Will U.S. Defense Cuts Delay Next-Gen Combat Aircraft Programs?

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  6 septembre 2018 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR

  Artificial intelligence expert gets top job at French defense innovation agency

  By: Pierre Tran PARIS — French Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly has appointed Emmanuel Chiva, a specialist in artificial intelligence and training simulation, as director of the newly formed agency for defense innovation, the ministry said. Chiva took up the post Sept. 1, when the innovation office was officially set up, the ministry said in a Sept. 4 statement. Parly made the appointment in consultation with Joël Barre, head of the Direction Générale de l'Armement procurement office. The innovation agency will report to the DGA. The agency will be the key player in a new strategy for innovation, seeking “to bring together all the actors in the ministry and all the programs which contribute to innovation in defense,” Parly said in an Aug. 28 speech to a conference held by Medef, an employers' association. The innovation office will be open to Europe, while allowing experiments to stay close to their operational users, she said. Parly has set a budget of €1 billion (U.S. $1.2 billion) for the agency, which will seek to coordinate attempts to apply new technology to military applications. Chiva has more than 20 years of experience in AI and training simulation. He previously held a senior post for strategy and development at Agueris, a specialist in training simulation for land weapon systems. Agueris is a unit of CMI Defence, a Belgian company specializing in guns and turrets for armored vehicles. Agueris was on the CMI stand at the Eurosatory trade show for land weapons in June. Agueris held three conferences on AI, with Chiva speaking at a roundtable debate on innovation. Chiva is a graduate of Ecole Normal Supérieure and a specialist in biomathematics, the study of the application of math to biology. “His appointment perfectly illustrates my vision of defense innovation: open to research and the civil economy, in which entrepreneurship is not a concept but a reality,” Parly said. https://www.defensenews.com/industry/techwatch/2018/09/05/artificial-intelligence-expert-gets-top-job-at-french-defense-innovation-agency

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  15 juillet 2019 | International, Autre défense

  Army researchers building ‘smart’ landmines for future combat

  By: Todd South FREDERICKSBURG, Va. – Army leaders see a future battlefield with networked minefields a commander can see from across the globe through satellite communications and that can be scattered in minutes but also retrieved and reused when needed. The push is an effort to keep landmines of various types in the weapons portfolio while still meeting the agreements made to get out of the old school “dumb” landmine use. Smart mines being developed now are a way to replace some of the aging stocks in the “Family of Scatterable Mines” run by the Army's Program Manager Close Combat Systems. The program actually runs nearly half of all munitions from non-lethals to hand grenades to shoulder-fired rockets and counter explosives equipment. The portfolio, its challenges and what's happening now were laid out for attendees at the annual National Defense Industrial Association's Armament Systems Forum in June. Top of the priority lists are some simple munitions needs — more hand-grenade fuzes and better shoulder-fired weapons. But the big ticket items that need problem solving are how to use “terrain shaping obstacles,” or landmines, that can be delivered to close, middle and deep distances and then controlled to avoid the problems of scattering mines across war zones and then leaving them for an innocent passerby to trigger years or decades later. Small options such as the remote activation system used for current mine emplacements relies on radio frequency transmissions. But, as Pelino noted, in a near peer fight it's likely that adversaries will do RF jamming. The Army has a host of terrain-shaping obstacles, everything from the trusty standby Claymore mine which came online in the late 1950s and saw extensive use in the Vietnam War to the Gator system, which can be air dropped to take out everything from an individual soldier to a tank. They're also the anti-personnel area denial artillery munition, or ADAM, mine that can be launched using a 155mm round from artillery. Its cousin, the remote anti-armor munition, or RAAM, packs a bit more of a punch but also can be delivered from anything that fires a 155mm shell. Both are fired to the area of the threat and then roll out multiple mines that detonate when the appropriate level of vibration triggers them. Pelino described the Modular Pack Mine System, or MOPMS, like a minefield in a suitcase. Though coming in at 165 pounds, that's a very heavy suitcase. A single radio-control unit can run up to 15 MOPMS on the battlefield. They can also be hardwired to a controller. An upside to the MOPMS is it can be recovered and reused. On the lighter side is the M86 pursuit deterrent munition. It was designed for special operations forces to use when being pursued by an enemy. Think classic films where the character scatters nails or an oil slick to slow down their chaser, except with a lot more boom. Only instead of firing from a cannon, the soldier has to arm the device and deploy tripwires for bad guys to stumble upon. The Volcano mine system takes more of an industrial approach. Allowing a UH-60 Black Hawk to create a 1,000-foot minefield in less than a minute, Pelino said. The problem with all of those systems is they don't currently meet treaty obligations and many that had about a 20-year shelf life are pushing past 30 years now. Most will still be in stock at 2035, as the Army uses updates to keep them serviceable, Pelino said. The newer Spider System is one that allows soldiers to put in a porcupine-looking system that gives 360-degree coverage to deny enemy access to an area while also networking with other systems and a common controller. Future systems will look a lot more like Spider and a lot less like pressure plate mines of the World War II era or the venerable Claymore. The future minefield systems must have a 2 to 300km communications capability, an ability to be switched on and off, remotely modified self-destruct or deactivate mechanisms, self-report status so that users will know if they've been tampered with or if a mine went off. The Army also wants the mines to be able to not just blow up when something rumbles by but also detect, track and engage threat vehicles for everything from tanks to engineer equipment. Oh, and it must work in all terrain and weather conditions, be easily trained and employed, recoverable, reusable and affordable. The standard kit will include between half and a full brigade's worth of mines to block off areas for maneuver and prevent enemy flanking. https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2019/07/12/army-researchers-building-smart-landmines-for-future-combat/

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  13 janvier 2021 | International, C4ISR

  Rafaut acquiert Secapem

  DEFENSE Rafaut acquiert Secapem Rafaut vient d'acquérir Secapem, une PME innovante spécialisée dans les systèmes d'entraînement des forces armées. « Avec cette opération, le chiffre d'affaires de Rafaut, un peu au-dessus de 90 millions d'euros, va s'approcher des 100 millions d'euros », précise Nicolas Orance, directeur général du groupe, qui souligne que Rafaut entre, avec cette opération, dans « une phase plus active d'acquisitions, pour répondre aux enjeux de taille critique, en ayant toujours à l'esprit de maintenir la complémentarité entre le civil et la défense ». Le modèle dual du groupe, civil et militaire, est en effet gage de résilience. Le rachat de Secapem permet à Rafaut d'acquérir des activités liées aux systèmes d'entraînement au tir réel et des solutions de scoring hautes technologies pour les forces armées, précise L'Usine Nouvelle. L'opération concerne aussi Lun'tech, filiale de Secapem depuis 2013, qui propose des solutions complémentaires pour l'entraînement aux tirs guidés par radar. L'Usine Nouvelle du 13 janvier