Electric Sky wins DARPA grant to work on focused power beaming system for drones. (Geek Wire) “A startup called Electric Sky says it’s begun building its first Whisper Beam transmitter for providing tightly focused wireless power to drones in flight, thanks to a $225,000 award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency… Laser and microwave beams typically start out strong but get weaker as they travel outward. In contrast, Whisper Beam’s transmissions start out weak but get stronger near the receiver… The radio waves sent out by Electric Sky’s transmitter self-focus at the receiver, enabling the drone to draw kilowatts of power in any kind of weather.”
Kamikaze drones: a new weapon brings power and peril to the US military. (CNBC News) “… the Switchblade 300, [is] a small, low-cost “kamikaze” drone made by AeroVironment, which sources said the U.S. military has used quietly for years in targeted killing operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria… and they cost just $6,000 apiece, compared to $150,000 for the Hellfire missile typically fired by Predator or Reaper drones… Switchblade can be taken into battle in a backpack and fly up to 7 miles to hit a target. The 300 model is designed to kill individuals, while a larger version, the 600, can destroy armored vehicles.”
Five $100M to DOD for innovation fund, top GOP appropriator says. (Fed Scoop) “Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Calif., said the proposed funds would be meant to help transition emerging technologies from seed investments into larger procurements, bridging the so-called “valley of death” where companies often struggle to receive major, follow-on funding from the DOD after receiving research or pilot grants… The traditional Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) process has been the bane of innovators and acquisition reformers for years. But so far little structural change has been made. The DOD was given tools to navigate around that slow-moving process in Other Transaction Agreements, but most contracts remain planted in the regulations that require years of planning before money can be sent to a contractor.”
Accounting for software in weapons systems. (FCW) “One possible solution is separating out software and hardware costs, but that approach brings its own set of headaches… “There is that inherent integration with the hardware piece,” Cadman said, noting that some of the F-35’s flight test problems could’ve been solved by software or hardware, and that it’s up to program managers to make that call… “If you’re not doing earned value, what are you doing? I mean, you can’t be unmanaged when you do your program,” he said. “So I’m not saying I know what the best way to do business is, but why don’t you work with us to try to figure out what is the best way to manage programs.”… But that idea of splitting programs, he said, could be applied to middle tier acquisitions with a carve out using the software acquisition pathway. “I wish more programs would pick it up,” Cadman said of the software acquisition pathway.”
US satellites are being attacked every day according to Space Force general. (The Drive) “Russia and China are launching “reversible attacks,” such as electronic warfare jamming, temporarily blinding optics with lasers, and cyber attacks, on U.S. satellites “every single day.” He also disclosed that a small Russian satellite used to conduct an on-orbit anti-satellite weapon test back in 2019 had first gotten so close to an American one that there were concerns an actual attack was imminent… it would seem that the U.S. military has decided that reversible attacks do not warrant direct retaliation… “The Chinese are actually well ahead [of Russia],” Thompson told Rogin. “They’re fielding operational systems at an incredible rate.”
Procurement officials wary of OTA regulations. (National Defense Magazine) “… it’s unlikely that OTAs will remain unregulated because of the current culture within the Defense Department, Wagoner [branch chief at U.S. Army Contracting Command] said. But he noted industry and procurement officials can influence future decisions by speaking with policymakers about how well the more flexible agreements have facilitated the acquisition process. “My hope is that cooler heads prevail and that we don’t go down that path,” he said.”
Anduril boss: In an era of strategic competition, we need artificially intelligent systems. (Defense News) “Our current unmanned systems are, in truth, unmanned in name only, often requiring large crews of remote pilots and operators…. AI is capable — not will be, but is — of taking on the most time-consuming and mundane aspects of this analysis, simultaneously fusing information from thousands of data streams to present analysts with a complete view of what we know.”
The ethics of an arms race. (Medium) Trae Stephens: “We should not shy away from calling it an arms race and the United States should not shy away from competing in it. And we should not doubt that the Chinese Communist Party believes it is in a race with us.… Deterrence is an ancient and enduring principle of war… Our vulnerabilities stem from our reliance on old technology — specifically, a handful of large, exquisite systems that our adversaries believe they can knock out… The United States is no perfect arbiter of justice, but it is the greatest protector of democracy and human rights the world has ever known.”
New book: Flying Blind – The 737 Max Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing. “Boeing underwent a cultural shift in the 1990s and early 2000s, abandoning its technically proficient and ethically transparent production culture in favor of a shareholder-focused structure in which safety took a back seat to profit. The new strategy of pursuing “more for less” guided Boeing’s redesign of the 737: to save time and money, technical complications were fixed with software solutions that pilots found difficult to troubleshoot, even though Boeing promised airlines the 737 MAX wouldn’t require additional pilot training. Robison highlights how the Clinton and Bush administrations’ restructuring of the FAA to adopt a more “customer service” approach to manufacturers allowed these and other issues to fly under the radar, until two crashes in the span of five months led to the grounding of the entire 737 MAX fleet for 20 months to make crucial fixes.”
Bad Idea: Beginning the Fiscal Year on October 1. (Defense 360) Bob Hale: “If the president and Congress want to enact more budgets on time, the fiscal year should begin later. The December holiday recess tends to be an action-forcing event for Congress; delaying the end of the fiscal year would take advantage of this behavioral pattern. Further, a new Congress begins every other year soon after December 31. This tends to spur congressional action prior to December 31 because all legislation not enacted during the previous Congress must be reintroduced during the new one… However, December 31 is not a good choice because DoD would have to conduct its final review of the current fiscal year (known as “close out”) during the December holidays and simultaneously finalize the budget for the next fiscal year.”
Editorial: Peril, Perspective, and Resolutions. (Air Force Magazine) “For the Air Force alone, a full-year CR would cost $11.8 billion in lost buying power, the service told the Congressional Research Service. Where does that money disappear to? In truth, into thin air… Jack Reed estimated in November that a CR stretching the whole year long would cost $36 billion in lost buying power. That works out to roughly $3 billion per month, and given a best case for 2022, that means Congress will “only” waste $9 billion this year.” The total time DoD was under CRs since 2010 would could add up to $90B.”
Five $100M to DOD for innovation fund, top GOP appropriator says. (Fed Scoop) “Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Calif., said the proposed funds would be meant to help transition emerging technologies from seed investments into larger procurements, bridging the so-called “valley of death” where companies often struggle to receive major, follow-on funding from the DOD after receiving research or pilot grants… The traditional Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) process has been the bane of innovators and acquisition reformers for years. But so far little structural change has been made. The DOD was given tools to navigate around that slow-moving process in Other Transaction Agreements, but most contracts remain planted in the regulations that require years of planning before money can be sent to a contractor.”
Next-Generation Defense Budgeting Project. (Day One Project) “At the heart of these challenges are industrial age resource allocation processes, namely the Department’s Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) system, which allocates resources years in advance, establishes categories for use of funds, sets the lens for congressional oversight, and has limited execution-year flexibility. While the PPBE system may be suitable for making long-term capital investments like aircraft carriers, these multi-year budgeting activities represent significant barriers to adopting emerging technology solutions in an era of a digitally-defined battlefield that requires joint operations.” And a reading list here.
Finland orders 64 Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets. (Reuters) “… o replace ageing F/A-18 combat jets and plans to order 64 planes with weapons systems in a $9.4 billion deal… Finland is the 14th nation to opt for the F-35. It will begin phasing in the F-35 from 2027 onwards… “Once again, we notice and regret an American preference prevailing in Europe,” Dassault said in a statement.”
Vice chief nominee pledges to drive acquisition reforms. (Defense News) “Navy Adm. Christopher Grady said he would use data and threat-based analyses to mediate between the armed services and combat the parochialism known to characterize the process… Reed pressed Grady on how he would ensure requirements are technically realistic, but push the envelope. Reed lamented the Pentagon’s tendency to build requirements to protect existing programs or to make them overly complicated ― “to build a Swiss Army knife when a simpler blade would be appropriate.””
Did anyone even look at the massive defense budget before passing it? (Slate) “I’m not saying all the decisions are wrong or all the threat-assessments are exaggerated. I am saying that almost no one has examined whether they might be. The process didn’t used to be like this. Staffers in the congressional armed services and appropriations committees would examine each line item of the budget, check to see whether weapons programs were redundant, whether they’d performed well in tests, whether they aligned with national strategy.”
Space Development Agency to acquire 28 missile-tracking satellites to launch in late 2024. (Space News) It “would expand the Tracking Layer Tranche 0, a batch of eight missile-detecting satellites currently being produced by L3Harris and SpaceX for launch in 2023… The data collected by missile-tracking satellites would be sent via optical links to the Transport Layer, a constellation of communications satellites that SDA also is building. That would ensure that if a missile threat is detected, its location and trajectory data can be transmitted securely through space and downlinked to military command centers… The Senate Appropriations Committee criticized MDA’s plan to launch HBTSS payloads on separate satellites instead of hosting them aboard SDA’s Tracking Layer Tranche 0 satellites. “MDA and SDA each launching their own satellites reveals a lack of coordination and cooperation between SDA and MDA, poor oversight on the part of the Department of Defense’s space acquisition enterprise, and waste of taxpayer dollars,” said the SAC in a report.”
Department of Defense awards C3.ai $500 million agreement. (Yahoo!) Using an OTA. “The agreement allows for an accelerated timeline to acquire C3 AI’s suite of Enterprise AI products and allows any DoD agency to acquire C3 AI products and services for modelling and simulation… C3 AI defense and intelligence applications in use today include insider threat, security clearance adjudication, readiness, AI predictive maintenance, modelling and simulation, missile trajectory modelling, and data fusion.”
How a 221-year-old shipyard is leading a US Navy modernization effort. (Defense News) ““Hence the program of record, a program office for SIOP within the Navy, that then can set priorities, can allocate funding and ensure that the sequence happens in the way that it should”… “One of the tenets that we have with the area development plans is making sure that our facilities are adaptable to future requirements,” LeBeau said. “These buildings are going to be around for 50, 75, 100 years. Our dry docks will be around for more than 100 years.””
China using world’s largest antenna for submarine operations that is five times the size of new york city. (The EurAsian Times) “The antenna, which is made out of a network of cables and pylons similar to those seen in regular power lines, would appear from space as a massive cross measuring more than 100 kilometers (62 miles) long and wide… The facility was built to provide underwater communications across a distance of 3,000 kilometers (1,900 miles), which is long enough to reach Guam… but the enhanced distance came at a cost: the link was one-way and could only convey encrypted text messages.”
DISA’s new HaCC office reflects hybrid cloud reality for DOD. (Fed Scoop) “DISA recently merged its Cloud Computing Program Office with its Service Enterprise Directorate and Ecosystem and other entities to create the Hosting and Compute Center… by bringing together DISA’s cloud arm with its on-premise data hosting functions, the agency has also set itself up to best embrace the reality that the U.S. military does not just depend on physical data centers nor only services hosted in the commercial cloud, but increasingly a mixture of both.”
Five things the Army learned about its network at Project Convergence 21. (C4ISRNET) 1. need for a data fabric, which links disparate systems and technologies for a more seamless flow of information. 2. improvement in coverage from resilient wide-band satellite communications. The main difference this year was bandwidth virtualization through aggregated high capacity/low latency communications. 3. importance of an aerial tier to the network to improve the resiliency and range. 4. extend edge mesh networking. 5. need for a joint common operational picture.
China’s new hypersonic aircraft is based on a rejected NASA design. (Interesting Engineering) ” At lower speeds, the engines work as normal turbine jet engines. With no moving parts, the configuration then allows the aircraft to quickly switch to high-speed mode to accelerate to more than five times the speed of sound… They were able to do this due to the fact that the blueprints for the Boeing Manta X-47C program were declassified in 2011. Huijun and his team tested the prototype in a wind tunnel that allows testing in conditions resembling flight at Mach 4 to Mach 8. The tests revealed that Tang’s proposed engine design works in these conditions… China’s space agency recently announced that it is building a fission reactor for the Moon that will reportedly be 100 times more powerful than one in development by NASA.”
Bath Iron Works plays catch-up on ship delivery after years of upheaval. (Defense News) “Nearly 60% of the company’s employees have been on the job fewer than five years… With green managers giving less-than-precise orders to inexperienced shipbuilders, the amount of rework needed on ships grew and the pace of deliveries fell behind, he said.”
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