U.S. Army Orders Additional Enhanced CH-47F Block II Chinooks

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  13 octobre 2021 | International, Terrestre

  Robot Dogs Now Have Assault Rifles Mounted On Their Backs

  Robot dogs have been met with equal parts fascination and fear by the public, but their utility for military applications is becoming undeniable.

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  24 juillet 2018 | International, C4ISR

  Marines Test New Drone Swarms a Single Operator Can Control

  By Gina Harkins One Marine could soon dispatch more than a dozen drones to jam enemy communications and take out targets -- all from a single handheld tablet. The Marine Corps Warfighting Lab has successfully tested the ability to have a single Marine operate six drones in the air simultaneously. The goal is to get that up to 15 and to see the small unmanned systems stay in the air for hours at a time. "What we're looking at is ... minimal operator burden so [a Marine's] face isn't down in a tablet," said Capt. Matt Cornachio, a fires project officer with the Warfighting Lab's science and technology division. "It's sort of having the machines do the work for you, so you give them intent and they operate." That could help ground troops in remote or hotly contested locations augment 60mm mortar fire with precision strikes. Cornachio said they're looking for drones with a host of potentials, including swarming, automatic-target recognition, kinetic-strike and electronic-warfare capabilities. "Your swarm is multifaceted so you have several warheads that hold their own capabilities in that cloud," he said. "... We see the precise nature of loitering munitions to augment company-level fires." In order to carry out a range of missions -- from delivering explosives to jamming communications, the Marine Corps is on the hunt for drone swarms that can stay in the air for hours. The Warfighting Lab held a drone-endurance test in the desert this month, Cornachio said, during which one unmanned aircraft flew for nearly two hours straight. "It's not out of the realm of possibility that these things could be in the air for three or four hours, so the smaller, the better," he added. Getting to the point where one Marine controls a swarm of drones is a big change from unmanned systems like the Switchblade, which required one operator per drone. That kamikaze-style drone delivers a payload equivalent to a 40mm grenade. The Warfighting Lab's efforts are part of a larger Marine Corps strategy called Sea Dragon 2025. Marines are experimenting with drones, self-driving vehicles, robotics and other technology that can limit their exposure in the field. The use of unmanned technology could be especially beneficial in complex urban environments, said Brig. Gen. Christian Wortman, head of the Warfighting Lab. "We can use manned-unmanned teaming and unmanned systems to take on some of the most dangerous tasks that Marines are executing in that kind of an urban environment," he said. https://www.military.com/defensetech/2018/07/23/marines-test-new-drone-swarms-single-operator-can-control.html

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  3 septembre 2019 | International, Naval

  These Tactical Glasses Could Give Marine Grunts an F-35 Pilot's View of the Battlefield

  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. https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/08/30/these-tactical-glasses-could-give-marine-grunts-f-35-pilots-view-battlefield.html