Nouvelles

By: Aaron Mehta NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. – The Pentagon is preparing to press the defense industry to increase its cyber security, with Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan saying it will become a key measurement for how industry is judged by the department. “This is a public service announcement for those of you from industry, especially for those of you that are in the, I'll call it, higher tiers,” Shanahan told an audience at the annual Air Force Association conference Wednesday. “Cybersecurity is, you know, probably going to be what we call the ‘fourth critical measurement.' We've got quality, cost, schedule, but security is one of those measures that we need to hold people accountable for,” he said. “We're going to work with our industrial partners to help them be as accountable for security as they are for quality. And it shouldn't be that being secure comes with a big bill. It's just like we wouldn't pay extra for quality. We shouldn't pay extra for security.” The responsibilities of primes goes beyond just ensuring their own internal cyber security, in Shanahan's eye. The former Boeing executive laid down the gauntlet to the biggest industrial partners, saying flatly it is part of their job to make sure the lower-tier supplier are secure as well. “I'm a real strong believer that the Tier 1 and Tier 2 leadership has a responsibility to manage the supply chain. And that's where we have real gaps,” he said. “Security is the standard. It's the expectation. It's not something that's above and beyond what we've done before.” In recent years the Pentagon has been increasingly vocal about its concerns that lower-tier suppliers are not as secure digitally as they need to be; unsecured parts from those suppliers can then be incorporated into larger projects, potentially with vulnerabilities that would not be discovered until it is too late. To try and address that, the Pentagon has been looking at a plan to launch red team cyber attackson industrial partners, in which a cell would test vulnerabilities and try to penetrate the contractors' systems, in order to identify weaknesses. https://www.fifthdomain.com/digital-show-dailies/air-force-association/2018/09/19/shanahan-cyber-security-will-become-fourth-critical-measurement-for-industry

Air Force Busts Out Credit Cards To Buy High Tech Gear The Air Force can be an “angel investor” for some startups, said Will Roper, the service's top acquisition official. By PAUL MCLEARY WASHINGTON The Pentagon has been trying for years to replicate the speed of Silicon Valley-style startup culture, with only sporadic — and limited — success. But the Air Force says it's doubling down on the effort, and is looking to start using government credit cards to buy small amounts of gear from tech firms that don't have much interest in forming long-term relationships with the government. The Air Force can be an “angel investor” for some startups, said Will Roper, the service's top acquisition official (and former head of the Pentagon's Strategic Capabilities Office). “The benefit is huge because it finally pulls startups into orbits around our program offices,” Roper told reporters at the Air Force Association conference on Tuesday. “Even if round one of their product isn't ready, they're aware of us as an angel investor. We're not trying to have them work for the government. We just want their products to make sense for us.” Roper is eyeing a series of startup days that will be held across the Air Force, beginning with an initiative between the Air Force Research Laboratory and AFWERX to knock out fifty contracts in fifty hours by the end of October. In 2015, then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter established the DIUx office in Silicon Valley, in the hope that a presence in the midst of tech startup boom country would convince small companies that working with the government would pay off. So far, the results have been modest, with most firms declining to sign up to be a part of the painfully slow and cumbersome government contracting process. What worries the Pentagon is that rivals like China don't suffer the same competition with the private sector for top talent. The government in Beijing compels technology firms to work with the government, which has led to a series of rapid-fire advances in artificial intelligence and surveillance technologies developed by large tech firms being sucked up by the government. In the United States, many tech firms are far more wary. Over 3,000 Google engineers recently signed a petition to refuse to work with the Pentagon on Project Maven, a program that collects and sorts data from drones to assist in targeting. The engineers objected to working on a program that could be used in bombing campaigns. Google will withdraw from the program. At the same time, Google leadership is working with the Chinese government on developing a Chinese-specific search engine that censors information Beijing wants to keep from its citizens. Roper knows the hurdles he faces. He's not looking to lock these companies into long-term contracts or relationships: “We're looking to buy into their ideas...I would love for them to sell us their product on their way to being bought up by Amazon.” In order to get there, the plan is for the Air Force to review the companies who want to partner with them and send out invitations to do a live pitch. At the end of a day of pitches, the idea is for 60 to 80 percent of the companies to walk out with a deal the same day. That's where the credit cards come in. Roper said he wants his people to use theirs to literally buy tech on the spot with a swipe. “The authorities that govern government purchase cards are broad and so we had both our government contracting professionals and legal professionals come back and they determined that we can do small business awards using a [government card],” he said. The new authority helps both sides: The companies get the cash, and the government doesn't drive away a potential partner by throwing months of lag time at them before a deal can be done. Even other transaction authority agreements, which are used when the Pentagon needs to move fast, “take three to four months — and that's in a good case — [but] that's too long for a startup.” https://breakingdefense.com/2018/09/air-force-busts-out-credit-cards-to-buy-high-tech-gear/

By: Sam LaGrone VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — The Pentagon's new focus on high-end warfare with sophisticated adversaries will put increased emphasis and pressure on Navy readiness, and the service's maintenance infrastructure needs to better in fixing ships on time, the head of Naval Sea Systems Command said on Tuesday. Taking cues from Secretary of Defense James Mattis' new National Defense Strategy, all the services are focused on dialing up readiness to meet a higher-level threat, Vice Adm. Tom Moore said during a keynote speech at the American Society of Naval Engineers (ASNE) Fleet Maintenance and Modernization Symposium. “The last year has had the biggest focus on readiness that I have seen in the 37 years I've been in the Navy, and that's on all levels. Navy leadership is talking about readiness every single day, from the [chief of naval operations] on down,” Moore said. “Right now we're not delivering on everything we need delivered, and going forth we really need to deliver, and the pace of change is only going to get faster.” According to Moore, the Navy's public yards are delivering ships on-time about 45 to 50 percent of the time, while private shipyards are getting ships out on time about 35 percent of the time. “It's important to keep in mind that I have 55 ships coming into maintenance availabilities in the private sector in 2019, and in 2018 only 35 percent ships I have in availabilities are expected to move on time,” he said. “Thirty-five percent is just not going to be good enough moving forward to meet the demands that fleet has today.” He indicated that the four public shipyards are improving. “We're starting to see some results. Last year we delivered all four carriers all on time. We stubbed our toe a little bit on Ike,” Moore said referring to the maintenance availability of carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower(CVN-69) that has almost doubled in length. Work on nuclear submarines has also lagged in public yards, he said. “All I have to do is look at Ike, Rhode Island and Ohio and Seawolf and some of the ships that are in the yard today to know that's still a challenge for us.” NAVSEA has a plan on the books to retool and refresh its four public yards over the next 20 years and has now turned its attention to the private yards: it needs to contract in a way that promotes more efficient work, and it needs more capacity through more drydocks. “There are people who argue with me that whether we have a capacity challenge or not, but all I do is look that only 35 percent of the ships are delivered on time, and the conclusion I draw is there are not enough people working on ships,” he said. “If we're going to be successful, we have to be able to provide a stable and predictable workload for industry, and we're going to have to be competitive.” NAVSEA is taking yet another look at how it contracts with private shipyards for maintenance, with a plan to modify the Multiple Award Contract/Multi-Order (MAC-MO) contract strategy that was meant to optimize cost for the Navy. “The consensus was, after two years of running with MAC-MO, I think we agree that strategy isn't delivering the results that we need,” Moore said. To improve the process, NAVSEA is working a pilot program that would bundle availabilities on each coast that would allow companies a more predictable set of work. “We'll get bids from industry and we'll be able to lay [our] chips on the table. We'll be able to look at the bids. We'll be able to look at who has capacity and who doesn't. We'll be able to look at, hey, it's important to keep an industrial base, and we'll be able to make decisions that are not solely based on price that will allow us to deliver our ships on time and give you a little more stable and predictive work,” Moore said. “My goal is eventually that we will eventually – on each coast – bundle availabilities six months at a time... so you can know at least what work you can have in the next six months and beyond.” The Navy is set to test the scheme with a three-ship pilot program for repairs of guided-missile destroyers USS Arleigh Burke (DDG-51) and USS Bulkeley (DDG 84) and amphibious warship USS Gunston Hall(LSD-44). With the increase in predictability for bundled MAC-MO contracts, the Navy hopes private industry will invest in infrastructure to handle the planned 355-ship Navy. “The acquisition strategy we have today doesn't incentivize industry to hire and make investments that I think they need to make,” Moore said. “I think that acquisition strategy is the root cause of what I would say was a lack of capacity in the private sector today.” In another bid to expand capacity, the NAVSEA is looking to certify drydocks to Navy standards. Moore said NAVSEA has been in touch with 12 shipyards who mostly don't do work on warships that are interested in having their drydocks certified for use for repair work. Moore said he's also looking to increase private industries ability to work on nuclear submarines. Currently, there are four submarines in repairs at public yards. Overall, Moore stressed the need to improve maintenance is growing as the Pentagon strives to be more dynamic and the service grows. “We're putting strain on the ships, we're putting strain on the men and women out there wearing the uniform that are out there at the tip of the spear, and it's up to us to figure out how to generate the readiness for the force that we have: 287,” he said. “As we go up to 355, if we can't generate the readiness with 287 in terms of delivering ships on time – as you know there's a lot of skepticism that we can do that as we head to 355.” https://news.usni.org/2018/09/19/navsea-new-pentagon-strategy-putting-pressure-private-public-maintenance-yards-deliver-ships-time

By Bobby Cummings, Office of Naval Research, ARLINGTON, Virginia (NNS) -- For U.S. Navy deep-sea divers, time is of the essence. While operating 100 feet down, with little to no natural light—often in frigid temperatures and limited oxygen—time is everything. But for divers, time remains a precious commodity on the surface as well. For years, military divers have had to manually write and log information from dives while at sea into a system known as the Dive/Jump Reporting System (DJRS). Manual entries can be time-consuming and allow human error. Enter the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Global TechSolutions program, a rapid-response science and technology program focused on solutions to problems submitted by Sailors and Marines. ONR TechSolutions and industry partners have created a new tool called the Scuba Binary Dive Application (SBDA) 100 to digitally plan, record and report dive-profile information to DJRS. The application will accelerate the process of logging and uploading dive information, and will help eliminate potential data-entry mistakes. The idea originated from Force Master Diver Scott Brodeur, Naval Expeditionary Combat Command. “Scott has completed over a thousand dives during his career and he recognized the need to make the logging and reporting process more efficient for his peers,” said Jason Payne, TechSolutions acting program manager. The SBDA 100 is a software application on a ruggedized tablet used to log, compute and accurately compile dive-profile data. The data, collected from a wrist watch that divers wear during operations called a Navy Diver Computer, includes dive site conditions, equipment used by the divers, dive events, such as, when a diver left the surface or left the bottom of the ocean floor, and if the dive required decompression stops. SBDA 100 syncs this information and automatically uploads it to DJRS. “For years, I witnessed how many hours it takes to manually log dives—watching the young guys that have to—at the end of a long 12 to 14-hour-day—come back and manually go through the dive logs and write everything down, and double check it and triple check it,” said Brodeur. During a recent training exercise in the Gulf of Mexico, Brodeur, the Naval Experimental Dive Unit and other U.S. Navy divers stationed around the globe had the opportunity to test the technology for the first time. “The designers gave me a crash course on how to operate the technology,” said Chief Navy Diver Marshall Goble, ship repair facility, Yokosuka, Japan. “I used the device as a primary but still used the ‘old school' way and wrote down the information as well. Both calculations came out 100 percent accurate. I found the tablet easier to use, and I have no doubt it's going to streamline efficiency.” Throughout the process of the development of the SBDA 100, ONR TechSolutions has worked in conjunction with Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) Atlantic; industry partner Intelligent Automation Inc.; and Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) Panama City, which is the home of the U.S. Naval Diving and Salvage Training Center. SPAWAR served as the principal investigator and NSWC Panama City provided technical support and hosted the training and demonstration of the SBDA 100 at sea. “The technology has tested very well,” Brodeur said. “It's a testament to the value of the ONR TechSolutions program and everyone who worked on this project. Witnessing this idea come to fruition and have it be built, demonstrated, designed and ready for use is pretty exciting.” Watch a video of the demonstration. Bobby Cummings is a contractor for ONR Corporate Strategic Communications. Get more information about the Navy from US Navy facebook or twitter. For more news from Office of Naval Research, visit www.navy.mil/local/onr/. https://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=107125

By: Shawn Snow In yet another sign the Corps is becoming increasingly concerned about air defense, the Corps decided to slap a counter-drone system on a Polaris MRZR all-terrain vehicle. It's called the Light Marine Air Defense Integrated System, or LMADIS, and it's comprised of two MRZR vehicles, a command node and a sensor vehicle. The system is a “maneuverable ground-based sensor, electronic attack, C2 [ command and control] system," 1st Lt. Ariel Cecil, the commander of the Low Altitude Air Defense detachment for Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 166, said in a video posted by the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit. The LMADIS can detect, track, identify and take down drones with electronic attack, according to Cecil. The MRZR counter drone system is currently deployed with the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit where it recently participated in the Theater Amphibious Combat Rehearsal exercise in Djibouti. The Corps has been investing heavily in counter air and drone threats. It's an issue the Marines really haven't had to focus on for some time now. But as the Corps begins to face down more sophisticated hostile actors there's no guarantee Marines will always operate on a battlefield where they own the airspace. That means enemy air or drone attacks are now a reality the Corps must plan for. And increasingly, drone technology has found its way into the hands of terrorist groups and ragtag militias. ISIS fighters in Iraq and Syria have been known to weaponize small commercial quadcopter drones, dropping small munitions and hand grenades on Iraqi and partner nation forces. Even the Taliban in Afghanistan have gotten in the game, using small drones to film attacks on remote Afghan army outposts. But the big threat, according to the Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. Robert B. Neller, is that adversaries will eventually learn how to control these small attack drones in massive swarms. “When you think about enemy air attacks, you think about jets and bombers and stuff,” Neller said at the Atlantic Council in April. “I think the real future in enemy air attack is going to be swarming drones.” So, the Corps has embarked on an ambitious plan to field a new suite of tech to bolster the Corps' air defense and counter drone capabilities. Two such systems are the Ground Based Air Defense-Transformation, or GBAD, and the Ground/Air Task-Oriented Radar, or G/ATOR. The GBAD systems is basically a detection system with laser weapon that can track and destroy drones, and it's mountable on the Corps' new Joint Light Tactical Vehicle or Humvee. That program is still undergoing testing and evaluation. The G/ATOR system has been in the Corps' arsenal since 2013 and it can detect rockets, mortars, artillery cruise missiles, and drones. The system is highly mobile making it integral to the Corps' distributed operations plan in the Pacific should a conflict come between the U.S. and China. And the Corps is also dishing out money to modify Stinger missiles as part of Service Life Extension Program. https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2018/09/19/the-corps-just-slapped-a-counter-drone-system-on-an-mrzr-all-terrain-vehicle

By: Brandon Knapp The Defense Advanced Research Agency announced an $8 million contract modification for the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute to work on a program that develops circuits that be quickly adapted rather than wholesale reinvented. The work is part of DARPA's Circuit Realization at Faster Timescales (CRAFT) research program. The modification brings the total value of the contract to $28 million, according to a Sept. 17 announcement from the Pentagon. The program is designed to dramatically shorten the design cycle and the expense numbers for custom integrated circuits, which are essential in a wide variety of military equipment such as drones and tactically useful 3D imagery production. Currently, it can cost up to $100 million and take more than two years to design these circuits, according to a DARPA release. The CRAFT program aims to cut that timeline down to a matter of months. “Reducing the time and cost for designing and procuring custom, high-efficiency integrated circuits, should drive more of those in the DoD technology community toward best commercial fabrication and design practices,” CRAFT program manager, Dr. Linton Salmon in a program information release. “A primary payoff would be a versatile development environment in which engineers and designers make decisions based on the best technical solutions for the systems they are building, instead of worrying about circuit design delays or costs.” Work will be performed by USC in Marina Del Ray, California, with an expected completion date of December 2019. DARPA has been working on the program since 2015. https://www.c4isrnet.com/industry/2018/09/19/darpa-contract-aims-to-design-circuits-in-months-not-years

By: Amber Corrin The Navy released a long-awaited final request for proposals Sept. 18 for the re-compete of its Next Generation Enterprise Network contract. But it's part one of two, covering only the hardware side of things as the service looks to overhaul its Navy-Marine Corps Intranet. According to analysts at Deltek, each piece of the NGEN-R request is valued at roughly $250 million over a three-year period, per estimates from Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command. That's significantly lower than NGEN's original $3.5 billion price tag. Specifically, the RFP seeks hardware devices for use on the Department of Defense's classified and unclassified networks, including desktops, laptops, two-in-one detachable devices, tablets, ultra-small desktop computers, as well as thin- or zero-client devices. A single device could serve multiple users and associated accounts, according to the RFP. But for the roughly 400,000 devices NGEN-R looks to replace, the service in particular is looking at an end-user hardware-as-a-service arrangement. “It's breaking out the services that are being provided in a way that allows us to gain most effective advantage of how industry does business today,” Capt. Don Harder, deputy program executive officer for Navy enterprise information systems, told Federal Times in a recent interview. “The end user of hardware and devices as its own separate contract, there are those suppliers out there that that's what they specialize in. By breaking that out into its own contractual component within the NGEN-R construct ... we believe will allow us to get more effective advantage to pricing on those components.” The language in the RFP solidifies Harder's thoughts as part of the statement of work. “In acquiring EUHWaaS, the Government is only acquiring the service of using an EUHW device. This is not a purchase, and titles for all EUHWaaS devices remain with the Contractor,” the RFP states. “EUHWaaS includes the provisioning, storage of spares, configuration, testing, integration, installation, operation, maintenance, [end-of-life] disposal of NIPRNet and SIPRNet EUHW, and internal storage device removal and destruction requirements.” Bids for the hardware piece of NGEN-R are due Nov. 19. The second part of the NGEN-R RFP, service management integration and transport or SMIT, is expected in the next 30 days, according to a Navy spokesman. SMIT will cover much of NMCI's backbone and functionality, including services ranging from help desk to productivity suites to network defense — and how they're technically provided. Splitting NGEN-R into two separate contracts was an intentional move designed, at least in part, to give the Navy greater flexibility in the capabilities available to users, and the options for buying them, as technology evolves. “We are modifying how the services are broken out in a way that it allows us to sever some of those services as new mechanisms [and] provide [them as they are] brought into play or brought to our attention,” Harder said, using cloud capabilities as an example. “We may allow a mechanism to pull some of those into either a hybrid cloud or a cloud solution in the future. If so, it may go on a separate contractual vehicle at which point in time we would sever those services away from the SMIT vehicle. So, we're looking at how we take those services and how we manage them contractually, which would allow us, again additional flexibility later on down the road.” Harder said that throughout the development of NGEN-R, he's been eyeing not just the Navy, but also the broader government to benefit from the new approach. “We're building in that flexibility that allows the government the ability in the future even to find components of services that can be done in a more effective or efficient way [and] either sever them or modify them separately as opposed to having to break apart the entire contract to do something,” he said. The hardware piece of NGEN-R was released less than two weeks after Navy officials announced a one-year, $787 million extension to the incumbent provider, Perspecta. Harder declined to put a dollar figure on the NGEN-R contract, as did other Navy officials. The RFP comes after several delays — officials previously had said the contract would be up for bidding this summer. According to Harder, prior to release the RFP had to be approved by leadership at the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition, as well as the Office of the Secretary of Defense's Defense Procurement and Acquisition Policy office. Harder said the Navy has taken extra time to shore up “the education piece” — ensuring the contracting process meets leaders' expectations, particularly with the new strategy. And IT modernization also has come into play, with officials from the broader DoD looking to NGEN as a possible model or even contract vehicle for defense networks down the line, he said. “We need to ensure that what we have placed in the contract and how we're going about the contract meets leadership expectations. And because we are doing things in a different way, that's taking a little bit of time,” Harder said. The Navy's approach to running NMCI today is “one of the more cost-effective ways of managing networks. And there is a desire as part of one of the many IT reform efforts [for possible] integration of networks in the future to mimic or, potentially, even ride on our contracts.” https://www.federaltimes.com/acquisition/2018/09/19/ngen-r-what-is-the-navy-thinking

By: Usman Ansari ISLAMABAD — Pakistan's ambassador to Turkey pledged this week to increase defense cooperation between the two countries to new levels, but after a string of recent deals, analysts believe further cooperation will be incremental. Speaking to Turkey's Daily Sabah, Muhammad Syrus Sajjad Qazi highlighted defense relations such as recent deals for platforms like the T-129 helicopter gunships and Milgem corvettes, which he said would further improve as the countries continue to explore new opportunities. The existing deals alone are likely to see substantial offsets and technological input for Pakistani industry, and build upon existing supply of defense technology critical for all three branches of Pakistan's military. Pakistan's defense industry generally lags behind other nations, and has struggled to offer much in return bar a deal for the PAC Super Mushak basic training aircraft, further highlighting the importance of the relationship between Ankara and Islamabad. Asked exactly how that relationship may further improve, Brian Cloughley, and author, analyst, and former Australian defense attaché to Islamabad, said there is room to do so. He highlighted training as one area of cooperation, thanks to tensions between Pakistan and the U.S., along with armored personnel carriers and future orders of helicopters. While Turkish AFV-related technology is already finding its way onto Pakistani APCs and tanks, Pakistan is exploring options to supplement or even replace its M113 type APCs, perhaps with an IFV design, with Turkey's Kaplan or Tulpar IFV programs potentially of interest. Turkey's T625 multirole transport helicopter may also be considered to replace Pakistan's range of legacy types. Both countries also have active fifth generation fighter development projects, but analysts believe this level of cooperation is presently a step too far. Justin Bronk, an analyst with the RUSI think tank, raises concerns given “the lack of any proven domestic capacity in both Pakistan and Turkey to produce a fifth-generation fighter, than with any issues around security or industrial interests.” “Neither country is in any position to develop such capabilities for the foreseeable future without massive external assistance and technology transfer,” he said That idea is echoed by author, analyst, and former air force pilot Kaiser Tufail, who nevertheless stresses their respective fifth generation programs “must continue for a long-term goal of manufacture”. Tufail believes both nations should co-operate on an interim type of jet, with some of the technical characteristics of a full fifth-generation fighter “rather than jumping straight to a full-capability fifth generation fighter.” Though new to aircraft manufacture, he believes Pakistan has gained a slight edge over its potential partner, having co-produced the JF-17, “essentially a Chinese design based on PAF's specifications”, though there is still “need for collaboration in design and production of any new fighter.” Turkey in comparison, though having license produced F-16s, lacks comparable modern fighter design experience. Their close relationship makes fighter co-production “logical” though, he said. Therefore, present co-operation “could well take the shape of a ‘Block-4' JF-17 developed by Turkey and Pakistan” to be “considered for joint design and co-production”, after which “a stealth fighter would then be a logical next step.” https://www.defensenews.com/global/asia-pacific/2018/09/19/future-pakistan-turkish-defense-cooperation-likely-to-be-incremental-for-now

Robin Hughes, London - IHS Jane's Missiles & Rockets MBDA in the United Kingdom has unveiled a new combat unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) concept designed to provide on-call, low-cost organic precision effects close air support for forward-deployed land forces. Spectre is a tilt wing, electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) combat air system concept capable of quickly transitioning to forward flight mode for rapid traversal over complex terrain at low altitude. Designed with an integrated modular payload bay capable of incorporating systems up to 25 kg, Spectre can be equipped with either two MBDA Enforcers or a single Missile Moyenne Portee (MMP) multirole weapons system to address light armoured, soft-skinned and unmanned threats, or heavier armoured threats. The Spectre system can ‘find and fix' beyond line-of-sight threats in complex operational environments to assist deployed ground forces. It also incorporates a ‘watch and wait' mode with a top attack capability effectively giving the Spectre an overwatch/loitering munition utility. Other mission module options include re-supply payloads, improved sensors, or electronic warfare payloads. The latter payload can be combined with kinetic effects to disrupt adversary operations. Spectre's various mission modules can be replaced by the operator in-theatre, and the system design provides for the integration of new and upgraded modules and technologies and requirements evolve. As currently envisaged, Spectre will have a cruise speed of 180 km/h, a cruising altitude of less than 100 m, and combat range in excess of 10 km with a flight endurance of more than 60 minutes. The Spectre design provides for two (front and aft) 2 m tilt wings, with four rotor assemblies: one on each wing. The all-up weight of the concept system has not been disclosed. Other features include automatic navigation, operator-over-the-loop command and control (but with firing authority always with the human operator), and anti-jam GPS navigation. Spectre can be used as a single system, or as a scalable co-operative swarming capability. https://www.janes.com/article/83133/mbda-unveils-spectre-combat-uav-concept