Israel’s Rafael integrates artificial intelligence into Spice bombs

Sur le même sujet

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  17 septembre 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  Who is Secretly Building the USAF’s New Fighter?

  MARCUS WEISGERBER Officials are mum, so here's a roundup of clues. Among the big questions surrounding the secret U.S. Air Force fighter-jet demonstrator revealed this week is: who built it? Will Roper, the head of Air Force acquisition, declined to say much about the new plane, other than it has actually flown, that some of the plane's systems have been flight-tested, and that it was designed and built using digital engineering. So let's look at some clues, starting with a likely predecessor to the Next Generation Air Dominance project that produced the new demonstrator. In January 2015, Frank Kendall, then defense undersecretary for acquisition, technology and logistics, told the House Armed Services Committee about a DARPA-led project that was developing new planes and engine technology for the Air Force and Navy. “The intent is to develop prototypes for the next generation of air-dominance platforms — X-plane programs, if you will," Kendall said. Dubbed the Aerospace Innovation Initiative, the project aimed to “develop the technologies and address the risks associated with the air dominance platforms that will follow the F-35, as well as other advanced aeronautical challenges.” Roper wouldn't say whether the NGAD and AII projects are linked, but they sound quite similar. He instead said that he disclosed the plane's existence, in part, to encourage companies to invest more in digital engineering. "The obvious candidates for the NGAD prototype are Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, though General Atomics might be a possible designer—but that's a long-shot," Byron Callan, an analyst with Capital Alpha Partners, wrote in a Tuesday note to clients. "Textron's Scorpion program had recently proven that in one year's time, it could take a new clean sheet design to flight, but we doubt it's been able to elevate this skill to combat aircraft." The plane's engine, Callan wrote, was built by either GE or Raytheon Technologies' Pratt & Whitney. Here's the case for why each of the following companies could have built the new NGAD fighter. Boeing The Chicago-based aerospace giant already knows a lot about digital engineering, having partnered with Sweden's Saab to design and build their T-7A training jet in less than a year, near-lightspeed by U.S. military standards. Air Force officials have gushed about the T-7A, which beat out two other planes, the Lockheed Martin T-50 and Leonardo T-100, that were already being used by foreign air forces. The Boeing plane has a mission computer that can run third-party software and apps, allowing for easy updates. It is also designed for quick assembly: it takes just 15 minutes to assemble the forward and aft fuselages, compared with some 24 hours to assemble a F/A-18 Super Hornet fuselage, according to Leanne Caret, the CEO of Boeing Defense. Northrop Grumman It often gets overlooked that Northrop owns Scaled Composites — the Burt Rutan-founded, XPrize-winning design shop behind SpaceShipOne, the first aircraft to carry private citizens into space. Like Boeing, Northrop's Scaled built a plane from scratch for the Air Force's pilot training jet contest, but in the end didn't submit a bid. Northrop has seen an uptick in classified Pentagon work in recent years. It's been presumed that a sizable portion of that cash has gone to build B-21 stealth bombers, whose existence has been disclosed but are being built in secret. It's conceivable that some of the classified cash flowing into the company's Aeronautical Systems business is for the NGAD test aircraft. Northrop is also building the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, the new intercontinental ballistic missiles that will replace the Cold War Minuteman III, using the same digital design technology often touted by Roper. Lockheed Martin The company's Advanced Development Programs division — far better known as the Skunk Works — has long developed super-advanced, super-secret planes for the U.S. military, including the famed U-2 and SR-71 spy planes and the F-117 ground-attack jet. They also built the F-22 Raptor and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. “ADP seems pretty busy across a number of fronts, but also...looking at the Digital Century Series and also looking at where the services are going to go in terms of sixth-gen and next-gen aircraft,” said Michele Evans, who leads Lockheed Martin Aeronautics and its Skunk Works operation, last week. Evans also touted Stardrive, a Lockheed effort to incorporate more commercial technology and practices into its manufacturing. “Think of model-based systems engineering, think about factory of the future, software development in terms of containerization technologies like Kubernetes, and agile [software] and then even into sustainment in terms of how we use data analytics and AI,” she said. “I think the technologies are just going to provide tremendous opportunities to speed up the development in the delivery of platforms going forward.” Someone else The most intriguing possibility is that the new jet may not be the product of one of the defense giants at all. There is evidence that the digital-design tools that Roper touted are allowing smaller upstarts to enter markets once reserved for only a few established contractors. In July, for example, an Air Force solicitation for proposals for drones to accompany manned jets drew 18 entries. “It shows there's a lot of interest from very large [companies], which you would expect, to very small,” Gen. Arnold Bunch, the head of Air Force Materiel Command, said in a Wednesday videoconference call with reporters. “I actually believe as we do the digital campaign and we look at doing digital engineering, it will actually open the door to more people to be able to participate that may not have before.” https://www.defenseone.com/business/2020/09/who-secretly-building-usafs-new-fighter/168541/

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  4 septembre 2019 | International, Terrestre

  Textron Preps For Mass Production Of New Army Rifle

  By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR. WASHINGTON: Textron has partnered with global gun-maker Heckler & Koch to mass-produce new rifles for the Army and with ammunition giant Olin Winchester to churn out the high-powered yet lightweight 6.8 millimeter rounds. Textron still has to beat both General Dynamics and Sig Sauer for the right to build the Next Generation Squad Weapons (NSGW). All three companies won awards last Thursday to build prototypes for troops to test, starting this coming spring and continuing through late 2021. No follow-on production contract is guaranteed. But Textron is watching the Army's urgent push to modernize across the force, from assault rifles to hypersonic missiles and wants to be ready to sprint to mass production if it wins. Textron could do everything in house, senior VP Wayne Prender said. But, he told reporters this morning, by working with Olin Winchester and H&K, which are experienced with largescale manufacture of ammo and weapons respectively, “we are preparing ourselves for a high rate of production.” The Army wants to start fielding two variants of NGSW to tens of thousands of close combat troops — infantry, scouts, special operators, and so on — in 2022. Support troops and vehicle crews will stick with the current M4 carbine for the indefinite future. But frontline ground combatants will get more than just a gun. Linked wirelessly with electronics all over the soldier's body, including Microsoft HoloLens-derived targeting goggles called IVAS, the Next Generation Squad Weapon is meant to be just one lethal component of a larger, high-tech system. It's like the Hellfire missiles on an Apache helicopter or the 120 mm Rheinmetall smoothbore cannon on an M1 tank, except this “weapons platform” moves on foot. This approach is part of a wider push, begun by former Defense Secretary (and Marine Corps rifleman) Jim Mattis, to improve the Close Combat Lethality of the military's most exposed members. The American grunt has accumulated more and more high tech over the last two decades. Designing a new weapon from scratch is a chance to streamline the scopes, cables, batteries, and other impedimenta festooning modern foot troops. “All of those are now part of an integrated weapon system, versus a rifle that then has something else strapped onto it with wires hanging off,” Prender told reporters. “We can make some smart decisions early in the design process that enable it to be cleaner.” That should make the new weapon easier to use, lighter, and even better balanced, since the center of gravity is now calculated with installing add-ons in mind. Three Contenders, 27 Months While troops will test the first prototypes this spring, each contender has 27 months to deliver a total of 53 NGSW assault rifles — potential replacements for the M16/M4 family in service since Vietnam — and 43 automatic rifles — replacing the M249 SAW — along with 850,000 rounds of 6.8 mm ammunition. Like the M16, M4, and M249 with the 5.56 mm cartridge, the new NGSW family will all share a common 6.8 mm round, which is supposed to deliver longer range and greater body-armor-penetrating power without increasing weight much. Each competitor has their own spin on how to deliver the new rifle bullet. Sig Sauer, which already builds the Army's standard 9mm pistol and a host of other limited-issue weapons, has taken what seems to be the most conservative approach. It offers what the company calls a “hybrid” cartridge, which is still made of metal like traditional brass casings, but significantly lighter. General Dynamics's Ordnance & Tactical Systems (OTS) division has partnered with a Texan firm, True Velocity, to build “composite” rounds out of polymers. In layman's words, the bullet is packaged, not in brass, but rugged plastic. Again, the goal is to save weight. Textron's approach is arguably the most radical, to the point it doesn't even look like a bullet, just a cylinder that's equally blunt on both ends. That's because it's a cased telescoped round, sheathing the entire bullet in a polymer shell, surrounded by its propellant instead of sitting on top of it. (The resulting case looks like a folded-up telescope, hence the name). Textron says this method cuts weight per shot by 40 percent, a potential boon for overburdened foot troops. The Army's new modernization strategy — after decades of cancelled programs and incremental changes to aging weapons — is to try such great leaps forward but then test prototypes ASAP with real troops in the field. The service has been “opening the doors of the Army to the contractors to get that feedback early and often,” Prender said approvingly. Each round of user feedback is meant to help the contractors improve their product, and the military to refine their specifications, until the service can confidently choose a refined design. Now, the Army isn't locking itself in. Whoever does best in testing, the Army hasn't promised the winner a production contract. But Textron is betting they can convince an eagerly modernizing Army that their product is not only superior but ready to field without further R&D. “Whether [to] move right into an initial Low-Rate Initial Production, followed by fielding and first unit equipped, or [to do] additional prototyping and maturation of the weapon system... all that will be determined by the Army,” Prender told reporters. “We have high confidence that our weapon system will meet all of the requirements that the Army has laid out... so we're looking forward to at the end of those 27 months to move into production.” https://breakingdefense.com/2019/09/textron-readies-for-mass-production-of-new-army-rifle

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  22 août 2024 | International, C4ISR, Sécurité

  Google Fixes High-Severity Chrome Flaw Actively Exploited in the Wild

  Google patches high-severity Chrome bug CVE-2024-7971, actively exploited in the wild. Users urged to update immediately.