Japan highlights F-35 acquisition, military ops amid pandemic in new whitepaper

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  5 février 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  New weapons purchases suffer under India’s latest defense budget

  By: Vivek Raghuvanshi NEW DELHI — India's defense budget for 2020-2021 will be $73.65 billion, the country government announced Saturday, but officials and analysts are warning the amount is unlikely to meet new demands for weapons purchases and military modernization, as India is set to spend about 90 percent if its defense funds on existing obligations. Of the total budget, $18.52 billion is for weapons purchases; $32.7 billion is for maintenance of the military's weapons inventory, pay and allowances, infrastructure, and recurring expenses; and $21.91 billion is for defense pensions. “The capital budget leaves no room for any big-ticket weapons purchase, as over 90 percent of the allocation capital funds will [be spent] for past [defense] contracts' committed liabilities," a senior Ministry of Defence official told Defense News. The limited procurement spending is expected to directly impact “Make in India" defense projects, a policy meant to boost the local economy under the ruling National Democratic Alliance government. “This also [leaves] no room for any major weapons purchases from U.S. at least for one to two years,” the MoD official added. India is slated to make a number of purchases through the U.S. Foreign Miltiary Sales program, including 22 MQ-9 Reaper (Predator B) drones for $2.6 billion; and additional six P-8I maritime surveillance aircraft for $1 billion; two Gulfstream 550 aircraft for intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance for nearly $1 billion; and one unit of the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System II for more than $1 billion. During at least the last two years, the Indian military has complained about a lack of funds for resolving existing liabilities. Amit Cowshish, a former financial adviser for acquisitions at the MoD, said the military will likely continue to face the challenge of preventing defaults on contractual payments. The senior MoD official told Defense News that due to the shortage of funds, at least a dozen pending defense contracts will experience delays. “The current $18.52 billion capital allocation is only [a] marginal increase from [the] previous year [capital] allocation of $18.02 billion [and] does not even adequately cover inflation costs.” The Indian Air Force is to receive $6.76 billion from the 2020-2021 budget, a drop from the previous year's $7.01 billion. The money is expected to go toward payments for orders of Rafale fighters from France and an S-400 missile system from Russia. The Indian Navy is to receive $4.56 billion, which is expected to help cover the cost of leasing a nuclear submarine and stealth frigates from Russia, as well as pay for warships from Indian companies. A Navy official said it is unlikely the service will be able to sign a contract for 24 MH-60R multirole helicopters for more than $2 billion from the U.S. next year. The Indian Army is to receive $5.06 billion to pay cover previous orders of wheeled and ultralight artillery guns, T-90 tanks, and ammunition. India's state-owned defense companies continue to receive 60 percent of defense-related business, with 30 percent going to overseas defense companies and 10 percent to domestic private defense firms. Another MoD official said the armed forces plan to focus on industry-funded defense projects under the government's “Make-II” category, which allows private companies to participate in the prototype development of weapons and platforms with a focus on import substitution, for which no government funding will be provided. https://www.defensenews.com/global/asia-pacific/2020/02/04/new-weapons-purchases-suffer-under-indias-latest-defense-budget

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  18 août 2020 | International, Naval

  In developing robot warships, US Navy wants to avoid another littoral combat ship

  By: David B. Larter WASHINGTON — As the U.S. Navy pushes forward with developing its large unmanned surface vessel, envisioned as a kind of external missile magazine that will tag along with larger manned surface combatants, a growing consensus is forming that the service needs to get its requirements and systems right before making a big investment. Congress has, for the second year in a row, slowed the development of the large unmanned surface vessel, or LUSV, in the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act. The language in this year's bill would essentially force the Navy to have a working prototype with all systems tested and fully integrated before using procurement dollars for the boats. In an exclusive July 16 interview with Defense News, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday said that while the marks were frustrating, he agreed with Congress that requirements must be concrete right up front. “The approach has to be deliberate,” Gilday said. “We have to make sure that the systems that are on those unmanned systems with respect to the [hull, mechanical and electrical system], that they are designed to requirement, and perform to requirement. And most importantly, are those requirements sound? “I go back to: Do I really need a littoral combat ship to go 40 knots? That's going to drive the entire design of the ship, not just the engineering plant but how it's built. That becomes a critical factor. If you take your eye off the ball with respect to requirements, you can find yourself drifting. That has to be deliberate.” Gilday has called for the Navy to pursue a comprehensive “Unmanned Campaign Plan” that creates a path forward for developing and fielding unmanned systems in the air, on the sea and under the water. Right now, the effort exists in a number of different programs that may not all be pulling in the same direction, he said. “What I've found is that we didn't necessarily have the rigor that's required across a number of programs that would bring those together in a way that's driven toward objectives with milestones,” Gilday told Defense News. “If you took a look at [all the programs], where are there similarities and where are there differences? Where am I making progress in meeting conditions and meeting milestones that we can leverage in other experiments? “At what point do I reach a decision point where I drop a program and double down on a program that I can accelerate?” ‘A lot of risk' According to the Congressional Research Service, the Navy's approach is to adapt a commercial design and put a bare-bones crew onboard while the service figures out how to move toward a fully unmanned system. “The Navy wants LUSVs to be low-cost, high-endurance, reconfigurable ships based on commercial ship designs, with ample capacity for carrying various modular payloads — particularly anti-surface warfare (ASuW) and strike payloads, meaning principally anti-ship and land-attack missiles,” the report read. But some very basic questions still need to be answered about how a large unmanned, or lightly manned, surface vessel might work, said Matthew Collette, an associate professor of naval architecture and marine engineering at the University of Michigan. “One of the biggest challenges people are realizing now is the machinery systems and keeping the systems operational for six months [over a deployment],” Collette said. “If you think about a ship today, there are daily machinery rounds and constant preventative maintenance. The Navy has its casualty reporting system, and the commercial world has something very similar. And over six months, that's a lot of work that's not getting done on the autonomous ship. “And there are two approaches to this that I've seen: One is you design it essentially like a space craft where you really limit what you do with the ship to make it as robust as possible and really accept that today that means less capability. We're just not going to be able to throw all the bells and whistles on that kind of a ship today. And for the smaller size ships, that's a good approach. “But the other approach is to try and monitor it and put in a lot of redundancy and figure out how we get this system reimagined so it can do a six-month deployment. And I can't really assess where we are with that at this point, I just don't have enough insight to know if that's six months away. Is it six years? Is it never reachable?” It's unclear that adapting an existing design will get the Navy where it needs to be, in large part because the Navy is going somewhere radically different from what the commercial offshore oil and gas or ferry industry is going, Collette said. “It's important to note that where the commercial industry is going is different from where the Navy wants to go,” Collette said. “In the commercial marine industry, you have a licensed captain ashore who is able to teleport to the ship whenever it needs human intervention. And we're really talking about short runs, like inter-European runs of six hours, 12 hours, and working their way out from there. “The Navy has really asked for a much harder, much more difficult problem. And you could see how something like the [extra-large unmanned underwater vehicle] as a technology trail that works toward this direction, but jumping toward something like large unmanned surface vessel, is a big, big step with a lot of risk.” https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2020/08/17/in-developing-robot-warships-us-navy-wants-to-avoid-another-littoral-combat-ship/

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  24 février 2023 | International, C4ISR

  When it comes to network innovation, we must protect the data ‘pipes’

  Because encryption has a shelf life, military networks still need to protect the data pipes that support the warfighter.