Nouvelles

By: Joe Gould WASHINGTON — A Trump administration official wants to create a “safe space” for international defense-industrial base cooperation. As China's military modernization strategy bridges its civil-military divide and the U.S. National Defense Strategy emphasizes the American industrial base, the Pentagon must protect and encourage America's international partnerships, according to Eric Chewning, the Pentagon's deputy assistant secretary of defense for industrial policy. “As China articulates a civil-military fusion doctrine where they are intentionally blurring the lines between their developments on the military side and the commercial side, we need to work with our allies to create a safe space where we can work collaboratively to do that,” Chewning said Wednesday at the Defense News Conference. Chewning's comments came as the Trump administration's defense-industrial base review has been delayed for months, but after the administration has streamlined conventional arms and drone export policies, in part to boost the American defense sector. The Pentagon's acquisitions and sustainment arm maintains bilateral conversations with 35 nations on industrial collaboration, providing a forum to work together in the context of the U.S. strategy's emphasis on great power competition with Russia and China. The Pentagon could scale up a handful of pilot programs tied to the 2017 expansion of the national technology and industrial base to include the U.K. and Australia, Chewning said. But the challenge is to create other avenues for countries outside that core group, like Israel. “We have different constructs that apply to different allies, and we're trying to figure out what the right tools is,” Chewning added. Sharing information and technology is easier said than done. As the U.S. pursues space and cyber capabilities, classification levels are trending higher, potentially hindering the effort, the Danish Embassy's minister-counselor for defense, Peter Michael Nielsen, told conference attendees. “We do need to see a need to continue sharing technology and information,” Nielsen said. “We also have problems in defense, to get the meetings, to get the information.” The Trump administration's “America First” emphasis is creating questions and concerns among allies, in that it also emphasizes “Buy America” provisions that penalize them, panelists said. “We have a strong concern. We are exempted, and if that changed it would be huge," Nielsen said. Full article: https://www.defensenews.com/smr/defense-news-conference/2018/09/05/trump-dod-official-wants-safe-space-for-defense-industrial-base-cooperation

By: Mark Pomerleau In an era in which the Department of Defense is criticized for delivering solutions too slow, one effort on the cutting edge of technology is proving the opposite. Aside from just being a pathfinder project to solve a critical need of more quickly processing intelligence using machine learning, Project Maven is “proving out how we go fast and how we deliver to the field,” Kari Bingen, deputy under secretary of defense for intelligence, said Sept. 5 at the Intelligence and National Security Summit hosted by INSA and AFCEA. “We're not here talking about come see me in five years and we're finally deliver something to the user downrange,” Bingen said when asked what excites her about the effort. “This is six months from authority to proceed to delivering a capability in theater.” Touting the same glee in Maven's rapidity, Bingen's boss Joseph Kernan explained earlier this year how Maven was under contract within two months and it actually delivered capability within six months. Bingen said this is the type of speed in acquisition DoD needs in today's era of so-called great power competition, when the department is pitted against sophisticated nation-states with significant resources that are outpacing the United States in some areas on the battlefield. “We have to be able to get things out to the field faster. Give me the 80 percent solution and we'll build from there,” she said. The larger Maven effort of applying algorithms to solve complex problems could be employed elsewhere in DoD beyond analyzing images and videos collected for intelligence purposes, Bingen added. One area she mentioned was developing algorithms to determine risks in humans. There's a lot of data sources available, she said, and leveraging automation tools and algorithms could enable DoD to identify insider threats. https://www.c4isrnet.com/intel-geoint/2018/09/05/what-excites-the-defense-department-about-project-maven

By: Daniel Cebul WASHINGTON — Mutlidomain operations are set to become standard for the U.S. armed services in the coming years, but technical, doctrinal and organizational hurdles remain. One impediment to multidomain operations involves issues in linking the service's disparate communication and information networks to share targeting data and communications. Rebecca Grant, a national security analyst with IRIS Independent Research, identified her “No. 1 problem" as “the communications architecture.” This stuff is not there yet," she said Wednesday at the Defense News Conference. "I'm less worried about the platforms, we've got some magnificent platforms. We've got to have that communication architecture. All the ability to do that is there, whether that's secure waveforms or the [radio frequency] links, but we have to take the plunge now, immediately, to go out and experiment with this next year.” The need for an integrated communications network was echoed by L3 Technologies' vice president of communications technology. “You need a network that can take all the networks we have right now, a systems-of-systems-level approach, that can tie these disparate networks together because you don't want to get rid of that install base because its too expensive to replace,” Keith Gentile said. Another challenge involves changing the services' doctrinal approaches to operations, especially as each branch becomes more dependent on one another. Gentile said that if the U.S. plans to quickly respond to enemy developments, doctrine surrounding operations in the domains must change. “There's a role mission and function issue that needs to be addressed when you talk about cross-domain or multidomain capabilities because each of the services operates in different domains," he said. "You got to go ahead and get away from the parochial pieces of service stovepipes, mission roles and functions — and realize you are talking about cross-domain capabilities.” Jaret Riddick, the director of the Vehicle Technology Directorate at the Army Research Laboratory, cited the service's recently stood-up Futures Command as one example of change within the services. “I would not downplay the steps the Army is making in standing up Futures Command. To take a four-star command and make the type of reorganization that has not happened since the early 1970s — I would not call that incremental,” he said. https://www.defensenews.com/smr/defense-news-conference/2018/09/05/whats-standing-in-the-way-of-multidomain-operations

By: Aaron Mehta WASHINGTON — When Congress delivered a $716 billion defense budget to the Pentagon, defense leaders made it clear it was a welcome boost — but some questioned if the number would be enough to do everything the department foresees as necessary. Now the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee — who is poised to take over the HASC should November elections go blue — is warning that tightened belts are on the horizon. Asked specifically if $716 billion is the right number for defense and whether future budgets will stay at that level, Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash, said flatly: “No and no.” “I think the number's too high, and its certainly not going to be there in the future,” Smith said at the second annual Defense News Conference. The congressman argued that the debt and deficit situation facing the country requires balancing out how the government is spending, particularly after the Trump administration's tax cuts made it “even more difficult to get our budget under control.” But drawing down the defense budget has to be part of a broader look at U.S. strategy, something that Smith said requires a realistic look at America's military strategy. He pointed to the idea that 355 ships are vital for the Navy as an example of flawed logic, because “capability matters.” “We can do this,” Smith said of the U.S. remaining the key world power. “I'm not even remotely worried about it. It is a more complicated and different world in some ways, but the Cold War was no walk in the park either. World War II certainly wasn't. We will always face challenges. The question is about being smart. “We just have to be smart instead of trying to force our way back into a world that is never going to be again." “We are going to be a major, major player, probably the major player, on the global stage” for a long time to come, Smith added. “But we are not going to be utterly and completely dominant.” https://www.defensenews.com/smr/defense-news-conference/2018/09/05/adam-smith-expects-future-defense-budgets-to-dip-below-716-billion

By: Pierre Tran PARIS — French Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly has appointed Emmanuel Chiva, a specialist in artificial intelligence and training simulation, as director of the newly formed agency for defense innovation, the ministry said. Chiva took up the post Sept. 1, when the innovation office was officially set up, the ministry said in a Sept. 4 statement. Parly made the appointment in consultation with Joël Barre, head of the Direction Générale de l'Armement procurement office. The innovation agency will report to the DGA. The agency will be the key player in a new strategy for innovation, seeking “to bring together all the actors in the ministry and all the programs which contribute to innovation in defense,” Parly said in an Aug. 28 speech to a conference held by Medef, an employers' association. The innovation office will be open to Europe, while allowing experiments to stay close to their operational users, she said. Parly has set a budget of €1 billion (U.S. $1.2 billion) for the agency, which will seek to coordinate attempts to apply new technology to military applications. Chiva has more than 20 years of experience in AI and training simulation. He previously held a senior post for strategy and development at Agueris, a specialist in training simulation for land weapon systems. Agueris is a unit of CMI Defence, a Belgian company specializing in guns and turrets for armored vehicles. Agueris was on the CMI stand at the Eurosatory trade show for land weapons in June. Agueris held three conferences on AI, with Chiva speaking at a roundtable debate on innovation. Chiva is a graduate of Ecole Normal Supérieure and a specialist in biomathematics, the study of the application of math to biology. “His appointment perfectly illustrates my vision of defense innovation: open to research and the civil economy, in which entrepreneurship is not a concept but a reality,” Parly said. https://www.defensenews.com/industry/techwatch/2018/09/05/artificial-intelligence-expert-gets-top-job-at-french-defense-innovation-agency

Northrop Grumman has revealed the details of a production-ready new radar called Vanguard that the company's Electronic Systems division quietly launched about five years ago with the ambitious goal of reinventing the active, electronically scanned array (AESA), the company confirms exclusively to Aviation Week. Northrop designed the Vanguard architecture to support a shift away from developing highly tailored AESA systems optimized for only one application to a modular approach that ... http://aviationweek.com/defense/modular-northrop-grumman-vanguard-surveillance-radar-details-unveiled

LONDON—The German defense ministry says it has begun a radical restructuring of the country's armed forces to better prepare it for modernization and an uptick in defense ... Full article: http://aviationweek.com/awindefense/germany-radically-overhauling-military

By: Jessie Bur The Pentagon has pushed back the response deadline for its $10 billion, single-award Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud contract by nearly a month, according to an Aug. 31 FedBizOpps posting. The Department of Defense made amendments to five documents associated with the contract, which, according to the new posting, were part of the consideration for moving the request for proposal due date to Oct. 9, rather than the previous Sept. 17 deadline. In addition to the amended documents, the DoD released 59 industry comments and corresponding government answers about the first RFP amendment made Aug. 23. The contract has already received industry protest prior to award, after many criticized the DoD's intent to award the contract to a single cloud provider. The due date for that protest, moved to Dec. 3 after an update was made, is still well beyond the new bidding deadline. https://www.federaltimes.com/govcon/2018/09/04/dod-extends-deadline-for-its-10b-cloud-contract

By: Mark Pomerleau The Army is making several changes to be in a better position to compete with adversaries in cyber, the electromagnetic spectrum and space. Russia and China have begun to organize all information-related capability — to include cyber, electronic warfare, information operations and space — under singular entities. Now, Army leaders, say the service must do the same. “Integrated formations will be innovative because they'll help us create novel approaches to problem solving by leveraging multiple skillsets,” David May, senior intelligence adviser at the Army Cyber Center of Excellence, said during a presentation at TechNet Augusta in August. May outlined five force design updates the Army is implementing. Four of those five updates will begin immediately to provide competitive edge in multidomain operations. 1. The widespread introduction of cyber and electromagnetic activities May said the Army will introduce cyber and electromagnetic activities, or CEMA sections, at every echelon from the brigade to service component commands. These sections will plan, synchronize and integrate cyber and EW operations as well as conduct spectrum management. At the Army's cyber school, effective Oct. 1, all previous electronic warfare personnel in the functional area 29 will transition into the cyber branch to serve as these CEMA planners. That's important because it moves those staffers out from working as a functional area specialist and into an operational branch, Maj. Gen. John Morrison, commander of the Cyber Center of Excellence, the home of the cyber school, told C4ISRNET during an interview at TechNet. May said Army leaders are expected to approve this plan in the next six weeks. Moreover, the update will not require any additional growth to the Army as it will reorganize existing workforce. 2. New electronic warfare platoons Electronic warfare platoons will be stood up within brigades residing inside military intelligence companies working in tandem with signals intelligence teams and double the Army's sensing capability in the electromagnetic spectrum, May said. Full article: https://www.c4isrnet.com/show-reporter/technet-augusta/2018/09/04/here-are-5-army-modernization-efforts-to-keep-pace-in-cyber-and-electronic-warfare