31 août 2021 | International, Aérospatial

Aurora and Lockheed Martin enter Phase I of DARPA’s CRANE programm

Aurora Flight Sciences and Lockheed Martin are set to enter Phase I Control of Revolutionary Aircraft with Novel Effectors CRANE programme.

https://www.airforce-technology.com/news/aurora-lockheed-enter-darpa-crane-programme/

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  • COVID-19 News: Virus Hurting Army Small Businesses

    1 mai 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

    COVID-19 News: Virus Hurting Army Small Businesses

    By Connie Lee The COVID-19 pandemic is putting particular stress on the Army's second- and third-tier suppliers, said the service's secretary April 30. The Army is racing to ensure its manufacturing supply chain is able to stay afloat amid economic challenges posed by the virus, said Ryan McCarthy. “Some of these are small companies [that have] 15,000 people, and you get a couple people sick, you shut the whole company down,” he said during a virtual event hosted by Brookings Institution. The supply chain will "be a challenge for us months and months ahead.” The pandemic is also hurting overseas manufacturing in areas such as Mexico, Europe and East Asia, where the Army has little influence, he noted. The service is working with the State Department to figure out how to keep overseas workers employed and keep the supply chain running, he said. “We are limited in our ability to affect them and get them back to work,” McCarthy said. “It presents challenges that are far beyond our reach and ... influence, so we're going to have some real heart-to-hearts with manufacturers going forward.” Despite these issues, the Army is continuing to prioritize modernization, he said. Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville said the service is moving forward with weapons assessments, noting that it was recently able to conduct a successful hypersonic weapons test. As part of its plan to keep up with great power competition, the service is pursuing 31 new signature systems. “Over half of our procurement budget is going towards these new weapon systems,” McCarthy said. “We've got to put them into formation. Much of our iron is 50 years old. That probably is the prime area where we put the most energy.” Meanwhile, the Army is collaborating with other organizations in search of a vaccine. There are 10 to 15 top potential vaccine candidates worldwide that are in various stages of maturity, McCarthy said during a Pentagon briefing the same day. To speed up the timeline, the service plans on investing in the ones that seem to be moving the fastest, he noted. “We can double down and invest in the fastest horse, if you will, in this 15 candidate race, and then that compresses the timeframe that will ultimately get you to the answer and bring a vaccine to life,” he said. “You'll hear ranges on how fast it can go.” Some of these vaccines are currently in human trials, with the bulk of the work slated for summer and early fall, he noted. “It's moving faster than probably any point in history because of the extraordinary collaboration that's going on today,” he said. However, this may involve accepting some risks in the process, McConville noted at the briefing. “You can save time by taking risks,” he said. “You may get ready to produce something, and that horse may not get to the final race and that may not be the most efficient use of money, but by taking risks, you can really move things very, very quickly.” https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2020/4/30/covid-hurting-army-small-businesses

  • Air Force paints a digital future where data from satellites play central role

    1 octobre 2019 | International, Aérospatial

    Air Force paints a digital future where data from satellites play central role

    by Sandra Erwin In a few months the Air Force will start a series of experiments to try to connect fighter aircraft and other weapon systems into a single network so they can all share critical data and intelligence, much of which is collected by satellites in space. Will Roper, the assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, described the venture as the “first demonstration of what you could call ‘step 1' of ABMS.” ABMS is short for Advanced Battle Management System, and it is a hard concept to explain because it is not like a traditional piece of hardware or software. It can be best described as a network where data is piped in from sensors located in space, at sea, in the air or on the ground. That information would be instantly analyzed with artificial intelligence tools and shared across the network. This is the type of technology that will “allow us to be more collaborative,” Roper told reporters at the recent 2019 Air Space & Cyber symposium. Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein is “driving this idea across the Air Force,” said Roper. Goldfein has been a champion of ABMS and wants to make it a “large dollar item in our 2021 budget,” said Roper. The thinking is that the Air Force will spend less money on shiny new platforms and more on exploiting data and advanced networks. It would be like the “Internet of Things, but applied to military systems,” said Roper. Air Force leaders initially pitched the ABMS idea to Congress two years ago as a vision of the future where access to timely data is key to success in the battlefield. They suggested that the Air Force should invest in ABMS rather than spend billions on new command-and-control airplanes. Congress gave the plan a skeptical reception but the Air Force will continue to press its case. In a keynote speech at Air Force Association's Air Space & Cyber conference last week, Goldfein described the future as one of “multi-domain operations” where all weapons and military forces receive up-to-the-minute intelligence and are able to share that data, something that ABMS would make possible. “What I'm talking about is a fully networked force where Air Force paints a digital future where data from satellites play central role each platform's sensors and operators are connected,” said Goldfein. While the concept seems straightforward, putting it into practice is not. One of the challenges is how to handle the vast amounts of data available from satellites and the infrastructure required to bring this data to the ground, analyze the data and then transport it to where it's needed. Some of the crucial technologies that will enable ABMS or any similar efforts will come from the world of commercial space and cloud computing. The Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center has recognized this as it pursues a project called CASINO, short for Commercially Augmented Space Inter Networked Operations. CASINO is a spinoff of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Blackjack program that is attempting to demonstrate the military utility of small satellites in low Earth orbit. SMC has made CASINO one of its signature efforts to show how commercial technology could be used to process and distribute data from large LEO constellations. The Pentagon's Silicon Valley-based Defense Innovation Unit on Sept. 10 awarded a contract of undisclosed value to Ball Aerospace and Microsoft to demonstrate cloud processing capabilities in support of the CASINO project. The companies will have to show how simultaneous, worldwide data streams from large, distributed constellations of small satellites can be processed quickly using Microsoft's Azure cloud and Ball Aerospace algorithms. This is about making satellite data more actionable more quickly, Azure Global vice president Tom Keane said. One of the questions this project seeks to answer is “what would it take to completely transform what a ground station looks like, and downlink that data directly to the cloud?” Keane said. Perhaps one option is to place electronically steered flat panel antennas on the roof of a data center to connect multiple LEO satellites. Ball Aerospace algorithms in this project will process data streams from up to 20 satellites. With the data in the cloud, customers can direct it to where it's needed. Clearly, there is a long way to go to achieve what Goldfein calls the “Air Force That We Need” — one where all U.S. and allied forces are connected and get relevant information quickly. But you have to start somewhere. https://spacenews.com/air-force-paints-a-digital-future-where-data-from-satellites-play-central-role/

  • RTX's Pratt & Whitney receives sustainment contract valued up to $870 million for TF33 engines powering B-52s, E-3s

    16 novembre 2023 | International, Naval

    RTX's Pratt & Whitney receives sustainment contract valued up to $870 million for TF33 engines powering B-52s, E-3s

    This agreement is a culmination of the Defense Logistics Agency's decades-long partnership with the 448th Supply Chain Management Wing, Tinker Air Force Base, Okla., and Pratt & Whitney to establish...

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