24 avril 2023 | International, Autre défense

Ukraine war spurs record global spending on military, Stockholm think tank says

Global military spending rose to a record last year as Russia's war in Ukraine drove the biggest annual increase in expenditure in Europe since the end of the Cold War three decades ago, a leading conflict and armaments think tank said on Monday.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-war-spurs-record-global-spending-military-stockholm-think-tank-says-2023-04-23/

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  • The US Navy, seeking savings, shakes up its plans for more lethal attack submarines

    23 avril 2019 | International, Naval

    The US Navy, seeking savings, shakes up its plans for more lethal attack submarines

    By: David B. Larter WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy is shaking up its plan for acquiring a new, much larger and more deadly version of its Virginia-class attack submarine it aims to start buying this year. The plan heading into this year was to start a contract on the 5th block of Virginias in October, beginning with an upgraded version of the block-four Virginia (a “straight-stick” Virginia), then the second boat in 2019 would be the first boat with the added with 84-foot section known as the Virginia Payload Module, designed to expand the Virginia's Tomahawk strike missile load-out from 12 to 40. The rest of the 10-ship buy was suppose to have the VPM, a move designed to offset the retirement of the four 154-Tomahawk-packing guided missile submarines in the mid-2020s. But the Navy is looking for savings and things have changed heading into the 2020 budget cycle. Instead of nine of 10 block-five Virginias being VPM boats, the Navy is proposing to Congress that they add a third Virginia in 2020, but the first boat will be another “straight-stick.” Then in 2021, the Navy will return to buying two Virginias, but the first boat again will be a straight-stick and the second will have VPM. All the block five boats, VPM and otherwise, will have acoustic upgrades. The net effect will be one fewer Virginia Payload Module in the block-five buy. Instead of nine of 10 boats in the buy having VPM, the Navy is proposing that eight of 11 boats have the VPM, deferring the VPM presumably to Virginia Block Six, which is slated to begin in 2024. The last-minute shuffling of the deck on Virginia, which includes pushing out VPM boats for which Congress had already appropriated advanced procurement money, shifts what was originally supposed to be the end of the straight-stick Virginias this year to buying one new straight stick a year for the next three years. This has raised concerns among those in the submarine building industry because of the potential for disruptions in the workflow at the yards, which is carefully planned out years in advance, and could even bleed over into the new, strategically vital Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine program. “Just like there is one rule in real estate (‘location, location, location'), there is one rule in building ships: Predictability, predictability, predictability,” said Dan Gouré, a former Bush Administration defense official and military analyst with the Arlington-based Lexington Institute. “And they are messing with that now, for the first time in quite a while. And that makes no sense.” The late changes have also affected the timeline for contract negotiations, and a source with knowledge of the details said a planned April contract date for block five is now unlikely. The date had already slipped from the beginning of the fiscal year in October, according to 2018 budget documents. The Virginia-class program has begun seeing creeping delays which the Navy acknowledged this year will likely be between four and seven months on each boat for the foreseeable future. The service says it has struggled to meet more aggressive construction timelines because of issues within the supplier base, which are causing delays. A spokesman for the Navy's research, development and acquisition office said he wouldn't comment on precisely what savings would be achieved with the strategy, citing ongoing negotiations, but said the move of a matter of competing priorities within the budget. He also said the changes in the VPM schedule were not part of ongoing supplier challenges. “To support the Navy's PB-20 request the decision to delay VPMs in FY-20 and 21 was based on competing requirements,” said Capt. Danny Hernandez, RD&A spokesman. “This was not based on any issues with shipbuilding or supply chain.” Added Wrinkle The third boat in 2020 also adds a wrinkle to the schedule. According to the Navy's justification books, the third boat will not start construction until 2023, which is the year before the service plans to buy a second Columbia-class boomer. That means the shipyards will be building three Virginias in 2023. The Virginia Payload Module strategy of continuing to buy straight-stick Virginias into 2021, ensures that General Dynamics Electric Boat and Huntington Ingalls Newport News will be building both straight sticks and Virginia Payload Module Virginia-class boats and the Columbia class simultaneously through 2026 and beyond, according to Navy budget documents. That will stress the yards and the supplier base, raising the risk that Columbia could run late, according to an industry source who spoke on background. “The juxtaposition of Virginia VPM and Columbia will be an added challenge for the shipyards,” the source said. “VPM and Columbia will have no learning curves when both projects are started. As we saw with Seawolf and Virginia (and every other first of a class ship the Navy has ever built) first ships are late and over cost. “Unfortunately, with the delay to the original program, Congress and the Navy have run the clock down, so there is no margin for Columbia to be late.” The mounting challenges within the submarine building enterprise prompted RD&A chief James Geurts to stand up a new program office specifically for the Columbia class, which was previously organized under Program Executive Office Submarines. Rear Adm. Scott Pappano is heading the new enterprise. “My concern was with Columbia being our No. 1 acquisition priority and all the other submarine activities we have going on, do we have enough leadership bandwidth available to oversee and run all those programs simultaneously?” Geurts said in an early March roundtable with reporters. “As I understand the challenges going forward, [I wanted to] get PEO-level support to that program as it starts ramping up. And I didn't want to wait for a crisis for that to occur; I wanted to make sure we are proactively working the program.” https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2019/04/04/the-us-navy-seeking-savings-shakes-up-its-plans-for-more-lethal-attack-submarines/

  • A human F-16 pilot will fight against AI in an upcoming contest

    10 août 2020 | International, Aérospatial, C4ISR

    A human F-16 pilot will fight against AI in an upcoming contest

    Andrew Eversden WASHINGTON ― An artificial intelligence algorithm will face off against a human F-16 fighter pilot in an aerial combat simulation in late August, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency announced Aug. 7. The simulation — the third and final competition in DARPA's AlphaDogfight Trials — will take place Aug. 20. The event will be virtual due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The AlphaDogfight Trials was created to demonstrate advanced AI systems' ability in air warfare. Eight teams were selected last year to participate in the final competition that runs from Aug. 18-20. The competition is also part of DARPA's Air Combat Evolution, or ACE, program, which was started in 2019, and seeks to automate air-to-air combat as well as improve human trust in AI systems to bolster human-machine teaming. “We weren't able to host the finals at AFWERX in Las Vegas as we'd originally planned with fighter pilots from the Air Force Weapons School at nearby Nellis Air Force Base,” Col. Dan Javorsek, program manager in DARPA's Strategic Technology Office, said in a statement. “We are still excited to see how the AI algorithms perform against each other as well as a Weapons School-trained human and hope that fighter pilots from across the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps, as well as military leaders and members of the AI tech community will register and watch online. It's been amazing to see how far the teams have advanced AI for autonomous dogfighting in less than a year.” The eight teams are Aurora Flight Sciences, EpiSys Science, Georgia Tech Research Institute, Heron Systems, Lockheed Martin, Perspecta Labs, PhysicsAI and SoarTech. On the first day of the competition, the teams will fly their respective algorithms against five AI systems developed by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab. Teams will face off against each other in a round-robin tournament on the second day, with the third day featuring the top four teams competing in a single-elimination tournament for the championship. The winner will then fly against a human pilot. “Regardless of whether the human or machine wins the final dogfight, the AlphaDogfight Trials is all about increasing trust in AI,” Javorsek said. “If the champion AI earns the respect of an F-16 pilot, we'll have come one step closer to achieving effective human-machine teaming in air combat, which is the goal of the ACE program.” https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/it-networks/2020/08/07/a-human-f-16-pilot-will-fight-against-ai-in-an-upcoming-contest/

  • Hacktivist Group Twelve Targets Russian Entities with Destructive Cyber Attacks

    22 septembre 2024 | International, C4ISR, Sécurité

    Hacktivist Group Twelve Targets Russian Entities with Destructive Cyber Attacks

    Twelve hacktivist group targets Russian entities with destructive cyber attacks, using public tools for maximum damage without financial gain.

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