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22 septembre 2020 | International, Naval

US Marines wants to move fast on a light amphibious warship. But what is it?

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Marine Corps is moving as fast as it can to field a new class of light amphibious warship, but it remains unclear what it will do, where it will be based or what capabilities it will bring to the fight.

The idea behind the ship is to take a commercial design or adapt a historic design to make a vessel capable of accommodating up to 40 sailors and at least 75 Marines to transport Marine kit over a range of about 3,500 nautical miles, according to a recent industry day presentation.

While the presentation noted that the ship should have few tailored Navy requirements, that also creates a problem: If the Navy is going to pay tens of millions to develop, build, crew and operate them, should it not provide some additional value to the fleet?

Analysts, experts and sources with knowledge of internal discussions who spoke to Defense News say the answer to that question is a source of friction inside the Pentagon.

The idea of the warship arrived on the scene in 2019 with the ascension of Gen. David Berger as commandant of the Marine Corps. His planning guidance called for a smaller, more agile amphibious force that could operate inside the Chinese anti-access, area denial window in the South China Sea.

In a recent virtual meeting of the Surface Navy Association, the chief of naval operations' director of expeditionary warfare, Maj. Gen. Tracy King, emphasized that above all, the platform must be cheap and come online quickly.

“I see the efficacy of this [light amphibious warship] is really to help us in the phases and stages we're in right now,” King said Aug. 27. “We need to start doing things differently, as an extension of the fleet, under the watchful eye of our Navy, engaging with our partners and allies and building partner capacity: We ought to be doing that right now. I think we're late to need with building the light amphibious warship, which is why we're trying to go so quickly.”

When asked whether the ship should contribute to a more distributed sensor architecture to align with the Navy's desire to be more spread out over a large area during a fight, King answered in the affirmative.

"[But] I really see it benefiting from [that architecture] more,” he said. “We need to build an affordable ship that can get after the ability to do maritime campaigning in the littorals.”

The unstated implication appeared to be that if the ship is loaded up with sensors and requirements, it will slow down the process and increase the cost. Analysts who spoke to Defense News agreed with that, saying the Navy is likely trying to put more systems on the platform that will make it more complex and more expensive.

The Navy has said it wants to keep the price under $100 million per platform and begin purchasing them as early as the latter half of 2022.

“The hardest part is going to be appetite suppression, especially on the part of the Navy,” said Dakota Wood, a retired Marine officer and analyst with The Heritage Foundation. "This is what we saw in the littoral combat ship: It started out as a very light, near-shore, small and inexpensive street fighter. And then people started adding on requirements. You had ballooning costs, increasing complexity of the platform, and you get into all kinds of problems.

“The Marine Corps wants this quickly. It needs it to be inexpensive so you can have 28-30 of them over a three- to four-year period.”

There is the additional challenge of where the ships will be based, since they will probably not be built to the kinds of standards of normal Navy vessels built to last for 30-40 years in service. The minimum service life for the light amphibious warship will be about 10 years, according to the industry day presentation.

Wood said that would be a challenge for the Marines and the State Department to work out in parallel with the effort to get the hulls quickly built.

Jerry Hendrix, a retied Navy captain and analyst with the Telemus Group, agreed with that assessment, saying the Marines are eager to move forward to get something fielded, in part to make sure this transition to a lighter, more distributed force being pushed by Berger actually happens.

"The commandant can't divest of some of the legacy platforms he's building — these big, expensive and vulnerable platforms — until he has something that replaces it in the water. And so he's anxious to get going with something else so he then has a reason to move away from what he has.

“The commandant is well aware he has a four-year clock and its ticking. So if he's going to make changes, he's got to get moving to get those changes in place and commit the Marine Corps to them to make sure it's going to last. And right now I'm not sure there's a lot of high confidence that they are going to last.”

Hendrix acknowledged that the Navy has good reason to want the light amphibious warship to have more capability, but added that the Corps is more interested in something simple than something costly and elaborate.

“What that does,” Hendrix said, “is drive up unit cost and drive down the numbers that can be purchased.”

https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2020/09/21/us-marines-wants-to-move-fast-on-a-light-amphibious-warship-but-what-is-it/

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    11 mai 2020 | International, C4ISR

    Where the next iteration of the Army’s network capabilities is heading

    Andrew Eversden The Army is finishing up a list of requirements for technologies it needs for the next round of its network modernization capabilities, known as Capability Set 23, one of the service's network leaders said May 6. The Army wants to have research and development contracts for prototypes signed no later than July, according to Maj. Gen. Peter Gallagher, director of the network cross-functional team for Army Futures Command. He added that the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has slowed the timeline. Capability set 23 is a follow-on effort to capability set 21, which is addressing current capability gaps in the Army's network with technology currently available, such as improved network transport capabilities. The service plans to deploy new network tools every two years starting in 2021 as part of a continuous network modernization plan. “We realized we weren't going to be multi-domain dominant with what we fielded in Cap Set '21,” said Gallagher, speaking May 6 at the C4ISRNET conference. For Capability Set '23, the service plans to take advantage of emerging technology, with developments from either commercial industry or internal researchers that are part of the Command, Control, Communications, Commuters, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Center at Aberdeen Proving Ground. “The next steps for Cap Set '23 — it's about enhanced capacity in our network backbone,” said Gallagher. “High capacity, low latency communications that are not readily available today, but they're emerging in technology." The key piece for is medium-Earth and low-Earth orbit satellite constellations, which will provide the Army with significantly more bandwidth and reduced latency. “In some cases, it's kind of like having a fiber optic cable through a space-based satellite link,” Gallagher said. Gallagher added that Army plans to prototype the technology over the next year and added that around spring next year the Army plans to be working on the preliminary design review for Capability Set '23. Capability Set '23 will also expand on tools from Capability Set '21 to increase the resiliency of the Army's network. Gallagher said that the service is looking at advanced networking waveforms that can be effective in a contested environment. For Capability Set '23, the Army reviewed more than 140 white papers on capabilities and narrowed its selection to 12 papers that they thought would be ready for the second capability set iteration and will help “prototype and make some network design choices," Gallagher said. The Army then held a “shark tank” style event in March and is now “actively in discussions with vendors,” said Justine Ruggio, director of communications for the Network Cross Functional Team at Army Futures Command. Meanwhile, the Army is collecting feedback from soldiers on Capability Set '21 pilots and will procure those technologies this year. Initial delivery of the new capabilities to units is scheduled for second quarter of fiscal 2021, Gallagher said. https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/c2-comms/2020/05/07/where-the-next-iteration-of-the-armys-network-capabilities-is-heading/

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  • USAF Picks B-21 For Software Learning Demo Challenge

    20 septembre 2019 | International, Aérospatial

    USAF Picks B-21 For Software Learning Demo Challenge

    By Steve Trimble The U.S. Air Force has selected the Northrop Grumman B-21 to demonstrate a potentially revolutionary approach to flightworthy software. The future stealth bomber will demonstrate a software architecture running the operational flight program (OFP) that learns and adapts as it flies a mission, says Will Roper, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics. Such an approach potentially “allows them to land with better code than they took off with,” Roper tells Aerospace DAILY. The architecture enables the code to update itself during a mission. Asked if the demonstration involves software code in the OFP, the operating system of a military aircraft, Roper replied affirmatively: “Within the OFP. That kind of adaptability is what we want to aspire to.” As a special access program, details of the B-21's schedule, capabilities and even cost are kept secret. But Roper says he is able to discuss what he calls the “digital bullet challenge,” albeit within strict limits. Asked if the B-21 software demonstrations imply the insertion of a deep learning technique known as a neural network, Roper declined to answer. “Details of how I won't go into,” Roper says. “But B-21 is trying to not just do agile software. They want to blaze new territory, a new trail for the Air Force. The idea that one of our most complicated airplanes with one of the most challenging missions is also taking on one of the most challenging software approaches to make their software living [and] breathing on the plane itself is inspiring. “They're going to be pushing the boundaries of how aircraft software should work in this century, and increasingly the software is where the cutting edge—the winning edge—is going to come from,” he explained. Roper's description appears to push the boundaries of software used in the flight computers of a commercial or military aircraft. Aircraft certification standards demand a highly rigid approach to software architecture, with the function of each line of code validated and verified on the ground before it is allowed to be used in flight. The challenge set for the B-21 could lead to altering or even adding software lines of code in the OFP during a flight. The Air Force launched the B-21 program in 2015 by awarding a $21.4 billion contract to Northrop. Air Force officials have previously announced that first flight is scheduled around December 2021. The aircraft will take off from Northrop's final assembly center in Palmdale, California, and fly to the flight test center on the adjoining Edwards Air Force Base. https://aviationweek.com/defense/usaf-picks-b-21-software-learning-demo-challenge

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