30 novembre 2020 | International, C4ISR

US Army solicits bids for new cryptographic technologies

by Carlo Munoz

The US Army is soliciting industry proposals to develop new cryptographic technologies, designed to ensure secure and compartmentalised communication capabilities in the wake of rapidly advancing cyber warfare and electronic warfare threats to those operations.

The proposals being sought by the service's Program Manager Tactical Radios (PM TR), under Program Executive Office Command, Control, Communicate – Tactical (PEO C3T), will assist in the development of the advanced variant of the Next Generation Load Device-Medium (NGLD-M). Army officials anticipate developing and fielding a maximum of 265,000 NGLD-M units, at an estimated cost of USD850 million, according to the service's 18 November request for proposals (RFP).

The new NGLD-M systems will replace the army's more than decade-old fleet of Simple Key Loaders (SKLs), which are designed to transfer, issue, fill, and manage electronic cryptographic keys to highly sensitive End-Cryptographic Units (ECUs), used by combat units to transmit and receive secure communications transmissions.

Designed to meet the Type 1 cryptologic standards for secured data transmissions established by the National Security Agency (NSA), the NGLD-M will provide “the functionality of legacy fill devices while providing network connectivity to support Over the Network Key (OTNK) distribution”, the RFP stated. The new NGLD-M will also provide end users with a “reprogrammable crypto subcomponent to meet future modernisation requirements”, it added.

“The NGLD-M will enable delivery of the strongest NSA-generated cryptographic keys to tactical, strategic, and enterprise network systems operating from secret to the highest levels of security classification,” according to a PEO C3T statement, issued shortly after the RFP's release.

https://www.janes.com/defence-news/news-detail/us-army-solicits-bids-for-new-cryptographic-technologies

Sur le même sujet

  • DARPA, BAE to develop AI for interpreting radio-frequency signals

    28 novembre 2018 | International, C4ISR

    DARPA, BAE to develop AI for interpreting radio-frequency signals

    By Stephen Carlson Nov. 27 (UPI) -- BAE Systems has been selected by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to develop machine learning algorithms to decipher radio frequency signals for protection against enemy hacking and jamming attempts. DARPA is awarding BAE $9.2 million for machine learning algorithm development, the company announced on Tuesday, which will build off of adaptive technology that has already been applied to face- and voice-recognition systems and drones operating autonomously for RF signal processing. "The inability to uniquely identify signals in an environment creates operational risk due to the lack of situational awareness, inability to target threats, and vulnerability of communications to malicious attack," Dr. John Hogan, product line director of BAE Systems Sensor Processing and Exploitation division, said in a press release. "Our goal for the RFMLS program is to create algorithms that will enable a whole new level of understanding of the RF spectrum so users can identify and react to any signals that could be putting them in harm's way," Hogan said. Under the Phase 1 contract, BAE will develop the RFMLS as part of its artificial intelligence efforts utilizing technology from DARPA's Communications Under Extreme RF Spectrum Conditions and Adaptive Radar Countermeasures programs. BAE Systems is already working on DARPA's machine learning and artificial intelligence research in RF called the Spectrum Collaboration Challenge. SCC is meant to help alleviate scarcities in available RF spectrum, which would dovetail with work being performed on RFMLS by identifying spectrum that could evade enemy jamming. https://www.upi.com/Defense-News/2018/11/27/DARPA-BAE-to-develop-AI-for-interpreting-radio-frequency-signals/2371543335188/

  • Leonardo fine-tunes its 757 jetliner converted into a Tempest test rig

    16 septembre 2021 | International, Aérospatial

    Leonardo fine-tunes its 757 jetliner converted into a Tempest test rig

    Dubbed Excalibur, the aircraft has been remodeled with a pointed nose to mimic the likely Tempest design by Leonardo's partner, UK firm 2Excel.

  • Connectivity will ‘make or break’ US military use of AI, official says

    28 avril 2023 | International, C4ISR

    Connectivity will ‘make or break’ US military use of AI, official says

    The Pentagon is pursuing seamless networking through a connect-everything campaign known as Joint All-Domain Command and Control, or JADC2.

Toutes les nouvelles