20 avril 2021 | International, C4ISR, Sécurité
A badly needed war-fighting cloud capability ran into delays. The Pentagon's even more lucrative
7 décembre 2023 | International, Aérospatial
Boeing is in advanced talks to sell around 80 wide-body 787 Dreamliner jets to Thai Airways after pulling ahead of Airbus in widely watched fleet renewal talks, industry sources said.
14 août 2020 | International, Terrestre
Nathan Strout The U.S. Army has invested another $190 million into a counter-small unmanned aircraft system (C-sUAS), but it's determined that the system will need to be replaced by a U.S. Marine Corps alternative. On July 20, the Army announced it was awarding DRS Sustainment Systems $190 million to develop, produce and deploy the Mobile-Low, Slow, Small Unmanned Aircraft System Integrated Defeat System (M-LIDS). While the system will be deployed, it doesn't have a long-term future with the military. Despite the Army investing in the program for years, M-LIDS is a casualty of redundancy. As the Department of Defense has become more concerned by the threat posed by small drones in recent years, the services have each developed their own C-sUAS responses — mobile, stationary and dismounted. Recognizing the redundancy in that approach, the defense secretary delegated the Army to lead the effort to narrow the number of C-sUAS solutions for use by the joint forces. On June 25, the Army's Joint C-sUAS announced it had selected eight C-sUAS for future investment and deployment by the joint forces. M-LIDS didn't make the cut. But then, about a month later, the $190 million M-LIDS contract was announced, “Mobile-LIDS (M-LIDS) was not selected and will be replaced by the next generation mobile system,” said Jason Waggoner, an Army spokesman. In the meantime, “M-LIDS will be deployed with Army units to the CENTCOM area of operations.” M-LIDS would likely be replaced by the Light-Mobile Air Defense Integrated System (L-MADIS), a C-sUAS developed by the U.S. Marine Corps and the only mobile solution approved by the Joint C-sUAS Office. L-MADIS has already been deployed for testing and was reportedly used to down a drone off the coast of Iran last year. The Joint C-sUAS office told reporters in June that the services were conducting an analysis of how many systems would need to be replaced under the new arrangement. However, leaders were not able to provide a timeline for how quickly they expected to replace those systems. The series of announcements in this market came quickly this summer. Two days after the M-LIDS award, the Army announced a contract for one of the C-sUAS solutions that was included on the list for future investment: the Expeditionary-Low, Slow, Small Unmanned Aircraft System Integrated Defeat System (now known as FS-LIDS). The $426 million contract with SRC Inc. provides for the development, production, deployment and support of FS-LIDS, the only fixed-site solution approved for the joint forces by the Joint C-sUAS Office. “Development of FS-LIDS is complete and systems are being deployed to U.S. forces globally, with a focus in the CENTCOM area of operations,” Waggoner said. “FS-LIDS will remain in use until replaced with newer technologies.” C-sUAS spending hasn't been limited to the Army in recent weeks. On Aug. 10, the U.S. Air Force issued Black River Systems Co. an $89 million contract for an operational C-sUAS open systems architecture https://www.c4isrnet.com/unmanned/2020/08/13/army-buys-189m-counter-drone-system-but-already-has-plans-to-replace-it
14 avril 2020 | International, C4ISR
Nathan Strout This summer, the Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate is hosting an event where owners and operators of critical infrastructure, manufacturers of commercial GPS receivers, and civil industry stakeholders can see how their equipment holds up under a spoofing attack. “Accurate and precise position, navigation, and timing (PNT) information is vital to the nation's critical infrastructure,” said Bill Bryan, the senior official performing the duties of the undersecretary for science and technology. “[The Science and Technology Directorate] established this program to assess GPS vulnerabilities, advance research and development, and to enhance outreach and engagement with industry. The objective is to improve the security and resiliency of critical infrastructure.” Slated for this summer, the 2020 GPS Equipment Testing for Critical Infrastructure event will be the third of its type hosted by DHS that allows parties to test their equipment against GPS spoofing in unique live-sky environments. This event will focus mainly on fixed infrastructure applications, though there will be some support for testing ground-based mobile applications. There are no registration fees for participants, and interested parties have until April 24 to sign up. Though originally developed as a military tool, GPS technology has become a constant presence in civilian life over the decades, enabling agriculture, telecommunications, financial services, weather forecasting, the electrical grid and more. An RTI International report released last year estimated that a 30-day GPS outage could result in economic losses to the tune of $35-45 billion. U.S. adversaries are well aware of the country's reliance on GPS, both in the civilian world and by the military, and they have developed tools to degrade, deny or spoof that signal. In recent months, the U.S. government has raised concerns that relying solely on GPS for PNT data leaves the nation's critical infrastructure vulnerable to attack. To help address this, President Donald Trump signed an executive order Feb. 12 calling for the U.S. to develop alternative sources of PNT data that can supplement or replace the GPS signal, should it become unreliable. Under that executive order, the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy will be developing PNT services independent of GPS and other global navigation satellite systems, while at the same time working to increase the resiliency of critical infrastructure by having them incorporate multiple PNT sources. https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/space/2020/04/09/is-your-gps-equipment-vulnerable-to-spoofing-the-government-wants-to-test-it/