Marine Corps looks at ocean glider for rapid resupply to fight China

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  18 juin 2019 | International, C4ISR, Autre défense

  What’s the best way for the Army to demonstrate force via electronic warfare?

  By: Mark Pomerleau When the Russian military attacked Ukraine, it prevented units from communicating with each other by turning to powerful electronic jamming tools. The U.S. Army, however, is not interested in the same raw demonstration of force. Instead, U.S. officials are following a philosophy that relies on “surgical” attacks. This could include creating an image on enemy's radar, projecting an aircraft at one location when enemies think it is at another, or impairing the command and control links of adversaries' unmanned aerial systems. “When the Russians emit like that, they're letting the entire world know where they are,” Col. Mark Dotson, the Army's capabilities manager for electronic warfare said on a media call with two reporters June 14. “What we're looking at in the future ... [is] surgical electronic attack, electronic intrusion or 21st century electron attack. We're looking for much more discrete ways of conducting electronic attack. Using low power to affect the signal and to affect it in such a way that it may not even be detectable that you're interfering with what they're doing.” Dotson said instead of sheer power, future capabilities should focus on the end result, such as whether it's hurting an enemy's ability to communicate or to use radar. “There's a variety of different approaches that can be taken to create the effect necessary without having to do what we refer to as traditional jamming, which is just increasing the signal to noise ratio,” Dave May, senior cyber intelligence advisor at the Cyber Center of Excellence, said. Finding materiel solutions The officials spoke at the conclusion of Cyber Quest, a week-long technology experimentation that took place at Fort Gordon. Cyber Quest is a prototyping event that allows the Army to test technologies and concepts from industry to help solve future problems. This year, Army leaders focused on several areas. They include: Improving the requirements for the Terrestrial Layer System, an integrated electronic warfare and signals intelligence system that will provide a much-needed jamming capability to formations; Identifying candidates for rapid acquisition, and Conducting risk reduction against current programs and identifying candidates for electronic warfare capabilities to outfit the Intelligence, Information, Cyber, Electronic Warfare and Space detachment or I2CEWS, a battalion-sized unit described as the “brain” of the Army's multidomain task force. “Cyber Quest helps ... in that we are able to take these difficult challenges to industry, walk them through what we're trying to accomplish and let industry come back to us with novel approaches,” May said. “This pre-prototyping philosophy allows us to work through concepts, [tactics, techniques and procedures], and actually start the concept for doctrine.” At Cyber Quest, Army officials focused on the overall TLS system and two subsets: the Tactical Electronic Warfare System (TEWS) and the Tactical Signals Intelligence Vehicle. Both are integrated platforms the Army is using to experiment with different technologies that would allow for sensing, signals intelligence, electronic warfare and RF-enabled cyberattacks. May said these subsystems are in the pre-prototype phase. Army leaders also tested a spectrum analyzer tool that will notify commanders of the health of their systems within the electromagnetic spectrum. Such a tool would provide details on the footprint of blue force electromagnetic spectrum. The Army's current spectrum management program of record, Electronic Warfare Planning and Management Tool, only offers details on red force's in the spectrum relying on sensors in the field. By contrast, the spectrum analyzer tool the Army looked at during Cyber Quest is a handheld system that doesn't need to rely on the sensors that belong to tactical operational tools. There's been a focus across all the services in recent years to better understand their own electromagnetic spectrum as a way to prevent themselves from being detected and jammed or detected and killed. The details for when these capabilities would reach soldiers, however, is still in flux. If the Army has approved a requirement, a new product can be fielded to certain units under what the Army refers to as a buy, try, decide model. Capabilities can be fielded faster if they are funneled through the Rapid Equipping Force, though, they wouldn't become a program of record, but could be fielded to operational units that need it between 90 days and six months. If a capability goes through the Rapid Capabilities Office, it could take six to 18 months to get to units, Dotson said. May said the goal for TLS is to deliver a “validated requirement” to the program manager by third quarter of fiscal year 2020. That puts fielding in the 2022 or 2023 timeframe. Officials were a bit more circumspect on the Multi-Functional Electronic Warfare Air Large program, a first of its kind brigade-organic aerial electronic attack pod that will be mounted on unmanned systems. Lockheed Martin was awarded was awarded two sequential 18-month contracts valued at $18 million in January. Officials said it should be flying within the next 12 months but added that they want to see the product that ends up flying before forecasting a timeline for when it would reach units. https://www.c4isrnet.com/electronic-warfare/2019/06/17/whats-the-best-way-for-the-army-to-demonstrate-force-via-electronic-warfare/

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  29 avril 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  The Flying Car Of the Future Looks to Flying Cars of the Past

  The Air Force is close to testing an experimental vertical takeoff prototype under its new program. The first contract in the U.S. Air Force's bid to acquire flying cars has gone to a company whose design harks back to a pioneer in the field. California-based Sabrewing Aircraft Company received a $3.25 million Phase II Small Business Innovative Research earlier this month to test its Rhaegal-B, a four-rotor craft that the company says can carry up to 5,400 pounds up to 200 knots some 1,000 nautical miles. With its four electric rotors, two on either side of the aircraft, the 60-foot Rhaegal-B somewhat resembles the M400X Skycar from Paul Moller. Moller is, in many ways, the Nikola Tesla of the flying car field. In the early 2000s, the Moller International Skycar became the first non-helicopter vertical takeoff and landing aircraft to actually get off the ground. The four motors would lift the car up and then swivel to propel it forward, like a V-22 Osprey. Even though the design worked, it never made it into showrooms. “For the engine, the most critical element is power,” Moller told The Futurist magazine in 2008. “Once you reduce the diameter of the propulsion system [making the propellor smaller] you go from a helicopter to a fan system. So you're moving less air, and the less air you move, the more power it takes to generate a certain kind of thrust. If I took a helicopter and made it one-half the diameter, I would have to immediately add 60% more power. I halve the diameter again, I have to add 60% more power, again. The M400 Skycar has over 1,000 horsepower.” Given the high cost to power it, the M400 Skycar was impractical for most locations outside of the Middle East, where oil sheiks would use them to traverse wide distances, Moller said at the time. Sabrewing CEO Ed De Reyes, who once worked for Moller, said his former boss was restricted by the engines of his time. The best-suited for the purpose were Wankel rotor engines, and internal combustion engines, which offered high speeds but limited torque. The electric motors that have arrived in recent years are far more promising: smaller, lighter, yet capable of producing more torque than an internal combustion engine. The Rhaegal-B design is highly but not fully autonomous, De Reyes said. A controller will command it from a ground station, but with the sort of low-effort, push-button interface you would encounter on a Northrop Grumman Global Hawk, rather than the more hands-on piloting needed for General Atomics MQ-9 Reapers. Something else that's come a long way since the early 2000s is the ability to detect and avoid objects in mid-air. Ssense-and-avoidance systems are a major stepping stone to more widespread use of drones in U.S. civilian airspace. A lot of drone manufacturers are hoping for the FAA's blessing for their versions. The Rhaegal-B combines radar and nine other sensors to give the aircraft a picture of the environment around it. It can take evasive action without any human control. (In fact, humans can't override it to accidentally steer the vehicle into something else.) If communication is cut off, it can continue to its destination with no additional imput from the ground operator. The appeal for the Air Force has to do with versatility and even detectability. During a webcast on Monday, Air Force Col. Pete White, with Air Force Warfighting Integrating Capability, said that traditional helicopters are noisy compared new vertical-lift aircraft. Thanks, in part, to the new electric motors. “Within feet of an enemy, they can't hear you,” He said that new, nimble electric air vehicles that could take off and land without a runway could help the military “maneuver around the battlefield at a pace that would be impossible today” The Air Force says it wants flying cars to evacuate wounded soldiers from the battlefield, among other missions. That means that they could be operating under fire. De Reyes says the military version of the aircraft has a Kevlar coating to protect it from small ballistics and can operate even when one of the motors is damaged. Air Force officials have also said that they are looking to fund and support U.S. flying-car companies, lest they migrate to China or accept lots of foreign investment. De Reyes says he's often approached by Chinese investors looking to gain a foothold in his company and other entrepreneurs in this space are as well. Sabrewing will test the Rhaegal-B at the Air Force's Edwards Air Force Base, hoping to meet safety requirements that will clear it for more military work and perhaps even commercial use. A June flight demonstration with its prototype has been postponed due to travel restrictions https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2020/04/flying-car-future-looks-flying-cars-past/164995

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  21 juin 2019 | International, Aérospatial

  Typhoon’s 'Digital Stealth' Can Evolve To Meet Changing Threat

  by Jon Lake Mark Hewer, Leonardo's v-p for the Integrated Mission Solutions Business Area, believes that the company's open/reprogrammable electronic warfare (EW) suite for the Typhoon represents what he calls “digital stealth.” This will confer a high degree of survivability, even in a threat environment whose lethality is growing exponentially, with the emergence of a plethora of high-end, software reprogrammable, multi-spectral threats, including surface-to-air missile systems. These threat systems are being updated more regularly and are frequently networked, allowing them to share intelligence of the air situation. EW systems are able to evolve to deal with this dynamic and rapidly changing threat, in a way that fifth-generation stealthy aircraft cannot. While stealth aircraft are hard to detect, they are not invisible, and counter-stealth technology is developing rapidly. Moreover, the skin, internal structure, and configuration of an aircraft cannot be easily altered. “You cannot easily modify a stealth platform to counter new high-end threats,” Hewer said. Typhoon's EW capabilities are provided by Leonardo's Praetorian Defensive Aids Sub-System (DASS), which incorporates an onboard podded ECM system and off-board ECM, with a towed radar decoy, as well as missile approach, laser, and radar warning systems and a flare and countermeasures dispensing system. These systems will soon be augmented by the new BriteCloud, an active, highly programmable Digital RF Memory (DRFM) decoy that will allow the Typhoon pilot to better counter the highest-end threats. BriteCloud will give a discriminatory capability that is not on any other platform, providing a world-leading expendable active decoy capability on the Typhoon that none of its rivals will have. The MoD's Desidermagazine has predicted that initial operational capability on Typhoon will be declared in late 2019. Arguably more important than the performance of the individual hardware elements within Typhoon's DASS is their ability to be reprogrammed. “What is really important for the high-end customer buying Typhoon is that their EW system is highly programmable,” Hewer said. “There's no point in directing your ECM if it is going to be ineffective against a threat because you're not exploiting its vulnerabilities.” The Typhoon's EW system is undergoing continuous evolution, with regular upgrades to the hardware and a spiral software development process, but the most important factor is getting the right threat intelligence or “mission data” into the system. This is used to interpret the information that the sensors receive, and drives the behavior of the EW system. Mission success will often depend on having the most up-to-date data set to ensure relevance to the environment. This makes the rapidity of the upgrade cycle of paramount importance. Leonardo believes that many customers want a sustainable sovereign mission data capability, and it can offer to provide this as a service or as a fully tailored sovereign solution. The company can help customers to set up a national EW database or an aircraft specific database and has a suite of software tools available to customers. While F-35 naturally incorporates advanced EW systems, there is still a very heavy reliance on the U.S. for mission support, with a relatively cumbersome mission data cycle. Hewer believes that Typhoon is “many years more mature in its operational use of programming for EW.” While Leonardo's emphasis is currently on highlighting its ability to produce robust and agile high-end sovereign mission data generation capabilities for customers, the company is already looking to the future. Greater automation and machine learning promise a solution to the increasing complexity of the threat environment, and the company is also looking at the potential for sharing information across platforms as well as the possibility of reprogramming an EW system in flight. https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/defense/2019-06-19/typhoons-digital-stealth-can-evolve-meet-changing-threat