Pentagon re-awards multibillion-dollar office tools contract to CSRA

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  9 juillet 2022 | International, C4ISR

  British government clears sensitive Ultra Electronics sale to US-based Advent

  Media reports said U.S. officials had threatened to limit intelligence cooperation if the sale was blocked by London.

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  14 janvier 2019 | International, Terrestre, C4ISR

  What to look for in the upcoming Missile Defense Review

  By: Aaron Mehta WASHINGTON — The Pentagon's Missile Defense Review is in the final stages of pre-release, sources tell Defense News, after more than a year of release delays. The review, a congressionally mandated document looking at the status of America's missile defense capabilities, could be unveiled as soon as the next week, although it has yet to be briefed to Congress, sources say. And while there appears to be significant momentum to actually releasing the document soon, the release has seemed imminent in the past, only to be pulled back at the last minute. The document has been the focus of intense speculation from both the missile defense and nonproliferation communities, with a wide expectation that the document will call for investments in new missile defense technologies and, potentially, a notable change in America's missile defense posture toward Russia and China. For years, America has maintained that missile defense systems capable of defeating major strategic systems are being designed and deployed not at another great power, but only at rogue actors — chiefly Iran and North Korea — who might seek to strike at the U.S. or its allies. The National Security Strategy — the overall security guidance released by the Trump administration in late 2017 — underlines this thinking, stating that “the United States is deploying a layered missile defense system focused on North Korea and Iran to defend our homeland against missile attacks. This system will include the ability to defeat missile threats prior to launch. Enhanced missile defense is not intended to undermine strategic stability or disrupt longstanding strategic relationships with Russia or China.” But analysts, such as Thomas Karako of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, have argued that in an era of great power competition, as illustrated in the National Defense Strategy, it's foolish to lack a plan for defending American assets and allies against China and Russia. “For so many decades we've been standing there like Samson, pushing apart Russia and China on the one hand and missile defenses on the other, saying they're not related,” Karako said. “So in some ways, that implicit connection [from previous reviews] could become much more explicit and pursued more aggressively, and really it should be.” Citing a need to defend against Russian and Chinese weapons is simply stating a need to defend against a major challenger. But China particularly seems to grow as a concern year over year for the U.S. government; it's notable that acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan's message to his staff upon taking over the top job at the Pentagon was to focus on “China, China, China.” Members of the nonproliferation community, such as Laura Grego of the Union of Concerned Scientists, argue that the technology needed to ensure America can defeat a major nation's use of strategic weapons is so expensive and technically challenging that getting to that point will divert funding from better projects. That spending decision would also encourage potential adversaries to invest more, not less, in nuclear weapons to counter America's perceived missile defense improvements, the argument goes. “Even absent a specific policy to take on Russia and China more explicitly, planned missile defense plans continue to be made in patterns that Russia and particularly China will not be able to ignore,” she said. “Trying to counter China and Russia's strategic deterrent with missile defense is of course a fool's errand and gets us further from reducing nuclear weapons, not closer. I hope that wiser heads prevail.” It is important to differentiate between regional missile defense systems being placed to defend allies against Russia or China, and the bigger homeland defense mission, said Kingston Reif of the Arms Control Association. For example, based on congressional guidance, it is expected the review will include ideas for countering hypersonic weapons, a threat currently originating from only Russia and China. “If the review goes so far as to broaden the role of missile defense to defend the U.S. homeland against Russian and Chinese missile attack[s], that would mark a major and radical change in U.S. policy,” Reif said. “The United States, Russia and China aren't taking into account the concerns the others have about their offensive and defensive developments sufficiently seriously to avoid increased risks of instability.” Technical capabilities While the great power competition may be a key driver, it is unlikely to be the only new aspect of the report. Karako hopes to see a layout for how missile defense capabilities fit into America's overall deterrence strategy, noting: “All capabilities are finite. So how is it that finite active missile defenses can contribute to deterring a Russia or China?" “Everyone knows if they want to, they could overwhelm a given defense. But it really comes down to how do certain capabilities deter aggression, opportunism, limited strikes, all these kind of things,” he said. “So I'll be looking for the articulation of how it contributes to overall deterrence for ourselves and our allies.” He's also keeping an eye out for how the document defines “integrated” missile defense systems, and whether planners can avoid stovepiping capabilities. Reif, for his part, is looking to see if there are increases in the Ground-Based Interceptor force in Alaska and California, or the creation of an East Coast missile defense site. Technologically, the report is expected to push for so-called left-of-launch technologies — capabilities that can take out a potential missile threat before it even leaves the launcher. “If you can see it early, you can kill it early,” Gen. John Hyten, the head of U.S. Strategic Command, said in August. “Driving that equation to the left has huge operational advantages because to actually shoot down a missile that somebody launched that comes back down on their head, do you think they are going to shoot another one? I don't think so. They are not going to shoot another one because it's just going to come right back down on their head, and so they stop shooting. Isn't that the whole point?” It's also expected the MDR will call for investment in laser systems, with Michael Griffin, the Pentagon's research and engineering head, saying in November that “you're going to see in upcoming budgets for missile defense a renewed emphasis on laser scaling across several” technology areas. In addition, expect talk of a space-based layer for missile defense, although that may be primarily focused on sensors rather than intercept capabilities — at least for now. Asked about space-based interceptors, Reif said: “Like a zombie that can't be killed, the idea keeps coming back. Pursuing space-based interceptors would be unaffordable, technically dubious and highly destabilizing.” The document, as ordered by Congress, must include milestone targets for developing new capabilities. It requires statements of five- and 10-year programmatic goals for developing capabilities, “as well as desired end states and milestones for integration and interoperability with allies, and a statement on the role of international cooperation,” per congressional guidance. Getting the MDR published has proven to be a nearly Sisyphean task for the Trump administration. Pentagon officials originally said the document would be released in late 2017 — then February, then mid-May and then late in the summer. In September, John Rood, who as undersecretary of defense for policy is the point man for the MDR, indicated the report could come out in a matter of weeks. And in October, Shanahan, then the deputy secretary of defense, said the document had been done “for some time.” There is also widespread speculation in the missile defense community that the review has been delayed, at least in part because of the warmed relations between the Trump administration and North Korea. Notably, the mid-May time frame for release, which was floated by Shanahan in April, lined up President Donald Trump's planned meeting in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. While that meeting was canceled and then eventually happened in June, there was a sense the Pentagon did not want to do anything that could jeopardize those talks, such as releasing a report discussing how the U.S. could counter North Korean capabilities. https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2019/01/11/what-to-look-for-in-the-upcoming-missile-defense-review

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  29 octobre 2018 | International, Aérospatial

  KC-135s and C-130Js are the next aircraft to enter the Air Force’s data-driven maintenance program

  By: Jeff Martin The KC-135 refueling tanker and the C-130J airlifter will be the next two aircraft to be part of the Air Force's predictive maintenance program, part of the service's effort to do maintenance before airplanes break--and improve mission capable and availability rates, according to Air Mobility Command's logistics director. "The bottom line is to get to where we are scheduling all of our maintenance, rather than reacting to the maintenance,' said Brig. Gen. Steven Blaymaier, who oversees Air Mobility Command's logistics, engineering and force protection, in an interview at the 2018 Airlift Tanker Association symposium outside Dallas, Texas. “We want our units to achieve their mission-capable rates on a sustained basis.” According to the latest available data, from FY2017, the KC-135 fleet had, on average, a 74 percent mission capable rate, and the C-130J fleet had a 77 percent mission capable rate. As for the rest of the mobility fleet, by that same data, the C-5M fleet stood at 60 percent, the C-130H fleet was at 73 percent, and the C-17 fleet was at 84 percent mission capable. The concept, known as conditions based maintenance, has already been rolled out to the C-5 fleet within AMC, and the B-1 fleet in Air Force Global Strike Command. It uses algorithms based on reams of data to create models to predict when a part might break, rather than waiting for it to fail. Its a standard practice in the commercial aviation industry, and is now making its way into the Air Force. Blaymaier says the KC-135 fleet will join the program in spring of 2019, and the C-130J fleet will follow in the summer. Blaymaier also added that the other aircraft in AMC's fleet would be joining the program eventually, like the C-17 and KC-10. “They're all in work at their program offices right now,” he said. “What we learn from C-5 will be incorporated into the other aircraft.” Blaymaier also said the Air Force was modelling their effort after Delta Airlines's Tech Ops division's procedures, and that the service was at the beginning or “crawl stage” of the process. He also noted that Delta took “eight years” to get achieve the results they were looking for, and that the Air Force was working on that path. In September, Lt. Gen. Robert McMurray, commander of the Air Force Sustainment Center, told Defense News that the conditions-based maintenance program was critical to increasing the readiness of the Air Force's aircraft. "Given the aging fleet situation that we have, we probably need to be using data better to take care of it — which is a drive toward what most everyone right now is saying is the right way to manage fleet sustainment, which is through condition-based maintenance and data analytics,” he said at the time. Another benefit Blaymaier described was that the service will be able to track maintenance needs by individual aircraft, rather than by a general fleet-wide standard. That could reduce time in depots and increase mission capable rates, a top priority of senior Pentagon leaders. “As we move forward with conditions based maintenance plus (CBM+) and predictive analytics, we'll be able to know by tail number which parts are going to fail on certain aircraft," he said."It'll be much more surgical [and] operational." Blaymaier added that while the transition to conditions based maintenance might be a long journey, it would lead to huge benefits for the Air Force. “Ultimately we want to achieve those aircraft availability standards that we established for each of our fleets that are required to meet our wartime taskings,” he said. https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/airlift-tanker-annual/2018/10/27/kc-135s-and-c-130js-are-the-next-aircraft-to-enter-the-air-forces-data-driven-maintenance-program