6 juillet 2018 | International, Aérospatial

Study finds these gaps in Army’s small unit counter-drone capabilities

Army units at and below the battalion level are unprepared to defeat aerial drones and current plans can't keep up with rapidly evolving technology, according to a recent study.

Back in 2016, the Army Research Office asked an outside organization, The National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, to evaluate their counter drone capabilities for battalion and below operations.

The report they published earlier this year notes some significant gaps and threats to soldiers with this technology.

“Contrary to the past, when U.S. warfighters may have found (improvised explosive devices), now the IEDs will find our warfighters,” according to the report.

While the Army and Marine Corps, which also included representatives in the study, are throwing resources at the small drone problem, they are not keeping pace with the threat.

“Army time frames are significantly out of sync with the rapidly advancing performance capabilities of individual (small Unmanned Aerial Systems) and teams of sUASs,” according to the report.

The report noted that most of the service's counter drone asset work was focused on heavy vehicle platforms or on fixed sites, which leaves smaller units most likely to first encounter the threat more exposed.

“Significant quantities of man-portable” counter-drone systems have been fielded, Army spokesman Maj. Chris Ophardt told Army Times in an email. The Army will continue to pursue those capabilities based on emerging threats.

Based on his response, which did not include details of capabilities, the Army is pursuing other ways to defeat drones. A large portion of the study was classified, due to operational security concerns.

“Future Army C-UAS systems will encompass a variety of potential platforms to include fixed, mobile, and Soldier-portable capabilities,” Ophardt wrote.

But beyond the types of systems employed, what they're targeting or attacking also came under fire in the report.

The Army and other branches have invested significantly in counter-drone technology, “often focusing on detecting radio frequency transmissions and GPS signals of individual sUASs. However, today's consumer and customized sUASs can increasingly operate without radio frequency (command and control) links.”

Drones now available can use automated target recognition, tracking, obstacle avoidance and other software-enabled activities instead of traditional RF and GPS.

Ophardt did not divulge specifics of how the Army is addressing this, but responded that the service's counter drone capabilities, “include multiple methods in order to detect, identify and defeat enemy UAS.”

A new school began last month at Fort Benning, Georgia to give basic trainees familiarity with small drones. The drone school gives infantry and scouts the ability to fill out a seven-line report when they encounter a drone then relay that info to their headquarters.

The students use both fixed-wing and helicopter small drones. They also learn defensive tactics such as how to use dispersal and hiding tactics to minimize casualties from drone-coordinated fires, according to an Army release.

Those introductory tactics can help even brand-new soldiers start thinking about how to deal with drone threats.

But, at the same time, the low-level tactics currently used for counter drone work have tried to use “kinetic effects,” basically shooting down the drone by interfering with its signals or overheating its circuits.

The report noted that method isn't practical on a wide scale for large numbers of troops, especially dismounted units.

That path only adds more gear from the equipment to the batteries, to an already overloaded soldier, not to mention the “cognitive load” of training and using another piece of equipment, according to the report.

Ophardt responded that the Army's counter-drone strategy included “multiple methods” to detect, identify and defeat” enemy drones.

The major provided a similar response when asked about Army efforts at counter-drone tactics, capabilities against swarming drones and collaboratively acting drone groups, which the report remarks will be more prevalent and sophisticated as soon as 2025.

Report authors urge Army leaders to adjust their timelines for matching tech development, which are woefully inadequate for the exponential changes in software, hardware and drone capabilities.

Current Army time frames consider near-term planning to run from now until 2025; mid-term planning in the 2026 to 2035 window and far-term at the 2036 to 2050.

Those efforts mirror vehicle acquisition strategy timelines, not the drone arena.

The report pushes for a near-term planning of one to two years, mid-term at the three- to five-year level and far term in drone tech at the six- to eight-year range.

The advances are happening so quickly, authors point out, that it is “impossible to predict performance capabilities beyond eight years.”

https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2018/07/05/study-finds-these-gaps-in-armys-small-unit-counter-drone-capabilities

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18 janvier 2021 | International, Aérospatial

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Nathan Strout WASHINGTON — The Missile Defense Agency awarded L3Harris Technologies a $121 million contract to build a prototype satellite capable of tracking hypersonic weapons, the agency announced Jan. 14. Under the contract, L3Harris is tasked with building an on-orbit prototype demonstration for the agency's Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor, a proliferated constellation in low Earth orbit that is capable of detecting and tracking hypersonic weapons. The constellation is designed to fill the gap in the country's missile defense architecture created by hypersonic weapons, which are dimmer than traditional ballistic missiles, making them harder to see with the nation's infrared sensors based in geosynchronous orbit. In addition, they are able to maneuver around terrestrial sensors. With China and Russia developing these weapons, the Department of Defense is eager to develop a new constellation that can detect and track the threats anywhere in the world. And so is Congress — in December lawmakers set aside $130 million to fund the project. The HBTSS design solves the hypersonic weapon problem by placing the sensor much closer to the Earth's surface in the lower orbit, making it easier to see the threat. But because the sensors are closer to the Earth, they have a far more limited field of view than the sensors in geosynchronous orbit. In order to achieve global coverage, the Missile Defense Agency wants a proliferated constellation made up of dozens of satellites on orbit. L3Harris was one of four companies awarded $20 million contracts in 2019 to develop a prototype payload design and risk reduction demonstration for HBTSS, along with Northrop Grumman, Leidos and Raytheon Technologies. According to the initial contract announcements, work on those designs was due Oct. 31, 2020. With this most recent award, L3Harris has won the subsequent competition between the four companies to build the actual prototype. The company has also been selected to build satellites for the Space Development Agency that will track hypersonic threats and feed data to HBTSS. In October, L3Harris won a $193 million contract to build four of the agency's eight wide field of view (WFOV) satellites, with SpaceX building four more. According to Space Development Agency leaders, their satellites will work in conjunction with HBTSS satellites to track hypersonic threats. The WFOV satellites will provide initial detection and tracing of the weapons, passing custody from satellite to satellite as the threats traverse the globe. Then, the WFOV satellites will pass custody to the medium field of view HBTSS satellites, which can provide targeting solutions with their more accurate sensors. The WFOV satellites are scheduled for launch as early as September 2022. Work on the HBTSS prototype contract will be complete in July 2023. https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/space/2021/01/14/l3harris-to-build-prototype-satellite-capable-of-tracking-hypersonic-weapons/
11 mars 2022 | International, C4ISR, Sécurité

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7 novembre 2019 | International, C4ISR, Sécurité

Are banned Chinese cameras watching the US military?
By: Joe Gould WASHINGTON ― Amid news that thousands of banned Chinese-made surveillance devices are in use across American government installations, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., is asking the Pentagon to identify the Chinese gear in use at U.S. military facilities. In a letter to Defense Secretary Mark Esper made public Wednesday, Rubio said the Trump administration needs a comprehensive strategy to address the threats posed by foreign-sourced components and subcomponents. “The Department of Defense must act quickly to identify and remove this equipment as every day that passes only provides our adversaries additional time to infiltrate and exploit our national security networks as well as the ability to monitor U.S. military activities that may be of interest,” Rubio said. The letter comes after Forbes reported the government has made little progress complying with a legally mandated ban on Chinese surveillance tech. Government contractor Forescout found 3,500 devices from from telecom giants Huawei and ZTE, as well as surveillance camera-makers Dahua and Hikvision, on U.S. government systems a month before the ban was to take effect. Language in the fiscal 2019 National Defense Authorization Act banned the procurement of Chinese-produced cameras and associated electronics to ensure U.S. government installations are not at risk of surveillance by potentially malicious Chinese technology. The provision also prohibited the renewal of any contracts currently in use across the federal government. “As you continue to posture the Department of Defense in the era of great power competition, we must remain vigilant to attack from every possible source,” Rubio said in his letter to Esper. “I strongly urge you to implement a comprehensive and proactive approach meeting the requirements of the ban cited in the FY 2019 NDAA." Among other questions, Rubio's letter asked what steps the DoD has taken to address the NDAA's ban on procurement, whether the department has considered removing the technologies, and whether the future will bring further prohibitions on additional products or manufacturers. Rubio wanted to know whether the DoD has a way to purge nontraditional surveillance gear automatically. “How would you detect non-traditional IP-connected products, those beyond, if future prohibitions on such products materialize?" https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2019/11/06/are-banned-chinese-cameras-watching-the-us-military/

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Study finds these gaps in Army’s small unit counter-drone capabilities

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Défense Cyber Sécurité Marché Le Rapport 2022 Explore Les Profils Des Acteurs Clés Et Les Données De Vente Jusqu’en 2031