3 septembre 2019 | International, Naval
By Matthew Cox
Marine infantrymen may soon be able to see through the floor of an MV-22 Osprey and track terrain features as they approach their attack objective.
It sounds like science fiction, but Marine Lt. Col. Rory Quinn of the Pentagon's Close Combat Lethality Task Force says it could become reality if the Marine Corps decides to field the Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS), a sophisticated Microsoft technology that the Army is developing to give soldiers a new level of situational awareness in combat.
In October, the Army will hold its second round of soldier evaluations, known as Soldier Touch Points, on what will eventually consist of a special set of tactical glasses that will display a soldier's weapon sight reticle and other key tactical information they will take into battle.
Army officials say IVAS will be ready for initial fielding in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2021.
Quinn said he sees IVAS as key to transforming Marine and Army infantry into a fifth-generation fighting force similar to the way fighter aircraft such as the F-35 Lighting II have evolved into fifth-gen technology.
"Effectively, we have a third-generation infantry," Quinn told an audience Tuesday at the iFest 2019 symposium, put on by the National Defense Industrial Association.
The lethality task force was stood up in 2018 by then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis with the goal of resourcing the U.S. military's close-combat forces to become far more deadly than they are today.
"In the MV-22, the windows are [not that big] so if I am lucky, I am next to one and ... I can see ... the river path and I can see that we went on this side of the river, so that confirmed that we went in the right direction," Quinn said. "But the F-35 pilot has cameras on the outside of the airplane and looks through the floor of the airplane. ... He can look through the wing and see someone who is down low at six o'clock on his right flank.
"IVAS is coming, and it's going to create an F-35 [technology] for grunts, so I will simply look through the skin of the aircraft and see that I have turned 180 degrees out. I otherwise wouldn't be able to see that, and it creates chaos," he added.
The Marine Corps has not committed to IVAS, but officials at Marine Corps Combat Development Command, Combat Development and Integration, "are watching the [Soldier Touch Points] and watching to see how the results occur versus what the metrics had to be" on the system, Quinn said.
Roughly 50 Marines participated in the first Soldier Touch Point and the same number of Marines will likely be involved with the second evaluation in October, he said.
"The Marines often follow and trace the Army -- let the Army do the research and development," Quinn said.
The Army awarded a $480 million contract to Microsoft in late 2018 to develop its HoloLens technology into IVAS. The system is also being designed to provide soldiers with a synthetic training environment that will feature enemy avatars capable of learning soldier tactics so training scenarios are never the same, Army officials say.
1 juin 2021 | International, Naval
Budget justification documents released by the Navy on May 29 list the Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC) and the Supersonic Propulsion Enabled Advanced Ramjet (SPEAR) demonstrators as candidates for the Offensive Anti-Surface Warfare (OASuW) Increment II program.
9 mai 2019 | International, Aérospatial, C4ISR
(CIO Mag) – L'avionneur français affiche plus que jamais sa détermination à ouvrir davantage les données géospatiales, les images satellites et les algorithmes aux start-up et développeurs. Objectif : les aider à développer leurs propres services et de les vendre. Pour ce faire, Airbus a officialisé cette semaine le lancement à Berlin d'une plateforme dédiée et dénommée UP42. Selon le site des « Echos » qui donne l'information, le groupe français a mobilisé une trentaine de personnes au sein de cette filiale. Laquelle doit permettre à la société de surfer sur un marché de l'imagerie satellitaire en pleine expansion à l'heure actuelle et évalué à plusieurs dizaines de milliards d'Euros. https://cio-mag.com/democratisation-de-lacces-des-developpeurs-aux-images-satellites-airbus-lance-une-plateforme-dediee/
29 juillet 2020 | International, Terrestre
By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army is still considering two different paths to build prototypes for its future long-range assault aircraft following an industry day earlier this month, but is pushing toward a contract award in fiscal 2022, according to the service's FLRAA program manager. While the Army continues to sift through industry feedback to help it choose a route, the service remains on track to publish a draft request for proposals by the end of the year, followed by a finalized RFP in FY21, Col. David Phillips told reporters July 24. The Army chose Bell and Lockheed Martin's Sikorsky to enter into a competitive demonstration and risk reduction effort ahead of the start of the FLRAA program of record. The service is on a tight timeline to field a brand-new, long-range assault aircraft by 2030. The CDRR effort will consist of two phases that will last roughly one year each. Bell and a Sikorsky-Boeing team respectively designed, built and flew technology demonstrator aircraft as part a Joint Multi-Role Technology Demonstration phase prior to entering the CDRR effort. The companies will deliver initial conceptual designs, an assessment of the feasibility of requirements and trade studies using model-based systems engineering. “Due to the success of phase one (awarded on 16 March) the Army is looking at the scope of a second phase which would refine the digital designs from the system to subsystem level and further burn down risk as FLRAA enters into the [program of record,” Phillips said in a written statement to Defense News on July 27. The Army provided two schedules to get through the design and prototyping phase in an RFI in May to gain industry feedback. The first schedule lasts 52 months, putting the end of the prototyping period somewhere in the ballpark of early summer 2026. The schedule allows for a preliminary design review for just the air vehicle from the winning team — picked in the second quarter of FY22 — eight months after the contract award. The team would then have another preliminary design review for the weapon systems 17 months past contract award, which roughly falls around August 2023. The Army would hit the engineering and manufacturing development phase around October 2023, followed by a critical design review in early 2025. The first prototype would be delivered in the summer of 2025, with five more prototypes delivered through the summer of 2026. The alternative schedule would allow for a preliminary design review for both the air vehicle and the weapon systems at the same time at roughly 10 months following a contract award. This approach aims to get to an engineering and manufacturing development decision around March 2023. A critical design review would follow at the start of 2024, with a first prototype delivery expected around February 2025. All six prototypes should be delivered to the Army by roughly March 2026. The total time frame for the second option is 48 months post contract award. While the difference in schedules is just roughly four months, every week counts as the Army works to field new capabilities as fast as possible. Army leaders have often said that schedule is king when it comes to fielding the service's top modernization priorities. FVL is the third-highest priority, preceded only by a Next-Generation Combat Vehicle and Long-Range Precision Fires. The Army is driving toward entering a production and deployment phase in 2028 ahead of the first unit receiving the aircraft in 2030. “We believe FLRAA's design and requirements approach is inverting the defense procurement paradigm. Our approach gives the Army multiple opportunities to optimize requirements through digital engineering prior to entering the design, build, and test of the weapons system,” Phillips told Defense News. “Making informed decisions on requirements through design optimization will enable the Army to ensure FLRAA capabilities are affordable; meet [Multi-Domain Operations] requirements; and deliver on an aggressive schedule that does not sacrifice rigor for speed.” Multi-Domain Operations is the Army's war-fighting doctrine designed to operate and fight against anticipated future adversaries across land, sea, air and cyberspace Bell and Lockheed are also competing head-to-head to design and build the Army's future attack reconnaissance aircraft, which will follow a nearly simultaneous schedule as the FLRAA competition. https://www.defensenews.com/land/2020/07/28/army-still-mulling-different-paths-to-build-long-range-assault-helo-prototypes/