U.S. General Says Unmanned Aircraft Need Too Many People

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  21 septembre 2018 | International, Aérospatial

  ‘I’ll be their angel investor’: Air Force vice chief wants to crowdsource airmen’s ideas

  By: Kyle Rempfer As the U.S. military turns its attention to the threats posed by near-peer adversaries, Air Force leadership is shifting its focus to great power approaches to combat, like multi-domain operations and expeditionary warfare. A culture of innovation among airmen will be pivotal in preparing for such a conflict, and the effort to foster that independence and creativity is already underway. In the coming weeks, the Air Force will be rolling out a new initiative to crowdsource solutions from airmen around the service. Across all specialty codes, the service is calling on airmen to design apps, develop algorithms and create new approaches to the problems that plague their career fields or help the Air Force carry out its missions. The program — dubbed the Vice Chief's Challenge — will be spearheaded by Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Stephen Wilson. “We want to take the ideas our airmen have to see around corners, anticipate what's next and solve these really complex national security challenges,” Wilson told Air Force Times. Those challenges range from fusing open-source social media information into actionable intelligence with new software, to upgrading legacy aircraft with gadgets to help airmen stay in the fight longer. “Navigation apps like Waze change the way we travel across town by giving us an intuitive display that integrates traffic, hazards, and route recommendations in real time. Companies like Uber and Amazon have transformed our view of logistics," according to a copy of the Vice Chief's Challenge provided to Air Force Times. "They are not the only ones leaning forward. I am sure each of you have seen opportunities to enhance [multi-domain operations]. I want to hear your best ideas.” The initiative is designed to deliver capabilities to the Air Force in months, rather than the usual years, Wilson said. And it's going to become routine, always running against the backdrop of the service's other acquisition initiatives. “It's this cultural change and this shift that happens ... and today, I think it's clear in this great power competition, we need this urgently," Wilson said. “I need to remove barriers to innovation." The Vice Chief's Challenge will consist of three phases. First, ideas will be solicited from across the service in a broad announcement. Then, workshops will be set up in which subject matter experts help refine the most promising proposals and draft development plans for the budding ideas. The final phase will involve developing and demonstrating prototypes for the chosen concepts. “We'll start small by gathering ideas from individual airmen, rapidly evolve concepts with national thought leaders, and scale fast by working with industry to build and demonstrate prototypes in the next year,” Wilson said. Each phase will be led by a different organization, but the Air Force Research Lab and the Office of the Vice Chief of Staff will serve as executive agents to ensure smooth transition between phases. The initiative is similar to last year's first-ever Spark Tank innovation proposals. “Each of the [major commands] went out to their different wings and solicited ideas, picked their best ones and came to us," Wilson said. "There were a dozen ideas, of which we picked six of them and presented them at the [Warfighter's Edge] conference.” The idea chosen for development ended up being that of a boom operator on the KC-135 Stratotanker. He proposed a plan to re-engineer the boom operator platform instructor position for the entire KC-135 fleet at a projected cost of $1.5 million. The proposed innovation aims to both reduce back and neck injuries and save the Air Force $132 million each year in this critical aircrew specialty, according to Air Mobility Command. “It was across the fleet, easy to implement, and that's what we're using now,” Wilson said. Other innovative ideas that Wilson has already seen, and clearly wants more of, involve software development that connects sensors, platforms and nodes to share information across the force. “We had an airman and second lieutenant who briefed me on software development they had done that was unbelievable — the capability they were bringing me and the speed at which they were doing it,” Wilson said. The duo took SIPRNet information and found a way to fuse it together using complex computer coding for targeting purposes. The result was a tool dreamed up in-house that directly solved a pressing issue. Much of that is simply owed to the fact that those airmen knew what they needed to do, how to do it and already worked in a position to provide the service. “The CEO of Pivotal [Software Inc.] pulled me aside and said ‘I work with all the Fortune 500 companies across the world, and I would put these two people against any company, anywhere,'” Wilson said. That's the sort of innovation the Vice Chief's Challenge is looking to tap into. Wilson doesn't know yet how many ideas will be taken to completion, but by this time next year, he's hoping that the Vice Chief's Challenge will be handing out some awards. “I can't compensate them like industry can, but I can offer them purpose," he said. https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2018/09/20/ill-be-their-angel-investor-air-force-vice-chief-wants-to-crowdsource-airmens-ideas

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  5 août 2019 | International, C4ISR

  Carderock Uses High-Fidelity Signature Simulation to Train Surface Combat Systems

  By Benjamin McNight III, Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Division Public Affairs WEST BETHESDA, Md. (NNS) -- In the world of simulations, getting a system to act as close to authentic as the real-world situations it represents is always the main goal. Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC), Carderock Division develops high-fidelity acoustic simulation and training systems, giving naval personnel the ability to practice combat scenarios virtually. The Combined Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD) and Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) Trainer, better known as CIAT, made its official debut in December 2018 at Naval Base San Diego. In June, Naval Station Norfolk became the site for another CIAT installation. Motions to create this trainer began in 2014, according to Rich Loeffler, Carderock's senior scientific technical manager, director for signatures, tactical decision aids and training systems (Code 705). “CIAT is what we refer to as a Combat Systems Team Trainer,” Loeffler said. “Meaning that your goal is to bring in the whole portion of the crew that would be operating the combat system and train them in a shore site how they can best utilize the system when they are at sea.” Carderock shares CIAT responsibilities with NSWC Dahlgren Division. Dahlgren is responsible for the overall system integration and manages the IAMD aspect of the trainer, while Carderock leads the development of the acoustic and ASW capabilities. Carderock also has capabilities that contribute to the IAMD training. Using the periscope simulation that creates a real-time visual simulation of what one could see through the periscope of a submarine, Loeffler said they were able to utilize that technology for the surface ship trainer in the CIAT. “In this case, they have deck cameras if they want to be able to see when a missile launches from the forward or aft launchers. We basically provide the visuals for that,” he said. By modeling the threats and the ocean environment and then stimulating the actual tactical combat system software, the CIAT system is highly flexible in the ability to train real-world scenarios. With the many possibilities of training situations that can be created within the CIAT comes the need to use multiple sources of knowledge to create effective training situations that will benefit the fleet. “We'll work with people like the Office of Naval Intelligence to get threat intelligence data, we'll work with folks like the Naval Oceanographic Office to get the latest environmental models and databases, and then we'll work with the tactical programs themselves to get the tactical software,” Loeffler said. “Our role here at Carderock has been to leverage signature simulation capabilities we have developed over the years across submarine, surface and surveillance ASW trainers and provide the system design, development, integration and testing support to implement the CIAT requirement to support the fleet's training needs,” he said. Before the CIAT existed, the Surface ASW Synthetic Trainer (SAST) was developed by Carderock as an on-board embedded training system within the AN/SQQ-89 A(V)15 Sonar system. Loeffler said beginning in 2008, they went through a series of large analyses to compare and contrast what the simulation produced with what operators saw at sea. The data from that testing helped further develop the SAST and subsequently create the CIAT. Now, they are able to represent all components of the operations they run from the physics modeling perspective, such as what sounds are generated and how they propagate through the water, interactions with interfering objects and sea-state effects on these variables. “Since we're acoustically stimulating the actual tactical software of the sonar system, the users are operating the systems just as they would at sea,” he said. Loeffler believes that there is not anything off limits for what the CIAT can do, but adapting with new threats will require the right development within the trainer to represent the real-world situation. Although the system is relatively new, discussions on the next steps in the development of the trainer are already taking place with the help of Center for Surface Combat Systems (CSCS) defining and prioritizing fleet training requirements “CSCS is basically the primary stakeholder that owns the surface-ship training schoolhouses, and they've done their requirements review to see what additional capabilities they'd like to see in the next version of CIAT,” Loeffler said. “So, we're going through that process, assessing those requirements and looking for what would go into the next version to further improve training and also address training of the new combat system capabilities as they are being introduced into the fleet.” https://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=110471

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  20 juin 2018 | International, Terrestre

  BAE wins Marine Corps contract to build new amphibious combat vehicle

  Jen Judson WASHINGTON — BAE Systems has won a contract to build the Marine Corps' new amphibious combat vehicle following a competitive evaluation period where BAE's vehicle was pitted against an offering from SAIC. The contract allows for the company to enter into low-rate initial production with 30 vehicles expected to be delivered by fall of 2019, valued at $198 million. The Marines plan to field 204 of the vehicles. The total value of the contract with all options exercised is expected to amount to about $1.2 billion. The awarding of the contract gets the Corps “one step closer to delivering this capability to the Marines,” John Garner, Program Executive Officer, Land Systems Marine Corps, said during a media round table held Tuesday. But the Corps isn't quite done refining its new ACV. The vehicle is expected to undergo incremental changes with added new requirements and modernization. The Corps is already working on the requirements for ACV 1.2, which will include a lethality upgrade for the amphibous vehicle. BAE's ACV vehicle will eventually replace the Corps' legacy amphibious vehicle, but through a phased approach. The Assault Amphibious Vehicle is currently undergoing survivability upgrades to keep the Cold War era vehicle ticking into 2035. BAE Systems and SAIC were both awarded roughly $100 million each in November 2015 to deliver 16 prototypes to the Marine Corps for evaluation in anticipation of a down select to one vendor in 2018. [BAE, SAIC Named as Finalists in Marines ACV Competition] All government testing of the prototypes concluded the first week of December 2017 and the Marine Corps issued its request for proposals the first week in January 2018. Operational tests also began concurrently. Government testing included land reliability testing, survivability and blast testing and water testing — both ship launch and recovery as well as surf transit. Operational evaluations included seven prototypes each from both SAIC and BAE Systems, six participated and one spare was kept for backup. BAE Systems' partnered with Italian company Iveco Defense Vehicles to build its ACV offering. [BAE Systems completes Amphibious Combat Vehicle shipboard testing] Some of the features BAE believed were particularly attractive for a new ACV is that it has space for 13 embarked Marines and a crew of three, which keeps the rifle squad together. The engine's strength is 690 horsepower over the old engine's 560 horsepower, and it runs extremely quietly. The vehicle has a V-shaped hull to protect against underbody blasts, and the seat structure is completely suspended. SAIC's vehicle, which was built in Charleston, South Carolina, offered improved traction through a central tire-inflation system to automatically increase or decrease tire pressure. It also had a V-hull certified during tests at the Nevada Automotive Test Center — where all prototypes were tested by the Marine Corps — and had blast-mitigating seats to protect occupants. The 3rd Assault Amphibian Battalion, 1st Marine Division out of Camp Pendleton, California, is expected to receive the first ACV 1.1 vehicles. https://www.defensenews.com/land/2018/06/19/bae-wins-marine-corps-contract-to-build-new-amphibious-combat-vehicle/