With new CH-47 variant back in flight tests, Boeing hopes for production contract

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  17 août 2020 | International, Naval

  The new strategy from Navy’s cyber command

  Mark Pomerleau The Navy's primary cyber outfit released its strategic plan for the next five years, a document that calls for using the service's networks as a warfighting platform. The document, released by 10th Fleet/Fleet Cyber Command in late July, covers the range of responsibility of the command, which is the only fleet with a global footprint in all the military domains, to include cyberspace operations, signals intelligence and recently, the Navy's component to U.S. Space Command. Much has changed since the last strategic plan was published in 2015, namely, the rampant activity of adversaries on a daily basis below the threshold of armed conflict to strategically harm the United States. “The long term competition we face today is between democracies and authoritarian regimes, freedom of navigation, and access to shared world markets. Our long-term strategic competitors are executing strategic cyber activities to alter the international order. This will not let up,” the document read. It added that adversaries learned the military's game but now the military must learn the adversary's game and play it on their terms. “Historically, to undermine a state's power required territorially-focused, overt armed attacks or physical invasion. While that is and will always remain a possibility, technology has provided our adversaries with the ability to achieve their objectives without traditional military force,” the document read. “Currently, our adversaries are engaging us in cyberspace and the costs are cumulative – each intrusion, hack or leak may not be strategically consequential on its own, but the compounding effects are tantamount to what would have been considered an act of war.” The Navy, and military by extension, must be prepared to contest this activity. “I am certain the opening rounds of a 21st century great power conflict, particularly one impacting the maritime domain, will be launched in the electromagnetic, space, or cyber domains. If the Navy is to fight and win, Navy networks must be able to survive those hits and ‘fight hurt,'” Vice Adm. Timothy White, who rarely speaks publicly, said in the forward to the strategy. “Our people must be trained and exercised to fight through those hits. This contest spans the continuum of competition and conflict. We must win this contest during the day-to-day competition of ‘peacetime operations,' where our networks are already in close contact, under constant probing and attack. If we do not, we will be at a severe disadvantage during crisis and lethal combat.” The plan, which continues to nest within the Navy's overarching vision of Distributed Maritime Operations, features a three pronged vision; acting first in full spectrum information warfare, fighting and winning in a fully contested battlespace and promoting modernization and innovation. Moreover, the plan tweaks the five goals outlined in the previous strategic plan 2015-2020. They include: Operating the network as a warfighting platform: Following several high profile network breaches, the Navy must tighten the screws on its IT. Fleet Cyber is responsible for operating, maintaining and defending the network and as part of that, service leaders recognize they must “fight hurt” when networks are strained. They are also working ton establish greater cyber situational awareness across the service and reduce the intrusion attack surface. Conducting fleet cryptologic warfare: Fleet Cyber published its cryptologic cyber warfare vision in 2019. As part of the new strategy, command officials said they will seek to expand and enhance capabilities in distributed signals intelligence as part of its contribution to Distributed Maritime Operations. Delivering warfighting capabilities and effects: Fleet Cyber wants to expand how it delivers effects on the battlefield to include accelerating and synchronizing information warfare capabilities across Maritime Operations Centers, advancing integration of cyber effects into Navy and Marine Corps concepts and creating tactical cyber teams along with a maritime fires cell to provide expertise across the fleet for delivering cyber effects. Accelerate Navy's cyber forces: Fleet Cyber needs to develop a plan to meet increased demand, both for its joint force requirements through U.S. Cyber Command and Navy specific requirements. Leaders are also looking to mature organizational structures and command and control relationships between various cyber entities that control forces across the globe such as Joint Forces Headquarters–DoDIN, Joint Force Headquarters–Cyber and Cyber Operations–Integrated Planning Elements. Moreover, with the additional importance of the space domain, Fleet Cyber will look to exploit the increasing convergence between space, cyberspace and electromagnetic spectrum. Establish and Mature Navy Space Command: The document states that Fleet Cyber's goal is to “maintain maritime superiority from the sea floor to space with a core emphasis on lethality, readiness and capacity,” and so officials must re-focus to provide the best space integration possible as the service component to Space Command. The strategy also articulates Fleet Cyber's role in enabling Distributed Maritime Operations, which is underpinned by assured command and control, battlespace awareness and integrated fires. All of those require robust networks, information and completion of the kill chain. https://www.c4isrnet.com/cyber/2020/08/13/the-new-strategy-from-navys-cyber-command/

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  12 décembre 2024 | International, Terrestre

  US military airfields in Indo-Pacific too easily taken out of action, report says

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  25 septembre 2018 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

  Defense industry fighting DoD proposal to change performance payments

  By: Joe Gould WASHINGTON — The Pentagon's proposed plan to lower the rate of progress and performance payments some companies receive on defense contracts is sending shockwaves through the industry and invited a backlash from three large trade associations. To incentivize defense firms to work more quickly and more efficiently for the taxpayer, Pentagon leaders want to create a tiered system that recognizes high performing companies with higher performance-based payments. Contractors, however, are balking at the Pentagon's efforts to make them more accountable. While obscure to the general public, the proposed rule changes have rattled government contractors, which argue they would choke off funding for innovation, shackle them with more bureaucracy, increase the cost of military equipment— and hurt profits. The baseline performance- and progress-based payment rate for larger companies would be reset from 80 percent to 50 percent, with incremental increases or decreases based on new criteria proposed by DoD. If a contractor, for instance, delivers end items on time, hits milestone schedules, or avoids serious corrective action requests, it would win 10 percent bumps for each. (Small businesses would have their own schedule of incentives.) The National Defense Industrial Association is calling on DoD to rescind the regulation and collaborate with industry to create a different rule. One objection it has is the proposed rule would determine payment rates based on companies' overall performance, as opposed to contract by contract. “The marching orders from Congress is we have to be faster, more innovative, to do better for the warfighter,” said NDIA Senior Vice President for Policy Wesley Hallman. But, under the proposed rule, a company that wants to take on a high-risk project that fails, “will later be judged on that thing the following December. They're incentivized to take a low-risk approach.” Though Section 831 of the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act encourages DoD to use performance payments, NDIA argues the rule violate's the law's intent and that lessening companies' cash flow would slow payments to subcontractors and sap funding for independent research and development. “We're doing our best to let them know how this will hurt industry,” said NDIA Director of Regulatory Policy Corbin Evans. The trade group's comments were submitted at a public meeting Sept. 14 to consider changes the Pentagon proposed in August to federal acquisitions rules, the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulations Supplement. The Defense Department is holding another public meeting, Oct. 10, before the public comment period ends on Oct. 23. Both the Professional Services Council and the Aerospace Industries Association, which more than 300 companies in the aerospace and defense industry, also offered presentations in opposition. The move toward better stewardship of taxpayer dollars comes amid record Pentagon budget growth and amid a reorganization of the Pentagon's acquisition, technology and logistics office, now due to finish in a few months. The move falls in line with Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Ellen Lord's efforts to halve the timeline of major defense acquisition programs, which are notoriously slow. “I believe the lifeblood of most industry is cash flow, so what we will do is regulate the percentage of payments or the amount of profit that can be achieved through what type of performance they demonstrate by the numbers,” Lord said in a Defense News interview last week. Hence, “we're going to begin to reward companies through profit or through progress or performance payments, as a function of how they manage all of that, as well as quality and delivery and a variety of other things,” Lord said. Though it's unclear whether DoD will formally move ahead with the rule by a Dec. 1 deadline, investors have already responded negatively to a reports on the changes, according to aerospace and defense sector analysts at Cowen and Company. “It will be a scramble for companies and DoD to compile the necessary data to evaluate the rate request. Under the current draft rule, DoD would need to evaluate the rate request in just one month for all its suppliers,” Roman Schweizer, of Cowen and Company, said in a note to investors Friday. “We suspect that will be very hard the first time and suggests this year may be too hard.” Still, Cowen analyst Cai von Rumohr downplayed the near-term effects, especially beyond the major primes. He speculated the proposed rule change will have negligible impact on contractor results in 2019 since it doesn't apply to any current contracts; it's very unlikely to go into effect before 2020, if ever; it will not apply to time and materials and fixed-price commercial terms contracts, and because it will only apply to some cost-plus contracts. https://www.defensenews.com/industry/2018/09/24/defense-industry-fighting-dod-proposal-to-change-performance-payments