Netherlands doubles order of MQ-9 Reaper drones, plans to arm them

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  21 juin 2019 | International, Terrestre, Autre défense

  Nearly 40 percent lighter body armor coming to Marines in 2020

  By: Shawn Snow The Corps is gearing up to field its new lightweight body armor plates, designed to be worn in the Corps' low intensity or counterinsurgency style conflicts. On Friday the Defense Department announced the Navy awarded a nearly $216 million contract to Point Blank Enterprises for the purchase of up to 680,706 of the new lightweight plates. Maj. Ken Kunze, a spokesman for Marine Corps Systems Command, told Marine Corps Times that the Corps expects to kick off fielding the new plates during the second quarter of fiscal year 2020 and complete by 2023. The new body armor plates will protect “against the preponderance of likely threats while improving mobility” and will reduce the hard body armor weight burden on Marines by 38 percent, Kunze said. The Corps has been in the hunt for lighter body armor as the force tries to reduce the weight burden and combat load carried by Marines and grunts, which a government watchdog report said can be as high as 117 pounds to 119 pounds. One solution was to field a set a new set of armor plates that would provide commanders flexibility to match body armor with the threat in the region the Marines were operating in. That means Marines don't always need to slap on the nearly 15 poundenhanced small arms protective, or ESAPI plates, while operating in low intensity conflicts like Iraq and Afghanistan, where a lighter, more mobile armor plate would be sufficient. The heavy ESAPI plates will still be important, especially as the Corps faces down near-peer rivals equipped with better and more capable weapon systems. Nick Pierce, the armor team lead for infantry combat equipment at Marine Corps Systems Command, previously told Marine Corps Times that the Corps was seeking to shave the 15 pound ESAPI plate down to roughly 8.6 pounds for a medium-sized Marine. Marines can shed a total of 8 pounds to 10 pounds from their combat load when the lightweight plate is used in conjunction with the Corps' new Plate Carrier Gen III system, Pierce explained. The Corps is also looking at new polymer based ammunition and a lighter helmet for grunts to help shave the pounds carried by infantry Marines. https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2019/06/19/nearly-40-percent-lighter-body-armor-coming-in-2020/

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  30 novembre 2018 | International, C4ISR

  Squad X Improves Situational Awareness, Coordination for Dismounted Units

  The first test of DARPA's Squad X Experimentation program successfully demonstrated the ability to extend and enhance the situational awareness of small, dismounted units. In a weeklong test series at Twentynine Palms, California, U.S. Marine squads improved their ability to synchronize maneuvers, employing autonomous air and ground vehicles to detect threats from multiple domains – physical, electromagnetic, and cyber – providing critical intelligence as the squad moved through scenarios. Squad X provides Army and Marine dismounted units with autonomous systems equipped with off-the-shelf technologies and novel sensing tools developed via DARPA's Squad X Core Technologies program. The technologies aim to increase squads' situational awareness and lethality, allowing enemy engagement with greater tempo and from longer ranges. The Squad X program manager in DARPA's Tactical Technology Office, Lt. Col. Phil Root (U.S. Army), said Experiment 1 demonstrated the ability for the squad to communicate and collaborate, even while “dancing on the edge of connectivity.” The squad members involved in the test runs praised the streamlined tools, which allowed them to take advantage of capabilities that previously had been too heavy or cumbersome for individual Soldiers and Marines to use in demanding field conditions. “Each run, they learned a bit more on the systems and how they could support the operation,” said Root, who is also program manager for Squad X Core Technologies. “By the end, they were using the unmanned ground and aerial systems to maximize the squad's combat power and allow a squad to complete a mission that normally would take a platoon to execute.” Two performers, Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control and CACI's BIT Systems, each are working on different approaches to provide unique capabilities to enhance ground infantries. Manned-unmanned teaming is critical to both companies' solutions. Marines testing Lockheed Martin's Augmented Spectral Situational Awareness, and Unaided Localization for Transformative Squads (ASSAULTS) system used autonomous robots with sensor systems to detect enemy locations, allowing the Marines to engage and target the enemy with a precision 40mm grenade before the enemy could detect their movement. Small units using CACI's BITS Electronic Attack Module (BEAM) were able to detect, locate, and attack specific threats in the radio frequency and cyber domains. Experiment 2 is currently targeted for early 2019. https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2018-11-30a

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  23 avril 2020 | International, Naval

  Navy Rushes To Get F-35s on USS JFK; Other Ford Carriers Wait Their Turn

  The service's aircraft carrier boss says the COVID economic slowdown hasn't effected building new carriers -- yet. By PAUL MCLEARY WASHINGTON: The Navy's rushed effort to retrofit its newest aircraft carrier to operate the F-35 will create a testbed for the service's other Ford carriers — which have not been built to fly the fifth generation aircraft — as the Navy juggles work on the remaining three big decks. The $11 billion USS John F. Kennedy (CVN 79) was designed and christened without the capability to fly the 5th generation fighter because of cost caps and the aircraft's infamously delayed development. Those schedule slippages forced the Navy to design and build the ships while the messy F-35 was still undergoing development. In the 2020 NDAA Congress indicated it had had it's fill of delays to the carrier and ordered the Navy to get to work refitting the Kennedy before it sets sail in 2024, forcing the Navy to improvise and refit the just-christened ship. Speaking with reporters today, Rear Adm. James Downey, head of the Navy's carrier programs, said those changes are forcing him to hold off on some early work on the forthcoming USS Enterprise (CVN 80), the third Ford-class carrier, and the USS Doris Miller (CVN 81) to ensure the Kennedy retrofits are done correctly before incorporating them on the other ships which have just started their build cycles. Downey said he's working to accelerate the integration of the F-35 on the JFK and prove out the upgrades in operational testing before doing similar work on the next Ford carrier to be built, the USS Enterprise. That way, all of the bugs will be ironed out on the JFK. The original plan to incorporate the F-35 on the four Ford-class ships was to phase the capability in after the ships were declared operational, and then to refit them as they came into port for overhaul. But Congress, frustrated that the nation's newest class of carrier couldn't operate the nation's newest fighter plane, told the Navy to speed things up. The namesake of the class, the $13.2 billion USS Gerald R. Ford, is currently acting as a training asset off the East Coast, where air wings get carrier certified as the ship continues to iron out remaining issues with its weapons elevators. Simply put, the Ford won't fly the F-35 for years to come. Those electromagnetic elevators have been one of the biggest issues plaguing the ship over the past two years, as the Navy installed them without first testing the new technology ashore, resulting in a ship that had no functioning weapons elevators. And what use is a warship without weapons? It's been slow progress to get them up and running, but the Navy recently certified that just the fifth of eleven elevators is now up and running. The working lifts have logged more than 8,000 cycles over the past several months of operational testing as the Ford acts as the Navy's East Coast training platform to certify pilots. The Ford has been operating one month at sea and one pierside for the last several months, and has launched 2,300 aircraft in that time. Downey said the Ford is keeping to its schedule, and that impending supply-chain issues the services are dealing with as the COVID-19 crisis shutters the global economy shouldn't have any near-term impact on the program overall. “We don't have any real significant concerns right now; we know where the suppliers are,” he said. “Prior to this, we had increased some of our procurements for spares and various materials so we had a pretty steady demand signal.” While the Ford class ships wait for the F-35 upgrades, the 36-year old USS Carl Vinson is undergoing a $34 million refit in Bremerton, Wash. so it can begin flying F-35s by 2021, making the veteran ship the first carrier in the Navy to fly the 5th generation aircraft even before the JFK. While both Nimitz and Ford-class aircraft carriers can operate with F-35Cs aboard, significant modifications are required for both classes to fly and sustain the aircraft for extended periods. Also, the ships will need the capability to push and fuse all the data the F-35s can generate, along with building additional classified spaces, new jet blast deflectors and other refits. Room also needs to be made for Osprey tiltrotor aircraft, which will replace the Navy's C-2A Greyhound fleet that are unable to haul the F-35's heavy engines out to the ship. The USS Enterprise is slated to deploy in 2028 and the USS Doris Miller will be ready to sail in 2032. In January, the Navy awarded Huntington Ingalls Industries' Newport News Shipbuilding a $24 billion contract for the two ships, compared to a predicted cost of $28 billion if the sea service had purchased them separately. https://breakingdefense.com/2020/04/navy-rushes-to-get-f-35s-on-uss-jfk-other-ford-carriers-will-wait