6 mai 2020 | International, C4ISR

The Key To All-Domain Warfare Is ‘Predictive Analysis:’ Gen. O’Shaughnessy

By THERESA HITCHENS
on May 05, 2020 at 3:23 PM

WASHINGTON: Northern Command head Gen. Terrence O'Shaughnessy says the key to winning tomorrow's all-domain wars is predicting an adversary's actions — as well as the impacts of US military responses — hours and even days in advance.

The capability to perform such “predictive analysis” will be enabled by the US military's Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) initiative for managing high-speed battle across the air, land, sea, space and cyber domains,” he told the Mitchell Institute yesterday evening in a webinar.

“We see JADC2 is absolutely core to the way we're gonna defend the homeland,” O'Shaughnessy enthused. “And the part that I think is going to be so incredibly game-changing is the ability for us to really use predictive analysis and inform our decisions going into the future.”

“That's, to me, what JADC2 is going to do: it's going to inform our decision-makers, it's going to help them make decisions that, like playing chess, are thinking about two or three moves downstream,” he added. “It's going to give the decision-makers, at the speed of relevance, the ability to make really complex decisions.”

NORTHCOM was a key player in the Air Force's first “On Ramp” demonstration in December of technologies being developed under its Advanced Battle Management System effort, which the service sees as a foundation for JADC2. O'Shaughnessy said he is excited that NORTHCOM will be expanding its participation in the next demonstration, now slated for late August or early September having been pushed back from its original April data due to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.

O'Shaughnessy said JADC2 also will be critical for providing much-needed improvements to domain awareness in the Arctic. The US military has to “put together a bigger ecosystem for sensing” rather than relying on “traditional stovepiped systems” in the High North, he explained. That ecosystem needs to fuse information from as many systems as possible — from submarines patrolling beneath the icy waters to ground-based radar to long-endurance unmanned drones to future sensors based on large constellations of Low Earth Orbit satellites — which is exactly the goal of JADC2.

“We have to continue to work on our ability to see the approaches to our homeland and understand what what is there and be able to react to it,” said O'Shaughnessy, who also is the commander of NORAD.

As Breaking D readers know, the US military is turning an increasingly worried eye toward the Arctic where Russia and China both have begun to covet as a future zone of economic wealth as the Earth's climate opens shipping routes and expands access to undersea oil.

O'Shaughnessy said he sees three areas where more investment is required to up the US military's game in the Arctic: communications, training, and infrastructure.

Communications at northern latitudes is a particular struggle due to the difficulties of laying fiber optic cable in the harsh terrain, and the paucity of satellite coverage in the region. This, he said, is why NORTHCOM is extremely interested in the potential for so-called proliferated LEO satellite constellations. — both those currently being built by commercial firms and any future military networks.

As Breaking D readers are well aware, DoD's Space Development Agency is planning a multi-tiered network of satellites in LEO that includes “data transport” satellites to allow faster communications between satellites and air-, land- and sea-based receivers that Director Derek Tournear sees as integral to JADC2.

DARPA also is experimenting with proliferated LEO architectures under its Blackjack program, which plans 20 satellites using various buses and payloads to test their capabilities by the end of third-quarter 2022. DARPA late last month selected Lockheed Martin to undertake Phase 1 satellite integration of satellite buses with payloads and the central Pit Boss C2 system under a $5.8 million contract. SEAKR Engineering announced on April 28 that it had been granted a sole source Phase I, Option 2 contract (under a three-phased program plan) to develop a Pit Boss demonstrator, beating out two other teams led, respectively, by BAE and Scientific Systems.

“One of the things we find is after you get above about 65 degrees or so north, some of our traditional means of communications really start breaking down,” he said, “and once you get closer to 70, almost all except for our most exquisite communications capability really starts to break down. And so we see a need to relook our ability to communicate in the Arctic” — with proliferated LEO “one of the best approaches.”

“If you look at some of the companies out there doing incredible things, we see that as a solution set to allow us to communicate in the Arctic in the relatively near future, and that will be critical,” he added.

https://breakingdefense.com/2020/05/the-key-to-all-domain-warfare-is-predictive-analysis-gen-oshaughnessy

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6 décembre 2019 | International, Naval

Coast Guard to Re-Compete Multi-Billion Dollar Offshore Patrol Cutter Contract
By: Ben Werner This post was updated to accurately reflect the size of the Offshore Patrol Cutter contract the Coast Guard is re-competing. An earlier version of this post included an incorrect number of hulls included in the re-compete. The Coast Guard is recompeting its potentially $10.5 billion Offshore Patrol Cutter contract because the program risks falling fatally behind schedule due to hurricane damage to the shipyard initially awarded the contract. The program has already slipped nearly a year behind schedule and could cost an additional $659 million to finish just the first four OPCs contracted to Eastern Shipbuilding Group as part of a nine-hull deal awarded in 2016, according to a recent Congressional Research Service report. To reign-in costs and try getting the program back on schedule, the Coast Guard is now taking the extraordinary measure of recompeting the entire contract for OPC hulls five through 25. The 25-hull OPC fleet is intended to replace the Coast Guard's current fleet of 29 medium-endurance cutters, some of which were built during the Vietnam War. The Coast Guard previously set a target cost of $310 million per cutter. The service is asking potential bidders to provide analysis comparing their anticipated costs with this target for building the six OPCs Friday is the deadline for contractors to provide comments on an OPC industry studies statement of work. The study, along with an industry day scheduled for next Wednesday, is intended to give the Coast Guard an assessment of the technical effort, cost risks and schedule risks associated with recompeting the OPC contract. “These activities will provide fresh insight into the current state of the shipbuilding industrial base and inform the Coast Guard's way forward on a re-compete strategy to complete the OPC program of record,” Brian Olexy, the communication manager for the Coast Guard Acquisition Directorate, told USNI News in an email. The Coast Guard intends to purchase up to 25 OPCs making this the service's largest acquisition program. However, the current prime contractor, Panama City, Fla.-based Eastern Shipbuilding Group, is having a hard time fulfilling the contract due to damage caused in 2018 by Hurricane Michael. Eastern Shipbuilding officials could not be reached for comment at the time of this post. In September 2016, the Coast Guard awarded Eastern Shipbuilding Group a contract to build the future USCGC Argus (WMSM-915) with options to build up to nine OPCs. Eastern beat General Dynamics Bath Iron Works and Bollinger Shipyards to land the design and construction contract. The average purchase cost for OPCs is about $421 million per ship, according to the CRS report. The first OPC, Argus, was funded in Fiscal Year 2018. The second OPC, the future USCGC Chase (WMSM-916) and long-lead-time materials for the third OPC were funded in the FY 2019. Eastern Shipbuilding was just about to start building Argus and was gathering materials to start building Chase when Hurricane Michael hit the Florida panhandle, USNI News reported in October 2018. Workers evacuated from the area and were slow to return. When they did, many took jobs rebuilding nearby Tyndall Air Force Base, which also suffered substantial damage from the hurricane, according to a statement released by Sen. Marco Rubio (R.-Fla.). Rubio supported a plan to modify Eastern Shipbuilding's contract with the Coast Guard. In October, the Coast Guard asked Congress for extraordinary relief from the contract, on behalf of Eastern Shipbuilding. The Coast Guard plan would allow Eastern Shipbuilding to continue building the first four OPCs but would move forward with seeking new bidders to build out the fleet, Adm. Karl Schultz, the commandant of the Coast Guard, said during an event co-hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the U.S. Naval Institute. Lawmakers, though, did not sound too receptive to the plan. Congressional leaders detailed their concerns in a bipartisan letter to the Coast Guard sent Nov. 25, from Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.); the chair of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure; ranking member Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.), Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), chair of subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation; and ranking member Rep. Bob Gibbs, (R-Ohio). “We are skeptical that such truly extraordinary relief is justified given that this ‘crisis' was foreseeable and mostly avoidable. Further, we are concerned that this relief sets a damaging precedent that any current or future contract with the United States Coast Guard (Coast Guard or Service) could be renegotiated outside the Federal Acquisition Regulations,” their letter states. The lawmakers are concerned the Coast Guard and Department of Homeland Security focused on “exploring options to resuscitate [Eastern Shipbuilding Group] and prevent it from defaulting on the OPC contract without first completing a transparent and objective alternative analysis.” The chief lobbyist for Eastern Shipbuilding is former commandant of the Coast Guard, retired Adm. Robert Papp, who joined the company shortly after being awarded the initial OPC contract. Papp is the first Washington lobbyist hired by Eastern Shipbuilding, according to a company statement. “The veil of secrecy regarding its analysis and the absence of any meaningful consultation by the Coast Guard and DHS with the Committee, provides us scant confidence that any revised OPC contract will not encounter a similar fate as the original contract,” the congressional letter states. https://news.usni.org/2019/12/05/coast-guard-to-re-compete-multi-billion-dollar-offshore-patrol-cutter-contract
12 août 2020 | International, C4ISR, Sécurité

Pentagon requests 30-day extension for re-awarding JEDI
Andrew Eversden WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Defense has requested 30 extra days to review vendor proposals as it prepares to make another award decision for its massive enterprise cloud contract, according to a Monday night court filing. The DoD is currently reviewing new revised proposals for its Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract, which it awarded to Microsoft over Amazon Web Services in October last year. In the filing, the DoD said that it “recently identified the need to reopen limited discussions related to certain aspects of the offerors' pricing proposals.” The request, made in the Court of Federal Claims, is yet another delay for the controversial JEDI cloud. The department was supposed to re-award the contract by Aug. 17 after receiving a 120-day stay to take corrective action on the contract. It's now asking to delay that decision to Sept. 16. “During the remand, DoD has identified areas of concern with respect to the revised proposals received from both offerors, resulting in multiple solicitation amendments, rounds of proposal revisions, and exchanges with the offerors,” the court filing said. AWS, which filed the protest late last year in the Court of Federal Claims after losing the contract, argues that the department made several technical errors while evaluating its proposal and also accuses President Donald Trump of political interference in the contract. AWS does not oppose the Pentagon's new motion, the court document said. In late July, DoD CIO Dana Deasy told reporters that the DoD would “probably sometimes towards the very end of August, barring any last minute, unforeseen additional issues that are raised.” The court filing says that the department “anticipates” that the re-evaluation process will wrap up in early September. The JEDI cloud has been delayed continuously throughout the entirety of the procurement process. Last year, the initial award decision was delayed for months due to a pre-award protest by Oracle. Earlier this year work on JEDI was further delayed when the court placed a temporary restraining order on any work on the JEDI cloud, finding that AWS was “likely to succeed” in proving DoD erred in the evaluation process. https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/it-networks/2020/08/11/pentagon-requests-30-day-extension-for-re-awarding-jedi/
17 avril 2020 | International, Terrestre

Great Britain procures Rheinmetall Mission Master – Cargo
April 16, 2020 - Her Majesty's Armed Forces have ordered four Rheinmetall Mission Master robotic vehicles. Configured for transporting cargo, these unmanned ground vehicles will form part of the United Kingdom's Robotic Platoon Vehicle programme. This programme is designed to determine the extent to which unmanned vehicles can boost the combat effectiveness and capabilities of dismounted troops at platoon level. The four Mission Master – Cargo vehicles will be delivered throughout the spring of 2020. In addition, the scope of supply comprises two stretcher systems that can be integrated into the cargo vehicle in just 60 seconds. The order, which was placed at the end of 2019, also includes training and service support, as well as spare parts. The vehicles will be supplied by Rheinmetall Canada, with Rheinmetall BAE Land Systems providing on-location support services in its capacity as cooperation partner. Robotics is already changing the modern battlefield. A modular unmanned ground vehicle (UGV), Rheinmetall's new Mission Master enhances the combat performance of soldiers deployed on the ground in numerous ways. The Mission Master's artificial intelligence and robotic brawn mean that it can execute a multitude of dull, dirty, and dangerous tasks that troops would otherwise have to perform themselves, letting them get on with the most important thing of all: their core mission. The Mission Master – Cargo system reduces the combat load soldiers have to carry, boosting their mobility and efficiency. Its flexible stowage concept and robust design let the Mission Master – -Cargo shoulder a payload of up to half a ton of supplies, tactical kit, or medical equipment Ready for action, the Mission Master can operate in autonomous or semiautonomous mode as a fully-fledged member of the combat team. The Mission Master platform is designed for maximum flexibility, and can be readily adapted for a wide variety of different missions thanks to modular build-ons specially engineered for quick installation. Potential applications include surveillance, protection, evacuation of casualties, firefighting, and CBRN reconnaissance and detection. It can also serve as a mobile radio relay station. Speed, scalable autonomy, and proven high mobility in all types of terrain combine to make the amphibious Mission Master a powerful, highly reliable comrade of dismounted forces operating in small groups. View source version on Rheinmetall : https://rheinmetall-defence.com/en/rheinmetall_defence/public_relations/news/latest_news/index_23616.php

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