologies that threaten our nation's security. The imperative is clear – and the opportunity is now. Bill Brown is chairman and CEO at L3Harris Technologies. https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2020/05/18/our-nations-defense-supply-chain-imperative/
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9 décembre 2020 | International, Naval
The US Navy wants to find ships to kill using aerial drones launched from submarines
By: David B. Larter WASHINGTON – The name of the game in the Pacific is stand-off range. But with longer range torpedoes and anti-ship missiles in the arsenal, submariners are looking to a new domain to help them extend their deadly reach: The air. In an October request for information, Naval Sea Systems Command's Submarine Combat and Weapons Control Program Office asked industry for input into a “Submarine-Launched Unmanned Aerial System,” or SLUAS, currently in development. The Navy has been interested in sub-launched drones for some time and has been testing prototypes, but the RFI shows the service is getting serious about the idea as it adds longer-range torpedoes and anti-ship cruise missiles to the arsenal of its attack submarines. The idea for the SLUAS is an ambitious one. The drone would launch from a submerged submarine out of a 3-inch ejector tube used for sonobuoys, flares and countermeasures among other things. The battery-operated UAS would then deploy its wings and operate for an hour, well beyond the range visible from just the low-in-the-water periscope. Additionally, the UAS should have an “electro-optic capability with reliable target solution analysis,” the RFI said, adding that it should be able to “operate at ranges out to the line-of-sight radio horizon, and use a variable bandwidth encrypted datalink with at least 256-bit encryption strength. The drone should also have a degree of autonomy and “include the ability to operate in an emission-controlled environment and operate without constant radio communication links.” “Every submarine has a 3-inch launcher, so in theory, every submarine could operate with UASs,” said Bryan Clark, a retired submarine officer and senior fellow with The Hudson Institute. “The idea is that you would be about the size of a sonobuoy — it could be pretty long — and you'd put it inside a canister. Then you launch this in a canister, it floats to the surface and the USA deploys from there. “And from there it can either connect up with the submarine or it could connect with another unit, and it gives you the ability to have over-the-horizon surveillance.” “The demonstrations have been pretty successful,” Clark added. The responses to the RFI were due in November. https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2020/12/07/the-us-navy-wants-to-find-ships-to-kill-using-aerial-drones-launched-from-submarines/