20 décembre 2017 | International, Aérospatial
WASHINGTON — The United States is actively pursuing a change to a major arms control treaty that would open the door for wider exports of military drones.
The proposed change to the Missile Technology Control Regime would make it easier for nations to sell the systems, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs, that fly under 650 km per hour, according to multiple sources who are aware of the efforts.
The MTCR is an agreement among 35 nations that governs the export of missiles and UAVs. Under the terms of the MTCR, any “category-1” system capable of carrying 500-kilogram payloads for more than 300 kilometers is subject to a “strong presumption of denial.”
Proponents of UAV exports argue that language, while appropriate for curtailing the sale of cruise missiles, should not group together expandable weapons and unmanned systems. Instead, they argue, UAVs should be looked at the same way fighter jets or other high-tech military vehicles are.
As part of an effort to find a compromise, American officials floated a white paper during the latest plenary session on the MTCR in October, proposing new language to the treaty: that any air vehicle that flies under 650 kilometers per hour would drop to “category-2” and thus be subject to approval on a case-by-case basis.
A State Department official confirmed to Defense News that the U.S. presented the white paper, and that American negotiators have zeroed in on the speed of the vehicles as a potential change to the treaty. However, the official declined to comment on the exact speed under consideration.
“I can't confirm any specific numbers because it's treated — inside the MTCR — as proprietary ... particularly because there's a deliberative process,” the official said. “But I can tell you that speed is the thing that we, based on industry input and all, have looked at. And that's what we have discussed with partners. And I know other governments are also looking at speed as well, so we're all sort of coming to a similar conclusion.”
Under the MTCR, a “presumption of denial” about exports for category-1 systems exists. In essence, that means countries tied into the MTCR need to have a very compelling case to sell them.
However, the speed change, if adopted, would result in most drones used by the U.S. military dropping down from category-1 to category-2, allowing the U.S. to sell them through the traditional foreign military sale or direct commercial sale methods.
“Treating drones as missiles is fundamentally incoherent. It reflects a 1980s view of the technology,” said Michael Horowitz, a former Pentagon official now with the University of Pennsylvania who has studied drone issues.
“To the extent creating a speed delineation helps you get around that problem, it's a good practical solution.”
The impact of speed
Most medium-altitude, long-endurance systems like General Atomics' MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper fly at slow speeds, with the Reaper clocking in with a cruise speed of 230 mph or 370 kph, according to an Air Force facts sheet. Northrop Grumman's RQ-4 Global Hawk, a high-altitude ISR drone, flies only at a cruise speed of about 357 mph or 575 kph.
The 650 kph ceiling would also keep the door open for companies developing cutting-edge rotorcraft that could be modified in the future to be unmanned — a key request made by the companies involved in the Future Vertical Lift consortium, said one industry source.
Those companies include Bell Helicopter and a Sikorsky-Boeing team, both of which are developing high-speed rotorcraft that can fly at excess of 463 kph, or 250 knots, for the Army's Joint Multi Role technology demonstrator program.
However, the limitation would ensure that some of the United States' most technologically advanced UAVs stay out of the grasp of other nations. For example, it would prevent the proliferation of jet-powered, fast moving flying wing drones like Boeing's Phantom Ray and Northrop Grumman's X-47B demonstrators, both of which can cruise at near-supersonic speeds.
While the UAV industry wants the U.S. government to pick up the pace on drone export reform, the State Department and other agencies argue that a prudent approach is needed. For example, any change to the MTCR that loosens restrictions on low-speed drones also needs to be closely examined to ensure that missile technology is still strictly controlled.
“We don't want any unintended consequences, so it has to be crafted carefully. We don't want to inadvertently drop something else out like a cruise missile,” the State Department official said.
The focus on speed is particularly smart at a time when countries are focused on increasing the speed of their munitions, Horowitz said.
He pointed to growing investments in hypersonic weapons as an example where creating a speed delineation in the MTCR would allow the U.S. to push for greater UAV exports while “holding the line on exports of next-generation missiles.”
Industry desires
Industry has long argued that the United States has taken an overly proscriptive route, hamstringing potential drone sales to allies and pushing them into the arms of more nefarious actors such as China, the other major UAV producer on the worldwide market.
Modifying the MTCR is just one facet of the Trump administration's review of drone export policy, which also includes taking a second look at domestic regulations that can be amended by the president at will. Because changes to the MTCR require consensus among the regime's 35 member countries, industry sees it as a direly-needed, but long-term solution.
“Now we have lighter-than-air vehicles; we have intelligence, surveillance reconnaissance [UAVs]. We still have cruise missiles, we have aircraft that could autonomous for cargo and other purposes. But [the MTCR] doesn't distinguish between any of that, so a revisit of those MTCR rules is in order for things that fly and can fly autonomously,” said Aerospace Industries Association President David Melcher during a December 14 roundtable with reporters.
American firms are particularly concerned about losing out on sales in the Middle East. China has already exported its Wing Loong — a medium altitude, long endurance UAV that resembles General Atomics' MQ-1 Predator — to multiple countries worldwide, including some close U.S. partners such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Meanwhile, sales of U.S.-made drones have been rarer, with many Middle Eastern countries such as the UAE only able to buy unarmed versions of American UAVs, even though those nations regularly purchase more technologically advanced weaponry like fighter jets from the United States.
The State official noted that any change in the MTCR would not need to wait until the next plenary session, but could be introduced in some form as early as an April technical meeting. And at least one industry source was optimistic about the administration's MTCR reform plan.
“They're taking a pretty smart process in not trying to tackle everything at once, but trying to get some of the language corrected in small bites,” the source said. “I don't see this as being an overnight process. I don't think we're going to end up in the next six months with a brand new MTCR policy.”
However, Horowitz warned that the nature of the MTCR, where any single country could veto such a change, means getting any changes will not be easy. Russia, for example, could block the move not on technical reasons but geopolitical ones, given relations between Moscow and Washington.
If that happens, Horowitz noted, the U.S. could potentially look to apply the 650 kph speed definition on its own, something possible because of the voluntary nature of the MTCR.
5 novembre 2021 | International, Aérospatial
Airbus and France's Dassault Aviation are still ironing out details of the work sharing agreement they reached last spring for the trinational Future Combat Air System program, according to Airbus Defense and Space CEO Michael Schoellhorn.
3 septembre 2019 | International, Sécurité
By: Andrew Eversden “What are you talking about now in cybersecurity that you weren't talking about six months ago?” Fifth Domain posed this question to cybersecurity experts at Black Hat, a cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, that ran from Aug. 3-8. With the cyber domain rapidly evolving, we wanted to know how conversations within the cyber community are changing. Some pointed to a new focus on utility systems and web-connected devices that sit on critical infrastructure. “It's only a matter of time until there's another major disruption in an electric utility somewhere in the world, probably not in the U.S., but elsewhere,” Sergio Caltagirone, threat intelligence director at Dragos, said at the conference Aug. 5. “But oil and gas has the higher likelihood of a major destructive and loss-of-life event. And I think most people did not realize how close to that we actually were.” Caltagirone was referring to the TRISIS event, malware that struck industrial control systems at a Saudi Arabian petrochemical plant and could've caused physical harm. He said that in the aftermath of that attack, threat researchers diving into the details realized just how bad it could've been. “We started finding a lot of stuff which hadn't been found before,” Caltagirone said. “Which made us realize very quickly how close that space is to a major event.” Dave Weinstein, chief security officer at Claroty, pointed to an “explosion” of devices connected to the internet of things.. “It's really a product of this general consensus among industrial organizations that the benefits exceed the costs in terms of embracing this type of digital transformation," Weinstein said Aug. 8, adding that organizations must be “mindful” of these devices and have a plan to mitigate their potential vulnerabilities. Brian Costello, a senior vice president at Flashpoint, told Fifth Domain on Aug. 8 that he is more often than before focusing on targeted cyberattacks from bad actors. That's a shift away from “campaign-based” attacks that tracked. There's “more planning out, more scoping out of targets and taking long-term planning to go after [a] particular target with a specific asset in mind,” Costello said. Along that same vein, Julian Zottl, a senior cyber architect at Raytheon, said he's noticing more inclusion of all-source intelligence in threat analysis. “We're looking at ... all the sources and trying to figure out indicators,” Zottl said Aug. 7. “[We're] even trying to do predictive analytics now, where it's like, ‘Oh, we see this threat might be coming.' I think that's something that we're starting to talk about more and more.” Several cybersecurity professionals interviewed by Fifth Domain said the U.S. government is moving away from the classic cyber kill chain and over to the MITRE ATT&CK framework, which dives deeper into potential threats to information security. “They used to think the hackers would just come in to steal secrets, conduct espionage and then leave,” said Tom Kellermann, chief cybersecurity officer at Carbon Black and a former commissioner on the Commission on Cyber Security for then-President Barack Obama. “In fact, they're maintaining persistence in these systems. They're manipulating the integrity of data and then they're using federal government agencies themselves and personnel's devices themselves to target anyone who implicitly trusts that person, that agency, that department.” he told Fifth Domain on Aug. 6. Chris Kennedy, chief information security officer at AttackIQ and a former official with the Treasury Department and the Marine Corps, said these new frameworks in use along with federal continuous monitoring programs allow for more attacker emulation, essentially simulating the attack agencies could face. “Agencies are starting to realize the value of attacker emulation as a way to measure and benchmark the effectiveness of their security controls,” Kennedy said on Aug. 7. And with government agencies in different stages of cloud migration, agencies will need to learn how that fits into their cybersecurity posture. Marten Mickos, CEO of white hat hacking company HackerOne, said this a new discussion. He also said the conversation surrounding the use of ethical hackers in government environments has evolved: The word “hacker” is becoming more accepted. “I do think it signals a shift in mindset," Michos said. There's a realization that "those people who portray themselves as hackers are actually those who will rescue us, not those who will destroy us.” Despite all the changing technology and evolving threats, one aspect of cybersecurity remains set in stone, said M. K. Palmore, a field chief security officer for the Americas at Palo Alto Networks and a recently retired FBI cyber agent. “It's about adhering to cybersecurity fundamentals,” Palmore said. “That message hasn't changed regardless of my position or where I'm located.” https://www.fifthdomain.com/show-reporters/black-hat/2019/08/30/whats-changing-in-the-cyber-domain-we-ask-industry-experts
26 juin 2020 | International, Naval
June 25, 2020 - On Wednesday 24 June, the Dutch Ministry of Defense took an essential step in the replacement of the current M frigates of the Netherlands and Belgian Navies. The B-letter was sent to the Dutch Lower House, marking the completion of the investigation phase, with a design that meets the requirements of both the Defense and NATO. Damen, Thales and a whole chain of companies involved in naval shipbuilding in the Netherlands, are delighted with this next step. They are ready to start with the next phase of the project. Director Damen Schelde Naval Shipbuilding Hein van Ameijden: “This kind of launching customer projects are essential for the future of naval shipbuilding in the Netherlands. We are delighted that we can build the successor to the M frigates. Much more importantly, the men and women of the Royal Netherlands Navy will once again have an innovative ship at their disposal, to sail and fight with.” The main task of the frigates will be to fight submarines remotely. This will be performed by way of a new torpedo, to be deployed from the ship or by the NH90 helicopter onboard. This is one of the subjects stated in the letter that the Dutch Lower House received from State Secretary Barbara Visser. The current four M frigates of the Belgian and Dutch navies are at the end of their lifetime. In addition to submarine combat, the new frigates must be able to protect themselves and other units. They must be deployable worldwide for maritime combat and safety operations and assistance. This requires means of defence against threats from the air and enemy ships on and underwater. The frigate has room for a 110-man crew. For mission-specific personnel and their equipment, 40 extra beds and various spaces are available. The first ship is expected to be delivered in 2027. After that, operational effectiveness and safety of the ship will be tested. The Dutch Navy is expected to receive this first frigate in 2028 and the second one a year later. The Belgian frigates will be delivered no later than 2030. View source version on Damen Schelde Naval Shipbuilding: https://nlnavy.damen.com/important-next-step-in-the-m-frigate-project/