Nouvelles

By Matthew Cox U.S. Army leaders are looking to autonomous technology to be the game-changer on the future battlefield, but experts are wrestling with how the service will convince aviators and leaders to trust machines to help them make life-or-death decisions in a split second. Part of the Army's new modernization effort involves manned-unmanned teaming, a concept that will rely on unmanned, autonomous aircraft and ground vehicles working, in some cases, as forward scouts to identify and select targets much quicker than humans can. Army leaders have stressed that there will always be a "human in the loop" to prevent misjudgements that could result in unintended casualties. But aviators and leaders are still reluctant to trust machines to think for themselves. "Trust in autonomy is going to be a challenge as we move forward; there is a huge psychological component to it," Patrick Mason, deputy for the Army's Program Executive Office Aviation, told an audience Wednesday at the Association of the United States Army's Aviation Hot Topic event. Col. Thomas von Eschenbach, director of the Capability Development and Integration Directorate at the Army's Aviation Center of Excellence, has been running simulations to experiment on how autonomy and artificial intelligence can make aviators more effective. "When you add autonomy and you add AI ... you quicken the pace of decisions," von Eschenbach said. "We don't want to take things away from a human; we want to want to enable humans to be faster [and] more agile, and make the decisions inside somebody else's decision cycle. Full article: https://www.military.com/daily-news/2018/09/06/army-wants-autonomous-aviation-tech-do-pilots-trust-it.html

By: Kyle Rempfer NEW ORLEANS — The Tennessee National Guard currently has trainers in Ukraine, armored units in Poland, aviators in Kosovo, and other airmen and soldiers deployed across Southeast Asia and the Middle East. That's to say nothing of domestic missions like disaster relief for which they are also responsible. Although those missions are broad, Tennessee Adjutant General Maj. Gen. Max Haston said his guardsmen are well trained to accomplish their tasks. Still, readiness shortfalls on big-ticket items strain their capabilities. “The biggest thing that does impact readiness ... is ensuring we have a common platform across our services,” Haston told Military Times. “We've done a terrific job of taking care of our soldiers with the fielding of individual personal equipment — ballistic vests, helmets, all that stuff. ... But it's the major end items. It's the tanks, the Bradley [fighting vehicles], the helicopters and the planes," he said. Haston explained that readiness issues aren't exclusive to Tennessee Guardsmen. He said they were “enterprise-wide," and boiled down to “dollars and cents.” Readiness concerns aren't something the Guard cooked up on its own. It was the first issue Defense Secretary Jim Mattis brought up during his speech at the 2018 National Guard Association of the United States conference in New Orleans last month. “The way we're going to address the challenges we face is we're going to restore readiness across our force, and you [the National Guard] are considered every bit a part of that force as any active element," Mattis said. “We cannot be unprepared when destiny in the form of mobilization day taps us on the shoulder, for then it will be too late." While his words were welcomed, Guard leadership was still left wondering what the next step will be while they juggle missions abroad with training constraints at home due to outdated equipment. One example: the Tennessee Army National Guard's 278th Armored Cavalry Regiment operates M1A1 Abrams AIM SA tanks, according to Haston. However, active-duty Army units, by and large, are operating the newer M1A2 SEP variant. Full article: https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-air-force/2018/09/06/planes-tanks-and-helicopters-equipment-shortfalls-are-hurting-the-guards-readiness-leaders-say

By: Kelsey Atherton Air Force One's most important mission is to support managing an apocalypse. The daily function of the vehicles is, of course, regular transport of the president of the United States, an airborne White House that transports the functions of the executive branch to wherever it may travel. But it is as a command center in crisis, up to and including nuclear war, that the special modifications of highly customized Boeing 747s are most valuable. In all of that, it is the ability of the airplane to continue to communicate with people on the ground that matters most. On Sept. 6, the United States Defense Information Systems Agency awarded Viasat a contract worth $55.6 million a year to provide U.S. government senior leader and VIP aircraft with in-flight broadband and connectivity services. Valued at $559.8 million for the base year and seven follow-on years, the contract may, in a major crisis, prove that value in maintaining a consistent chain of command. Viasat first won a contract to provide the bandwidth in 2016. “The service enables an elite connectivity experience with the ability to use the in-flight broadband connection to stream full-motion high-definition video for en-route command-and-control (C2) missions,” says Viasat. It also, Viasat continues, allows the people on board the connected aircraft “to access real-time intelligence and other location-based, live-sensor data for critical decision-making and more.” With the broadband provided by the Viasat connection, a president on board Air Force One can receive the relevant intelligence reports, communicate with counterparts elsewhere in government and the military, and then respond to the crisis by crafting an appropriate response. Or even a tweet. https://www.c4isrnet.com/c2-comms/2018/09/06/viasat-is-now-responsible-for-internet-aboard-air-force-one

By: Mike Yeo MELBOURNE, Australia — The contract for the last of four Northrop Grumman E-2D Advanced Hawkeye airborne early warning aircraft ordered by Japan has been awarded, as the country announces plans to reorganize its airborne early warning aircraft command. According to a Sept. 5 contract award announcement by the U.S. Department of Defense, Northrop Grumman has been awarded a $164 million firm-fixed-price modification to an existing contract for a new-build E-2D Advanced Hawkeye aircraft . This follows similar contract awards in November 2015, July 2016 and June 2018, and brings the total procurement cost for Japan for the four E-2Ds to $633 million, not inclusive of engineering and other related costs. The first Japanese E-2D is currently undergoing flight tests, having made its first flight from Northrop Grumman's Aircraft Integration Center of Excellence in St. Augustine, Florida, in October 2017, with delivery expected in late 2019. The E-2D is the latest variant of the E-2 Hawkeye carrierborne, airborne early warning aircraft, which is already being operated by the U.S. Navy. It features a new Lockheed Martin AN/APY-9 ultrahigh-frequency-band radar, which is able to detect and track cruise missiles and low-observable aircraft. However, the Japanese aircraft are not fitted with the Cooperative Engagement Capability, or CEC, like U.S. Navy E-2Ds. CEC is a sensor network with integrated fire control capability that combines data from multiple battle-force air-search sensors on CEC-equipped units into a single, real-time, composite track picture. Japanese media has also previously reported that the Defense Ministry is looking to equip its E-2Ds and Aegis-equipped destroyers with CEC, allowing the former to guide missiles fired by the latter. Full article: https://www.defensenews.com/air/2018/09/06/northrop-grumman-secures-164m-contract-to-modify-hawkeye-aircraft-for-japan

BY PATRICK TUCKER DARPA's new research in brain-computer interfaces is allowing a pilot to control multiple simulated aircraft at once. A person with a brain chip can now pilot a swarm of drones — or even advanced fighter jets, thanks to research funded by the U.S. military's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. The work builds on research from 2015, which allowed a paralyzed woman to steer a virtual F-35 Joint Strike Fighter with only a small, surgically-implantable microchip. On Thursday, agency officials announced that they had scaled up the technology to allow a user to steer multiple jets at once. “As of today, signals from the brain can be used to command and control ... not just one aircraft but three simultaneous types of aircraft,” said Justin Sanchez, who directs DARPA's biological technology office, at the Agency's 60th-anniversary event in Maryland. More importantly, DARPA was able to improve the interaction between pilot and the simulated jet to allow the operator, a paralyzed man named Nathan, to not just send but receive signals from the craft. “The signals from those aircraft can be delivered directly back to the brain so that the brain of that user [or pilot] can also perceive the environment,” said Sanchez. “It's taken a number of years to try and figure this out.” In essence, it's the difference between having a brain joystick and having a real telepathic conversation with multiple jets or drones about what's going on, what threats might be flying over the horizon, and what to do about them. “We've scaled it to three [aircraft], and have full sensory [signals] coming back. So you can have those other planes out in the environment and then be detecting something and send that signal back into the brain,” said Sanchez. The experiment occured a “handful of months ago,” he said. It's another breakthrough in the rapidly advancing field of brain-computer interfaces, or BCIs, for a variety of purposes. The military has been leading interesting research in the field since at least 2007,. And in 2012, DARPA issued a $4 million grant to build a non-invasive “synthetic telepathy” interface by placing sensors close to the brain's motor centers to pick up electrical signals — non-invasively, over the skin. But the science has advanced rapidly in recent years, allowing for breakthroughs in brain-based communication, control of prosthetic limbs, and even memory repair. https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2018/09/its-now-possible-telepathically-communicate-drone-swarm/151068

PARIS, 6 septembre (Reuters) - La ministre française de la Défense Florence Parly s'est déclarée jeudi satisfaite des nouvelles fonctionnalités en cours de test sur l'avion de transport militaire A400M d'Airbus. “Nous sommes dans une phase extrêmement positive”, a-t-elle observé lors d'une rencontre avec l'Association des journalistes professionnels de l'aéronautique et de l'espace (AJPAE), disant attendre l'intégralité des fonctionnalités en 2021. Les retards successifs du programme A400M ont conduit les pays clients, comme la France, à réceptionner des appareils n'ayant pas toutes les fonctionnalités contractuelles, comme le largage de parachutistes par les portes latérales, des équipements électroniques de défense et le ravitaillement en vol d'hélicoptères. En mars, Reuters avait révélé que l'armée allemande avait dit dans un rapport confidentiel voir un “risque important” que l'A400M n'ait pas toutes les capacités tactiques requises après 2021, au moment du retrait de sa flotte de C-160 Transall. “Chaque étape que nous passons est une étape qui se franchit avec succès et donc ceci aide chacun à être un peu patient”, a ajouté Florence Parly. L'armée française avait annoncé au printemps la réception de son 14e A400M, avec un objectif de 25 unités en 2025 et une cible de 50 à terme. Le président exécutif d'Airbus Tom Enders a fait état fin juillet d'avancées dans les négociations avec les pays clients de l'A400M pour parvenir à un amendement du contrat d'ici la fin 2018. https://fr.reuters.com/article/frEuroRpt/idFRL5N1VS3VA

Par Michel Cabirol La France a lancé un plan pour réduire les dépendances de l'industrie d'armement aux composants américains qui entrent dans la fabrication de certains programmes français. La France veut réduire sa dépendance aux composants américains dans la Défense afin de ne pas gêner l'exportation de ses programmes, a déclaré jeudi la ministre des Armées Florence Parly. La France doit actuellement demander aux Etats-Unis la levée d'interdictions sur certains composants. "Nous avons besoin progressivement de nous désensibiliser par rapport à un certain nombre de composants américains, ce qui ne veut pas dire nécessairement pouvoir se désensibiliser complètement", a-t-elle expliqué lors d'une rencontre avec l'Association des journalistes professionnels de l'aéronautique et de l'espace (AJPAE). La France a d'ailleurs lancé un plan pour réduire les dépendances par rapport à ces composants américains. "Je ne donnerai pas d'exemple précis mais nous avons été confrontés, dans des échanges liés à des prospects exportations, à des difficultés. Et nous savons bien que ces difficultés sont liées en apparence à des questionnements stratégiques et en réalité souvent à des problèmes de concurrence commerciale. Il ne faut pas en être dupes", a-t-elle expliqué. Si un système d'armes contient au moins un composant américain sous le régime de la réglementation américaine ITAR, les Etats-Unis ont le pouvoir d'en interdire la vente à l'export à un pays tiers. Ainsi, ils ont récemment bloqué la vente de missile de croisière Scalp, qui devait armer le Rafale, à l'Egypte et au Qatar. En 2013, Washington avait déjà refusé une demande de réexportation de la France aux Emirats Arabes Unis de composants "made in USA" nécessaires à la fabrication de deux satellites espions français (Airbus et Thales). La visite de François Hollande aux États-Unis en février 2014 avait permis de régler positivement ce dossier. Lors de son audition en juillet dernier à l'Assemblée nationale, Florence Parly avait reconnu que "nous sommes à la merci des Américains quand nos matériels sont concernés". "Avons-nous les moyens d'être totalement indépendants des composants américains ? Je ne le crois pas. Cherchons-nous à améliorer la situation ? La réponse est oui", avait-elle déjà assuré en juillet. La France travaille notamment à désensibiliser les futurs programmes d'armement. Ainsi Florence Parly a affirmé que cette moindre dépendance serait cruciale pour la viabilité du futur programme d'avion de combat (SCAF). Cela passe pour Paris et Berlin d'avoir la capacité d'exporter ce futur système d'armes. Elle a estimé que les industriels devaient prendre en compte ce dossier en lançant des investissements en matière de recherche et de technologie pour être en mesure de fabriquer un composant analogue qui échapperait au dispositif ITAR. "Certains industriels l'ont compris", a-t-elle précisé. C'est le cas du missilier MBDA dans le cadre du développement du futur missile air-air MICA-NG. Ce programme, qui sera opérationnel en 2025, est développé en prenant en compte la contrainte ITAR. Ils seront ITAR Free, assure-t-on à La Tribune. Florence Parly a également rappelé la dépendance de la France pour les drone MALE Reaper. "Pour armer les Reaper, il faut une autorisation du Congrès américain. Est-ce satisfaisant ? Non. Mais aujourd'hui on n'a pas le choix", a-t-elle expliqué, faisant référence aux drones achetés aux Etats-Unis depuis 2013. Pour autant, l'armement des Reaper ne signifie pas que la France armera le futur drone MALE de reconnaissance et de surveillance en préparation pour 2025. "Dans les spécifications, il sera possible de l'armer, ce qui ne signifie pas qu'aujourd'hui la décision est prise sur la question de savoir s'il sera en définitive armé", a-t-elle souligné. https://www.latribune.fr/entreprises-finance/industrie/aeronautique-defense/reglementation-itar-la-france-veut-reduire-sa-dependance-aux-composants-americains-789612.html

By: Aaron Mehta WASHINGTON — Last December, Ellen Lord sat down with reporters and told them that the reorganization of the Pentagon's Acquisition, Technology and Logistics office would be a two-year process. Now, however, Lord believes her Acquisition and Sustainment office will beat that target, easily. “I believe we are going to be pretty squared away” by the first quarter of calendar year 2019, Lord told Defense News in an interview following her appearance at the second annual Defense News Conference. “I believe those last critical slots — a lot of [deputy assistant secretary of defense] slots, a few director slots — will all be filled by March of '19. We're excited to get going on the work,” she said. The AT&L reorganization included splitting the office into two new units — the undersecretaries of Acquisition and Sustainment, led by Lord, and of Research and Engineering, led by Mike Griffin. In July, Deputy Secretary of Defense Pat Shanahan released a memo — obtained first by Defense News — finalizing the structures of the new organizations. Full article: https://www.defensenews.com/smr/defense-news-conference/2018/09/06/as-reorganization-should-be-completed-a-year-ahead-of-time

By Terry Pedwell A mandate letter for Canada's new corrections commissioner calls for more engagement with community groups to help prevent re-offending — something prisoner advocacy organizations say the prison system has not been very good at doing. The letter, issued to Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) commissioner Anne Kelly in mid-August but only made public Wednesday, also calls on her to reduce the use of segregation, especially for inmates suffering from mental illness. Two major lawsuits launched since 2015 have challenged how the prison system uses segregation to keep inmates in line, or to prevent them from harming themselves or others. The letter says prisons should explore new, supervised use of computers so inmates are more prepared to enter the workforce once they are released. And it calls on the commissioner to do more to address the needs of Indigenous offenders, including increasing the use of community-run healing lodges. The government said the letter marks the first time a CSC commissioner has received a public mandate. The letter to Kelly from Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale says the prison system can not take a one-size-fits-all approach to incarceration. “Different groups of offenders — including black Canadians, women, young adults, LGBTQ2 people and aging offenders — have different needs and experiences, which require tailored approaches,” Goodale said in a statement to Kelly, dated Aug. 17. “In particular, more work needs to be done to address the needs of Indigenous Peoples, who are overrepresented in federal custody.” Jennifer Metcalfe, executive director of Vancouver-based Prisoners' Legal Services, applauded the mandate, but said she is frustrated the government has appealed recent court decisions denouncing the use of segregation. “If the government was really committed to making concrete changes that would have a positive impact on peoples' health and mental health, they shouldn't be fighting these issues in the courts,” she said. Her legal services clinic has filed a human rights complaint on behalf of prisoners with mental disabilities that calls for significant changes to Canada's prison system. “We would like to be at the table to help (CSC) come up with alternatives to solitary confinement that would better treat people with mental disabilities,” said Metcalfe. She said more money needs to be invested in mental health care services for offenders, rather than warehousing people where they can develop bad behaviours including self injury. Goodale said the CSC commissioner has four critical responsibilities: ensuring offenders can live law-abiding lives when they are released, providing a safe workplace for prison employees, showing victims of crime compassion and keeping them informed, and ensuring offenders are treated safely and humanely. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the appointment of Kelly as CSC commissioner in late July. The Canadian Press https://ipolitics.ca/2018/09/05/correction-services-head-marching-orders-less-segregation-more-engagement/