21 juin 2018 | International, C4ISR
With cyber playing a critical role in conflict going forward, the Army has begun to recognize the need to have organic cyber planners within a brigade's staff to offer commanders options related to cyber as well as electronic warfare.
Cyber and Electromagnetic Activities, or CEMA cells, have been stood up in each brigade acting as planners to provide targeting options and capabilities to get at commander objectives just as an artillery planner would offer the commander choices related to their field for a pending operation.
At the tactical level, these two disciplines – cyber and electronic warfare – have become intertwined.
“When I talk to Army commanders and staffs, I try to make the point that I want you to worry less about whether it's a cyber or EW effect,” Lt. Col. Christopher Walls, deputy director for strategy and policy, at the Army's Cyber Directorate within the G-3/5/7, said at the C4ISRNET Conference in May.
For example, Walls said for a river crossing mission, a commander might say he needs to buy a few hours to get a battalion across. The CEMA cell, in turn, would look across the capability sets in its portfolio and come up with a course of action.
These cells potentially have the ability to allow the commander to target local internet service providers or local routers and prevent opposing forces from using them. The teams may also have an electronic warfare capability that can jam local area network protocols. Finally, these teams might know where mobile switching centers are by digitally geolocating them allowing physical strikes to take them out, Walls said.
“I don't want the commander to worry about which of those three things, I just want him to talk to me in terms of desired objective and effects and then us, along with the staff, will determine which capability makes sense,” Walls said. “That's kind of the way we're thinking about the tactical fight.”
The best choice comes down to understanding the commander's objectives and intent in order to offer the best solution.
“What I would do is understand his intent, what effect he wants and what I'll do is submit that in a formal request and I'll let the higher echelons determine if they can provide that effect,” Capt. Daniel Oconer, brigade CEMA officer, told C4ISRNET during a recent visit to the National Training Center.
“In general, all I really need to know for my planning processes is understand what the maneuver force wants to do,” he added. “How do tanks and Bradleys [move], how are the troops on the ground moving. Then, what is their mission? What is their objective? What is the commander's intent? Once I understand that I throw some CEMA flavor, so to say, onto it and then enable them to accomplish their mission.”
Oconer is currently billeted as a 29 series electronic warfare officer. The Army will begin to transition these individuals into the cyber branch, or 17 series, so they will all eventually be cyber planners in the CEMA cell.
“The way that we're transforming our electronic warfare professionals is they will become cyber operators. They will be the face inside our brigade combat teams and our maneuver formations for cyber operational planning,” Maj. Gen. John Morrison, commander of the Cyber Center of Excellence, said during a May speech. “They're complimentary. You cannot look at electronic warfare professionals and cyber operators in isolation.”
5 septembre 2017 | International, Aérospatial
Arturo Avila toiled and suffered to build his Mexican start-up into a thriving aerospace company -- and the last thing he's going to do now is lose sleep over Donald Trump's NAFTA threats. https://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/36967051/mexicos-booming-aerospace-industry-not-sweating-nafta/
27 mai 2020 | International, Aérospatial
The U.S. Army is leading what looks to be the biggest rotorcraft program in history. Called Future Vertical Lift, it could eventually buy thousands of aircraft to replace over a dozen different helicopters in the joint inventory. FVL, as it is usually called, has been a long time coming. So long that technologies now commonplace in commercial aviation such as “fly-by-wire” flight controls are nowhere to be found in the Army fleet. So long that the Army was forced to retire all of its aged scout helicopters even though it lacked a replacement. The U.S. Army is leading what looks to be the biggest rotorcraft program in history. Called Future Vertical Lift, it could eventually buy thousands of aircraft to replace over a dozen different helicopters in the joint inventory. FVL, as it is usually called, has been a long time coming. So long that technologies now commonplace in commercial aviation such as “fly-by-wire” flight controls are nowhere to be found in the Army fleet. So long that the Army was forced to retire all of its aged scout helicopters even though it lacked a replacement. The bad news is that if Future Vertical Lift falters the way some past efforts have, much of the U.S. rotorcraft industry might falter with it. FVL isn't the only game in town, but it is by far the biggest. If production of legacy rotorcraft ceases to make room for new ones and then FVL fails to deliver, industry might not have enough cashflow to sustain essential skills and suppliers. Army leaders are acutely aware of the potential industrial-base fallout. I know that because earlier this month my colleagues and I at the Lexington Institute had a lengthy exchange with the two top Army officials managing FVL. They are Brigadier General Walter T. Rugen, leader of the service's cross-functional team for vertical lift, and Mr. Patrick H. Mason, the Army's program executive officer for aviation. I thought we would spend most of the conversation discussing the Army's need to “overmatch” future adversaries in the air. But early on, Gen. Rugen observed that Future Vertical Lift “isn't just about overmatch, it's about the industrial base.” It was a theme he kept coming back to throughout the exchange, noting that top Army leaders have been briefed on the consequences for industry if FVL doesn't come to fruition. Apparently those consequences are potentially grave, particularly at lower levels of the supply chain, where fragile, single points of failure support the entire sector. That phrase—single points of failure—was used frequently in an interagency assessment of the defense industrial base prepared early in President Trump's tenure. It detailed how a domestic industrial complex once dubbed the “arsenal of democracy” has gradually hollowed out in recent decades as manufacturers moved offshore. There has been concern about the loss of skills and suppliers in the rotorcraft industry for some time. The U.S. Army is by far the biggest operator of rotorcraft in the world, but since the Cold War ended 30 years ago it has mainly been upgrading what it already had rather than developing new helicopters. It isn't easy to sustain design and engineering talent when your top customer never buys anything genuinely new. So in addition to addressing the increasingly harsh operational environment in which Army Aviation will need to wage future wars, FVL must also provide most of the resources needed to revitalize a key part of the domestic aerospace industry. So far that effort is progressing nicely, using paperless design techniques, digital modeling and prototyping to develop strikingly new rotorcraft that will take the place of retired Kiowa scouts and Black Hawk assault helicopters in the future. The service has recently made awards to two industry teams for each effort, which will competitively develop solutions for final down-selects in a few years. The service has also awarded funding for developing a new helicopter propulsion system, and has made steady progress in developing an electronic architecture for future combat rotorcraft. One way of controlling costs and assuring interoperability on the battlefield is to equip diverse airframes with the same hardware and software for functions such as communication and navigation. It will likely take another 8-10 years before new rotorcraft developed by FVL begin reaching the operational force in large numbers, but managers have been thinking since the program's inception about how to make them reliable and maintainable for users. A big part of the affordability challenge unfolds after production, when 68% of life-cycle costs are incurred. One facet of this challenge is how and where to provide maintenance for the future fleet. There is a long-running debate in military circles about how best to sustain rotorcraft in the operational fleet, with warfighters and legislators usually favoring organic depots over industry sources for much of the maintenance. But doing that requires access to data and intellectual property generated by the companies that build the airframes. This inevitably creates tension with industry, which is as eager to protect its intellectual property in the rotorcraft sector as in other sectors. Intellectual property is a crucial source of competitive advantage. However, Rugen and Mason emphasize that FVL is trying to strike a reasonable balance between military and industry needs in securing access to sensitive information. As one of them put it, “The Army recognizes industry's need for cashflow and adequate returns. It doesn't want to undermine industry's business model.” So while they have carefully analyzed the impact of intellectual property access on the ability of the Army's organic support base to do its job, they are mindful of the need not to impair the capacity of suppliers to make money. This is not the way the Army has typically looked at such matters in the past. Its usual approach has been to find the best deal for warfighters and taxpayers, and let industry fend for itself. But what comes through in a conversation with FVL managers is a recognition that the business pressures faced by companies must be taken into account if the Army is to have an adequate industrial base for its aviation initiatives in the future. They are also working hard to find overseas partners who might be customers for the rotorcraft that FVL ultimately produces. The bigger the international footprint that Future Vertical Lift has, the cheaper each aircraft will likely be for the Army and the more business there will be for American industry. But what Rugen and Mason would most like in the near term is a multiyear funding commitment from Congress to keep FVL on track, because if the program falters the outlook for both Army Aviation and the domestic rotorcraft industry will be bleak. https://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenthompson/2020/05/26/army-fears-if-future-vertical-lift-falters-serious-fallout-for-industry-might-follow
11 février 2022 | International, Aérospatial
Under a new contract, Orbital Insight will use commercially available data and advanced algorithms to detect and alert operators to possible spoofing attempts.