Nouvelles

By: Laicie Heeley As the host of a national security podcast literally named “Things That Go Boom,” I spend a lot of my time thinking about what keeps us safe. And usually these thoughts are pretty focused on big, obvious threats — things like bombs. But with the world seemingly imploding, a global pandemic spreading, nationwide protests against police brutality erupting and world economies tanking, it's clearer than ever that we've been preparing for the wrong crisis. You could say we were preparing for World War III, when we got hammered by World War C. Staying safe means recognizing what threats we're facing — the ones we're expecting and the ones that might catch us off guard. But we didn't do that. Instead we invested hundreds of billions of dollars in weapons and wars while the coronavirus slipped silently and invisibly across our borders, into our homes and even onto our military aircraft carriers. The greatest threats of the past decade have come in the form of a deadly virus, climate-related natural disasters, economic meltdowns, and attacks on free and fair elections. So why are expensive weapons systems and massive military installations still a foregone conclusion? America spends over $700 billion a year on our national defense. That's about a sixth of our overall budget and more than health care, education and all the rest of our discretionary spending combined. And the money is solid, meaning that most of the time, it's not subject to normal swings in the economy. Things are bad? We can't let the military feel the pain. Things are good? The military has to prepare for the next big threat. Bad or good, it's always a great time to invest. You can't put a price tag on security, they say. And they don't. According to the Watson Institute's Costs of War Project, America's war on terror — which now spans more than 80 countries — has cost taxpayers over $6 trillion since 2001, with no signs of slowing down. And in its latest budget proposal, the Trump administration proposed spending $20 billion more on military programs than on all other federal programs combined. Conversely, in 2018, the Trump administration cut the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's budget by 80 percent, forcing it to scale back its efforts to prevent epidemics in 39 of 49 countries, including China. These and other major cuts to global health spending left the U.S. unprepared for the crisis we're facing now. As vital American businesses — from my son's preschool to our friends' farm — struggle to survive, the defense industry has unsurprisingly had no such problem. In late April, for example, some contractors received a windfall of business when the State Department approved over $2 billion in weapons sales to repressive regimes like India, Morocco and the Philippines, with more supposedly on the way. The defense industry is doing so well in fact that it is showing up on investment lists as an example of one of the best places to “hedge in hard times.” Despite their already deep financial pockets, Congress decided to give these huge contractors billions of dollars in coronavirus relief funds. This comes as a bit of a surprise when you consider that the Pentagon just recently diverted $13.3 billion in unused funds for the construction of the president's border wall. And the first-ever audit of the Department of Defense revealed that it failed to spend almost $28 billion from 2013-2018, all the while asking for more funding. Unfortunately, experts believe this money, which is supposed to be used to help keep workers safe and employed, will instead only help make the companies' executives richer. We're already seeing this play out. Deemed “essential workers” due to the pending arms sales, workers in these manufacturing plants recently went on strike after they were forced to go to work even as a number of their colleagues tested positive for coronavirus. Flush with additional resources from a growing military budget, and as other departments' budgets have been cut, the Pentagon has also become deeply embedded in domestic affairs. Last year, Defense Secretary Mark Esper went so far as to proclaim election security a core part of the Pentagon's mission, despite the hesitance of past officials to allow such forms of military creep. The separation of the civilian and the military is one of the hallmarks of our democracy. The breakdown of these norms isn't good for our country, and it isn't good for the Pentagon, which has already sounded the alarm on what the military can — and cannot — do to deal with the pandemic. What's more, the migration of funds to the Pentagon saps other agencies of vital and limited resources. By many accounts, it also makes us worse at winning wars, as the Pentagon foregoes more focused and essential strategic planning in favor of a do-it-all, buy-it-all reality. Consider that some estimates put the annual cost of eradicating homelessness in the United States at about $20 billion, and the cost of eradicating hunger in America at about $26 billion. And consider, in the midst of an outbreak, that we could buy 2,200 ventilators for the price of one F-35. It doesn't have to be this way. While some may see the Pentagon budget as a sacred cow, it's not. Reconsidering our spending to invest more heavily in the programs that really keep us safe is not only possible, but long overdue. https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2020/06/10/we-prepared-for-war-but-should-have-spent-our-money-elsewhere/

Nathan Strout For a little more than one year, Brig. Gen. Rob Collins served as the program executive officer for Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors (IEW&S), where he was responsible for ensuring the soldier can detect, recognize and identify the enemy. Collins' vast portfolio included airborne and terrestrial sensors, position, navigation and timing devices, biometric solutions, and the TITAN ground station program, which will take data from aerial, terrestrial and space sensors to distribute essential data to shooters. The officer has a long career working in this arena: he previously served as project manager for the Army's Distributed Common Ground System and before that as product manager for the Warfighter Information Network-Tactical (WIN-T) Increments 2 and 3. On June 1, Collins officially took over as the new head of the Army's Program Executive Office – Command, Control and Communications (Tactical) where he will oversee the Army's network modernization efforts and work with the network cross functional team at Army Futures Command. In May, during his final days at PEO IEW&S, Collins talked to C4ISRNET's Nathan Strout about his approach to acquisitions, how the Army fits into Joint All Domain Command and Control, and the legacy he'll leave at the program office. This interview has been edited for clarity and length. C4ISRNET: How has your office helped the Department of Defense's shape its approach to Joint All Domain Command and Control? COLLINS: Enhancing deep sense and linking sensor to shooter is fundamental to our Army multi-domain operations concept, and really, the future of large-scale ground combat operations. And specifically for our PEO, we've been active partners in JADC2 efforts, working closely with our network (cross functional team) and our PEO C3T partners and the Assured Position Navigation and Timing cross functional-team in particular and the ISR task force at large, which is led by the G2. We're working on integrated architectures, multi-functional sensors that are integrated within the network for both [data] transport and mission command, and really solutions that are tailored to meet the unique requirements of our Army ground force. And when I say that, [I meant that they are] really at scale and they can meet the mobility requirements of our ground force. We operate at a scale and at an expeditionary mobile fashion which makes the Army a little bit unique. I'll tell you the collaborations that we've embarked upon with the [program officers] really assisted in some common design principles and components to assist in interoperability and really enabling sensor to shooter. Most recently within the PEO, we really helped the Army with some deep sensing ground stations — TITAN circuits if you will — that participated in some sensor to shooter threads in a training exercise [outside the continental United States]. So that really informed our approach. Across the PEO moving forward we've identified a lot of collaborative areas for experimentation demonstrations, tech maturity and really focused in on sensor integration and really data — how do we share data best across the battlefield? C4ISRNET: From the outside, it seems like TITAN will be an essential piece to the entire JADC2 concept, especially for the Army. How are you approaching redundancy and survivability to that system? COLLINS: TITAN is certainly a significant focus area in the modernization effort. It's a key component for our deep sense capability and really being scalable and expeditionary as an intelligence ground station and supporting commanders across the multi-domain operations battlefield framework. And we're really looking at TITAN to be kind of a LEGO approach that can be tailored based on the echelon it supports. And yes, one of the tenets is that it's going to leverage a multi-layered approach, a robust set of nodes from space, from high-altitude aerial to terrestrial sensors and assist with target nominations and link fires, command and control, informed by all the multi-disciplines of intelligence. And really as it connects all these various feeds, hundreds of thousands of intelligence feeds, it's going to employ artificial intelligence and machine learning to rapidly synthesize that information into meaningful info at the speed of battle —sometimes what we say is time can almost become a weapon in and by itself. Part of the analysis is taking a look at primary and alternate communications, what we call PACE, as part of the design, and I'll tell you TITAN is going to consist of a number of assured communications capabilities designed in the PACE plan, from Beyond Line-of-Sight communications, common tactical network components, direct downlinks, software-defined radios, and other IT and non-IP options that really span the gambit of the security domain. So we understand the criticality of PACE and it's one of these that we'll work closely with our network and APNT CFT partners as we continue to refine and define the concept. C4ISRNET: Speaking more broadly, a key function of JADC2 is being able to network with the other services and pull in their information to your shooters. When you look to the other services, what are the platforms, networks, or developments that you're excited to see feed into TITAN and other Army systems? COLLINS: We're always looking for opportunities to leverage national and other mission partner information, and that can span a number of sense capabilities, certainly within space. We certainly watch all things that are going on within low Earth orbit, capabilities that will provide a lot of opportunity. Across the joint force there are a number of areas — certainly within the Air Force — that have the ability to do deep sense with aerial platforms at altitude, so we watch that closely. And I would just tell you, even in the commercial arena even as far as the geospatial information there is a lot of collect capability. TITAN is really adopting an open systems architecture kind of baked in from the beginning [where it can take data from multiple sources], whether it's a [science and technology] effort — which could come from the Army or another agency — for intelligence warning capability or detect/assess/decide-type capability, or if it's leveraging a mission or national partner capability as I mentioned for deep sense, or really even adopting a commercial capability like geospatial collect or adopting a high performance data platform. C4ISRNET: Leaders at the Space Development Agency frequently note that the Army is the biggest customers for data collected from space. Can you speak a little bit about how you're looking at their architecture and tying into their transport layer? COLLINS: At least on the ISR side, we work closely with many of our partners as we look at opportunities to be able to leverage investments that they're making into the space sense capability, and certainly some of the things we have to be conscious of are the responsiveness to our tactical command. If they have intelligence requirements [we need to be able] to provide those back so we can get the persistent stare or the on demand access that we need for the tactical war fight. We certainly are also aware as we push that information down, some of the impacts that it may have on the Army networks that often operate on disconnected, intermittent, limited bandwidth environments, so to the extent that we can do processing as far forward at the point of collect and sense so we can only distribute the information that's absolutely necessary, we're working those concepts to do that. And that's where the artificial intelligence and machine learning comes into play. C4ISRNET: How have acquisitions changed over the last few years? From the outside we've seen a lot more usage of Other Transaction Authorities across the Department. What is your thinking on OTAs and other acquisition vehicles? COLLINS: We have really adapted our acquisitions — now more than ever — using more agile and more tailored acquisition approaches. Each endeavor, each capability that we go to pursue, often has a unique set of circumstances such as the technology maturity, the types of requirements, the types of things that we need to integrate—even our intellectual property approaches. Now more than ever, we've got multiple pathways on the acquisition approach that we can pursue: tailoring traditional, pursuing mid-tier, there's now software pathways, and there's always quick reaction and engineering change proposals to existing programs. So there's a number of different approaches, and I would tell you, too, our ability to involve soldiers in the operational feedback and operational perspective in the process is also kind of new and something that we've really underscored as part of the process. That starts not only from the requirements process, but how we include them in our source selection to assessing soldiers' hands-on kit and providing that feedback. OTA is just another tool that we have at our disposal. Certainly, if we need to do a little bit more maturation of prototypes prior to finalizing requirements, the OTA does offer an opportunity to more quickly pursue those prototypes in advance of transitioning into a more traditional FAR-type approach. I think there's a lot of flexibility and we're starting to do our critical thinking to decide how we approach each acquisition, because each acquisition and capability is unique. I'll tell you the other thing that we're really doing too is—where appropriate—exercising a DevOps or DevSecOps type of approach, and really that's where you bring material developer, combat developer, user, interoperability certifier, tester, and even to the extent the accrediter for those approaches, and they're all collectively together so you do things in parallel and you can dramatically speed up the process. Those are a number of things that we are really using at our disposal to move both more rapidly but also more efficiently and effectively. C4ISRNET: How do you incorporate smaller, nontraditional vendors that can bring in solutions? How do you bring more people into the fold, especially in tech hubs like Silicon Valley? COLLINS: We've got a lot of footprints in a lot of these technical hubs ... I would tell you that we've also done a tremendous amount of industry outreach even within the portfolio. I think in my tenure, in about a year I've probably done close to almost 200 industry engagements, and that spans from small, medium and large. And we're continuously trying to encourage and build relationships beyond just the traditionals. It is probably one of the advantages of the OTA that we've got, to be able to attract non-traditionals. I think there's other opportunities that we've got within Small Business Innovative Research-type initiatives that we've pursued, and then also CRADAs, the Cooperative Research and Development (Agreements). So we kind of span the gamut of that and I'll tell you we've got a pretty healthy teaming relationship between us and the [cross functional teams] to be able to get out there and attract that type of non-traditionals that really have a lot of the innovative and forward thinking ideas that we want to bring into our Army. C4ISRNET: We know a lot of the programs at places like PEO IEW&S take years to develop, with multiple PEOs overseeing and influencing different platforms. As you finish out your tenure, what are the milestones, programs you're proud of? COLLINS: First and foremost, I'll depart extremely proud of the people and the mission that the PEO IEW&S portfolio has accomplished and continues to accomplish. I'll tell you one of the unique things about our portfolio is about 50 percent of our programs support overseas operations, and so we do a significant amount of investment of things that are going on abroad. Much of our Army is deployed and so for that I'm extremely proud. I'll tell you the other thing — I think we have established a healthy culture that is ready, that is resilient and adaptive to change. And I think that has certainly been one thing that I'll be proud of, that I think will be a lasting legacy within the organization. We kind of walked in focused on a couple basic attributes. First and foremost, people and leadership was one. Two, exercising acquisition discipline. Three, integrating our kits so it can collectively operate and inform on the battlefield. And then four, really working with our partners and stakeholders. I think in each one of those areas we've made tremendous progress and really established a lot of momentum. Some of the major programmatics moving forward ... the Terrestrial Layer System, I think we've made some good progress there. Missile Defense and Space Systems set the conditions for our future aerial deep sense capability and really tightened kind of the major deep collect and nesting in with a lot of collecting in space and with our national mission partners. And then all of that data coming down to the foundational component are probably some of the big areas where we've established a lot of positive, irreversible momentum that will allow us to move forward on our Army modernization front. C4ISRNET: And as you move over to PEO C3T, what are you excited to tackle there and what lessons will you bring with you from PEO IEW&S? COLLINS: Well, I must admit that I am a signal officer and so I am excited to return to my roots as a network professional. And so I do find very much the network (to be) an exciting endeavor, and so I'm looking forward to getting back and contributing with the team. And I think what I would certainly take with me is that ... I have a better appreciation of the types of information, the types of data, the types of intelligence ... that need to traverse our networks, the type of demands that it puts on the network, the types of speed of service and quality of service and performance that are required to support those users of the network. So I think that's one of the key things that I'll take with me as I get ready to move over and be part of the C3T team, which I'm very excited (about). I've been very thankful for the experience here at the IEW&S team— a phenomenal group of professionals — and I'm excited to continue my Army mission. https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/it-networks/2020/06/09/what-the-armys-titan-program-means-to-multidomain-operations/

ARMY General Dynamics Land Systems, Sterling Heights, Michigan, was awarded a $2,477,329,768 fixed-price-incentive contract for the production of Stryker Double V-Hull A1 engineering change proposal vehicles. Bids were solicited via the internet with one received. Work locations and funding will be determined with each order, with an estimated completion date of April 30, 2027. U.S. Army Contracting Command, Detroit Arsenal, Michigan, is the contracting activity (W56HZV-20-D-0005). Lockheed Martin Corp., Grand Prairie, Texas, was awarded a $1,042,250,000 modification (P00001) to contract W31P4Q-20-C-0023 for incidental services, hardware, facilities, equipment, and all technical, planning, management, manufacturing, and testing efforts to produce Phased Array Tracking Radar to Intercept on Target Advanced Capability-3 missiles. Bids were solicited via the internet with one received. Work will be performed in Huntsville, Alabama; Camden, Arkansas; Chelmsford, Massachusetts; Grand Prairie, Texas; and Lufkin, Texas, with an estimated completion date of Oct. 31, 2024. Fiscal 2020 missile procurement, Army; and Foreign Military Sales (Bahrain, Germany, Poland, Qatar, Romania, Republic of Korea, United Arab Emirates) funds in the amount of $1,042,250,000 were obligated at the time of the award. U.S. Army Contracting Command, Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, is the contracting activity. Richard Group LLC,* Glenview, Illinois (W912QR-20-D-0026); Iron Mike Construction,* Centennial, Colorado (W912QR-20-D-0027); and AMI & LGC JV LLC,* Andover, Kansas (W912QR-20-D-0028), will compete for each order of the $45,000,000 firm-fixed-price contract for construction services for the Great Lakes and Ohio River Division mission boundaries. Bids were solicited via the internet with 15 received. Work locations and funding will be determined with each order, with an estimated completion date of June 9, 2023. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Louisville, Kentucky, is the contracting activity. Seres-Arcadis SB JV LLC,* Charleston, South Carolina, was awarded a $9,625,000 firm-fixed-price contract to perform optimized remediation for the Air Force. Bids were solicited via the internet with six received. Work will be performed at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, with an estimated completion date of June 9, 2029. Fiscal 2020-2029 operations and maintenance, Army funds in the amount of $9,625,000 were obligated at the time of the award. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Baltimore, Maryland, is the contracting activity (W912DR-20-C-0011). NAVY General Dynamics Mission Systems, Pittsfield, Massachusetts, is awarded a $104,214,429 cost-plus-incentive-fee, cost-plus-fixed-fee, and cost-no-fee contract (N00030-20-C-0003) for fiscal 2020-2023 Columbia (US01) and Dreadnought ballistic missile submarine class development, production and installation requirement. Work will be performed in Pittsfield, Massachusetts (90%); the United Kingdom (6%); Quonset Point, Rhode Island (3%); and Groton, Connecticut (1%). Work is expected to be complete by November 2024. Fiscal 2020 shipbuilding and conversion (Navy) funds in the amount of $26,390,000; United Kingdom funds in the amount of $10,727,082; and fiscal 2020 research, development, test and evaluation (Navy) funds in the amount of $2,210,541 are obligated on this award, and no funds will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract is being awarded to the contractor on a sole-source basis under 10 U.S. Code 2304(c)(1) and four were previously synopsized on the Federal Business Opportunities website. Strategic Systems Programs, Washington, D.C., is the contracting activity. BAE Systems, Information and Electronic Systems Integration Inc., Greenlawn, New York, is awarded a $58,738,453 firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract. This contract provides for the manufacture, test and delivery of 239 Mode 5 capable RT-1763C/D AN/APX-111(V) combined interrogator transponders and 397 spare shop replaceable assemblies for the F/A-18 Super Hornet series and Boeing EA-18G Growler warfare aircraft for the Navy and the government of Canada. Work will be performed in Greenlawn, New York (84%); and Austin, Texas (16%), and is expected to be complete by December 2025. No funds will be obligated at the time of award. Funds will be obligated on individual orders as they are issued. This contract was not competitively procured pursuant to Federal Acquisition Regulation 6.302-1. The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Maryland, is the contracting activity (N00019-20-D-0002). Cardno – Amec Foster Wheeler JV, Charlottesville, Virginia, is awarded $50,000,000 for a firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity, architect-engineering contract with a maximum amount of $50,000,000 for Marine Corps (USMC) facility assessments utilizing the BUILDER Sustainment Management System at various USMC installations worldwide. No task orders are being issued at this time. Work will be performed at various USMC facilities worldwide: North Carolina (31%); Japan (25%); California (22%); Hawaii (7%); Virginia (5%); South Carolina (4%); Georgia (3%); Arizona (2%); and Republic of Korea (1%). The work to be performed provides for condition assessments of facilities approximately 20 million square feet and greater annually and BUILDER is utilized for major building component systems, data input, data analysis and interpretation, remote entry database and web-based BUILDER. It is also used for assessment and management training; other knowledge-based sustainment management system facility assessments and training; other specialized engineering assessments and studies for site facilities; conventional or deficiency-based facility assessments and training; life-cycle, space utilization and functionality assessments; and short and long range maintenance planning. Work is expected to be complete by June 2025. Fiscal 2020 operations and maintenance (Marine Corps) (O&M, MC) contract funds in the amount of $5,000 are obligated on this award and will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. Future task orders will be primarily funded by O&M, MC. This contract was competitively procured via the Navy Electronic Commerce Online website and four proposals were received. The Naval Facilities Engineering Command, Southwest, San Diego, California, is the contracting activity (N62473-20-D-0615). Communications and Power Industries, Palo Alto, California, is awarded a $43,798,135 firm-fixed-price requirements contract for the repair of continuous wave illuminator traveling wave tubes in support of the Aegis Combat System. Work will be performed in Palo Alto, California, and is expected to be complete by June 2025. The contract includes a five-year base period with no options. Annual working capital funds (Navy) will be obligated as individual task orders are issued and funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. One company was solicited for this sole-source requirement under authority 10 U.S. Code 2304 (c)(1), and one offer was received. The Naval Supply Systems Command, Weapon Systems Support, Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, is the contracting activity (N00104-20-D-VD01). Machine Tools USA Inc.,* Mathews, Virginia (N68936-20-D-0014); Machine Tool Marketing Inc.,* Bixby, Oklahoma (N68936-20-D-0015); and Pacific IC Source,* Yucaipa, California (N68936-20-D-0016), are awarded $25,000,000 for indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contracts in support of the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division. Work will be performed at the contractor's locations. These contracts provide various types of plant and laboratory tools, analytical and diagnostic equipment, work holding devices and peripheral equipment for conventional and computer numerically controlled equipment in support of advanced technology products for the Energetics Department. The estimated aggregate ceiling for all contracts is $25,000,000, with the companies having an opportunity to compete for individual orders. Work is expected to be completed in June 2025. No funds are being obligated at time of award; funds will be obligated on individual orders as they are issued. These contracts were competitively procured via an electronic request for proposals and three offers were received. The Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division, China Lake, California, is the contracting activity. ETM-Electromatic Inc.,* Newark, California, is awarded a $9,500,000 firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract with a ceiling of $9,500,000 for the procurement of supplies and engineering services required for the modulator procurement, other spare parts and services for repairs and upgrades for ETM High Power Modulators. Work will be performed in Newark, California (75%); Crane, Indiana (8.4%); Palo Alto, California (8.3%); and Rancho Cordova, California (8.3%). These modulators are used to simulate operating conditions so microwave devices can be evaluated outside of their normal systems. These modulators allow the operator to safely and accurately evaluate a microwave device in a lab-controlled environment. The use of the microwave devices is critical in maintaining the radars aboard Navy ships in operational status. Work is expected to be complete by June 2025. Fiscal 2020 other procurement (Navy) funding in the amount of $30,662 will be obligated at time of award and will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was not competitively procured via the Federal Business Opportunities website in accordance with 10 U.S. Code 2304(c)(1). This contract was not competitively procured and only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements. The Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane Division, Crane, Indiana, is the contracting activity (N00164-20-D-WP60). UPDATE: An indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity, multiple award design-build/design-bid-build construction contract announced on Jan. 31, 2020, with a combined value of $990,000,000, has added HHM Laulima Constructors JV, Honolulu, Hawaii (N62478-20-D-4013); Nan Inc., Honolulu, Hawaii (N62478-20-D-4014); and TNT Constructors, Bremerton, Washington (N62478-20-D-4015), as three of 10 awardees to design-build and design-bid-build construction projects located within the Naval Facilities Engineering Command Hawaii area of operations. DEFENSE ADVANCED RESEARCH PROJECTS AGENCY Blue Canyon Technologies Inc.,* Boulder, Colorado, has been awarded a $14,183,250 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract for the Blackjack Track B (Bus) Phases 2 and 3 program. Work will be performed in Boulder, Colorado, with an estimated completion date of June 2021. Fiscal 2020 research and development funds in the amount of $10,282,600 are being obligated at the time of award. This contract is a competitive acquisition in accordance with the original broad agency announcement HR0011-18-S-0032. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Arlington, Virginia, is the contracting activity (HR0011-20-C-0094). DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY Sea Box Inc.,* Cinnaminson, New Jersey, has been awarded a maximum $7,799,220 firm-fixed-price contract for commercial shipping and storage containers. This was a competitive acquisition with 15 responses received. This is a one-year contract with no option periods. Locations of performance are New Jersey and Republic of Korea, with a March 15, 2021, performance completion date. Using customer is Army. Type of appropriation is fiscal 2020 through 2021 defense working capital funds. The contracting activity is the Defense Logistics Agency Troop Support, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (SPE8ED-20-C-0006). *Small Business https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Contracts/Contract/Article/2215443/source/GovDelivery/

The Army Futures commander is making a list of which of the service's 34 top-priority programs to sacrifice first – and which programs outside the top 34 he has to save. By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.on June 10, 2020 at 4:18 PM WASHINGTON: The Army Secretary and Chief of Staff approved a draft spending plan for 2022-2026 yesterday that funds all 34 of the service's top-priority programs, the Army's modernization chief said this morning. But with the ever-growing cost of COVID looming over the economy and the Pentagon alike, Gen. John “Mike” Murray says he's already made a mental list of which of the 34 the service might have to slow down or sacrifice and which ones it absolutely has to save. “I have a one-to-N list in my mind” of the 34 programs, Murray told an Association of the US Army webcast this morning. “That's only in my mind, right now,” he emphasized. “It's pre-decisional.” In other words, it's not final, it's not official, and it's not ready to share with the public. All that said, however, it's still a telling sign of uncertain budget times that the four-star chief of Army Futures Command not only has such a list, but is willing to say he has it. Meanwhile, Murray's chief civilian partner, Assistant Secretary for Acquisition Bruce Jette, has launched a long-term study of the Army's economic prospects. In effect, Jette's looking at the supply side, asking how tight the budget will be, and Murray is looking at the demand side, asking what the Army should prioritize within that tight budget. Beyond The 34: “Critical Enablers” Gen. Murray is also looking at the Army's 684 other programs, he said, to determine which of them can be cut – while some have been slashed already to free up funding for the 34, others are so far unscathed – and which are essential to the top-34's success. “We can come up with, you know, the most impressive Next Generation Combat Vehicle in the world,” Murray said. “If you can't get fuel to it, then you're wasting your time.” Fuel is just one, particularly knotty logistical problem. Ultimately, Murray wants to reduce Army fuel demands by moving to hybrid diesel-electric motors. While electric power by itself might work for civilian cars, he said, he's skeptical the Army can charge batteries in combat, or that any practical amount of batteries can store enough energy to move, say, a 70-ton main battle tank. Likewise, while civilian quadcopters can run off batteries, the Army's new scout helicopter, the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft, requires a high-powered turbine. So for decades to come, the Army will need fuel trucks, storage bladders, pumps, drums, hoses, and so on. And that's just for the gas. Both current and future combat systems require a staggering array of spare parts, repair tools, maintenance facilities, and more. Logistics is historically a US strength, but it's not a major focus of the 34 priority programs, which range from hypersonic missiles to smart rifles, from tanks to aircraft to robots. Besides weapons, the 34 do include a lot of high-tech information-age infrastructure, both to train the troops in virtual and augmented reality, and to share tactical data like target locations across the battlefield. There has not, however, been nearly as much emphasis on supporting functions such as fuel, maintenance, and transport. Murray now aims to fix that. Starting with a study by the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, he said, the Army has come up with a list of “18 key critical enablers that are getting funded,” Murray said, again without naming them. Murray's calling the 34 priority programs “Tier One” and the 18 enablers “Tier Two,” he said. “Then tier three is ammo,” he added. The general didn't elaborate, but certainly a high-tech tank or aircraft can't fight without ammunition, just as it can't move without fuel. The catch is that, in modern warfare, you're not just buying rifle bullets and cannon shells, but a host of precision-guided munitions that are much more expensive to stockpile in bulk for a major war. Even once the Army has figured out which weapons, support systems, and ammunition it can afford to buy, it still won't be able to buy enough of them to equip every unit at once. The service's recent AimPoint study, Murray said, focused on figuring out which units around the world need to be modernized first and which will have to wait. “The whole point behind AimPoint was an understanding that you can't modernize the entire army overnight, or in a year, or really even in a decade,” Murray said. As a young officer, he recalled, his unit had M60 tanks and M113 transports “while the rest of the Army was running around in M1s and Bradleys.” While he doesn't to return to the extreme disparities of the past, he said, “somebody has to be first and somebody has to be last.” https://breakingdefense.com/2020/06/army-ponders-what-to-cut-if-budget-drops-gen-murray/

Roper expects GBSD, B-21 and F-35 to migrate parts of their development to cloudONE as he pushes the Air Force to embrace advanced software practices. By THERESA HITCHENSon June 11, 2020 at 4:01 AM WASHINGTON: Air Force acquisition czar Will Roper says he is considering taking over DoD's artificial intelligence (AI) experiment, Project Maven, to make it operational while the service pushes its own AI capabilities into the field. “I was just speaking with USDI today about the potential of transitioning Maven over to the Air Force and making it an operational reality day-to-day,” Roper said. Project Maven begun in 2017, was designed to put machine-learning to work to sort through the masses of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) data generated by DoD and Intelligence Community (IC) platforms. It has been a bit controversial, with Google pulling out of the effort in 2018; and the head of Air Combat Command head Gen. Mike Holmes saying he didn't believe it was ready for prime time. Roper explained that the Air Force was best positioned to take on Project Maven because of its progress in standing up capabilities under its Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) family of systems, each dubbed with the prefix ONE. This includes the cloudONE for remote data storage, processing and access; platformONE for securely building software; the dataONE library; and the deviceONE that allows secure remote access to classified data. Via the ABMS effort, which is the Air Force's flagship for enabling Joint All Domain Command and Control, the Air Force has been able to build the “AI infrastructure” that allows an AI system to actually do analysis, Roper stressed. “That boring part, the AI infrastructure, is what has been critically absent in the Department, and we are finally doing it in the Air Force,” Roper said. “So cloudONE, platformONE, dataONE — this family of ONE systems — builds a tech stack that really is about getting data in proper custody so that analytics can be built on top of it and we can finally go do AI at scale.” The key, he said, is “data curation and custody, so that that data is discoverable by analytics algorithms that are able to assess its import to different missions, and then push it to the machine, without having to have people be inside the loop.” And that, of course, is what Project Maven focused on, the algorithms. Roper said the Air Force already has an “AI at scale operational today with the Distributed Common Ground System” as well as one being used for “predictive maintenance” that the service hopes have in use for 16 different assets within the next 18 months. The DCGS family of systems, an effort that began way back in 1998, is DoD's flagship capability for providing daily processing, exploitation and production of analysis from DoD to ISR platforms. Predictive maintenance is using AI to figure out what parts of a weapon system or platform are likely to break next, to ease and speed logistics planning. In both these instances, he explained, the environment is benign. That won't be so on the battlefield, where adversaries will be attempting to hack and spoof US AI systems — something that he says is all too easily done today. “It's harder than meets the eye to try to teach an algorithm to know that something is messing with them,” he said. “They inherently trust their data.” “I think there is this belief that that AI will just churn through it — throw enough data at it and everything will be okay — and that's not the case,” he elaborated. “We need another generation of this technology.” Thus, for the moment, the best solution is for humans and machines to work in tandem — as the Air Force is looking to do with the Skyborg project and the development of an AI co-pilot Roper has nicknamed R2D2. “We need to be pairing our AI with people,” Roper stressed. Still, Roper is enthusiastic about the progress made by the ABMS effort toward AI, including working with Northern Command on its response to COVID-19 — helping predict where pandemic hot spots might arise. “We're excited that we have that first taste of AI changing operations,” he enthused. “That AI flag has now been planted for the department. We have seen a future that only silicon was able to see; the human brain was not. If we can get that out onto the battlefield and use the ABMS event in September as our stepping stone, then what a wonderful step towards getting our department and our military away from thinking of itself primarily in terms of the platforms that produce data, and rather instead of the insights that are created by that data, many of them being created by AI,” he said. (The Air Force is planning the second “ABMS OnRamp,” to follow the debut field demonstration in December, for the first week of September. As Breaking D readers know, that second exercise will feature a scenario centered on Space Command operations.) Roper also waxed enthusiastic about the recent decision by the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) to move its development operations to cloudONE. They are not alone, he said. “I believe that portions of the Aegis Weapon System, and the F-18 are also using cloudONE for development,” he said. The Air Force has “put a ton of effort into getting it certified at the various security levels, classified to critical unclassified information,” he added. CloudONE now can be used with secret-level and Top Secret/Special Access Program (TS/SAP) level data, and Roper said that by the end of June it will be certified for use with Secret/Special Access Program level data. This makes it available to software developers across security levels, and opens the door for use by more Air Force weapons development programs, he explained. For example, Roper said that the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent Program (GBSD) “will absolutely be using cloudONE and platformONE for its development.” And, he said, in talking with the F-35 program office he expects “they will do some portion of their development” using cloudONE. Further, he said the highly classified B-21 bomber program will be “moving in at the right point for them.” He noted that prime contractor Northrop Grumman has just demonstrated the use of Kubernetes — a software development technique that helps manage multiple “containerized applications” (i.e. with its own operating system) across multiple machines in a secure manner — on flight-ready hardware. Indeed, he noted, the B-21 program involves an initiative called DevStar that is trying to establish an autonomous testing capability. An Air Force spokesperson said in a statement that DevStar is “an Air Force initiative to use modern software development paradigms to rapidly deliver software to weapon systems while continually meeting safety, security, airworthiness and other compliance requirements that traditionally are performed in serial.” The Air Force website on the initiative shows it is trying to go beyond DevSecOps that seeks to build IT security into software upfront — to include super-high security and safety measures that will allow use in developing highly classified nuclear weapons-related systems. “And you're gonna keep seeing more of the Air Force move into this,” Roper said. “You will hear people use terms like Agile Development and DevOps and DevSecOps — they are not all the same. The tech stack underneath that is producing the software matters.” PlatformONE, he said, is one critical tool in producing software for the Air Force. “It is what is automating all those things that we have people doing today and people doing them in serial,” he said. And, he added, the use of platformONE and cloudONE in combination is “magic” that allows the sharing of software code across weapon systems development programs. “One of my ambitions for this year is to have code that's been written for, say, B-21 run on F-16 and vice versa, and not have any humans check it in between.” https://breakingdefense.com/2020/06/roper-pushes-moving-project-maven-to-air-force

The Pentagon is likely to seek double-digit billions of dollars to reimburse defense contractors that were authorized to seek the money by the CARES Act to preserve their workforce during the COVID-19 crisis, the Pentagon's top procurement officer told lawmakers June 10. The problem is that while the section of the $2 trillion COVID-19 relief bill allows contractors to seek that reimbursement, the bill did not provide any related funding. For just one prime contractor, the estimated costs to keep its workforce in a steady state throughout the crisis exceeds $1 billion, Ellen Lord, the under secretary of acquisition, logistics and technology, said during a House Armed Services Committee hearing. Without additional funding, Lord warns that the Pentagon will “eat into readiness and modernization and slow down readiness and modernization on an ongoing basis.” Aviation and aviation propulsion are two of the hardest-hit areas of the defense industrial base, because of the implosion of the civil aviation industry, she said. Satellite launches also have been hit, given their dependence on the commercial industry, Lord said. Lawmakers were looking for details about how much would be needed for defense contractors, as they anticipate a new COVID-19 spending bill will move through Congress at the end of July. According to Lord, there have been 960 closures and 859 reopenings due to COVID-19. The average closure is about 57 days. But contractors will be specifically requesting reimbursement for issues that affected their employees. So far, contractors are holding back from seeking claims because they are aware that no appropriation exists yet. The Pentagon's internal acquisition group has been tracking data from prime contractors; subcontractors, though, may not be sharing all of their issues to avoid revealing proprietary data, she said, while pledging to provide specific guidance on allowable costs within 30 days. “The defense industrial base is the nexus of economic and national security and it's vitally important to make sure it stays as healthy as possible,” she said. https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/budget-policy-operations/lord-defense-contractors-need-billions-covid-19-relief

Dans le cadre des mesures du plan de relance annoncées mardi par le gouvernement, la ministre des Armées, Florence Parly, a annoncé un doublement du fonds d'investissement DefInvest de 50 à 100 millions d'euros sur une période de 5 ans. Ce fonds, lancé en 2017 et géré avec Bpifrance, a pour vocation pour soutenir le développement des PME stratégiques pour la défense. «J'ai lancé il y a quelques semaines une task force interministérielle sous le pilotage du ministère des Armées. Soit une centaine de personnes qui ont été chargées de quadriller le territoire, visiter les usines et les bureaux d'études pour identifier avec les entrepreneurs les domaines d'activité qui sont à risque», a précisé la ministre. L'Usine Nouvelle du 10 juin

The French government has pledged to buy new military heavy-lift helicopters and accelerate plans for naval drone, ISTAR and tanker aircraft programmes as part of a wider economic stimulus package, worth €15 billion ($17 billion), aimed at protecting the country's aviation industry from faltering under the strain of COVID-19. Based on the PlanAero initative, a decision to specifically issue the defence industry with funding of €600 million means that eight H225M rotary platforms will be ordered, while orders for three A330 MRTT and one Beechcraft King Air 350 ALSR will be expedited. VSR700 rotary-wing UAS and Aliaca mini drone plans have also been brought forward. The H225M order confirms that Paris will opt for it as a replacement for legacy French Air Force Puma helicopters while the new A330 MRTT arrangements will lead to retirement of the A340 being reset from 2028 to this year. A310s will similarly be taken out of service in 2021 – two years earlier than scheduled. The ALSR is under contract with Thales and Sabena Technics with a host of additional French suppliers contributing to the programme, including Ecrin, Aquitaine Electronics, Arelis, Avantix, Elvia and Protoplane, although a 9 June announcement from the French Ministry of Armed Forces does not mention a delivery date for the aircraft. PlanAero unmanned details include the addition of a second VSR700 demonstrator as part of the French Navy's SDAM programme but new commitments for the effort and the navy's SMDM mini drone programme stop short of exact order quantities. SDAM has been contracted to Airbus and Naval Group who have designed the in-development VSR700 from the Cabri G2 light helicopter, while SurveyCopter supplies the Aliaca for SMDM. 'This additional SDAM demonstrator will enable the programme to further secure the next steps, and in particular the development of technologies and the refinement of specifications to meet the French Navy's operational requirements,' an Airbus spokesperson told Shephard. The VSR700 is due to enter service in 2028 and boasts a 500-1,000kg MTOW capability. In November 2019, Airbus announced the platform had undergone tethered flight testing with future free flight trials anticipated. A VSR700 demonstrator phase. to include ship-based flights off French Navy frigates, has been laid out as part of risk reduction activities that were originally due to be completed by 2021. Shipborne deployments from the future FTI medium frigate are a longer-term target. Following on from France's aviation support plan, the European Commission warned on 10 June that budgetary pressures stemming from COVID-19 could impact member states, calling on them to 'spend better together'. In a joint statement Josep Borrell, VP of the European Commission and Thierry Breton, European Commissioner for the Internal Market, said that common capabilities, critical technologies and infrastructure must be strengthened but they questioned if Europe had given itself 'the means to do so'. https://www.shephardmedia.com/news/defence-helicopter/french-aviation-rescue-plan-bets-defence-helicopte/

Le Rapport de recherche sur le marché Dispositif d'interface pour avion de chasse mondial propose une analyse approfondie des derniers développements, de la taille du marché, du statut, des technologies à venir, des moteurs de l'industrie, des défis, des politiques réglementaires, avec les profils des entreprises principales et les stratégies des acteurs. Le Rapport de recherche inclus les nouveaux acteurs du marché mondial de Dispositif d'interface pour avion de chasse, il donne une idée du scénario actuel du marché ainsi que des opportunités ou défis du marché à venir. En outre, la récente pandémie de COVID-19 au début de 2020 a un impact sur le marché mondial de Dispositif d'interface pour avion de chasse. En raison de la propagation sans précédent du coronavirus à travers le monde, le marché mondial de Dispositif d'interface pour avion de chasse est entravé dans divers secteurs tels que l'Amérique du Nord, l'Amérique du Sud, l'Europe, l'Asie-Pacifique, le Moyen-Orient et l'Afrique, etc. De nombreux fabricants sont confrontés à ce problème en raison de la pandémie du coronavirus. De nombreuses industries connaissent aussi des fluctuations de la demande, qui peuvent principalement changer les tendances chez les consommateurs. Les principaux acteurs présentés dans ce Rapport comprennent: Astronics Corporation Rockwell Collins Navaero Inc Esterline Technologies Corporation United Technologies Corporation Teledyne Control Arconics Obtenez un exemplaire PDF gratuit (comprenant la table des matières complète, les tableaux et les graphiques) de: Le Marché Dispositif d'interface pour avion de chasse @ https://www.apexmarketreports.com/Heavy-Industry/global-fighter-jet-aircraft-interface-device-market-by-596056#sample En outre, l'étude du Rapport mondial de recherche sur le marché Dispositif d'interface pour avion de chasse se concentre sur des aspects importants tels que la classification des produits, les concepts importants et d'autres paramètres spécifiques à l'industrie. Ce Rapport comprend également les facteurs clés en fonction des stratégies et événements commerciaux actuels tels que les alliances, les fusions et acquisitions et les lancements de nouveaux produits. Segmentation globale du marché Dispositif d'interface pour avion de chasse par régions: Amérique du Nord (États-Unis, Canada, Mexique) Amérique du Sud (Cuba, Brésil, Argentine et bien d'autres.) Europe (Allemagne, Royaume-Uni, France, Italie, Russie, Espagne, etc.) Asie (Chine, Inde, Russie et de nombreux autres pays asiatiques.) Région Pacifique (Indonésie, Japon et de nombreux autres pays du Pacifique.) Moyen-Orient et Afrique (Arabie saoudite, Afrique du Sud et bien d'autres.) Segmentation globale du marché Dispositif d'interface pour avion de chasse par type: Wired Wireless Segmentation globale du marché Dispositif d'interface pour avion de chasse par applications: Civil Military Le Rapport de recherche sur le marché Dispositif d'interface pour avion de chasse comprend des informations détaillées sur l'analyse des données en utilisant les chiffres, des graphiques, des camemberts, des tableaux et des graphiques à barres. Avec l'aide de ceux-ci, les utilisateurs comprennent facilement les données analysées, d'une façon meilleure et facile. Le Rapport présente aussi les différents défis commerciaux qui affectent la croissance du marché de façon positive ou négative. Renseignez-vous ici pour demander un Rapport, une remise et une personnalisation du Rapport : https://www.apexmarketreports.com/Heavy-Industry/global-fighter-jet-aircraft-interface-device-market-by-596056#inquiry Points importants couverts par le Rapport: Aperçu commercial et stratégies commerciales des principaux acteurs Analyse globale des tendances de l'industrie Informations détaillées sur les moteurs, les opportunités et les contraintes du marché Dispositif d'interface pour avion de chasse Dernières informations et mises à jour liées aux progrès technologiques Carte de croissance sur l'amélioration de la technologie avec un impact sur l'analyse du marché Le Rapport fournit une analyse concurrentielle du marché Dispositif d'interface pour avion de chasse et des segments de produits clés d'un marché Analyse point à point de la dynamique de la concurrence sur le marché Il y a 13 chapitres pour présenter le marché mondial de Dispositif d'interface pour avion de chasse: Chapitre 1: Présentation du Marché, Facteurs, Contraintes et Opportunités, présentation de la Segmentation vue globale Chapitre 2: Concurrence sur le marché par fabricants Chapitre 3: Production par régions Chapitre 4: Consommation par régions Chapitre 5: Production, par types, revenus et parts de marché par types Chapitre 6: Consommation, par applications, part de marché (%) et taux de croissance par Applications Chapitre 7: Profilage complet et analyse des fabricants Chapitre 8: Analyse des coûts de fabrication, analyse des matières premières, dépenses de fabrication par région Frais généraux de fabrication Chapitre 9: Chaîne industrielle, stratégie d'approvisionnement et acheteurs en aval Chapitre 10: Analyse de la stratégie marketing, distributeurs / commerçants Chapitre 11: Analyse des facteurs d'effet de marché Chapitre 12: Prévisions du marché Chapitre 13: Résultats et conclusion de l'étude en Dispositif d'interface pour avion de chasse, annexe, méthodologie et source de données https://journallactionregionale.com/2020/06/09/marche-mondial-des-dispositifs-dinterface-pour-avions-de-chasse-a-reaction-2020-impact-du-covid-19-analyse-de-la-croissance-future-et-defis-astronics-corporation-rockwell-collins-navaero-inc/