26 décembre 2019 | International, Aérospatial
By: Nathan Strout
Congress wants the Air Force to develop a prototype receiver capable of using navigation signals provided by other countries, which could increase the resilience of the military's position, navigation and timing equipment.
The primary source of the military's PNT data is the Global Positioning System, a satellite system operated by the Air Force. But with adversaries developing GPS jamming technology and anti-satellite weapons that could potentially knock out one or more of those satellites, Congress wants a receiver capable of utilizing other global navigation satellite systems.
The annual defense policy bill, which was passed by both chambers of the legislature this week, calls on the Air Force to develop a prototype receiver capable of utilizing multiple global navigation satellite systems in addition to GPS, such as the European Union's Galileo and Japan's QZSS satellites. The belief is that if the GPS signal is degraded or denied, war fighters could switch to one of those other systems to get the PNT data they need.
According to Brian Weeden, director of program planning at the Secure World Foundation, the provision represents an evolution from the Department of Defense's stance on foreign GNSS signals from 15 years ago.
“When Galileo was first announced, there was a big debate within the Pentagon about whether to cooperate with the Europeans or try and kill it,” Weeden wrote to C4ISRNET in a Dec. 18 email. “The big driver there was that the Europeans were going to park their protected signal on top of M-code and then sell their service as being unjammable by the Americans (assuming that the US couldn't jam the protected Galileo signal without also interfering with M-Code).”
Efforts to kill Galileo ultimately died, Weeden noted, although the EU did move their protected GNSS signal off of M-Code, a more secure military version of the GPS signal that is in development. That concession and the subsequent development of GPS jamming capabilities by Russia and China has changed the thinking on Galileo and other GNSS signals.
“It seems the Pentagon has decided that leveraging Galileo will make their PNT capabilities more robust as Russia or China would need to jam both of the separate military signals,” said Weeden. “There's some engineering and technical wizardry still to be worked out to create a good multi-GNSS receiver but it's doable.”
Congress wants the Air Force to report on the benefits and risks of each potential GNSS signal, and it fences 90 percent of the funding for the Military GPS User Equipment Program until lawmakers receive that report.
14 novembre 2023 | International, Aérospatial
The U.S. drive to develop sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) using ethanol could be slowed because of growing opposition to proposed pipelines that would curb greenhouse gas emissions from ethanol plants by capturing carbon dioxide and carrying it away to other states for storage.
28 février 2020 | International, C4ISR
February 25, 2020 - Thales has been selected for the French Ministry for the Armed Forces “Defence Platform” project. This project, which serves all of the Ministry's users (military, civilian defense and affiliated personnel), enables the design, development in “agile mode” and the immediate production release of data-driven applications for new use cases, as well as their secure storage and exchange. Since 2018, the Ministry for the Armed Forces has been engaged in a digital transformation aimed at making routine tasks simpler for users, by offering them new online services accessible from desktop computers and mobile devices: equipment orders, tracking of benefits, annual leave and transfer requests, administrative forms, etc. In this context, the mission of the "Defence Platform" project of the General Directorate for Digital and Information Systems (DGNUM) is to support the Ministry's departments in defining the needs of its users, and in identifying, developing and pooling new technical resources to enable the implementation of new digital services, in a shared and controlled manner. This project will also support the development of the Socle Numérique de Défense (Digital Defence Base), whose piloting has been entrusted to the French Armament General Directorate (DGA) and the DIRISI. Following the "Defence Platform" call for tenders issued by the Joint Department of Infrastructure Networks and Information Systems (DIRISI), Thales was chosen to support the modernisation of the software development platforms. Under the agreement, Thales will deploy its “Athena software factory”, which is entirely based on open-source components from the software development environments set up by the Group's engineering department for its own in-house needs. The solution applies DevSecOps methods to support design and continuous integration for fast and secure software development. Thales will also provide its expertise in cloud environments, data protection technologies and secure communications. Finally, the Ministry for the Armed Forces will benefit from Thales's experience in agile project management, with Thales software developers working as part of integrated Ministry teams when appropriate. This project will thus support the design and rapid production release of new cloud-ready digital services, capable of running in the Ministry's future cloud environments, with guaranteed levels of security and trust for the Ministry and its users. View source version on Thales : https://www.thalesgroup.com/en/market-specific/critical-information-systems-and-cybersecurity/news/french-defence-ministry-chooses
29 octobre 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval
Mallory Shelbourne This post has been updated to include a new photo of the CH-53K from Sikorsky. The Navy has issued Lockheed Martin-owned Sikorsky a $550.4 million contract modification for the next lot of the Marine Corps' new heavy-lift helicopter. The Navy awarded Sikorsky the funds for six CH-53K King Stallions as part of lot 4 of the program's low-rate initial production phase, according to an Oct. 26 Pentagon contract announcement. “The production of this CH-53K helicopter represents a new era in capabilities, technologies, safety and mission flexibility for the U.S. Marine Corps,” Bill Falk, the CH-53K program director for Sikorsky, said in a statement. “Sikorsky is committed to supporting the Marine Corps to maximize the benefits of this all-new helicopter,” he added. “Pilots are already training on state-of-the art flight training devices to prepare in a safe, cost-effective manner for operational deployment.” The Navy anticipates Sikorsky finishing the work in July 2024, according to the announcement. USNI News previously reported that the Navy restructured the CH-53K test program to address technical deficiencies discovered on the test aircraft. Sikorsky and the Marine Corps announced the two had found a fix to one of the main problems – exhaust gas reingestion – in December 2019. The Navy decreased the number of aircraft it planned to purchase in the Fiscal Year 2021 budget request because it had not yet identified fixes to several technical problems. Lt. Gen. Steven Rudder, the former Deputy Commandant of the Marine Corps for Aviation, told the House Armed Service tactical air and land forces subcommittee earlier this year that the service was ready to increase the rate of production in hopes of bringing cost of the aircraft down. “The higher the numbers, the greater the learning curve from production,” Rudder told the panel of lawmakers at the time. “As we saw with F-35, as we ramp production, the cost curve comes down.” https://news.usni.org/2020/10/27/navy-issues-sikorsky-550-4-million-modification-for-6-ch-53ks