14 mai 2019 | International, Aérospatial
BY MARCUS WEISGERBER
A U.S. delegation is scheduled to brief Polish defense officials eager to buy the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter later this month, U.S. Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson said Monday.
The American team is expected to discuss the costs of buying the Lockheed Martin-made jet as well as the warfighting capabilities it would bring to the Polish military.
“They want to deepen their relationship with the United States of America in part by interoperability of advanced equipment,” Wilson said after a Meridian International Center event in Washington. “Those discussions are continuing. We're providing the information that might be needed for them to make a decision.”
Poland has been looking to replace its Soviet-era MiG-29 Fulcrum and Su-22 Fitter fighters for several years. Its air force has 31 MiG-29s and and 18 Su-22s, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies' 2019 Military Balance. In recent weeks, Polish officials said they would buy 32 F-35s.
“The Polish government has decided that they want the F-35 and they're in discussions with the United States,” Wilson said Monday.
U.S. officials heading to Poland is a sign that the potential deal is going through the standard foreign military sale process.
The F-35's design and electronic equipment make it difficult to track for advanced surface-to-air missiles — like the long-range S-300 SAMs that Russia deploys in its Kaliningrad exclave north of Poland.
When the U.S. Air Force deployed F-15 fighters from the 104th Fighter Wing to Estonia in 2016, the jets flew close to those Russian surface-to-air missiles.
“When you take off [in Estonia] you were either in or very close to being in a Russian [surface-to-air-missile] system out of Kaliningrad,” Col. Tom Bladen, operations officer with the 104th Fighter Wing, told Defense One in October 2016.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Marine Corps flew its F-35B jump jets in Syria, where Russia has also deployed the S-300.
Last month, the F-35 program director listed Poland as a potential purchaser along with Greece, Singapore, Spain, and Romania. Vice Adm. Mat Winer submitted his written testimony to the House Armed Services tactical air and land forces subcommittee.
Later in April, Poland Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak told local media that a F-35 deal was “not far away.”
While the sale has not been approved by the U.S. State Department, Wilson said it came up when she visited Poland in April.
“[T]hey want to be allied with the United States,” the secretary said. “If there's one thing that's really clear, is they fear and detest the Russians.”
Wilson touted Warsaw's defense spending, which has been increasing for nearly three decades. Poland is one of seven NATO members who spends above 2 percent of its annual gross domestic product on defense.
Buying a fifth-generation fighter is expensive and includes an abundance of training, infrastructure, and maintenance costs beyond the aircraft themselves. Right now, an F-35A, the Air Force version of the Joint Strike Fighter, costs just under $90 million each. For comparison purposes, in January 2018, the Pentagon estimated the sale of 34 F-35s to Belgium at $6.53 billion when all associated costs are factored in.
Poland already flies 48 Lockheed-made F-16 fighters.
https://www.defenseone.com/business/2019/05/mw-poland-f-35/156971/
9 janvier 2024 | International, Aérospatial
A seasoned air mobility pilot, Captain Jeremie Burney is learning new techniques to master the C-17 Globemaster III on an exchange with the U.S. Air Force.
6 juillet 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
DEFENCE DECONSTRUCTED PODCAST June 3, 2020 On today's Defence Deconstructed Podcast, we feature a discussion with Brigadier Nicholas Orr about defence in the United Kingdom. Defence Deconstructed is part of the CGAI Podcast Network and today's episode is brought to you by the Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries (CADSI). Participant Biography: Brigadier Nicholas Orr: The United Kingdom's Defence Advisor to Canada. https://www.cgai.ca/whats_going_on_for_defence_in_the_uk
3 février 2021 | International, C4ISR
Nathan Strout WASHINGTON — Northrop Grumman says a new investment into small startup Deepwave Digital will allow it to push data processing much closer to the point of collection, decreasing the amount of data that needs to be transported and getting products to war fighters faster. Northrop Grumman will install Deepwave Digital's artificial intelligence solution on airborne and on orbit payloads, said Chris Daughters, the company's vice president of research, technology and engineering for aeronautics systems. With the AI incorporated into the payload, the satellite or aircraft will no longer need to send data back to the ground to be processed. Instead, the payload will process the data itself. The innovation, said Daughters, is in incorporating the AI software with the hardware used in various Northrop Grumman payloads. “Deepwave Digital really has an innovative architecture that blends artificial intelligence with some advanced hardware in the RF [radio frequency] domain, whereas a lot of artificial intelligence in the past has always been focused on, I'll just say, mining and scrubbing really big data or maybe doing customized things with video or audio,” said Daughters. In other words, the AI is able to process data at the edge, at the point of collection, instead of sending it down to Earth to be processed independently. “We have a lot of RF payload systems that collect information or collect intelligence for the war fighters and the government as a whole, and by embedding this innovative hardware and AI software, we are able to essentially filter and optimize and scrub and prioritize the data much nearer to the point of collection for that information,” said Daughters. AI has been key to the military's efforts to manage the torrent of data collected by government and commercial satellites, which is simply too much for human analysts to sort through on their own. While progress has been made in using AI to process satellite imagery, military officials are now tackling a related problem: the sheer amount of raw data being pushed out over the networks for processing at remote locations. To reduce the bandwidth needed for satellite imagery, U.S. Army officials say the military needs to shift to edge processing, meaning applying AI to the data and then sending the finished product out over the network instead of all of the raw data. “Edge processing is something that we're very interested in for a number of reasons. And what I mean by that is having smart sensors that can not only detect the enemy, [but] identify, characterize and locate, and do all those tasks at the sensor processing,” said John Strycula, director of the Army's task force focused on intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, at an October AUSA event. “If I only have to send back a simple message from the sensor that says the target is here ― here's the location and here's what I saw and here's my percent confidence ― versus sending back the whole image across the network, it reduces those bandwidth requirements,” he added. Daughters said Northrop Grumman is working to incorporate Deepwave Digital's AI solution into products in development or in limited production in the “very near term.” “The capability exists now. We just need to integrate it in with the systems,” said Daughters. “Our research and technology organization is already looking at how we could be injecting this hardware and AI capability in some of the systems that exist right now or very near term.” While the company is applying the AI to both space and airborne systems, the technology can be more easily integrated with airborne systems, where payloads can be more easily accessed or swapped out. https://www.c4isrnet.com/intel-geoint/2021/02/02/with-deepwave-digital-northrop-grumman-is-pushing-processing-to-the-edge/