22 décembre 2020 | International, Aérospatial

The Hornet Jumps

Marc Cook

December 21, 2020

Boeing has demonstrated yet another capability of the ever-young F/A-18 Super Hornet by proving it can “operate from a ‘ski jump' ramp, demonstrating the aircraft's suitability for India's aircraft carriers,” according to the company. India uses something called STOBAR, for Short Takeoff But Arrested Recovery, that uses a ramp-assisted takeoff relying only on the aircraft's thrust and benefiting from the ship's forward motion, combined with more conventional arresting methods for landing. It's said that STOBAR carriers are cheaper to build than those with powered catapults.

“The first successful and safe launch of the F/A-18 Super Hornet from a ski jump begins the validation process to operate effectively from Indian Navy aircraft carriers,” said Ankur Kanaglekar, India Fighter Sales lead for Boeing. “The F/A-18 Block III Super Hornet will not only provide superior war fighting capability to the Indian Navy but also create opportunities for cooperation in naval aviation between the United States and India.”

“This milestone further positions the Block III Super Hornet as a versatile next-generation frontline fighter for decades to come,” said Thom Breckenridge, vice president of International Sales for Strike, Surveillance and Mobility with Boeing Defense, Space & Security. “With its proven capabilities, affordable acquisition price, known low documented life-cycle costs and guaranteed delivery schedule, the Block III Super Hornet is ideally suited to meet fighter aircraft requirements of customers in India, North America and Europe.”

The demonstration is part of Boeing's sales pitch to the Indian navy, which has not chosen which fighter to purchase. It will be looking to add to its fleet of MiG-29K fighters and is considering both the F/A-18 and the Dassault Rafale. Also part of the pitch: “Boeing has strengthened its supply chain with 225 partners in India and a joint venture to manufacture fuselages for Apache helicopters. Annual sourcing from India stands at $1 billion. Boeing currently employs 3,000 people in India, and more than 7,000 people work with its supply chain partners.”

https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/the-hornet-jumps/

Sur le même sujet

  • New at the Paris Air Show

    17 juin 2019 | International, Aérospatial

    New at the Paris Air Show

    Airbus Vahana With urban air mobility a central theme of this year's event, Airbus is showcasing its growing fund of expertise, accumulated partly from the Vahana multirotor. Intended to be the first certified electric, self-piloted, vertical take-off and landing ( e VTOL) passenger aircraft, Vahana flew in the U.S. in January 2018, but did not demonstrate transition to forward flight until May 3 this year. The manufacturer is also developing a second design, the CityAirbus, but will place neither in production. Full artcile: https://aviationweek.com/paris-airshow-2019/new-paris-air-show

  • Microsoft Positions Itself To Win Space Data Market With Azure Orbital

    29 septembre 2020 | International, C4ISR

    Microsoft Positions Itself To Win Space Data Market With Azure Orbital

    KELSEY ATHERTON Offering Ground-Stations-as-a-Service means customers are only obliged to pay for the amount of time they actually need to use on the station. ALBUQUERQUE: Azure Orbital, the space-connections wing of Microsoft's cloud service Azure, launched last week. By offering Ground-Stations-as-a-Service, Microsoft wants to position itself as the bridge between the Pentagon and commercial satellites. Ground stations are vital infrastructure for satellite communication, the physical node that makes all the images and information they collect useful. With the advent of lower-cost satellites, and the expansion of small satellite constellations in low earth orbit, the space industry is moving away from a locked-in model, where specific vendors only grant access to their satellites through their ground stations. “Space is just so critical to everything we do here on earth,” says Frank Rose, a former assistant secretary of state for arms control who is now at Brookings. “Deploying additional capabilities, especially small satellites, in low earth orbit will definitely improve the resiliency of our national security space architecture.” Earlier this year, Microsoft Azure won the $10 billion JEDI contract for Pentagon cloud services. Offering Ground-Stations-as-a-Service means that the customers are only obliged to pay for the amount of time they actually need on the station. Cloud service providers already have a great deal of experience in flexible demand management and in processing the data received in their servers. That makes ground stations a natural outgrowth of existing cloud competences, the company argues. In June 2020, the Space Development Agency said that rentable ground stations make it easier for the military to piggy-back on existing commercial infrastructure. When it comes to constellations of small satellites, what companies are “trying to do is to optimize their processing architecture, trying to minimize how much compute you need to do on board because of the [Size, Weight and Power] constraints, which inevitably leads them to do more on the ground,” says Mikhail Grinberg, principle at Renaissance Strategic Advisors. Yet that principal doesn't apply evenly across all applications. “For some military applications, given resiliency requirements,” says Grinberg, “they're trying to do more networking processing on board, as opposed to having an open pipe that can be tapped into.” While Azure Orbital appears aimed at the space sector broadly, it is specifically cultivating ties to the Pentagon and the defense contracting community. Partners signed up at launch include Amergint, Kongsberg Satellite Services, Viasat, and US Electrodynamics, all of whom have long histories of working with the Pentagon. Of particular note is Azure Orbital's partnership with Kratos, a company already actively working to make low-earth-orbit satellite space viable for military applications. “Right now, the current national security space architecture is very vulnerable to other countries' Anti-Satellite capabilities, primarily China's and Russia's,” says Rose. “If we can proliferate this constellation of small satellites, we can improve the resiliency of America's national security space architecture.” The military is planning for low earth orbit satellites in the battle management layer, ones that will primarily be processing data on board, having access to commercial infrastructure through Ground-Stations-as-a-Service increases the likelihood that they can be used when needed. “For satellites in low earth orbit it might be days, three to four days before it's overhead again. That's the core problem,” says Brian Weeden of the Secure World Foundation. “One way you can solve that is by building a lot of ground stations.” “The more you have commercial guys doing infrastructure on the ground,” says Grinberg, “if you can partition the data right, you can provide more resiliency.” As part of its bid to build strong ties between Azure and the Department of Defense, Microsoft has specifically hired career professionals of the military and intelligence communities. In late, Azure hired Chirag Parikh from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. Parikh had previously served as the Director of Space Policy for the White House. William Chappell, CTO of Azure Global, announced Sept. 22nd that Azure Space had hired Stephen Kitay, former deputy assistant secretary of Defense for space policy, to head Azure's space industry division. It is, actively, a project to embed Microsoft in the infrastructure of orbit. By positioning itself as an intermediary between the space sector and its end users, Microsoft can become another almost-invisible piece of that same infrastructure. Azure Orbital would also offer Microsoft a greater role in other Pentagon satellite-based projects, like cloudONE and the Advanced Battle Management System. Being able to surge connections with sensors in orbits, on demand, makes space far more flexible for human commanders. “In the last 5 years, there's been a push from the military to move towards more common ground systems,” says Weeden. What remains to be seen is if the military will be comfortable with commercial companies operating those common ground systems, or if security concerns will instead preclude military traffic riding commercial channels. https://breakingdefense.com/2020/09/microsoft-positions-itself-to-win-space-data-market-with-azure-orbital/

  • How DoD is getting serious about artificial intelligence

    20 décembre 2018 | International, C4ISR

    How DoD is getting serious about artificial intelligence

    By: Mark Pomerleau Pentagon leaders have tapped Air Force Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan to serve as the head of a new center that will focus on the use of artificial intelligence in the Department of Defense, multiple officials confirmed to C4ISRNET. Shanahan's move to JAIC was first reported by Defense One. The appointment is part of a series of moves by the Department of Defense to get serious about the broader adoption of artificial intelligence as competitors make significant investments in the technology. Despite several efforts to use advanced algorithms and AI throughout the department, the Pentagon is creating the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) to synchronize these efforts and accelerate the delivery of AI capabilities. “Other nations, particularly China and Russia, are making significant investments in AI for military purposes,” Dana Deasy, the Defense Department's chief information officer, wrote in testimony to Congress Dec. 11. “These investments threaten to erode our technological and operational advantages and destabilize the free and open international order. The Department of Defense, together with our allies and partners, must adopt AI to maintain its strategic position, prevail on future battlefields, and safeguard this order.” Deasy, to date, has led JAIC and spearheaded the Pentagon's AI efforts. But Shanahan is expected to assume that mantle. Shanahan has been leading Project Maven, which sought to use AI and machine learning to more quickly process full motion video in the fight against ISIS. “Lt. Gen. Shanahan's appointment to run the Joint AI Center is a clear sign that DoD is taking artificial intelligence seriously,” Paul Scharre, senior fellow and director of the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, told C4ISRNET. “Shanahan has a proven track record of delivering success as head of DoD's Project Maven. The institutionalization and expansion of these early efforts into the new Joint AI Center, under Shanahan's lead, will help ensure that DoD is well-positioned to capitalize on the advantages of the AI revolution.” Deasy wrote in testimony that the department's AI approach has been directly influencing by Project Maven, which “has been successful in identifying and beginning to address key challenges with integrating AI into operations and has put in place an initial set of data, tools, and infrastructure for AI delivery, as well as initial templates for acquisition, testing and evaluation, operational assessment, and more.” The center will work to develop capabilities in the near-term while also complementing the efforts of the undersecretary for research and engineering in longer-term efforts, Deasy said. Deasy added that these efforts fall into two categories: national mission initiatives (NMI) and component mission initiatives (CMI). National initiatives are pressing operational or business reform challenges identified either from the national defense strategy's key operational problems or those identified by a specific military leader. These initiatives are completed by cross functional teams, made up of JAIC personnel and subject matter experts from across DoD on a rotational basis, Deasy said. CMIs are component level challenges, as opposed to larger national and strategic issues, that can be solved through AI. While the components will be responsible for identifying and implementing organizational structures to complete their projects, Deasy wrote that the AI center will help them identify, shape, and accelerate their AI deployments through the use of common tools, libraries, the cloud, best practices and partnerships with industry and academia. Currently, JAIC has about 35 staff members working on designing the initiatives, Rory Kinney, principal director for deputy chief information officer, information enterprise at DoD, said at an AFCEA-hosted event Dec. 4. Kinney added that the behind-the-scenes infrastructure for AI requires a software factory and equipment that allow these algorithms to learn. “There's got to be machine learning environment as well as a development environment together,” he said. “The intent is to take that secure DevOps solution set, embed it in JAIC, make it standardized within JAIC and generate that factory and that development.” Personnel in the CMIs and NMIs will be able to use the factories with the intent to standardize on it making it more interoperable and scalable, he added. As DoD moves to a production environment, this standardization will allow personnel to take that AI where they want. https://www.c4isrnet.com/c2-comms/2018/12/19/how-dod-is-getting-serious-about-artificial-intelligence

Toutes les nouvelles