17 janvier 2019 | International, C4ISR
By: Robert Burns, The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is considering ways to expand U.S. homeland and overseas defenses against a potential missile attack, possibly adding a layer of satellites in space to detect and track hostile targets.
Details on how far the administration intends to press this in a largely supportive Congress are expected to be revealed when the Pentagon releases results of a missile defense review as early as Thursday.
The release was postponed last year for unexplained reasons, though it came as President Donald Trump was trying to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons. A review might have complicated the talks.
The Trump approach is expected to include emphasis on stopping missiles either before they are launched or in the first few minutes of flight when their booster engines are still burning. Congress already has directed the Pentagon to push harder on this "boost-phase" approach, which might include the use of drones armed with lasers.
Any expansion of the scope and cost of missile defenses would compete with other defense priorities, including the billions of extra dollars the Trump administration has committed to spending on a new generation of nuclear weapons. An expansion also would have important implications for American diplomacy, given longstanding Russian hostility to even the most rudimentary U.S. missile defenses and China's worry that longer-range U.S. missile defenses in Asia could undermine Chinese national security.
Senior administration officials have signaled their interest in developing and deploying more effective means of detecting and tracking missiles with a constellation of satellites in space that can, for example, use advanced sensors to follow the full path of a hostile missile so that an anti-missile weapon can be directed into its flight path. Space-based sensor networks would allow the U.S. to deal with more sophisticated threats such as hypersonic missiles.
"I think that makes a lot of sense," said Frank Rose, a former Pentagon and State Department official and now a senior fellow for security and strategy at the Brookings Institution. "This could make a real improvement in our missile defense capabilities."
Current U.S. missile defense weapons are based on land and aboard ships.
Republican presidents starting with Ronald Reagan, who proposed a "Star Wars" system of anti-missile weapons in space, have been more enthusiastic about missile defense than Democrats. In recent years, however, both parties have argued that better defenses are needed, if only against emerging nuclear powers such as North Korea.
Trump's detailed views on this are not well-known. The national security strategy he unveiled in December 2017 called "enhanced" missile defense a priority, but it also said it was not intended to disrupt strategic relationships with Russia or China, whose missile arsenals the U.S. sees as the greatest potential threat.
John Rood, the undersecretary of defense for policy, said last year that a space-based layer of missile-tracking sensors would not mark a big shift in American policy or as a security threat to others like Russia or China.
"It watches, it detects what others are doing. I don't regard it as a provocative act to observe the missile flights of missiles that are potentially threatening to the United States," Rood said in September. "I don't think having a sensor capability is a sea change for the United States," he added, without stating directly that the Trump administration will pursue this.
Such a system is different than the more provocative idea of putting missile interceptors aboard satellites in space, which is not expected to be part of the Trump strategy. Congress has ordered the Pentagon to study it and some senior Pentagon officials have said recently that space-based interceptors are feasible and affordable. However, Rood in September strongly suggested that that Pentagon is not ready to move ahead with that.
"Those are bridges yet to be crossed, some time away," he said.
Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, said he expects the missile defense review to endorse an expanded role for missile defenses to counter certain Russian and Chinese missiles, especially those that could threaten U.S. allies in Asia and Europe.
“This is likely to stimulate them to accelerate offensive missile programs, like hypersonic vehicles, that can evade our missile defense,” Kimball said.
5 septembre 2018 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR
LONDON—The German defense ministry says it has begun a radical restructuring of the country's armed forces to better prepare it for modernization and an uptick in defense ... Full article: http://aviationweek.com/awindefense/germany-radically-overhauling-military
25 juillet 2018 | International, C4ISR
By: Maddy Longwell Congress used its annual defense policy bill to require leadership at the Department of Defense to double down on artificial intelligence and machine learning. Pentagon officials have repeatedly said artificial intelligence is a critical technology to staying ahead of potential adversaries. Earlier this month, the Defense Department reorganized its leadership structure to put a greater emphasis on emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence. In addition, the Pentagon said it plans to spend $1.7 billion over the next five years to stand up a new Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, according to new budgeting figures. Most recently, in an agreement between Congressional negotiators released July 23, lawmakers called for the Pentagon to establish a new commission to review advances in AI technology, a 15-member body that would meet regularly until October 2020. Members will be appointed by the Secretary of Defense, Secretary of Commerce and members of congressional defense committees. The commission will focus on AI, machine learning and associated technology with respect to national security and defense. It is expected to review the competitiveness of U.S. technology and foreign advances in AI, potential workforce and education incentives to attract and recruit talent for AI and machine learning technology jobs and research ways to foster emphasis and investments in research to stimulate the development of AI technology. The commission is tasked with presenting an initial report to the President and Congress within 180 days of the passage of the bill. It is also expected to produce annual comprehensive reports on the same topics, which will be publicly available. In addition to the new commission, the NDAA bill establishes other changes to address AI, machine learning and quantum science technology. They include: A designated official to coordinate AI and machine learning technology development The bill instructs the Secretary of Defense to designate an official who will be responsible for “developing a strategic plan to develop, adopt and transition artificial intelligence technologies into operational use.” This version encourages the official to partner with industry, academia and private industries, and use the “flexibility of regulations and acquisition,” to develop and field AI and machine learning technology for the Department of Defense. Reports submitted by the Secretary of Defense about US competitiveness in emerging technologies The bill also requires that the Secretary of Defense and Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency submit classified reports that compare the capabilities of the United States and its adversaries in emerging technology areas. The reports are expected to evaluate hypersonic, AI, quantum information science and directed energy weapons technologies. The NDAA bill says that reports should include evaluations of spending, quantity, quality, test infrastructure, work force and the willingness of adversaries to use technology. Improving the Air Force supply chain The NDAA bill allows the assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics to use funds for “non-traditional technologies and sustainment practices [which includes artificial intelligence] to increase the availability of aircraft to the Air Force and decrease backlogs and lead times for the production of parts.” The assistant secretary is able to use up to $42.8 million for research, development, test and evaluation. https://www.c4isrnet.com/newsletters/daily-brief/2018/07/24/how-congress-wants-dod-to-tackle-ai-and-machine-learning-in-2019/
17 septembre 2020 | International, Aérospatial
MARCUS WEISGERBER Officials are mum, so here's a roundup of clues. Among the big questions surrounding the secret U.S. Air Force fighter-jet demonstrator revealed this week is: who built it? Will Roper, the head of Air Force acquisition, declined to say much about the new plane, other than it has actually flown, that some of the plane's systems have been flight-tested, and that it was designed and built using digital engineering. So let's look at some clues, starting with a likely predecessor to the Next Generation Air Dominance project that produced the new demonstrator. In January 2015, Frank Kendall, then defense undersecretary for acquisition, technology and logistics, told the House Armed Services Committee about a DARPA-led project that was developing new planes and engine technology for the Air Force and Navy. “The intent is to develop prototypes for the next generation of air-dominance platforms — X-plane programs, if you will," Kendall said. Dubbed the Aerospace Innovation Initiative, the project aimed to “develop the technologies and address the risks associated with the air dominance platforms that will follow the F-35, as well as other advanced aeronautical challenges.” Roper wouldn't say whether the NGAD and AII projects are linked, but they sound quite similar. He instead said that he disclosed the plane's existence, in part, to encourage companies to invest more in digital engineering. "The obvious candidates for the NGAD prototype are Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, though General Atomics might be a possible designer—but that's a long-shot," Byron Callan, an analyst with Capital Alpha Partners, wrote in a Tuesday note to clients. "Textron's Scorpion program had recently proven that in one year's time, it could take a new clean sheet design to flight, but we doubt it's been able to elevate this skill to combat aircraft." The plane's engine, Callan wrote, was built by either GE or Raytheon Technologies' Pratt & Whitney. Here's the case for why each of the following companies could have built the new NGAD fighter. Boeing The Chicago-based aerospace giant already knows a lot about digital engineering, having partnered with Sweden's Saab to design and build their T-7A training jet in less than a year, near-lightspeed by U.S. military standards. Air Force officials have gushed about the T-7A, which beat out two other planes, the Lockheed Martin T-50 and Leonardo T-100, that were already being used by foreign air forces. The Boeing plane has a mission computer that can run third-party software and apps, allowing for easy updates. It is also designed for quick assembly: it takes just 15 minutes to assemble the forward and aft fuselages, compared with some 24 hours to assemble a F/A-18 Super Hornet fuselage, according to Leanne Caret, the CEO of Boeing Defense. Northrop Grumman It often gets overlooked that Northrop owns Scaled Composites — the Burt Rutan-founded, XPrize-winning design shop behind SpaceShipOne, the first aircraft to carry private citizens into space. Like Boeing, Northrop's Scaled built a plane from scratch for the Air Force's pilot training jet contest, but in the end didn't submit a bid. Northrop has seen an uptick in classified Pentagon work in recent years. It's been presumed that a sizable portion of that cash has gone to build B-21 stealth bombers, whose existence has been disclosed but are being built in secret. It's conceivable that some of the classified cash flowing into the company's Aeronautical Systems business is for the NGAD test aircraft. Northrop is also building the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, the new intercontinental ballistic missiles that will replace the Cold War Minuteman III, using the same digital design technology often touted by Roper. Lockheed Martin The company's Advanced Development Programs division — far better known as the Skunk Works — has long developed super-advanced, super-secret planes for the U.S. military, including the famed U-2 and SR-71 spy planes and the F-117 ground-attack jet. They also built the F-22 Raptor and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. “ADP seems pretty busy across a number of fronts, but also...looking at the Digital Century Series and also looking at where the services are going to go in terms of sixth-gen and next-gen aircraft,” said Michele Evans, who leads Lockheed Martin Aeronautics and its Skunk Works operation, last week. Evans also touted Stardrive, a Lockheed effort to incorporate more commercial technology and practices into its manufacturing. “Think of model-based systems engineering, think about factory of the future, software development in terms of containerization technologies like Kubernetes, and agile [software] and then even into sustainment in terms of how we use data analytics and AI,” she said. “I think the technologies are just going to provide tremendous opportunities to speed up the development in the delivery of platforms going forward.” Someone else The most intriguing possibility is that the new jet may not be the product of one of the defense giants at all. There is evidence that the digital-design tools that Roper touted are allowing smaller upstarts to enter markets once reserved for only a few established contractors. In July, for example, an Air Force solicitation for proposals for drones to accompany manned jets drew 18 entries. “It shows there's a lot of interest from very large [companies], which you would expect, to very small,” Gen. Arnold Bunch, the head of Air Force Materiel Command, said in a Wednesday videoconference call with reporters. “I actually believe as we do the digital campaign and we look at doing digital engineering, it will actually open the door to more people to be able to participate that may not have before.” https://www.defenseone.com/business/2020/09/who-secretly-building-usafs-new-fighter/168541/