6 février 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, C4ISR

The Navy's Surprise Unmanned Fighter Is a Glimpse of War's Near Future

In a surprise announcement, the U.S. Navy revealed on Tuesday that it had successfully flown tests involving unmanned versions of the EA-18G Growler electronic attack fighter. The tests involved a single manned EA-18G controlling two unmanned versions of the same aircraft, opening up the possibility that the U.S. Navy could fly armed unmanned aircraft sooner than originally thought.

The test, conducted by the U.S. Navy and Boeing, was undertaken by the U.S. Navy's flight test wing at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland. According to a C4ISRNET, a single EA-18G Growler controlled two unmanned Growlers in the air.

The test is notable for several reasons. One, the Navy was not known to be working on unmanned systems other than the MQ-25 Stingray, a future drone tanker set to join the fleet in the mid-2020s. Second, the ability to convert a manned fighter such as the EA-18G Growler into an unmanned aircraft was also previously unknown.

The EA-18G Growler is an electronic attack airplane. The EA-18 is based on the F/A-18F Super Hornet, has a crew of two, and is designed to escort Super Hornets on high risk air strikes. The Growler carries both a jamming pod designed to interfere with enemy radars and communications, preventing enemy air defenses from acquiring inbound aircraft and coordinating their attacks. The Growler also carries HARM anti-radar missiles, which detect the probing beams of enemy air defense radars and follow them to their source, destroying them. Without radars to guide them, many types of air defense missiles become unusable in combat.

The Growler's electronic warfare mission is particularly high risk, placing the jet and its crew between the strike fighters it escorts and enemy missiles. That makes it a good candidate for the unmanned mission, where the loss of an aircraft won't result in the loss of a crew.

The Growler and the Navy's main strike fighter, the Super Hornet, share 90 percent of their parts and systems. This makes it simpler to maintain both aircraft and allows the Growler to keep up with Super Hornets on missions. It also likely means that the Super Hornet can be unmanned, and possibly controlled by other Super Hornets.

This test also reinforces the Navy's seriousness about unmanned aviation. The service caught considerable flak in the 2010s after testing the X-47B unmanned aerial vehicle—and then promptly shelved it. The service greenlighted the new MQ-25 Stingray carrier-based drone, but made it a tanker instead of a fighter or strike aircraft. Now we know that there's been an interest in unmanned aviation all along. But instead of building new unmanned aircraft, the Navy decided to leverage its fleet of hundreds of manned aircraft, devoting resources into converting them into unmanned platforms.

Now it seems unmanned aircraft will almost certainly be an important weapon in the Navy's arsenal for future missions. Although drones can be controlled by crews on the ground on the other side of the planet, enemy electronic attack forces will be doing their best to interfere with U.S. forces, attempting to jam communications between a drone and its controllers. A manned aircraft could control multiple drones, providing instructions through unjammable short range communications.

For now, it's still important to have a human around.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a30771030/growler-unmanned-navy/

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    BAE Systems Wins Contract to Deliver and Manage Secure Networks Across Essential Government Agencies

    August 12, 2020 - The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has awarded BAE Systems a five-year $85 million contract1 to continue to develop, deploy, modernize, and maintain cross-domain solutions that allow for secure transfer of sensitive information between government networks. The work on the contract will enable the secure exchange of data—including streaming video, images and audio—to enhance mission collaboration. BAE Systems will also provide research, development, and evaluation of new technologies, including the integration of innovative artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200812005454/en/ “As the military cyberspace battlefield expands, we understand how critical it is that secure, innovative intelligence solutions are available to warfighting commands and combat support agencies to communicate safety and effectively,” said Pete Trainer, vice president and general manager of BAE Systems' Air Force Solutions business. “We are pleased to continue our long-standing partnership with the Air Force Research Laboratory and provide our expertise in high-assurance, cross-domain technologies to meet this new mission need. Our services will provide end-users access to virtual information and analysis faster, allowing them to make informed decisions quickly.” BAE Systems is a leading systems integrator supporting militaries, governments, and U.S. intelligence community members across the globe. The company's advanced technologies and services protect people and national security, and keep critical information and infrastructure secure across air, land, sea, space, and cyber domains. 1 This material is based upon work supported by the Air Force Research Lab under Contract No. FA8750-20-F-0007. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Air Force Research Lab. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200812005454/en/ (Photo: BAE Systems)

  • Le ministre des Armées confirme le Rafale F5 et le futur drone de combat pour l'AAE

    9 juin 2023 | International, Aérospatial

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  • Raytheon Unveils Platoon-Sized Infantry Combat Simulator

    4 décembre 2019 | International, Terrestre

    Raytheon Unveils Platoon-Sized Infantry Combat Simulator

    By Matthew Cox Defense contractor Raytheon has just unveiled a new virtual training simulator designed to immerse full platoons of soldiers at a time into realistic battlefield settings, where they can shoot enemy targets with individual weapons and even call in close-air support. Raytheon began showing off its new Synthetic Training Environment Soldier Virtual Trainer at the Interservice/ Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) in Orlando, Florida this week. The prototype system is Raytheon's attempt to satisfy the U.S. Army's need to create a synthetic training environment that dramatically increases the level of realism in training. "They need a way to get soldiers into the same virtual environments that they have had for tanks and helicopters for decades," Harry Buhl, lead investigator for synthetic training at Raytheon, told Military.com. "When you do that in an immersive, synthetic environment, you can go beyond the [live-fire] range -- you can put people soldiers into urban scenarios or into combat-type scenarios ... so you can stress them at a higher level and gain higher levels of proficiency." The Army recently told industry officials that it will begin seeking prototype solutions early next year designed to develop similar types of simulator training technologies. "We intend to compete for that opportunity," Buhl said. Currently, Raytheon is demonstrating its new soldier virtual trainer to simulate an observation post for two soldiers. But it can be configured for much larger units, Buhl said. "We can support up to a platoon ... that is something that the Army hasn't asked for. But the technology path that we have chosen allows us to actually do this for a platoon-sized unit over a large area. So we have the capability to do squad training or situational training exercises which we believe will be the next step as the Army goes down this path," Buhl said. The new trainer uses very high-quality graphics, similar to high-end games and relies on virtual-reality headsets and instrumented weapons, he said. "You can pick up a weapon, and the weapon is in that virtual environment," Buhl said. "When you put your cheek to the stock of that weapon, you have that same sight [picture] as you would in real life, but you are in a virtual environment." The trainer relies on commercially available tracking sensors, roughly two-inch cubes, that are spread out across any area, Buhl said. "The software package that we put behind them will link them together and make them smart enough to understand where you are in the environment so that you can be realistically replicated in the synthetic environment," Buhl said. "As you ... take a knee, go to the prone, you are doing the same things in that synthetic environment. "If you were training on a basketball court, you could put these things up in the rafters of the basketball court and just leave them there." Eventually, the sensor technology will be built into the headsets, so there will be no need for tracking sensors, Buhl added. One of the features the Army is looking for is the ability for soldiers to train for calling in artillery or close-air support, Buhl said, describing how Raytheon's simulator shows realistic training distances. "You are ... on a hilltop looking down the valley, you've got some threat vehicles few miles away," he said. "You have [Air Force] A-10s circling overhead; they come down and you control them and call in their attack, so that you can apply close-air support directly on those targets." The simulator also allows soldiers to engage enemy targets with individual weapons at realistic ranges, another feature on the Army's wish list, Buhl said. If soldiers are using a rifle with an effective range out to 500 meters "you can engage targets out to 500 meters," he said. The trainer will also allow units to train for scenarios involving checkpoints that could call for the need to escalate from using non-lethal devices to lethal force, Buhl said. The Army is now developing the Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS), a Microsoft-based headset that uses augmented reality to equip soldiers with a heads-up display allowing them to sight their weapon and view key tactical data. Scheduled to be ready for fielding in fiscal 2021, IVAS will also allow soldiers to train in synthetic training scenarios such as mission rehearsals before going on a live operation. Buhl said Raytheon used virtual-reality headsets because it "provides an immediate capability" the Army could take advantage of, but the system will be adaptable to work with augmented-reality headsets used with IVAS. "All of this is ... able to be packed up in a Pelican case and taken anywhere in the world," Buhl said. "It's also cloud-enabled, so if you did want to link into a networked training exercise with soldiers in another location, with tanks or helicopters that are in synthetic simulators, you could do all of that." https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/12/03/raytheon-unveils-platoon-sized-infantry-combat-simulator.html

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