25 décembre 2024 | International, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
Iran's Charming Kitten Deploys BellaCPP: A New C++ Variant of BellaCiao Malware
Kaspersky uncovers BellaCPP malware by Iranian APT35, targeting systems in Asia without web shell use.
17 août 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
New Pentagon tech chief to focus on improving project coordination
By: Andrew Eversden
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon's new acting research chief wants to provide the department's vast research and development enterprise with a “north star road map” amid an effort to adopt emerging technologies ahead of adversaries.
Speaking on a webinar hosted by Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology, newly installed acting Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Michael Kratsios said that he will focus on providing top-level guidance to the host of organizations that make up the Defense Department's R&D efforts. Those organizations include the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and service laboratories.
Kratsios said a team of principal directors are working to establish road maps for individual technologies.
“To me, what's critical is that R&E can serve as a place where we can sort of adjudicate disagreements between individual organizations, make sure they're working on these that complement each other, making sure that similar research isn't being done at multiple different labs,” Kratsios said Thursday in his first public speech since taking over the office from Michael Griffin, who left the position in July.
The Pentagon's R&E team has laid out several modernization priorities that include emerging technologies, including advancements in hypersonic weapons, artificial intelligence, 5G network connectivity and cyberspace. As different components across the department advance the maturity of these technologies, Kratsios said, his office will ensure modernization areas are not siloed.
“The way that we succeed and provide the best tools for the war fighter is understanding that these technologies are going to interact with one another,” Kratsios said. “Even when, for example, you want to launch a hypersonic missile, that requires so much other important technology that all needs to be done and working together in concert. So for me, it's really building those relationships between those individual modernization priorities and making sure they don't remain stovepiped.”
Kratsios still serves as the U.S. chief technology officer at the White House, a position he's held since August 2019. He has advised President Donald Trump on technology issues since early 2017. In that experience, Kratsios said, he's learned about the importance of looking across R&D efforts throughout the federal government, pointing to the research done by the National Science Foundation or the Energy Department on artificial intelligence as examples.
“What I've learned is that in order to get the most out of the federal government's technology ecosystem to drive innovation ... you need to be better coordinated across all aspects of the ecosystem,” Kratsios said.
Sur le même sujet
-
-
3 juin 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
Eurosatory 2020 : le COGES organisera des rendez-vous B2B en visio-conférences en septembre
Pour compenser l'annulation d'Eurosatory 2020, la COGES, filiale du GICAT, va organiser des rendez-vous B2B sous forme de visio-conférences les 14 et 15 septembre prochains. Une première pour Eurosatory Contrainte d'annuler le salon Eurosatory 2020 pour cause de coronavirus, la Coges, filiale du Gicat, va organiser, les 14 et 15 septembre prochains, des rendez-vous B2B sous la forme de visio-conférences organisées par Proximum, un prestataire que Coges connaît déjà bien pour avoir organisé de tels rendez-vous dans ses propres salons, à Eurosatory notamment. A ce niveau, et dans l'armement, où la confidentialité incite à des rencontres directes plutôt qu'à des visios sans garantie totale d'interception, cette initiative est une première que forcément les organisateurs de salon vont regarder de près. Les PME et ETI, qui sont représentées dans les salons (qui représentent une énorme effort rapporté à leurs moyens) vont aussi devoir se positionner. Le Gicat à l'initiative Autre difficulté, des problèmes de compatibilité entre créneaux horaires risquent de se produire d'un continent à l'autre. Mais manifestement, le GICAT veut montrer à ses adhérents et à ses clients du salon qu'il est conscient de son rôle d'animation du secteur. D'ores et déjà, la campagne de remboursement d'Eurosatory 2020 est aussi engagée. L'annulation d'Eurosatory a forcément un gros impact pour les rentrées de la Coges, mais aussi pour un écosystème de fournisseurs qui travaillent autour (fabricants de stands, restauration, limousines, etc). Au cabinet de la ministre des Armées, Florence Parly, on mesure amplement l'impact sur les industriels de la filière terrestre. Au GICAT, on rappelle que 50 % du chiffre d'affaires des adhérents proviennent de l'exportation. Et qu'évidemment Eurosatory y concourt à son échelle. Des formules de salons à revoir ? Cette dématéralisation des salons professionnels est une tendance encore faible, mais réelle. Le coronavirus ou covid-19, et son caractère potentiellement récurrent oblige à se poser les bonnes questions pour les salons. D'autres organismes français vont forcément devoir se poser de telles questions, rassembler les rendez-vous, digitaliser. Ceci alors que les dépenses de communications connaissaient déjà de très fortes baisses tendancielles et/ou conjoncturelles avant-même le covid-19, comme chez Thales et Dassault Aviation. La multiplication des salons régionaux et thématiques fragilise aussi les gros salons, et assèche les trésoreries des exposants. Report de trois autres salons Le covid-19 impacte aussi clairement les trois autres salons professionnels détenus par la COGES : le salon Platinum à Monaco (sécurité privée et intérieure) prévu en mai et repoussé aux 2 et 3 février, Shield Africa à Abidjan est décalé de fin janvier aux 7-10 juin (également pour prendre en compte les élections). Enfin, ExpoDefensa à Bogota se tiendra du 29 novembre au 2 décembre. A ce stade, Euronaval 2020 est maintenu et le Sofins reste programmé pour 2021.
-
3 août 2020 | International, Aérospatial
Budget Shows Flightworthy Sixth-Generation Fighter Engines Ready By 2025
Steve Trimble July 31, 2020 Details of the first of two mostly secret initiatives to support the U.S. Air Force's five-year-old pursuit of a sixth-generation successor to the Lockheed Martin F-22 are now released and reveal that a critical technology for the Next-Generation Air Dominance program could become flightworthy by mid-2025. GE Aviation and Pratt & Whitney are scheduled to complete separate competitive designs for a Next-Generation Adaptive Propulsion (NGAP) system by the second quarter of 2022 and finish assessments on a full-scale engine three years later, according to Air Force budget documents. The schedule and spending details on the NGAP appeared for the first time in the Air Force's budget justification documents for fiscal 2021 that were submitted to Congress in February, but passed unnoticed for several months. The Air Force awarded GE and Pratt each a $427 million contract to support the NGAP program, but the details were shrouded in budget documents within the related Adaptive Engine Transition Program (AETP), an unclassified effort to develop a reengining candidate for the Lockheed F-35. After Senate authorizers cited the Air Force's lack of transparency for justifying a $270 million budget cut for AETP this year, service officials decided to break out funding for the NGAP in budget documents. In fact, the NGAP program reappeared in the fiscal 2021 budget documents for the first time in more than six years. The Air Force has kept all details about the Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program highly secret since 2016, but there was a brief, two-year window in 2014-15 when senior defense officials provided information about the underlying technology development efforts. The NGAP was first referenced in testimony by Alan Shaffer before House Armed Services Committee in March 2014. Shaffer is now the deputy to Ellen Lord, undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment. Six years ago, he was the principal deputy to the director for research and engineering. In that role, Shaffer introduced the NGAP as an enabler to the NGAD program, along with another, complementary initiative focused on new airframes. “This program will develop and fly two X-plane prototypes that demonstrate advanced technologies for future aircraft,” Shaffer said in 2014. “Teams will compete to produce the X-plane prototypes, one focused on future Navy operational capabilities, and the other on future Air Force operational capabilities.” A year later, Frank Kendall, then undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, elaborated on the Aerospace Innovation Initiative (AII). The development of the X-planes would be led by DARPA, he said. “To be competitive, the Navy and the Air Force each will have variants focused on their mission requirements,” Kendall said. “There will be a technology period leading up to development of the prototypes. This will lead to the systems that ultimately will come after the F-35.” The results of the AII program have not been released or even acknowledged by Air Force or defense officials since 2015, but the initiative suggests that one or two X-plane aircraft could be in testing now. Kendall's remarks to Congress in 2015 came a year before the Air Force received the results of an Enterprise Capability Collaboration Team on the Air Superiority 2030 Flight Plan, which urged the development of a family of systems anchored by a next-generation fighter to replace the F-22. The Flight Plan prompted the Air Force to commission an analysis of alternatives (AoA) in late 2016. The results of that study were originally scheduled to be released by the end of 2017, but the analysis continued until early 2019. Meanwhile, a 2015 presentation by the Air Force Research Laboratory showed a notional schedule for the NGAD program; a contract award to launch the engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) phase is set for fiscal 2023. As late as the Air Force's fiscal 2019 budget request, the financial resources devoted to the NGAD appeared to support that schedule: A significant increase in funding starts in fiscal 2023, and $13 billion is set aside overall between fiscal 2019 and 2023. Last year, however, as the results of the AoA study became available, the Air Force appeared to defer the launch of the EMD by at least a few years. The fiscal 2020 budget request included only $6.6 billion for the NGAD from fiscal 2020-24. Funding for the NGAD and NGAP programs is accounted for separately in Air Force budget documents. The fiscal 2021 budget justification documents reveal that the Air Force spent $106 million for the NGAP in fiscal 2019. Another $224 million is allocated to the NGAP this year. But the program has requested an additional $403 million in fiscal 2021, the budget documents show. “The Next-Generation Adaptive Propulsion effort consists of four phases: preliminary design, detailed design, engine fabrication and engine assessments,” the Air Force's budget documents state. “Program deliverables include military adaptive engine detailed design parameters and models, engine hardware (plus spare parts), matured technologies, major rig assessment data (controls, combustor, etc.), program reviews, and technology, affordability and sustainability studies for next generation fighter aircraft,” the documents add. https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/budget-policy-operations/budget-shows-flightworthy-sixth-generation-fighter-engines