Thales développe un casque optimisé pour les hélicoptères militaires

Sur le même sujet

• 

  22 août 2018 | International, C4ISR

  What reduced size, weight and power mean on the battlefield

  Computers on the battlefield take a beating. Beyond the everyday wear and tear, they also must endure extreme temperatures and often violent vibrations. To help ensure its systems give soldiers and commanders the information they need, the Army relies on its Mounted Family of Computer Systems program. Known as MfoCS, pronounced em-fox, the program covers detachable tablets to fully-loaded, vehicle-mounted workstations. C4ISRNET spoke recently with Bill Guyan, vice president of business development for Leonardo DRS, about advances in battlefield computing. C4ISRNET: We hear a lot about a new emphasis on the hardening of security of contractors. And not just contractors, but primes, and then their contractors. Obviously this has become a point of concern for DOD leadership. Bill Guyan: One of the big areas of emphasis for the Army in the procurement of the [Mounted Family of Computer Systems] (MFoCS) and particularly MFoC2 II, were areas related to security, both from a cyber security standpoint and the ability to assure that the system was free from malware or any external threat. So there's a very comprehensive supply chain risk management strategy put in place and for this program we believe that this is the most secure edge computing system that the Army's ever purchased. It's absolutely critical that it be so, since ultimately there will be somewhere between a 100,000 and 125,000 of these systems fielded across the Army and Marine Corps, at the edge of the battlefield with each one of these systems serving as potential on ramp to the network and in an area of situational awareness that is absolutely mission critical. There was a time when we derived quick benefit from having an advantage and a capability that our opponents didn't. And over time the capability has evolved from a nice to have capability to a mission critical capability that we'd be hard pressed to fight without. C4ISRNET: The Army has put a lot of emphasis on size, weight and power. Can you explain how that manifests itself on the battlefield? Guyan: We optimize size, weight and power in two ways. At the hardware level we optimize by staying at the leading edge of available technologies, available commercial technologies and rapidly adapting and adopting them for employment in this mission critical extreme environment. The computers and displays are the soldiers' path to the network. It has to work at -40 centigrade and it has to work at 80 degrees centigrade. It has to work in extreme vibration and it has to work in contested EMI environments. It has to work all the time. For example, we led the charge in the adoption and fielding of solid state hard drives versus rotating media, which allowed us to not only improve the resiliency of the system, but also to reduce size, because we no longer have to isolate the rotating hard drive from the shock and vibration. We also migrated from the old backlight technology to an LED backlight, which is much more reliable, particularly in shock vibration at temperature extremes. But it also requires far less power. The other thing that we've been able to do is rapidly adapt the latest processor technologies when they're available. Of course, processors continue to get faster, smaller, and use less power. We're able to make sure that every generation of system can deliver more computing capability for less power, and less power means less heat. Full article: https://www.c4isrnet.com/show-reporter/technet-augusta/2018/08/21/what-reduced-size-weight-and-power-mean-on-the-battlefield/

• 

  1 septembre 2021 | International, Aérospatial

  So you want to fly a drone over a nuclear weapons lab'€¯'€¦

  U.S. authorities have issued a warning about the airspace over Los Alamos National Laboratory.

• 

  9 mai 2019 | International, Aérospatial

  Smart drones to command and launch smarter missiles

  By: Kelsey D. Atherton The future of war is a synergy in euphemisms, launched as a co-branding event. AeroVironment — maker of missile systems, including the one-way guided flying “switchblade” missile — announced May 7 that it is partnering with Kratos, maker of target and combat drones. The desired effect is cheap but smart drones to launch cheaper but smart missiles. It's an attempt at answering a question that has plagued the United States since the dawn of the jet age: As the costs of piloted craft go up, can anything be done to restore a numerical advantage in the sky? “AeroVironment tube-launched small unmanned aircraft and tactical missile systems to be integrated with Kratos high-speed, low-cost attritable drones to dramatically enhance situational awareness and system effectiveness,” reads the announcement. Switchblade is tube-launched, and it flies like a small unmanned aircraft up until the point where it hits its target and explodes. “Tactical missile system” is the formal term, though it's also known as a kamikaze drone or a suicide drone. Its flight time is too short to lump it in with the larger category of “loitering munitions,” but they're kindred spirits in function. As sensors got cheap and powerful and small, smart missiles with drone-like navigation systems became possible. The high-speed low-cost attritable drone made by Kratos is the Mako, an adaptation of the company's BQM-167 Aerial Target. Like the roughly $900,000 apiece target it's based upon, the Mako is designed to be cheap enough that it can be fielded in numbers and replaced without straining the Pentagon's budget. (In 2017, the combat-capable Mako was pitched as costing between $1.5 million and $2 million each. Not cheap in most senses, but relative to the going rate for a fifth-generation fighter, it's a bargain.) Taken together, the Switchblade and the Mako could be “attritable aerial assets,” flying things that are useful, but not so expensive that losing them drastically alters the ability of commanders to direct fights or of pilots to win them. Cheap and flying alone doesn't win much on its own; the craft have to prove that they can actually perform the tasks assigned them. Here, here is that crucial synergy. Kratos and AeroVironment are working together to see if the Mako can launch, communicate with and control Switchblades. The larger drone would serve as a node in a network between a human and the airborne munition. The exact location of control, between the drone and the flying munitions and the human directing them, is unclear. Would the Switchblades seek targets based on what the Mako's sensors could spot? Would that information get relayed to the human controller in time to approve of or call off the strike? These are questions that can be answered in the course of a development. If the combination of drone mothership and munition wingmates works, it could reduce the overall material cost of conducting an airstrike, while likely leaving unchanged the potential human toll. https://www.c4isrnet.com/unmanned/2019/05/08/smart-drones-to-command-and-launch-smarter-missiles