US military calls for better weapons to fight artificial intelligence

Sur le même sujet

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  31 août 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  Airbus unveils B-model Lakota helos to enter US Army fleet next year

  By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — The newest version of the UH-72B Lakota light utility helicopter will enter the U.S. Army fleet in 2021, aircraft manufacturer Airbus announced Aug. 28 at the National Guard Association of the United States virtual trade show. Beginning with the newest orders placed in 2020, Airbus will deliver 17 UH-72Bs next year after supplying 460 UH-72As across the Army, Navy and National Guard. In September, the last UH-72A (the 463rd) will roll off the production line in Columbus, Missouri, according to the statement. The “B” model will look distinctly different from the “A” variant. The aircraft is based off the Airbus H145 and will feature a Fenestron tail rotor, which the current A model does not have, according to Airbus. The B model will also have more powerful engine technology, “enhanced” controls and the Airbus Helionix avionics suite, the company said. The new helicopter variant will go to the Army National Guard. “Since we first began operations with the UH-72 Lakota some 15 years ago, this helicopter has been the workhorse of the Army and National Guard, saving lives, assisting in disaster relief, training thousands of pilots, and, more importantly, helping to protect our communities and our country,” Col. Calvin Lane, the Army's project manager for utility helicopters, said in the statement. “Procuring the UH-72B Lakota provides tremendous value with no research and development costs for the Army.” Since the program's inception in 2006, the Army and National Guard have logged nearly 800,000 flight hours, serving as the initial entry rotary-wing training aircraft for the Army at Fort Rucker, Alabama, and has flown search and rescue, medical evacuation and disaster relief missions as well counter-drug operations at the Southwest border. The Army chose to make the Lakota the primary training helicopter and retire its TH-67 aircraft when it restructured its entire aviation fleet in 2013. The decision met some resistance. Several companies like Bell Helicopter and AgustaWestland were hoping at the time to sell military training helicopters to several armed services, including the Army. AgustaWestland, a Leonardo subsidiary, filed a lawsuit four years ago in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims over the Army's plan to buy 16 of the aircraft for the training fleet. The court ruled in favor of AgustaWestland, and the Army was barred from buying the Lakotas. But the U.S. Court of Appeals overturned the lower court's decision in early 2018, allowing the service to move forward in procuring Lakotas. https://www.defensenews.com/land/2020/08/28/airbus-unveils-b-model-lakotas-will-enter-us-army-fleet-in-2021/

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  1 octobre 2018 | International, Aérospatial

  Critics point out holes in Swiss government’s $8.2 billion ‘Air 2030’ plan

  By: Sebastian Sprenger COLOGNE, Germany — The Swiss are choosing sides over how to shepherd an $8.2 billion package of new combat aircraft and air-defense equipment through the country's unique political process. Defence Minister Guy Parmelin favors subjecting the “Air 2030” program to a public referendum, eyed for 2020. If approved, that step could secure the population's thumbs-up for a blank check covering the cost of the entire project while leaving the administration to sort out the details of which planes to buy and how to split the aerial and ground components. This course of action is still preferred, a defense department spokesman told Defense News on Thursday, even though opposition to the plan became increasingly evident as the public feedback period ended Sept. 22. For now, there appears to be support across the major political parties for the main objectives of Air 2030, which aims to replace the country's aging fleet of F-18 and F-5 combat aircraft and install new ground-based weapons against aerial threats. But critics in parliament contend that the risk of a referendum defeat is too high, arguing nothing less than that the very future of the Swiss military is at stake. Depending on which political party is asked, some prefer putting the project out for separate votes for the larger aircraft portion, estimated at roughly $6 billion, and the ground segment. But others want the government to proceed without any referendum at all, arguing that the program — despite its hefty price tag — should be treated like other critical government purchases. The government's strategy of seeking popular approval only for the broad contours of Air 2030 follows the still-fresh memories of a failed attempt to replace the Swiss air-policing fleet. The population in 2014 voted against a measure to buy 22 Saab Gripen planes in a referendum that some analysts said was muddied by questions over the aircraft's specific capabilities and drawbacks. Swiss defense procurement agency Armasuisse on Monday invited bids for the ground-based program segment from the military sales offices of the United States, France and Israel. Those countries' anti-missile systems — Raytheon's Patriot, Eurosam's SAMP/T and Rafael's David's Sling — are expected to go toe-to-toe in a competition. For the aircraft portion, the Swiss in July invited bids from the Airbus Eurofighter, the Dassault Rafale, the Saab Gripen E, the Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornet and the Lockheed Martin F-35A. Armasuisse requested pricing proposals for a fleet of 30 or 40 planes. Meanwhile, government officials will sift through the fresh feedback from Swiss stakeholders — including political parties, regions and trade unions — in the coming months and formulate a measure for parliamentary debate by year's end, defense department spokesman Renato Kalbermatten told Defense News. And while the course of putting the entire investment plan out for a referendum remains the goal, there appears to be a willingness to adjust in case the risk of rejection is deemed to high. “We will put forward the best solution,” Kalbermatten said. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2018/09/28/critics-see-big-holes-in-swiss-governments-82-billion-air-2030-plan

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  22 septembre 2020 | International, Terrestre, C4ISR

  New US Army radios show anti-jam progress at network experiment

  Andrew Eversden WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army is seeing improvements in anti-jam capabilities in new radios crucial to securing manned-unmanned communications at its annual Network Modernization Experiment. At NetModX '20, which runs from late July to early October at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey, the Army's Combat Capabilities Development Command's C5ISR Center — or Command, Control, Communication, Computers, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Center — is testing the resiliency of the new radios. The effort will help the service observe how they would perform in the field as the Army looks to partner humans and machines. Initial data from the event suggests the two companies involved — Silvus and Persistent Systems — have improved their radio capabilities from last year, specifically in regard to anti-jam, according to Daniel Duvak, chief of the C5ISR Center's Radio Frequency Communications division. But one major challenge is making the radios less detectable as the Army's tactical network team starts to focus on command post survivability — or reducing the electromagnetic signature of command post communications — while not sacrificing latency and throughput. “If you want to make it less detectable, you know oftentimes you have to trade off the throughput or the range or one of those other products,” Duvak said. “So that's the piece and the real technical challenge that they're continuing to work on over the next few months. We've seen progress that they've made in those areas, but that's the piece that they're still working on.” Robert Stevens, an electronics engineer at the Radio Frequency Communications division, told C4ISRNET that the radios are an important piece of the next-generation combat vehicle. And Duvak said the Army's tactical network modernization team — made up of the Network Cross-Functional Team and Program Executive Office Command, Control, Communications-Tactical — wants to use the radios as a mid-tier radio solution. The development and fielding of new science and technology projects can take more than five years; however, the Army wants to speed that up as it seeks to modernize systems in preparation for future conflicts with near-peer adversaries. At last year's Network Modernization Experiment, the C5ISR Center tested several vendors' radios to see where commercial technology stood. Alternative contracting options, like broad agency announcements as well as cooperative research and development agreements, have proved critical to quickening radio development. Under the contracting mechanisms, vendors and the Army have more flexibility to experiment with radios and make iterative modifications as requirements change. Duvak said this is different from how the Army did business years ago, when it would award yearslong contracts but eventually receive radios that no longer met current requirements. “What we were able to do at this program was, in just about a year and a half of development time, take a couple of those products that we saw that were very promising and we were able to add and actually fund vendors to enhance those radios with those resiliency features that we were just talking about for the contested environment,” Duvak said. “Things like making them anti-jam, or more difficult for the adversary to jam, making them more difficult for the adversary to detect or intercept our communications.” Duvak said the Army wants the new radio capabilities for Capability Set '23, a collection of new tactical network tools to be fielded to soldiers in fiscal 2023. The resiliency of communications is critical as the tactical network modernization team pivots to reduce the electronic signature of the service's command post under Capability Set '23. The team is looking to increase bandwidth and reduce latency as part of that set of tools. Preliminary design review for Capability Set '23 is scheduled for April next year. https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/it-networks/2020/09/21/new-us-army-radios-show-anti-jam-progress-at-network-experiment/