US Army's hypersonic supervisor talks tech portfolio

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  29 octobre 2023 | International, Aérospatial, C4ISR

  Slovenian firm quietly provides surveillance drones to Ukraine

  Slovenian drone maker C-Astral recently provided Belin or Bramor C4EYE drones to Ukrainian troops, Defense News has learned.

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  17 février 2021 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

  Contract Awards by US Department of Defense - February 16, 2021

  AIR FORCE LinQuest Corp., Los Angeles, California, has been awarded a $200,000,000 indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity for advisory and assistance services in support of Space Operations Command. Work will be performed at Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado, and is expected to be completed Feb. 28, 2030. This award is the result of a competitive acquisition and one offer was received. Fiscal 2021 Space Force operation and maintenance funds in the amount $12,730,301 are being obligated at the time of award. Space Operations Command/Space Acquisition Management – Directorate, Peterson AFB, Colorado, is the contracting activity (FA2518-21-D-0001). U.S. SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND Reservoir International LLC, Fayetteville, North Carolina, was awarded a $200,000,000 maximum indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract (H92239-21-D-0001) for Army Special Operations Forces training support services in support of the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and 1st Special Warfare Training Group. Fiscal 2021 operation and maintenance funds in the amount of $3,449,752 are being obligated at the time of award. The work will be performed in the vicinity of Camp MacKall, North Carolina, until January 2026. The contract was awarded competitively among service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses with nine proposals received. U.S. Special Operations Command, Fort Bragg, North Carolina, is the contracting activity. DEFENSE HEALTH AGENCY Valor Network Inc., Metuchen, New Jersey (HT0015-21-D-0001), was awarded a $73,532,325 fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract to provide professional diagnostic radiology interpretive services to the Military Health System (MHS). The base year amount of the contract is $13,369,448. The contract has four 12-month option periods. This enterprise contract is to support the continued implementation of the MHS organizational reform required by 10 U.S. Code § 1073c, and sections 711 and 712 of the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2019, effective Oct. 25, 2019, which eliminated separate silos of military healthcare and officially integrated healthcare under the authority, direction, and control of the Defense Health Agency, consistent with the direction provided by the secretary of defense. This contract was a competitive acquisition with eight proposals received. Fiscal 2021 operation and maintenance funds in the amount of $13,369,448 are being obligated at time of award. The Defense Health Agency, Enterprise Medical Support Contracting Division, San Antonio, Texas, is the contracting activity. (Awarded Feb. 12, 2021) ARMY General Dynamics Land Systems, Sterling Heights, Michigan, was awarded a $20,652,845 modification (P00127) to contract W56HZV-17-C-0067 for Abrams systems technical support. Work will be performed in Sterling Heights, Michigan, with an estimated completion date of June 22, 2022. Fiscal 2010 Foreign Military Sales (Kuwait) funds; fiscal 2021 operation and maintenance (Army) funds; and fiscal 2019, 2020 and 2021 other procurement (Army) funds in the amount of $20,652,845 were obligated at the time of the award. U.S. Army Contracting Command, Detroit Arsenal, Michigan, is the contracting activity. Raytheon Co., Dulles, Virginia, was awarded an $8,220,193 modification (P00042) to contract W52P1J-16-C-0046 for multinational information sharing services. Work will be performed in Kuwait, with an estimated completion date of July 15, 2021. Fiscal 2021 operation and maintenance (Army) funds in the amount of $1,895,193 were obligated at the time of the award. U.S. Army Contracting Command, Rock Island Arsenal, Illinois, is the contracting activity. Carbro Constructors Corp.,* Hillsborough, New Jersey, was awarded a $7,773,175 modification (P00004) to contract W912DS-19-C-0035 for construction of flood-control measures for Green Brook Segment C1. Work will be performed in Middlesex, New Jersey, with an estimated completion date of Oct. 13, 2021. Fiscal 2010 civil construction funds in the amount of $7,773,175 were obligated at the time of the award. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, New York, New York, is the contracting activity. *Small business https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Contracts/Contract/Article/2504777/source/GovDelivery/

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  29 mai 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  Army Invites Air Force ABMS To Big Network Test: Project Convergence

  This fall's experiment will study how the Army's own weapons can share target data, Gen. Murray said, but in 2021 he wants to add the Air Force's ABMS network. By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.on May 28, 2020 at 5:06 PM WASHINGTON: Damn the pandemic, full speed ahead. The four-star chief of Army Futures Command plans to hold a high-tech field test in the southwest desert this fall, COVID-19 or no. Called Project Convergence, the exercise will test sharing of targeting data amongst the Army's newest weapons, including aerial scouts, long-range missile launchers and armored vehicles. The Army also wants to plug in its new anti-aircraft and missile defense systems, AFC head Gen. Mike Murray told reporters, but those technologies are at a critical juncture in their own individual test programs – some of which was delayed by COVID – and they may not be ready on time for this fall. “I'm going to try to drag them all into this,” Murray said. The experiment, set to begin in late August or early September, will definitely include the Army's Artificial Intelligence Task Force, as well as four of its eight modernization Cross Functional Teams. That's Long-Range Precision Fires (i.e. artillery), Future Vertical Lift aircraft (including drones), and the tactical network, he said, plus the Next Generation Combat Vehicle team in “a supporting role.” What about the Air & Missile Defense team? “We'll see,” Murray said. “Right now... I'm very cautious, because of the two major tests they've got going on this fall in terms of IBCS and IMSHORAD.” IBCS is the Army's new command network for air and missile defense units, which had to delay a major field test due to COVID. IMSHORAD is an 8×8 Stryker armored vehicle fitted with anti-aircraft missiles and guns, which Murray said is now delayed “a few months” by software problems. Meanwhile, the Air Force – with some input from the other services – will be testing its own nascent data-sharing network. That's the ambitious Advanced Battle Management System, the leading candidate to be the backbone of a future Joint All-Domain Command & Control (JADC2) network-of-networks linking all the armed services. The Air Force's ABMS experiment will be separate from the Army's Project Convergence exercise happening at roughly the same time this fall, Murray said. But he wants to hold a Convergence test each year from now on, he told reporters, and he wants to bring in ABMS in 2021. “In '20, we're parallel, not interconnected,” he said. “Our desire is to bring them closer and closer together, beginning in '21.” Sensor To Shooter Murray spoke via phone to the Defense Writers Group, along with the Army's civilian chief of acquisition, Bruce Jette. While the two men's roles and organizations are kept distinct by law, they've been joined at the hip on modernization, and Jette – a scientist, engineer, and inventor — is clearly enthused about the experiment. “We are looking at the potential integration of all of our fires into a fires network,” Jette told the listening reporters. Currently, he explained, the Army has one network, AFATDS, to pass data about ground targets to its offensive artillery units – howitzers, rocket launchers, surface-to-surface missiles. Meanwhile, it's developing a different network, IBCS, to share data on flying targets – incoming enemy rockets, missiles, and aircraft – amongst its air and missile defense units. The two networks and the sensors that feed them must meet very different technical demands, since shooting down a missile requires split-second precision that bombarding a tank battalion does not. But there's also great potential for the two to share data and work together. For example, the defensive side can figure out where enemy missiles are launching from, then tell the offensive side so it can blow up the enemy launchers before they fire again. “If I can bring the two of them together,” Jette said, you can use a sensor the Army already developed, bought and fielded to spot targets for one weapon – say, the Q-53 artillery radar – to feed targeting data into a totally different type of weapon – say, a Patriot battery. Artificial intelligence could pull together data from multiple sensors, each seeing the same target in different wavelengths or from a different angle, to build a composite picture more precise than its parts. “We're moving past just simple concepts of sensors and shooters,” Jette said. “How do we get multiple sensors and shooters [integrated] such that we get more out of them than an individual item could provide?” Looking across the Army's 34 top modernization programs, Murray said, “an individual capability is interesting, but the effect is greater than the sum of the parts. There have to be connections between these [programs]. And that's really the secret sauce I'm not going to explain in detail, ever.” Testing, Testing What Murray would share, however, was that the Army got to test a slightly less ambitious sensor-to-shooter link in Europe earlier this year, as part of NATO's Defender 2020 wargames. The field experiment fed data from a wide range of sources – in space, in the air, and on the ground – to an Army howitzer unit, he said. However, the Army had also wanted to experiment with new headquarters and organizations to command and control ultra-long-range artillery, Murray said, and those aspects of the massive exercise had to be cancelled due to COVID. The service is looking at alternative venues, such as its Combat Training Centers, but “it's just hard to replicate what Defender 2020 offered us,” he said. “What we lost was the largest exercise we've done and the largest deployment of forces in a very, very long time.” That makes the stakes even higher for Project Convergence. “You can call it an experiment, you can call it a demonstration,” Murray said. “Right now, the plan is we're going to do this every year... every fall as we continue to mature... this architecture that brings the sensors to the right shooter and through the right headquarters.” While this year's Convergence exercise will focus on the Army, Murray is already working with the Air Force to meld the two next year. “We have been in discussion with the Air Force for the better part of the year on how we integrate with the effort they have going on,” he said. “I was actually out at Nellis the last time they had a live meeting on JADC2 [Joint All-Domain Command & Control] with all of the architects of ABMS.” Those discussions made very clear to both the Army and the Air Force participants that “it all comes down to data and it all comes down to the architectures you build,” Murray said. “As Bruce [Jette] talked about, it's not a specific sensor to a specific shooter,” he said. “On a future battlefield... just about everything is going to be a sensor. So how you do you store that data and how do you enable a smart distribution of data to the right shooter? Because we can't build architectures that are relying upon huge pipes and just massive bandwidth to make it work.” https://breakingdefense.com/2020/05/army-invites-air-force-abms-to-big-network-test-project-convergence