A better bureaucracy can close the gap between defense and commercial technology. (War on the Rocks) Good data on microelectronics and drone production. They want to “create a new deputy national security adviser. Armed with sufficient resources and influence, this position would be given real responsibility to help shape the budget, trade policy, and alliance strategy.”
House Armed Services panel establishes new cybersecurity subcommittee. (The Hill) The “new cybersecurity panel will be separate from the House Homeland Security Committee’s subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, and Innovation, which has jurisdiction over a much broader portion of federal cybersecurity issues outside of the Department of Defense.”
Palmer Luckey Anduril is moving to a huge new Costa Mesa HQ. (Los Angeles Times) “The 640,000-square-foot transaction is one of the largest office leases in Orange County history, the real estate brokers involved said, and comes at a time when the region’s office rental market has finished one of its worst years since the Great Recession.”
With deepwave digital, Northrop Grumman is pushing processing to the edge. (C4ISRNET) “Deepwave Digital really has an innovative architecture that blends artificial intelligence with some advanced hardware in the RF [radio frequency] domain, whereas a lot of artificial intelligence in the past has always been focused on, I’ll just say, mining and scrubbing really big data or maybe doing customized things with video or audio.”
Boeing’s F-15EX jet makes its first flight. (Defense News) Shrewd Uncle Sam? “CAPE officials argued that buying an upgraded version of the F-15E Strike Eagle — with new features developed primarily at the cost of foreign customers like Qatar and Saudi Arabia — would be a more cost-conscious option.” USAF plans 144 buy, with options up to 200.
Pentagon to field low-collateral, counter-drone interceptors in FY22. (Defense News) “We don’t see the counter-UAS problem set as one enduring solution,” Maj. Gen. Sean Gainey, the JCO director, said during the same press briefing. “We see it as a range of capabilities integrated into a common C2 that gives you the ability to address threats across the range of threats out there and the ability to keep the pace of this threat.”
Pentagon’s hypersonic director rebuts the critics. (Breaking Defense) “The [UCS] analysis compares intercontinental ballistic missiles to hypersonic glide bodies, and the authors then make the conclusion that hypersonic glide bodies don’t offer much benefit for that mission, because they don’t significantly reduce time to target and they can theoretically be detected… The key attribute for a hypersonic weapon is the trajectory uncertainty due to maneuverability enabled by high speed flight within the atmosphere.”
Deputy Defense secretary nominee: Transition obstruction created hurdles for Pentagon budget. (The Hill) ““I am committed to a modernized, qualitatively effective deterrent,” she said in response to questions from Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) on whether she would commit to deploying the GBSD on schedule.”
Northrop Grumman, Ultra demonstrate unmanned ASW capability. (Naval News) “This successful demonstration of the UAS ASW mission on October 29 was the first time a vertical takeoff surrogate unmanned aerial system (VTUAS) had been used to conduct a large area multistatic acoustic search. The mission payload and effects were controlled from the ground with the resultant ASW picture disseminated to locations across the globe.”
Navy looking at America and Ford class derivatives in new light aircraft carrier studies. (The Warzone) “”Just because a decision was made 10 years ago does not necessarily mean that decision is the right decision now,” Lloyd said of the decision to once again look into a CVL…. I will say that we certainly learned that it is hard to beat the sortie rate of the Ford. The Ford is optimized for its ability to deliver aircraft and ordnance off the ship at a high rate, so it’s hard to match that.” Optimization of a single parameter creates all sorts of risks on other parameters.
Robot motherships to launch drone swarms from sea, underwater, air and near-space. (Forbes) “an 11-meter robot boat capable of operating autonomously and launching loitering munitions to attack targets at sea and on land. The unmanned boat is just the latest of a series of new platforms for launching drone swarms.” Discussion on loitering munitions (suicide drones) from all the services.
Air Force Research Lab holds wargame to assess impact of laser weapons. (Flight Global) “The AFRL’s wargaming experiment comes after Lockheed committed in September 2020 to putting a defensive laser weapon on an aircraft, perhaps the F-16 fighter, within five years. Its Tactical Airborne Laser Weapon System, a podded directed energy system carried underneath an aircraft, is intended for shooting down incoming tactical weapons, for instance air-to-air or surface-to-air missiles.”
USAF capabilities jeopardize by air refueling problems. (Aerotime Hub) USTRANSCOM tweeted: “the convergence of an aging air refueling (AR) fleet, with protracted KC-46A production and delays of becoming fully mission capable, puts America’s ability to effectively execute day-to- day operations and war plans at risk.”. General Goldfein said KC46 won’t be used “for day-to-day operations, but it will be made available for a contingency.” What if Airbus won that program?
Skyborg could develop multiple drones for many missions. (Breaking Defense) “GatewayONE — essentially a radio and antenna system put together by Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Honeywell — has been specifically developed under the service’s pivotal Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) to provide that translation. But it was unable to properly connect during the December test at Yuma Proving Grounds in Arizona, thus a ground-based backup, proven in an earlier ABMS On-Ramp demo, was used instead.”
The dawn of CRISPR mutants. (Sapiens) Perhaps we in national security need to pay more attention to biotech if it is indeed eating the world. “As scientists speculate about post-racial futures and nightmare military scenarios, as market forces bring new genetic technologies into the clinic at a dizzying speed, it is time to slow down and establish some clear rules for the road.”
DoD is centralizing space acquisition, but still has bugs to work out. (Federal News Network) “Earlier this month the Air Force revamped its space acquisition shop by splitting it into three directorates… acquisition, architecture, and policy and integration.”
F-22 Raptor gets major upgrades courtesy of Hill AFB’s 574th aircraft maintenance squadron 01. (Standard Examiner) “The program was responsible for increasing mission capabilities by performing structural modifications to increase total flying hour serviceability on each aircraft by 8,000 hours… Over the past several years, the aircraft maintenance squadron has also supported the warfighter by overhauling five aircraft that had been damaged through the unscheduled depot level maintenance program totaling 50,900 hours.”
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