Nouvelles

NAVY Lockheed Martin Corp., Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co., Fort Worth, Texas, is awarded an $861,731,778 modification (P00040) to previously-awarded fixed-price incentive (firm target), firm-fixed-price contract N00019-17-C-0001. This modification exercises options to procure eight Lot 14 F-35A Lightning II repositioned aircraft as a result of the Republic of Turkey's removal from the F-35 program, and six Lot 14 F-35A aircraft for the Air Force. Additionally, this modification establishes undefinitized line items that provides recurring engineering in support of the modification of the eight Lot 14 F-35A Lightning II repositioned aircraft to a full operationally capable F-35A Air Force configuration. Work will be performed in Fort Worth, Texas (63%); El Segundo, California (14%); Warton, United Kingdom (9%); Orlando, Florida (4%); Nashua, New Hampshire (3%); Baltimore, Maryland (3%); San Diego, California (2%); various locations within the continental U.S. (1.3%); and various locations outside the continental U.S. (0.7%). Work is expected to be completed by May 2026. Fiscal 2020 aircraft procurement (Air Force) funds for $848,881,778 will be obligated at time of award. No funds will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Maryland, is the contracting activity. Undersea Signal Systems Inc., Columbia City, Indiana, is awarded a $28,323,687 cost-plus-fixed-fee-contract to develop a prototype sonobuoy, known as Extended Range Directional Frequency Analysis and Recording (ER-DIFAR), to address new and quiet threat submarine targets. Work will be performed in Columbia City, Indiana, and is expected to be completed by July 2024. The total cumulative value of this contract is $28,323,687. This is a three-year base contract with one one-year option period. The base period is $24,128,769 and the option year is $4,194,918. Fiscal 2019 research, development, test and evaluation (Navy) funds in the amount of $50,000; and fiscal 2020 research, development, test and evaluation (Navy) funds in the amount of $4,061,000 are obligated at time of award. Funds in the amount of $50,000 will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was competitively procured under N00014-19-S-B001, “Long Range Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) for Navy and Marine Corps Science and Technology.” Since proposals are received throughout the year under the long range BAA, the number of proposals received in response to the solicitation is unknown. The Office of Naval Research, Arlington, Virginia, is the contracting activity (N00014- 20-C-2015). General Dynamics Missions Systems Inc., McLeansville, North Carolina, is awarded a $13,553,807 cost-plus-fixed-fee and cost-only modification to previously-awarded contract N61331-11-C-0017 to exercise an option for engineering support for ongoing development, test and production of the Surface Mine Countermeasure Unmanned Undersea Vehicle (SMCM UUV) program, also known as Knifefish. Work will be performed in Quincy, Massachusetts (52%); McLeansville, North Carolina (27%); Braintree, Massachusetts (10%); Hanover, Maryland (5%); Reston, Virginia (5%); and Ann Arbor, Michigan (1%). The Knifefish program will provide persistent volume and bottom mine hunting capability in a contested environment. This option exercise is for engineering support hours to support a number of efforts, including test and evaluation, engineering change proposal development and upgrade initiatives. Work is expected to be completed by September 2021. Fiscal 2020 research, development, test and evaluation (Navy); and fiscal 2020 other procurement (Navy) funding in the amount of $12,500,000 will be obligated at time of award. Funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington, D.C., is the contracting activity. Navatek LLC,* Honolulu, Hawaii, is awarded a $9,170,852 cost-plus-fixed-fee completion contract with no option periods for the talent and technology for Navy Power and Energy Systems. Work will be performed in Honolulu, Hawaii (50%); and Columbia, South Carolina (50%). The work to be performed will advance the state-of-the-art autonomous command and control of shipboard power systems, to include next-generation integrated power and energy systems, in order to harness the full energy available in the Navy's ships to meet critical mission needs. Work is expected to be completed by July 2023. The total cumulative value of this contract is $9,170,852. Fiscal 2020 research, development, test and evaluation (Navy) funds in the amount of $9,170,852 are obligated at time of award. Funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was competitively procured under N00014-19-S-B001, “Long Range Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) for Navy and Marine Corps Science and Technology.” Since proposals are received throughout the year under the long range BAA, the number of proposals received in response to the solicitation is unknown. The Office of Naval Research, Arlington, Virginia, is the contracting activity (N00014-20-C-1106). AIR FORCE BAE Systems Technology Solutions and Services Inc., Rockville, Maryland, has been awarded a $495,482,136 firm-fixed-price, cost-plus-fixed-fee and cost-reimbursable indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for the Instrumentation Range Support Program. This contract provides for serviceable components and subsystems for instrumentation tracking systems, worldwide for both foreign and domestic government agencies to include radars, telemetry and optical range mission systems, flight termination systems, data acquisition systems and Global Positioning Systems. Work will be performed on participating ranges in the program, including Air Force, Army, Navy, NASA, Department of Energy, as well as foreign ranges in the United Kingdom, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Republic of Korea and Switzerland. Work is expected to be completed Sept. 30, 2027. This award is the result of a competitive acquisition and three offers were received. Fiscal year 2020 operations and maintenance funds in the amount of $116,235 are being obligated, on a delivery order, at the time of award. This contract has a ceiling amount of $945,234,462. The 45th Contracting Squadron, Patrick Air Force Base, Florida, is the contracting activity (FA2521-20-D-0005). National Native American Construction Inc., Coeur D Alene, Idaho (FA4620-20-D0005); Northcon Inc., Hayden, Idaho (FA4620-20-D-0006); Alutiiq General Contractors LLC, Tacoma, Washington (FA4620-20-0008); RORE Inc., San Diego, California (FA4620-20-0009); M.J. Takisaki Inc., Seattle, Washington (FA4620-20-D-0010); and WHH Nisqually-Garco JV 2, Olympia, Washington (FA4620-20-D-0012), have been awarded a not-to-exceed $95,000,000 firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for design-build construction efforts at Fairchild Air Force Base, Washington. Work will be performed at Fairchild AFB, Washington, and is expected to be completed June 30, 2025. This award is the result of a competitive acquisition, and 10 offers were received. Fiscal 2020 operations and maintenance funds in the amount of $500 are being obligated to each at the time of award. The 92nd Contracting Squadron, Fairchild AFB, Washington, is the contracting activity. Richland Industries LLC, Pulaski, Tennessee, has been awarded a $24,800,000 indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity, firm-fixed-price contract for simplified acquisition of base engineering requirements. This contract will provide for a streamlined means to complete minor construction projects that encompass a broad range of sustainment, maintenance and repair and research development testing and evaluation projects on real property at Arnold Engineering Development Complex, Arnold Air Force Base, Tennessee. Work will be performed at Arnold AFB, Tennessee, and is expected to be completed July 19, 2025. This award is the result of a competitive service-disabled, veteran-owned, small-business, set-aside acquisition with 10 offers received. Fiscal 2020 operations and maintenance funds in the amount of $123,731 are being obligated at the time of award. Air Force Test Center, Arnold Air Force Base, Tennessee, is the contracting activity (FA9101-20-D-0001). Vanguard Pacific LLC, Foley, Alabama, has been awarded a $7,304,129 firm-fixed-price contract for protective coating and sign maintenance. This contract provides for airfield rubber removal, striping of airfield, streets and parking lots, protective coating and sign maintenance. Work will be performed at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, and Davidsonville and Brandywine communications sites, and is expected to be completed Aug. 4, 2025. This award is the result of a competitive service disabled veteran owned small business set aside acquisition and one offer was received. Fiscal 2020 operations and maintenance funds in the amount of $3,776 are being obligated at the time of award. The 316th Wing, Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, is the contracting activity (FA2860-20-D-0003). ARMY DRS Sustainment Systems Inc., St. Louis, Missouri, was awarded an $189,828,895 hybrid (cost-no-fee, cost-plus-fixed-fee, firm-fixed-price) contract for development, production, deployment and support of the Mobile-Low, Slow, Small Unmanned Aircraft System Integrated Defeat System. 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 July 30, 2025. U.S. Army Contracting Command, Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, is the contracting activity (W31P4Q-20-D-0031). Russell Construction Co. Inc., Davenport, Iowa, was awarded a $10,284,300 firm-fixed-price contract to construct a Special Operations Forces assessment and selection training complex. Bids were solicited via the internet with 10 received. Work will be performed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, with an estimated completion date of Sept. 17, 2022. Fiscal 2020 military construction, defense-wide funds in the amount of $10,284,300 were obligated at the time of the award. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Wilmington, North Carolina, is the contracting activity (W912PM-20-C-0018). *Small Business https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Contracts/Contract/Article/2280473/source/GovDelivery/

By: Andrew Chuter LONDON — The first element of a likely $7.5 billion upgrade of the British armed forces' satellite-telecommunications capabilities has finally been signed by the Ministry of Defence and Airbus Defence and Space. The deal, worth more than $630 million, will see Airbus build a new telecommunications satellite as a stop gap to bolster military capabilities ahead of the introduction of a new generation of space craft scheduled to start entering service towards the end of the decade. Airbus and the MoD have been locked in negotiation over the deal to construct the satellite, known as Skynet 6A, since the company was nominated in 2017, without a competition, as the preferred supplier. Under the terms of the deal the satellite, based on Airbus' Eurostar Neo spacecraft, will be developed, assembled and tested in the UK. Planned launch date is 2025. In a statement Airbus said the contract also covers technology development programs, new secure telemetry, tracking and command systems, launch, in-orbit testing and ground segment updates to the current Skynet 5 system. At one point defense officials here were sufficiently concerned about the drawn-out negotiations for Skynet 6A delaying the space crafts in-service date that they a contract with Airbus to start work on long-lead items ahead of the main deal being sealed. The deal will supplement a fleet of existing spacecraft built by Airbus as part of the Skynet 5 space telecommunications network operated by the company under a private finance initiative (PFI) deal which has been in operation since 2003. Operation of the Skynet ground stations was also included in the deal. The PFI, including ground station element, ends in 2022. A competition to run the ground stations as part of the wider Skynet 6 program is already in play, with Airbus, Babcock, BT and Serco all bidding to secure the contract for what is called the Service Delivery Wrap. The third main element of Skynet 6, known as Enduring Capability,will see industry compete to replace existing Skynet 5 satellites with a fleet of new generation beyond line of sight communication assets. The early stages of that competition is already underway. In-service date for the first of the new communications assets is around 2028. Announcing the satellite deal 24 hours ahead of the launch of the virtual Farnborough air show getting underway July 20, UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said the “newest contested frontier is space and so we need to provide resilience and better communications for our forces. Skynet 6A is one of many solutions we shall be investing in over the next decade. This government recognizes the urgent need to defend and promote space capabilities.” “British defense must continue to innovate and transform, particularly in cyber and space,” Wallace said. Confirmation of the satellite deal by Wallace comes just two weeks after the British government took a $503 million stake alongside Indian company Bharti Global in the rescue of failed broadband constellation supplier OneWeb. OneWeb is based in the UK but its satellites are built in Florida in a partnership between Airbus and OneWeb. So far, 74 satellites out of an initial requirement for 648 have been launched. Having been denied access by the European Union to the precise military navigational signals provided by their Galileo satellites as a result of Brexit, the British are hoping they can develop the small spacecraft operated by OneWeb to provide military-grade positioning, navigation and timing data for the armed forces. OneWeb satellites could also find themselves developed for use by the British military as part of Skynet 6′s Enduring Capability requirement, said an industry executive here, who asked not to be named. Space is expected to have top billing alongside cyber, artificial intelligence and other cutting-edge technologies in the upcoming integrated defense, security and foreign policy review being conducted by Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his advisors. Creation of a Space Command is likely to figure in a space defense policy being pulled together by the MoD. The bones of that policy could be presented to four-star-level officials in the next few weeks. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2020/07/20/airbus-gets-630-million-deal-under-uk-militarys-skynet-6-push

By: Andrew Chuter LONDON – A raft of top systems suppliers have been recruited to join the team leading Britain's development of the Tempest next-generation fighter aircraft. Bombardier in Northern Ireland, GKN, Martin Baker and Qinetiq, alongside the UK arms of Collins Aerospace, GE Aviation and Thales, have signed up to collaborate with the BAE Systems-led team working on the future air combat system, it was announced July 20 on what should have been the opening day of the Farnborough air show before Covid-19 caused the event's cancellation. At the same time as the announcement, Sweden's Saab revealed it was setting up a UK hub to potentially participate in future combat air systems work between the two nations. It's been almost two years to the day when the wraps were taken off a plastic mock-up of a Tempest fighter at the Farnborough show. The British revealed a BAE-led partnership, also involving Leonardo, MBDA, Rolls-Royce, that would begin investigating the technologies required for a future combat air system. Some $2.5 billion has so far been committed to the program. Now, just months before an outline business case to develop the program further is due to be delivered to the UK government, Team Tempest, as the industrial team is known, has signed up its first seven systems suppliers. With the first phase of the new partnerships signed, the companies will seek opportunities to join forces on established projects and developments with the core Team Tempest partners. More than 60 technology demonstration activities are currently underway on future combat air systems in the UK employing 1800 people – a number expected to grow to 2500 by the end of the year. In a statement, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said he was “delighted seven more companies have joined this mission to work in collaboration with the MoD, under the Team Tempest banner. They will bring the ambition, invention and expertise that will deliver the breakthroughs we will depend on for decades to come.” The rising employment levels and increasing industrial support comes at a crucial time for a program which will pretty much dictate Britain's future position in the defense industrial world, given the air sector's importance to jobs, skills and exports here. An integrated defense, security and foreign policy review is underway led by Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his advisors, who are said to be skeptical of local industry's ability to deliver major programs on time and on budget and would rather buy defense equipment off the shelf. With Covid-19 pretty much emptying government coffers, launching a multibillion-dollar program like Tempest is likely to be an issue unless the British can sign up some major international partners to share the cost. Last year Italy and Sweden both signed up to investigate partnering with the UK on a future combat air system, and those studies are ongoing with neither country yet committing to the program. Sweden may not have yet committed to a partnership with the British and others, but its biggest defense company, Saab, announced July 20 it was to invest an initial $63 million setting up a new future combat air center with other initiatives in the UK. Saab leads Sweden's future combat air system industrial participation in cooperation with the defense ministry. Details of where and when the company will invest in the UK are sparse, but Micael Johansson, the president and CEO of Saab, said the move demonstrated the company's commitment to combat air development and the UK. “Saab took the decision to create a new future combat air system center so that we can further develop the close working relationship with the other FCAS industrial partners and the UK MoD. This emphasizes the importance of both FCAS and the United Kingdom to Saab's future,” said Johansson. The British have cast their net beyond Europe in the search for partners, with India and Japan also having held discussions about a potential tie-up on a future combat air system. Across the English channel France and Germany are together developing a new combat jet to a similar time frame. Attempts to merge the two European programs have so far failed, but that's not to say that post Covid-19 financial reality may not cause a potential tie-up to be revisited. Howard Wheeldon, of consultants Wheeldon Strategic Advisory, said that the British government knew was at stake in the development of a future combat air system. “Team Tempest is a very significant program for the UK. ... A partnership between government, military, industry and international partners all of whom are determined to succeed,” he said. “Industry, along with the RAF Rapid Capabilities Office, have already achieved a vast amount in a very short period of time. I, for one, am in no doubt that the government fully understands the importance of what ‘Team Tempest' means to the UK, not only to jobs and maintaining necessary skills, but in the potential that the development has in terms of future prosperity,” said Wheeldon. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2020/07/20/british-next-generation-fighter-program-taps-new-suppliers

by Gareth Jennings Lockheed Martin has been awarded USD15 billion to support all remaining C-130J Hercules work through to 16 July 2030. The indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract, which was announced by the US Department of Defense (DoD) on 17 July, covers domestic and Foreign Military Sales (FMS) work related to the four-engined airlifter built at the company's Marietta facility in Georgia. “This contract provides flexibility to accommodate the broad enterprise of activities associated with the C-130J programme,” the DoD said, noting that it specifically covers development, integration, retrofit, and production activities for all C-130J variants. The DoD added that fiscal year (FY) 2018 and 2019 aircraft procurement funds in the amount of USD3.3 million were being obligated at the time of award. This award follows a similar IDIQ agreement for USD10 billion signed with Lockheed Martin in August 2016. At that time, the DoD said the contract covered the production of an estimated 100 C-130Js for the United States and FMS customers. It would appear from the overlap in scope and timelines between the two awards that this latest contract is an extension and an expansion of the earlier one. https://www.janes.com/defence-news/news-detail/lockheed-martin-awarded-usd15-billion-for-future-c-130j-work

By: Joe Gould WASHINGTON ― Epirus, a venture-backed startup offering a counter-drone capability, launched quietly enough two years ago, but it's making noise by bringing together key veterans of Microsoft, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon ― and by landing its first deal with a name-brand defense prime contractor. Epirus chief executive Leigh Madden was general manager for Microsoft's national security business before he joined the Hawthorne, Calif.,-based firm two months ago, and its chief financial officer, Ken Bedingfield, is a former chief financial officer at Northrop. The former chairman of Epirus is Joe Lonsdale, co-founder of the Silicon Valley data-analytics company Palantir Technologies. Epirus, this week, is expected to announce a previously undisclosed strategic supplier agreement with Northrop to provide exclusive access to Epirus' software-defined electromagnetic pulse system, called Leonidas. The dollar value of the deal isn't being disclosed. Northrop said Leonidas would augment its own kinetic and non-kinetic solutions to counter small drones. The Army recently selected Northrop's Forward Area Air Defense Command and Control software, or FAAD-C2, as the interim C2 system to counter small drones. (DoD's FY21 budget request included $18.7 million for counter-drone enhancements for the system.) “UAS threats are proliferating across the modern battlespace,” said Kenn Todorov, vice president and general manager of Northrop Grumman's Combat Systems and Mission Readiness division. “By integrating the Epirus EMP weapon system into our C-UAS portfolio, we continue maturing our robust, integrated, layered approach to addressing and defeating these evolving threats.” Many companies have jumped into the $2 billion counter-UAS market, anticipating a boom as commercial drones have grown cheaper and more commonplace, posing an asymmetric threat on the battlefield as well as a threat to airports, sports stadiums, government buildings and urban areas. So many companies are in the field the Pentagon has been working to streamline the number of systems available across the department. Epirus executives said the company's technology is unique because its use of solid-state commercial semiconductor technology makes it lighter and smaller ― and because it can have narrow effects or be “adjusted to sanitize a volume of terrain or sky, creating a forcefield effect.” The company's systems involve a combination of high-power microwave technology and, for enhanced targeting, artificial intelligence. Epirus Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Bo Marr was a radio frequency engineer and technical lead on Raytheon's next-generation jammer program, under development by the U.S. Navy. Madden, a former U.S. Navy SEAL who spent eight years at Microsoft, and Bedingfield, who spent five years as Northrop's CFO, both said they joined Epirus because they were impressed by the technology and its potential. “Northrop and Microsoft are both multibillion-dollar defense businesses, and I think we bring a knowledge of how to operate around some of the larger opportunities and to make outsized impacts in the market,” Madden said. “We're taking that experience to a smaller, innovative company. I think that will allow us to really accelerate the pace of growth and have a more rapid and greater impact for our customers.” The Pentagon has attempted to shift toward working with smaller, more innovative companies to supplement its work with larger firms, which continue to dominate the marketplace. Flexible, non-traditional contact vehicles called “other transaction authorities” have grown more popular as the Pentagon has turned to Silicon Valley for cutting edge technologies. “One of the things that attracted me to come to Epirus is the ability to work in an agile enterprise that is trying to take some of the approaches of Silicon Valley and apply them to the defense world―to iterate quicker and to field faster, and to be able to respond to the urgent needs of the customer,” Bedingfield said. Bedingfield said the company is growing fast and generating revenue from working with customers on studies and technology demonstrations, but it's as yet unclear when it will begin to deliver products. The coronavirus pandemic has slowed its hiring, but the firm is looking to double in the next year, adding more than 50 employees in Hawthorne, and a planned office in Northern Virgina. Formed in 2018 and named after the magical bow of the Greek hero Theseus, Epirus was raising $17.8 million in new funding last November, according to its public filings. With Lonsdale and Marr, its co-founders include its previous CEO; current Vice Chairman John Tenet, from venture capitol firm 8VC; Chief Operating Officer Max Mednik, a Google veteran; UnitedHealthcare Chief Digital Officer Grant Verstandig is the current chairman. Palantir, which Lonsdale founded with billionaire Peter Thiel in 2005, appeared as an upstart when the Defense Department hadn't opened its arms as wide to Silicon Valley. Last year, Palantir beat Raytheon in a head-to-head competition to provide the Army a new version of its intelligence analysis system ― after a years long saga in which the Army rejected Palantir's offering and Palantir sued. In September, Epirus won a Small Business Innovation Research contract from the U.S. Air Force's Space and Missile Systems Center as part of its AFWERX technology accelerator. The contract was for the company's novel architecture for using commercial off-the-shelf field programmable gate arrays, which are semiconductor devices commonly used in electronic circuits, as ultra-wideband radio frequency transceivers. While traditional systems use large vacuum tubes, Madden said Leonidas is based in microchips and software. “We believe there is no other solution on the market that allows for fully software defined precision targeting at digital speeds, enabling both precision targeting as well as large-area, counter-swarm targeting of many drones at the same time,” he said. Northrop and Epirus are expected to announce their partnership this week. “We're not just solving today's swarm threat, we're also looking to the future to understand how asymmetric threats will evolve,” Marr said in a statement. “Epirus is an agile startup, Northrop Grumman has defense prime contractor resources, and through this partnership we intend to deliver the best technology to the warfighter as fast as possible.” https://www.defensenews.com/2020/07/20/epirus-venture-backed-startup-inks-deal-with-northrop-for-counter-drone-tech

By: Mike Yeo MELBOURNE, Australia — Indonesia has expressed interest in acquiring Austria's fleet of Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jets, in yet another surprise defense procurement plan from the southeast Asian country. Indonesia's defense minister, Prabowo Subianto, wrote a letter to his Austrian counterpart, Klaudia Tanner, seeking to initiate negotiations to buy all 15 Typhoons belonging to the Austrian Air Force. In his letter, which was published by Indonesian news outlets, Prabowo said the potential purchase will assist in his aims to continue modernizing the Indonesian Air Force. He added that he understood the “sensitivity” of his proposal, which was likely to be a reference to the continued controversy surrounding Austria's 2002 acquisition of the Typhoon. That purchase has been dogged by questions about cost and the effectiveness of the aircraft. More recently, there have been allegations of corruption related to the original contract award. These culminated in Austria's 2017 decision to retire the aircraft from service this year in favor of a “more effective and cost-effective” solution for the central European country's air defense needs. Indonesia's interest in the fleet comes two weeks after the surprise announcement that the U.S. State Department cleared the country to buy the Bell-Boeing MV-22 tilt-rotor aircraft. Indonesia has been seeking a fighter aircraft to serve alongside its fleet of 23 refurbished early-block Lockheed Martin F-16C/D Fighting Falcon jets. These are all former aircraft operated by the U.S. Air National Guard, and were delivered from 2014 onward. The decision to seek the Austrian Typhoons, which are all Tranche 1 aircraft configured primarily for air defense missions, is a blow to Russian aspirations to sell the Sukhoi Su-35 Flanker interceptor to Indonesia. Indonesia had selected the Su-35 as its next fighter to provide continuity with its existing fleet of Su-27 and Su-30s Flankers acquired in the early part of the last decade. Negotiations for the Russian jets ended in 2018, but Indonesia had been reticent to sign the $1.14 billion contract, reportedly over fears that it may be subject to American sanctions. The sanctions would come from a U.S. law, Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, that targets Iran, North Korea and Russia. CAATSA was passed by Congress in 2017 and is meant to discourage governments or entities from acquiring weapons or military hardware and parts from U.S. adversaries. https://www.defensenews.com/global/asia-pacific/2020/07/20/indonesia-says-it-wants-to-buy-austrias-entire-typhoon-fighter-fleet/

Mark Pomerleau The Air Force is realigning the cyber mission force teams it provides to U.S. Cyber Command as a way to have intelligence personnel work more closely with cyber operators. In the past, Air Forces Cyber was made up of cyber and intelligence personnel from 24th Air Force and 25th Air Force, respectively. However, the arrangement created difficulties with command relationships and oversight of teams since the intelligence operators served beneath a separate Air Force command with a separate commander. But in October, the Air Force decided to merge 24th and 25th Air Force into 16th Air Force/Air Forces Cyber, placing cyber, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, electronic warfare and weather capabilities under one commander, and creating the Air Force's first information warfare entity. The new organization also serves as the Air Force's component to Cyber Command. The new organization of teams moves intelligence forces from the 70th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Wing to the 67th Cyber Operations Wing. “We looked at the intelligence squadron and focused on the position descriptions that really were supporting the cyber mission force ... so that we can merge those intelligence professionals into the cyber operations squadron in order to build the mission elements that supported the combatant command requirements,” Col. Lauren Courchaine, commander of the 67th Cyberspace Operations Group, told C4ISRNET in an interview. Specifically, these teams are combat mission teams – the teams that conduct cyber operations on behalf of combatant commands mostly in the offensive sphere – and cyber support teams, which provide intelligence, mission planning and other necessary support work for combat mission team. Officials at the creation of 16th Air Force said the integration would allow the service to provide more robust teams to Cyber Command. This new structure - with cyber operators, developers and intelligence forces in the same room and read in on the same missions - provides a tighter mission thread, Courchaine said. In the past, she said, when cyber operators needed intelligence support, they'd have to ask their intelligence teammates who weren't always privy to the mission or technical context, which created gaps. “Now when you have those conversations with intelligence airmen, operators and developers all in the same forum, sometimes in the same room with the same whiteboard, you come to integrated solutions up front in early vice having to work through a process where that one piece of information, potentially out of context, is levied on the intelligence requirement to somebody that you don't know in another place ... to try to understand truly what the intelligence piece that you're looking for,” Courchaine, said. “When you fuse all of them together, I think the output is significantly better and drives that operationally speed, the agility and flexibility that [16th Air Force commander] Gen. [Timothy] Haugh is looking after.” The final realignment package is still at the Air Staff awaiting final approval with details regarding new units still to be determined, to include a new group activated under the 67th Cyberspace Wing and three new squadrons. Gaining insights from joint operations The team realignment also extends to Air Force cyber teams that serve under commanders of other services under different Joint Force Headquarters-Cybers. The way cyber operations are structured within DoD is individual services do not have their own offensive teams. Instead, these teams work through several organizations, each formally known as Joint Force Headquarters-Cyber that exist beneath Cyber Command, which in turn provide planning, targeting, intelligence and cyber capabilities to the combatant commands to which they're assigned. The heads of the four service cyber components also lead their respective JFHQ-C. These organizations oversee combat mission teams and combat support teams. Courchaine said the Air Force teams, those that conduct operations in Central Command under Joint Force Headquarters-Cyber and operations focused on China under Joint Force Headquarters-Cyber Fleet Cyber, can bring a global perspective a back to the service. These teams conduct operations on behalf of European Command, Strategic Command, Transportation Command and Space Command. In some theaters, with the high tempo of operations, such as Central Command, the approach allows the teams conducting operations to bring back lessons learned to their respective services. “You can see how these three areas will really converge and enable Gen. Haugh from a 16th Air Force perspective to not just be successful in aligning the forces appropriately but driving that return on investment where we're able to converge target sets globally ... to drive operations so that we can influence our adversaries in support of national security objectives,” she said. https://www.c4isrnet.com/cyber/2020/07/19/with-a-new-setup-the-air-force-hopes-to-improve-information-warfare-operations/

Mark Pomerleau Government leaders are telling industry they need help with integration as the Department of Defense and individual services push toward a unifying approach to information warfare. Information warfare combines several types of capabilities, including cyber, intelligence, electronic warfare, information operations, psychological operations and military deception. On a high-tempo battlefield, military leaders expect to face against a near peer or peer adversary. There, one-off solutions, systems that only provide one function, or those that can't feed information to others won't cut it. Systems must be multi-functional and be able to easily communicate with other equipment and do so across services. “A networked force, that's been our problem for years. Having built a lot of military systems, a lot in C4 and mission command, battle command, we build them and buy them in stovepipes. Then we think of integration and connecting after the fact,” Greg Wenzel, executive vice president at Booz Allen, told C4ISRNET. “My whole view ... networking the force really is probably the best thing to achieve overmatch against our adversaries.” Much of this networking revolves around new concepts DoD is experimenting with to be better prepared to fight in the information environment through multi domain operations or through Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2). The former aims to seamlessly integrate the capabilities of each domain of warfare – land, sea, air, space and cyber – at will. It also aims to integrate systems and capabilities across the services under a common framework to rapidly share data. While not an official program, JADC2 is more of a framework for the services to build equipment. “It's more likely a mish-mash of service level agreements, pre-scripted architecting and interoperability mandates that you got to be in keeping with those in order to play in the environment,” Bill Bender, senior vice president of strategic accounts and government relations at Leidos, told C4ISRNET of JADC2. “It's going to take a long journey to get there because, oh by the way, we're a very legacy force and ... a limited amount of technology has the interoperability that is absolutely required for that mission to become a reality.” The “information warfare” nomenclature can feel nebulous and hard to understand for industry officials that provide solutions to the Pentagon. “It's a pretty broad definition. I think it's something that the DoD is struggling with, that's what we're struggling with in industry and it also makes it challenging because no one really buys equipment that way,” Anthony Nigara, vice president for strategy and business development in L3Harris Space & Airborne Systems, said. “No one really buys stuff to an abstract term like information warfare.” Others agreed that the term “information warfare” may be too broad, an issue that's further complicated as each service tackles information warfare in their own way. Most members of industry C4ISRNET talked with on the need to integrate described the key theme of a more networked force as a unifying way to think about the new push to information warfare. “There's a lot of discussions about the Joint All Domain Operations or the multidomain operations. When we look at that and we want to say ‘okay, what is information warfare really mean to everyone?” Steven Allen, director of information operations and spectrum convergence at Lockheed Martin rotary and mission systems, told C4ISRNET. “We look at it as how can we get the right information to warfighters in order to fight or how do we get the right information for them to plan? How do we move all that data across whether it's different levels of security or different levels of the warfighting and the data associated with it.” Others expressed the need for contractors to be flexible with how DoD is describing its needs. “Industry has learned to be flexible in responding to messaging calling for new situational awareness capabilities while other established capabilities were being mandated for use in cyber exercises,” Jay Porter, director of programs at Raytheon Intelligence & Space, said. The push to a more information warfare-centric force under the guise of larger concepts to defeat adversaries is pushing the DoD as a whole to fight in a more joint manner. Paul Welch, vice president and division manager for the Air Force and defense agencies portfolio at Leidos, explained that there's a consistent view by the services and the department that they must integrate operations within the broad umbrella of activities called information warfare just as they're integrating warfighting capabilities between the services and across the domains. This goes beyond merely deconflicting activities or cooperation, but must encompass true integration of combat capabilities. Some members of industry described this idea as one part of convergence. “When I talk about convergence, my observation is there is a convergence in terms of a family of technologies and of a family of challenge problems and how do they come together,” Ravi Ravichandran, chief technology officer of the intelligence and security sector at BAE, told C4ISRNET. Ravichandran provided five specific challenge problems the military may have in which a married suite of technologies can help provide an advantage against adversaries. They include JADC2, overmatch or the notion of assembling technologies in a way better than enemies, joint fires where one service's sensors may be acquiring a target and passing that target off to another service to prosecute it, sensing in the electromagnetic spectrum and strategic mobility to get forces and resources to a particular place at a particular time. Similarly, Welch provided the notional example of an F-35 flying over an area, seeing something on its sensors and sending that information to either an Army unit, a carrier strike group, a Marine Corps unit, or even a coalition partner to seamlessly and rapidly understand the information and act upon it. These sensors must be incorporated into a joint kill chain that can be acted upon, coordinated and closed by any service at any time. Allen noted that when looking at information warfare, his business is examining how to take a variety of information from sensor information to human information to movement information and pull it all together. “There's a lot of discussion on [artificial intelligence] AI and machine learning and it's very, very important, but there's also important aspects of that, which is hey what's the technology to help the AI, what's that data that's going to help them,” he said. “We tend to look very closely with the customers on how do we really shape that in terms of the information you're getting and how much more can you do for the warfighter.” By bringing all these together, ultimately, it's about providing warfighters with the situational awareness, command and control and information they need to make decisions and cause the necessary effects, be it cyber C4ISR, intelligence or electronic warfare, Nigara said. Porter said at Raytheon's Intelligence & Space outfit, they view information warfare as “the unification of offensive and defensive cyber missions, electronic warfare and information operations within the battlespace.” Integrating EW and IO with cyber will allow forces to take advantage of a broader set of data to enable high-confidence decision-making in real time, he added, which is particularly important in the multi-domain information environment to influence or degrade adversary decision making. From a Navy perspective, the ability to share data rapidly across a distributed force within the Navy's distributed maritime operations concept will be critical for ensuring success. “We will certainly have to include the mechanisms with which we share information, data and fuse that data from node to node. When I say node to node, a node may be a ship, a node may be an unmanned vehicle and a node may be a shore based facility,” Kev Hays, director of information warfare programs at Northrop Grumman, who mostly supports the Navy, said regarding areas Northrop is investing. “Linking all those participants into a network ... is critically important. We have quite a bit of technology we're investing in to help communicate point to point and over the horizon and a low probability of intercept and low probability of detection fashion.” Ultimately, the information space is about affecting the adversary's cognitive space, they said. “When it comes to information warfare, it's a lot less tangible ... It's not tank on tank anymore. You're trying to affect people's perception,” James Montgomery, capture strategy lead for information operations and spectrum convergence at Lockheed Martin rotary and mission systems, told C4ISRNET. As a result, he said, it is critical to take the time with the customer to truly understand the concepts and capabilities and how they all fit together in order to best support them. “Really spending time with them [the customer] and understanding what it is that they're attempting to get at. It helps us better shape the requirements but it also helps us better understand what is it they're asking for,” he said. “When you're moving forward and attempting to come together with both a software hardware based solution to something, it takes a lot of talking time and a lot of touch time with that customer to understand where their head's at.” https://www.c4isrnet.com/information-warfare/2020/07/19/whats-industry-role-in-dod-information-warfare-efforts/

La hausse fulgurante de la complexité du développement de logiciels pour les avions a expliqué beaucoup de retards et de dépassements de coûts au cours des dernières années. Une entreprise montréalaise, Mannarino, s'y attaque en présentant cette semaine un nouveau système d'exploitation qui pourrait réduire les coûts de moitié. Publié le 21 juillet 2020 à 8h00 Spécialisée en services informatiques, principalement dans le domaine aéronautique, depuis 20 ans, l'entreprise a reçu il y a deux ans un investissement de 10 millions de dollars US provenant de Lockheed Martin afin de concevoir un nouveau système d'exploitation en temps réel (RTOS) à partir d'une page blanche. Le résultat est apparu lundi, jour d'ouverture de la version virtuelle du Salon aéronautique de Farnborough, qui aurait dû avoir lieu cette semaine en banlieue de Londres. Au cours des années, Mannarino a conçu sur commande des logiciels pour le contrôle des moteurs, la gestion de vol, les communications ou le réapprovisionnement en carburant en vol, par exemple. Chaque fois, elle était limitée par la vétusté des systèmes d'exploitation employés. Le système d'exploitation est le logiciel maître, auquel font appel les autres applications, un peu comme Windows dans un ordinateur ou iOS dans un iPhone. Les exigences envers un système installé à bord d'un appareil sont toutefois nettement plus élevées en termes de fiabilité, ce qui en multiplie les coûts. « Le principal commentaire que l'on recevait de nos clients, c'était que ces systèmes étaient trop chers », explique John Mannarino, fondateur de l'entreprise. « Nous essayons de réduire les coûts de 50 %. » Comme ces systèmes n'étaient pas conçus spécialement pour l'aéronautique, et que les volumes sont relativement faibles dans cette industrie, les clients se plaignaient aussi de la pauvre qualité du service qu'ils recevaient, affirme M. Mannarino. Système plus rapide et moins gourmand En partant d'une page blanche, l'entreprise a conçu un système qu'elle estime être deux fois plus rapide et moins gourmand de moitié en mémoire. Il pourra être employé sur tous les types d'appareils, des avions commerciaux aux hélicoptères militaires, en passant par les avions d'affaires et les drones de taille suffisante pour nécessiter une certification. L'un des marchés pour lesquels on anticipe la plus forte demande est celui des drones. John Mannarino, président de Mannarino Les clients principaux du nouveau logiciel seront vraisemblablement des fabricants d'avionique, dont Lockheed Martin. Le géant américain a fourni 10 millions US dans le cadre du programme de contreparties mis en place par le gouvernement fédéral. En vertu de ce programme, les contrats militaires obtenus par des entreprises étrangères doivent faire l'objet de contreparties équivalentes dans l'industrie locale. De l'entente avec Mannarino, Lockheed Martin n'obtient rien de plus que des crédits lui permettant de combler les exigences de ce programme, assure M. Mannarino. Elle n'est pas propriétaire du logiciel et ne détient aucun droit sur lui. Des discussions sont toutefois en cours pour faire de Lockheed Martin un client. Bien que l'entreprise entende d'abord se concentrer sur le marché aéronautique, dans lequel elle a le plus d'expertise, son système d'exploitation sera éventuellement aussi offert dans d'autres industries, dont la santé et le transport ferroviaire, ou même pour des applications industrielles. https://www.lapresse.ca/affaires/entreprises/2020-07-21/un-nouveau-logiciel-montrealais-au-coeur-des-avions.php