Nouvelles

By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR. WASHINGTON: China is besting the United States in key military technologies like hypersonic missiles and electronic warfare, Gen. Paul Selva, vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs said today. We can still catch up, he predicted. What about Artificial Intelligence? That's too close to call, said former deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work, so we'd better get a move on. Both men spoke at a CNAS conference on “Strategic Competition: Maintaining The Edge.” “I actually regret talking about the Third Offset Strategy, in hindsight,” Work said, referring to the high-tech initiative he launched in the Obama Pentagon. “It made it sound like we had the advantage and we had the time to think about it and go through the motions.... I wish I would have said, ‘we need to start about upsetting the Chinese offset, which is coming uncomfortably close to achieving technological parity with the US.' “At this point, I would think that the outcome is too close to call,” Work said. “It's time for the US to crack the whip. (Let's) hope it's not too late.” Hypersonics & Electronic Warfare So what are some of these shortfalls? The most high-profile is hypersonics, weapons designed to move through the atmosphere at more than five times the speed of sound. Defense Undersecretary for R&D Mike Griffin has made hypersonics his top priority and has warned that China has conducted 20 times more tests than the US. China has demonstrated some impressive technology, Gen. Selva said today, but the race is far from over. “They haven't mass-deployed hypersonics or long-range ballistic missiles,” he said. “What they have done is proven the technologies, so they are able now to deploy those capabilities on a larger scale. “We are behind in the demonstration of many of those technologies,” Selva admitted, elaborating on a statement he made in January, “but we also can take asymmetric approaches and catch up. We are way ahead in a lot of the sensor integration technologies” — essential for telling the hyper-fast weapons where to go — “and we have to maintain that edge.” What about Electronic Warfare, I asked? Detecting, triangulating, and jamming enemy radio transmissions has long been a Russian strength and is increasingly a Chinese one, while the US disbanded many of its EW forces after the Cold War. Selva's answer got into technical nuances I hadn't heard before. “We're a step behind,” Selva said. “It's not hard to catch up, but as soon as you catch up the fast followers will actually leap over the top of you — and that's the dynamic that's set up by having digital radio frequency management capability.” DRFM, also called Digital Radio Frequency Memory, uses modern computing power to record enemy radio and radar signals, modify them, and copy them, allowing forces to transmit a false signal that the enemy can't tell from the real thing. It's a much more effective way of “spoofing” than traditional analog techniques, which suffered from telltale signal degradation. “We assumed wrongly that encryption and our domination in the precision timing signals would allow us to evade the enemy in the electromagnetic spectrum,” Selva said. It turns that that timing is everything in EW as well as comedy. While GPS is now part of daily life, a much less well-known feature is that GPS requires incredibly precise timing — within about three-billionths of a second — which can be used for other purposes, such as coordinating different radios as they switch rapidly from one frequency to another to avoid enemy detection and jamming. But apparently that wasn't enough to evade DRFM-based jamming, which can create a false timing signal that causes the entire network to fall out of synch. “We took a path that they have now figured out,” Selva said. “The Chinese and the Russians took an alternative path, which was to employ digitally managed radio frequency manipulation, which changed the game in electronic warfare. “We have done an in-depth study of where we are relative to the Chinese and Russians (across) the entire spectrum, and we've got some work to do,” Selva said. “We have to figure out alternative pathways for communications and command and control so it doesn't have to be an RF (Radio Frequency) game...It's an RF game because we chose to make it so.” He didn't specify what the alternatives to radio communication were, but there's been promising work using lasers to beam messages. (Breaking D readers will remember that we first reported the demise of America's lead in spectrum four years ago.) Securing our communications networks isn't enough, Work told me afterwards, because every weapon system now has chips in it that can be hacked into. “We have focused on securing network communications, but our biggest vulnerabilities now, Sydney, are in the DoD Internet of Things — the way you can crack into the network through platforms (e.g. tanks, aircraft, ships) and through components on platforms,” Work said. “The Russians and the Chinese understand these vulnerabilities and really try to exploit them.” So there are really three fronts in cyber/electronic warfare, and Work isn't sanguine about any of them. “Dominating the electromagnetic spectrum, and securing the DoD Internet of Things, and securing networks, all of these three things, in my view, we're well behind in,” he told me. The whole “Chinese theory of victory,” he said, is known (in translation) as “systems destruction warfare” because it focuses on electronically paralyzing command-and-control rather than physically destroying tanks, ships, and planes. Artificial Intelligence Now, artificial intelligence could potentially revolutionize electronic warfare. Computers can identify signals, trace them, and making jamming decisions much faster than human minds — a concept called “cognitive EW.” But that's just one of the many military applications of AI, from advising human commanders to coordinating swarms of combat robots. While Selva didn't address Artificial Intelligence, Work did; it's one of his passions and the central theme of the (now deprecated) Third Offset Strategy. So who's ahead in AI? Defense Innovation Advisory Board chairman Eric Schmidt, a former Google AI guru, told Work he had once thought the US was five years ahead of the Chinese, Work recounted. But after a recent trip to China, Work recounted, Schmidt changed his verdict: “If we have six months, we're lucky.” Schmidt said last year that the US lacks a coherent strategy to counter the Chinese in this area. The US has never been in a competition this intense, Work said. China has made AIan official national priority — something he thinks the White House should do here — and the Chinese have great coders. The Pentagon is now creating a Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, something Schmidt's DIB proposed over a year ago, Work noted. “We've got a lot of advantages and we can do very, very well in this race but don't take anything for granted,” Work told me. Just as politicians are warned never to take victory for granted, neither should DoD. “It's a political rule to always run like you're losing, and that's what we have to do in this area....The Chinese are very clever and very capable competitors, and they're intent on surpassing us.” https://breakingdefense.com/2018/06/us-must-hustle-on-hypersonics-ew-ai-vcjcs-selva-work/

By: Karen Jowers A retired Army major general and former retail executive will lead a Pentagon task force that is examining the case for a possible merger of the military exchange and commissary systems, Defense officials announced Thursday. Keith Thurgood, who was also the chief executive officer of the Army and Air Force Exchange Service from 2007 to 2010, will start work Monday. If the task force business case analysis confirms that consolidation is the right approach, and if Defense Department officials back that finding, Thurgood will serve as the consolidated organization's executive director until the permanent position is advertised and filled, according to a May 29 memo directing the task force's formation. The retired Reserve major general has more than 28 years of military service and has held executive positions at PepsiCo & Frito-Lay Inc., Sam's Club, Overseas Military Sales Corporation, and MedAssets, Inc. He will take a sabbatical from his current position as clinical professor at the University of Texas at Dallas. He could serve up to two years on the task force. The task force will examine “back office” operations of the exchanges and commissaries, such as information technology, human resources and accounting. It will first determine whether the exchange systems ― AAFES, Navy Exchange Service Command, and Marine Corps Exchange ― could be combined with one corporate “backbone.” Then members will determine whether the Defense Commissary Agency could be merged into that system. Consolidation of the stores wouldn't necessarily mean that commissaries and exchanges would be combined into one store. Officials are also looking at keeping the individual branding of the exchange stores on military bases, as they combine behind-the-scenes operations. “With General Thurgood's leadership, understanding of the customer experience, and private sector experience in the retail space, the task force will evaluate our potential to generate efficiencies and scrutinize the above-the-store business aspects of the exchange system, with a goal of validating and defining our execution plan for the way forward,” said John H. Gibson, II, DoD's chief management officer, in the DoD announcement. https://www.militarytimes.com/pay-benefits/2018/06/21/heres-who-will-lead-the-dod-group-that-could-decide-the-future-of-military-shopping/

By: Jill Lawless, The Associated Press LONDON — The bonds between Europe and North America are under strain and there's no guarantee the trans-Atlantic partnership will survive, the head of NATO warned Thursday. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called for an effort to shore up the military alliance amid the divisions between Europe and the United States over trade, climate change and the Iran nuclear deal. “It is not written in stone that the trans-Atlantic bond will survive forever,” Stoltenberg said during a speech in London. “But I believe we will preserve it.” NATO has been shaken by U.S. President Donald Trump's “America First” stance and mistrust of international institutions. Trump once called NATO obsolete and has repeatedly berated other members of the 29-nation alliance of failing to spend enough on defense. Ahead of a NATO summit in July, Stoltenberg said “we may have seen the weakening” of some bonds between North America and Europe. But he insisted that “maintaining the trans-Atlantic partnership is in our strategic interests.” Stoltenberg said the world faced “the most unpredictable security environment in a generation” due to terrorism, proliferating weapons of mass destruction, cyberattacks and an assertive Russia. “We must continue to protect our multilateral institutions like NATO, and we must continue to stand up for the international rules-based order,” he said. After meeting Prime Minister Theresa May in Downing St., Stoltenberg praised Britain, one of a minority of NATO countries to meet a target of spending 2 percent of GDP on defense. He said that despite differences between the U.S. and Europe, NATO delivered “trans-Atlantic unity” every day. “We have had differences before, and the lesson of history is that we overcome these differences every time,” Stoltenberg said. Some European officials worry the Trump administration is cool on efforts to hold Russia to account for misdeeds including election meddling and the nerve-agent poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal in England, which the U.K. blames on Moscow. At a G-7 summit this month, Trump suggested that Russia should be readmitted to the group of industrial powers, from which it was expelled over its annexation of Crimea in 2014. Some U.S. allies are concerned by reports that Trump plans to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin when the American leader travels to Europe for the NATO summit next month. But Stoltenberg said meeting Putin does not contradict NATO policies. “We are in favor of dialogue with Russia,” he said. “We don't want a new cold war. We don't want a new arms race. We don't want to isolate Russia.” https://www.militarytimes.com/flashpoints/2018/06/21/why-the-head-of-nato-says-theres-no-guarantee-that-the-trans-atlantic-alliance-will-survive/

David Ljunggren OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada is discussing changes to a multibillion-dollar fighter jet procurement process that could make it harder for a U.S. company to win the order as trade relations between the neighbors sour, two sources with direct knowledge of the discussions said. Canada is considering whether to penalize companies from countries that have caused it economic damage, the sources said on Wednesday. While a final decision is not expected before next year and the threat could be posturing, the move shows how the Trump administration's trade disputes are spilling over into other areas. A spokeswoman for federal Procurement Minister Carla Qualtrough - who has overall responsibility for major purchases of military equipment - declined to comment. Sources declined to be identified as the discussions are confidential. Boeing Co's (BA.N) F-18 Super Hornet and Lockheed Martin Corp's (LMT.N) F-35 fighter were among the favorites to capture the contract to supply 88 planes, worth between C$15 billion ($11.3 billion) and C$19 billion. Defense sources have long said the Canadian air force would prefer an American-built jet, citing the importance of operating easily with U.S. armed forces. But a change in procurement terms would give more of a chance to European suppliers: Airbus SE (AIR.PA), which makes the Eurofighter; Saab AB (SAABb.ST), which makes the Gripen; and Dassault Aviation (AVMD.PA), which makes the Rafale. Defense sources, however, say the European jets are likely to become obsolete by around 2040, at which point they could no longer incorporate the latest technologies. Canada has been trying unsuccessfully for almost a decade to buy replacements for its aging F-18 fighters, some of which are 40 years old. The former Conservative administration said in 2010 it would buy 65 F-35 jets but later scrapped the decision, triggering years of delays and reviews. Ottawa has already said bids will be evaluated in part by examining whether firms competing for the order have caused any past economic damage to Canada. Officials said at the time this was aimed at Boeing, which last year launched a trade challenge against Canadian planemaker Bombardier Inc (BBDb.TO). Government officials are now discussing whether Canada should also consider economic damage caused by governments, a clear reference to worsening relations with Washington, said the sources. “Politically it's hard to spend billions of dollars on contracts with a country that's hurting you,” said one of the sources, who asked to remain anonymous given the extreme sensitivity of the situation. However, the sources emphasized that the discussions are at an early stage and Ottawa could eventually decide to drop the proposed language. Canada - which is due to release the exact specifications for the jets next year - has not yet finished work on the clause referring to economic damage caused by a single firm. U.S. President Donald Trump last month slapped tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum, prompting Canada to announce its own retaliatory measures. Trump has also threatened tariffs on Canadian autos, which could badly hurt the economy. Ottawa froze talks with Boeing about the fighter jet contest but after the company's trade challenge against Bombardier failed, Canadian officials made clear the firm would not be discriminated against if it chose to bid. https://ca.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idCAKBN1JH2IA-OCABS

Ian Sample Report warns that swift progress in our ability to manufacture viruses is making us vulnerable to biological attacks The rapid rise of synthetic biology, a futuristic field of science that seeks to master the machinery of life, has raised the risk of a new generation of bioweapons, according a major US report into the state of the art. Advances in the area mean that scientists now have the capability to recreate dangerous viruses from scratch; make harmful bacteria more deadly; and modify common microbes so that they churn out lethal toxins once they enter the body. The three scenarios are picked out as threats of highest concern in a review of the field published on Tuesday by the US National Academy of Sciences at the request of the Department of Defense. The report was commissioned to flag up ways in which the powerful technology might be abused, and to focus minds on how best to prepare. Michael Imperiale, chair of the report committee, and professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Michigan, said the review used only unclassified information and so has no assessment of which groups, if any, might be pursuing novel biological weapons. “We can't say how likely any of these scenarios are,” he said. “But we can talk about how feasible they are.” In the report, the scientists describe how synthetic biology, which gives researchers precision tools to manipulate living organisms, “enhances and expands” opportunities to create bioweapons. “As the power of the technology increases, that brings a general need to scrutinise where harms could come from,” said Peter Carr, a senior scientist at MIT's Synthetic Biology Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. More than 20 years ago, Eckard Wimmer, a geneticist at Stony Brook University in New York, highlighted the potential dangers of synthetic biology in dramatic style when he recreated poliovirus in a test tube. Earlier this year, a team at the University of Alberta built an infectious horsepox virus. The virus is a close relative of smallpox, which may have claimed half a billion lives in the 20th century. Today, the genetic code of almost any mammalian virus can be found online and synthesised. “The technology to do this is available now,” said Imperiale. “It requires some expertise, but it's something that's relatively easy to do, and that is why it tops the list.” Other fairly simple procedures can be used to tweak the genes of dangerous bacteria and make them resistant to antibiotics, so that people infected with them would be untreatable. A more exotic bioweapon might come in the form of a genetically-altered microbe that colonises the gut and churns out poisons. “While that is technically more difficult, it is a concern because it may not look like anything you normally watch out for in public health,” Imperiale said. The report calls on the US government to rethink how it conducts disease surveillance, so it can better detect novel bioweapons, and to look at ways to bolster defences, for example by finding ways to make and deploy vaccines far more rapidly. For every bioweapon the scientists consider, the report sets out key hurdles that, once cleared, will make the weapons more feasible. One bioweapon that is not considered an immediate threat is a so-called gene drive that spreads through a population, rewriting human DNA as it goes. “It's important to recognise that it's easy to come up with a scary-sounding idea, but it's far more difficult to do something practical with it,” said Carr. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/jun/19/urgent-need-to-prepare-for-manmade-virus-attacks-says-us-government-report

Jaroslaw Adamowski WARSAW, Poland — Lt. Gen. Ales Opata, the chief of the General Staff of the Czech Armed Forces, has unveiled plans by the country to spend 100 billion koruna (U.S. $4.5 billion) on what he called the largest military modernization program in the Czech Republic's history. By 2027, the Czech military is to acquire 210 infantry fighting vehicles, 50 self-propelled howitzers, 12 multipurpose helicopters, two transport aircraft, and short-range air defense systems and combat drones, among other materiel. The purchases are to allow the Czech Armed Forces to replace a decisive share of its Soviet-designed gear. “Soldiers must feel that the Czech military budget is rising, and that the situation is starting to improve,” Opata said, as quoted in a government statement. The government also plans to acquire new 3-D radars. However, the pending purchase of eight ELM-2084 multimission radars from Israel's Elta Systems, a subsidiary of IAI, is currently under investigation by the Czech military police. The procedure was initiated on the request of Defence Minister Karla Slechtova amid concern over the equipment's interoperability with NATO infrastructure. This year, Prague's defense expenditure is to total 58.9 billion koruna, up 12 percent compared with 2017, according to government figures. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2018/06/20/heres-what-the-czech-military-wants-to-buy-with-its-record-45b-modernization-program/

Tony Osborne LONDON—Brussels may delay a decision on its selection of a future fighter to examine proposals from France and options to upgrade its existing F-16 http://aviationweek.com/awindefense/brussels-may-delay-future-fighter-selection

Mark Pomerleau   With cyber playing a critical role in conflict going forward, the Army has begun to recognize the need to have organic cyber planners within a brigade's staff to offer commanders options related to cyber as well as electronic warfare. Cyber and Electromagnetic Activities, or CEMA cells, have been stood up in each brigade acting as planners to provide targeting options and capabilities to get at commander objectives just as an artillery planner would offer the commander choices related to their field for a pending operation. At the tactical level, these two disciplines – cyber and electronic warfare – have become intertwined. “When I talk to Army commanders and staffs, I try to make the point that I want you to worry less about whether it's a cyber or EW effect,” Lt. Col. Christopher Walls, deputy director for strategy and policy, at the Army's Cyber Directorate within the G-3/5/7, said at the C4ISRNET Conference in May. For example, Walls said for a river crossing mission, a commander might say he needs to buy a few hours to get a battalion across. The CEMA cell, in turn, would look across the capability sets in its portfolio and come up with a course of action. These cells potentially have the ability to allow the commander to target local internet service providers or local routers and prevent opposing forces from using them. The teams may also have an electronic warfare capability that can jam local area network protocols. Finally, these teams might know where mobile switching centers are by digitally geolocating them allowing physical strikes to take them out, Walls said. “I don't want the commander to worry about which of those three things, I just want him to talk to me in terms of desired objective and effects and then us, along with the staff, will determine which capability makes sense,” Walls said. “That's kind of the way we're thinking about the tactical fight.” The best choice comes down to understanding the commander's objectives and intent in order to offer the best solution. “What I would do is understand his intent, what effect he wants and what I'll do is submit that in a formal request and I'll let the higher echelons determine if they can provide that effect,” Capt. Daniel Oconer, brigade CEMA officer, told C4ISRNET during a recent visit to the National Training Center. “In general, all I really need to know for my planning processes is understand what the maneuver force wants to do,” he added. “How do tanks and Bradleys [move], how are the troops on the ground moving. Then, what is their mission? What is their objective? What is the commander's intent? Once I understand that I throw some CEMA flavor, so to say, onto it and then enable them to accomplish their mission.” Oconer is currently billeted as a 29 series electronic warfare officer. The Army will begin to transition these individuals into the cyber branch, or 17 series, so they will all eventually be cyber planners in the CEMA cell. “The way that we're transforming our electronic warfare professionals is they will become cyber operators. They will be the face inside our brigade combat teams and our maneuver formations for cyber operational planning,” Maj. Gen. John Morrison, commander of the Cyber Center of Excellence, said during a May speech. “They're complimentary. You cannot look at electronic warfare professionals and cyber operators in isolation.” https://www.c4isrnet.com/electronic-warfare/2018/06/20/how-the-army-will-plan-cyber-and-electronic-warfare-operations/

Jon Grevatt Key Points Australian DoD seeks industry advice on tender timeline for Land 400 Phase 3 procurement project Industry feedback intended to support better planning and to reduce the cost of tendering The Australian Department of Defence (DoD) is looking to engage with local industry on the schedule to issue a tender in support of a multi-billion dollar programme to procure close combat capability under Project Land 400 Phase 3. The DoD said on 20 June that it is inviting local companies to review and comment on the timeline for project through which it will replace the Australian Army's M113AS4 armoured personnel carriers (APCs) with up to 450 modern infantry fighting vehicles and 17 manoeuvre support vehicles. A draft request for tender (RFT) document for the programme has also been issued as part of the engagement. According to the DoD's 2016 Integrated Investment Program, which identifies defence investments in the decade to 2026, the Land 400 Phase 3 acquisition is worth between AUD10-AUD15 billion (USD7.4-USD11 billion). The DoD issued a request for information (RFI) for the project in November 2015, while government gave ‘first pass' or preliminary approval for the procurement in March 2018. Commenting on the decision to seek industry's advice on the tender schedule, Australia's Minister for Defence Industry Christopher Pyne said that it would lead to a better informed tender process and reduce the cost of tendering for local industry. “The proposed tender timeline identifies key milestones in the tender evaluation,” said Pyne. “We welcome industry's feedback on the timeline to better enable both industry and [the DoD] to plan for this significant boost to capability.” The DoD indicated that the move to seek industry advice on the Land 400 Phase 3 tender timeline was requested by local companies during the programme to acquire more than 200 combat reconnaissance vehicles under Land 400 Phase 2. http://www.janes.com/article/81187/australia-seeks-industry-input-on-infantry-fighting-vehicle-project