29 juillet 2020 | International, C4ISR
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the Army's plans for testing upgrades to its network, according to two top Army generals working on the project.
The pandemic has meant fewer soldiers have availability to perform operational testing for new network equipment, known as Capability Set '21. Units are either not training or have implemented safety measures such as social distancing or personal protective equipment.
“The COVID-19 has had an impact on our cycle of testing, our access to units, and it's caused us to make some adjustments in our in our time schedule, as we've been trying to take care of the health and safety of our soldiers and our workforce, but still keep our modernization efforts on track,” said Maj. Gen. Peter Gallagher, director of the network cross-functional team for Army Futures Command, at a C4ISRNET event in May.
The Army had to change plans for soldier experiments that were going to play important roles in informing the allocation of new devices across the brigades.
“We had to really start with what were we going to learn specifically from those soldier experiments and how are we going to use that information to help make procurement decisions,” said then-Maj. Gen. David Bassett and former leader of Army Program Executive Office Command, Control, Communications-Tactical at the C4ISRNET conference. Bassett has since been promoted to lieutenant general and now leads the Defense Contract Management Agency.
He added, “And so in most cases, we weren't really using that to decide whether we were going to buy something or not. [It was] more about the density and the way things were integrated.”
Bassett also said that while the Army did lose out on some field testing, the service had already collected sufficient data in labs that could help “inform some of our decision-making.” He also said that the network modernization team was prepared to make adjustments to equipment because of the challenges associated with coronavirus.
“We're looking really hard at and when the next opportunities are going to be available to us to get that detailed operational feedback from soldiers either in a training environment or a test environment,” Bassett said.
The coronavirus pandemic “hasn't limited” the Army's ability to move forward on procurement decisions because of the large amounts of data it collected in testing for Capability Set '21.
“I think the risk of making those procurement decisions at this stage has been exceedingly low. And something that I think is a reasonable balance of risk and rigor and agility,” Bassett said.
The testing program was also disrupted at the beginning of the year when the 82nd Airborne Division, a primary partner for testing capabilities, was deployed to the Middle East.
11 octobre 2023 | International, Aérospatial, Sécurité
Boeing is offering upgrades to its Apache and Chinook, and the two programs are leveraging each other's ideas despite their obvious differences.
18 mars 2020 | International, C4ISR, Sécurité
Mark Pomerleau The Department of Defense has not consistently mitigated cyber vulnerabilities identified in a 2012 report, according to the department's inspector general. The DoD IG issued a follow-on report to its 2012 report, issued March 13 and made public March 17, that determined cyber red teams didn't report the results of assessments to organizations and components didn't effectively correct or mitigate the identified vulnerabilities. The new report discovered that components didn't consistently mitigate or include unmitigated vulnerabilities identified in the prior audit and during this audit by red teams during combatant command exercises, operational testing assessments and agency-specific assessments in plans of action and milestones. “Ensuring DoD Components mitigate vulnerabilities is essential to achieve a better return on investment,” the report stated. “In addition, we determined that the DoD did not establish a unified approach to support and prioritize DoD Cyber Red Team missions. Instead, the DoD Components implemented Component-specific approaches to staff, train and develop tools for DoD Cyber Red Teams, and prioritize DoD Cyber Red Team missions.” The report found that DoD didn't establish a unified approach because it didn't assign an organization with responsibility to oversee and synchronize red team activity based on priorities, it didn't assess the resources needed for each red team and identify requirements to train them to meet priorities and it didn't develop baseline tools to perform assessments. “Without an enterprisewide solution to staff, train and develop tools for DoD Cyber Red Teams and prioritize their missions, DoD Cyber Red Teams have not met current mission requests and will not meet future requests because of the increased demands for DoD Cyber Red Team services,” the report said. “Until the DoD assigns an organization to assess DoD Cyber Red Team resources, it will be unable to determine the number of DoD Cyber Red Teams and staffing of each team to support mission needs, which will impact the Do D's ability to identify vulnerabilities and take corrective actions that limit malicious actors from compromising DoD operations.” The DoD IG issued seven recommendations the secretary of defense assign an organization responsibility for. They include: Review and assess red team reports for systemic vulnerabilities and coordinate the development and implementation of enterprise solutions to mitigate them; Ensure components develop and implement a risk-based process to assess the impact of identified vulnerabilities and prioritize funding for corrective actions for high-risk vulnerabilities; Ensure components develop and implement processes for providing reports with red team findings and recommendations to organizations with responsibility for corrective actions; Develop processes and procedures to oversee red team activities, including synchronizing and prioritizing red team missions, to ensure activities align with priorities; Perform a joint DoD-wide mission-impact analysis to determine the number of red teams, minimum staffing levels of each team, the composition of the staffing levels needed to meet current and future mission requests; Assess and identify a baseline of core and specialized training standards, based on the three red team roles that team staff must meet for the team to be certified and accredited; and Identify and develop baseline tools needed by red teams to perform missions. https://www.fifthdomain.com/dod/2020/03/17/the-pentagon-is-handling-cyber-vulnerabilities-inconsistently/
15 novembre 2021 | International, Aérospatial
Amid a decline in aerospace sector revenues caused by the coronavirus pandemic, organizers hope the event will contribute to the industry's recovery and shape its future.