US, India establish INDUS-X to strengthen defense tech collaboration

Sur le même sujet

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  10 mars 2020 | International, C4ISR, Sécurité

  The Pentagon’s first class of cybersecurity auditors is almost here

  Mark Pomerleau The Pentagon hopes to have the first class of auditors to evaluate contractors' cybersecurity ready by April, a top Department of Defense official said March 5. The auditors will be responsible for certifying companies under the new Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC), which is a tiered cybersecurity framework that grades companies on a scale of one to five. A score of one designates basic hygiene and a five represents advanced hygiene. Currently, there are no auditors — known as Certified Third-Party Assessment Organizations (C3PAO) — as the accreditation board came about officially in January. “Our goal is to have, in late April, our pilot pathfinder on the training for the C3PAOs,” Katie Arrington, chief information security officer for the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, said at an event hosted by DreamPort in Columbia, Maryland. The accreditation board is working on training the auditors and the accompanying training materials Arrington said just because there aren't any auditors already working doesn't mean companies shouldn't be getting ready. “You've got to get prepared for the audit,” she said. “You should be able to say ‘I think I've done my self assessment, I think I'm at this CMMC level.' Waiting for the audit to come in and then decide to get good or to get on track is not the way I would position my business.” If all goes according to plan, all new contracts in 2025 will feature the security requirements. Arrington also suggested that the framework has received interest outside the DoD. “Do I think that other federal agencies are getting on board? Yes they are. They're waiting for me to get through my pathfinder,” she said. She also referred to comments made by Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Ellen Lord, who explained nearly a dozen nations and international organizations are interested in adopting CMMC. https://www.fifthdomain.com/dod/2020/03/09/the-pentagons-first-class-of-cybersecurity-auditors-is-almost-here/

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  6 juillet 2018 | International, C4ISR

  The Pentagon’s latest budget is its largest counter-drone budget ever

  By: Kelsey Atherton As the Pentagon's latest budget slouches towards Washington, a $716 billion beast waiting to be born, it is time to take a closer look at how the robots in the budget survived the various committees and drafts. As expected, the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act is a boon for drones, allocating funding for nearly three times as many uncrewed vehicles as in previous years. Most of those new drones are small, cheaper models, which is a trend reflecting in the other big spending increased in this budget: the Pentagon is set to spend almost twice as much on countering other drones in 2019 as it spend on that same in 2018. The Association of Unmanned Vehicles System International has provided an in-depth look at how exactly the 1.4 percent of the defense budget allocated to drones is spent, detailing the minute differences in the comparatively meager $9.6 billion allocation. From the AUVSI's report: Separating the President's Budget request by domain, we see that air is receiving the largest funding support with the budget for unmanned aircraft reaching almost $7 billion in FY2019, followed by $1.5 billion for counter unmanned systems (C-UxS), $1.3 billion for unmanned maritime vehicles and $0.7 billion for ground robotics. From FY2018 to FY2019, the budget for C-UxS technologies almost doubles. Figure 2 also shows the number of unique projects and sub-projects that involve unmanned systems relative to the domains in which they are operating. Cross-domain operations of air and ground unmanned vehicles are supported by the largest number of projects. Over 60 percent of these efforts are funded by the U.S. Army. The U.S. Navy is also working to provide solutions for interoperability and teaming of unmanned vehicles across multiple domains as they support over half of the projects involving operations in all domains (air, ground, and maritime). For the counter-drone mission, the Pentagon is splitting $1.5 billion between over 90 different projects, ranging from modifications to existing missiles and anti-air systems to directed energy weapons to electronic warfare software. The largest share of the 2019 budget for counter-UAS is set to go to the Army's Indirect Fire Protection family of systems, though the most interesting projects aren't always the budget headliners. Buried further down the spending list is DARPA's “Multi-Azimuth Defense Fast Intercept Round Engagement System” (MAD-FIRES) project, which a projectile as agile and useful for interception as a missile, but cheap enough to be fired and fielded like a bullet. There's also a submunitions project from the Air Force to “Exploit the signatures of ISR targets; capture and catalog multi-spectral signatures on asymmetric threat Unmanned Aerial Systems.” That project is dubbed “Chicken Little,” perhaps with the explicit goal of making the sky fall. What the diversity of counter-drone programs, and drone programs generally, in the new Pentagon budget show is that this is still a young field, one with drone types and countermeasures all in flux. It's likely that future years will see more spending on counter drone tools, but it's also equally likely that the range of countermeasures will shrink as people fighting learn first-hand what does and doesn't work. https://www.c4isrnet.com/unmanned/2018/07/05/the-pentagons-latest-budget-is-its-largest-counter-drone-budget-ever

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  23 avril 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  CSAF Goldfein’s Top COVID-19 Supply Chain Worry: F-35

  Goldfein said up to now no major programs have shown any signs of being "in a critical state ... at risk of cancellation" due to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. By THERESA HITCHENS WASHINGTON: Gen. Jay Raymond, as head of Space Command, will lead efforts to determine how to combat expected interference with GPS receivers from the future Ligado 5G wireless mobile communication network, says Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein. “We are both very concerned about this,” Goldfein told the Defense Writers Group this morning. “The best way I've heard it described ... is, if you're in a room trying to have a quiet conversation, and in the next room you've got a 500-watt speaker blaring music. Chief Raymond and I are looking at different mitigation steps,” he added. “It's a huge challenge.” Goldfein explained that, as the SPACECOM commander, Raymond is the combatant commander charged with spectrum management so any mitigation plan would be primarily his responsibility — with Goldfein serving a support function as the service chief. However, he noted that, since Raymond is dual-hatted as chief of Space Force, the two peers “will work together closely with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to provide options” to DoD Secretary Mark Esper. Much of Goldfein's conversation with reporters this morning centered on the affects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the service and its programs, as well as his service's responses. A few weeks ago the service went through what he called a “reset to the new normal” as senior officials worked out methodologies to ensure its highest priority missions could be maintained “despite a 15 to 20 percent infection rate.”