US Air Force invests $60M in the R&D of the ‘world’s fastest supersonic airliner.’ (3D printing industry) “Awarded via the USAF’s AFWERX innovation arm, the ‘STRATFI’ funding is designed to help ramp up the aero and engine-testing programs of the Overture, whose initial XB-1 demonstrator is being partially-built using 3D printing. Set to be capable of carrying up to 88 passengers at twice the speed of today’s airliners, while also running on 100% sustainable fuels, the Overture is slated to enter service by 2030.”
How the SDA’s satellite swarm will track hypersonic missiles where others can’t. (Air Force Magazine) “DOD’s existing tracking systems in high geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO) and polar orbit can detect the launches, but maneuverability has introduced the need to also track missiles throughout their flight… “In the lower orbit, we can actually detect signatures that are lower, that are essentially dimmer, than what you can detect in these higher orbits.””
How silicon valley is helping the Pentagon automate finding targets. (Military.com) “The military is investigating some of these limitations, and the results are not promising. This month, Air Force Maj. Gen. Daniel Simpson described a target-recognition AI, trained on a specific angle of a missile. Fed a different angle of that same missile, the algorithm correctly identified it only 25% of the time. But more troubling for Simpson, Defense One reports, is that “It was confident that it was right 90 percent of the time, so it was confidently wrong. And that’s not the algorithm’s fault. It’s because we fed it the wrong training data.”
Pentagon R&E chief pushes new tech initiatives, expects bump in funding. (Breaking Defense) “The Defense Department will be able to do “quite a bit” with the initial [RDER] funding, Shyu said. “They’re actually plussing me up more than I asked for.” Shyu did not specify exactly how much funding she has asked Congress for RDER in FY23, but said it was less than $1 billion… “For example, in emerging technology, it’s not just 5G I’m looking at,” she said. “I’m looking at [the] next [generation], right? But what you really want to look at as well is what is [the] critical enabling technology that 6G, and possibly 7G.””
Space Force chief technologist hints at future plans to build a digital infrastructure. (Space News) “Timely and relevant data is imperative, and that will require investments in government-owned and in commercial infrastructure in space, she added. “Things like cloud storage, elastic computing, critical computation for machine learning, infrastructure in and across orbits.”… Having space-based orbital computational power is “really critical so we don’t have to download massive amounts of data to ground stations to do processing, and then upload the information,” she said.”
Secretary of Defense Llyod Austin III redesignates the DoD chief sustainability officer. (DoD) Redesignated “Mr. Joe Bryan, Senior Advisor to the Secretary on Climate, as the Chief Sustainability Officer. Executive Order 14057, “Catalyzing Clean Energy Industries and Jobs Through Federal Sustainability”, and previous Executive Orders, required the Department to designate a CSO with the authority to implement sustainability requirements and the responsibility to report to the White House on agency progress. Though the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Sustainment was initially designated the CSO last spring, this change is being made due to the efforts required to meet existing and emerging sustainability objectives and the priority this issue holds.”
StormBreaker: A networked, all-weather weapon for low-collateral-damage engagement. (Breaking Defense) “The StormBreaker capability gives you the ability to stand off at greater than 45 nautical miles. It also gives you the ability to autonomously use the tri-mode seeker in the front end to classify and engage targets. At the back end, looking at the actual capability and lethality of the platform, is the multi-effect warhead that is designed to take on tanks, maneuvering targets, and fixed structures. It’s got a wide portfolio of targets that it can go after. Previous classes of weapon were only intended for soft non-moving or slowly-moving targets in the open… Presently, we have 2,500 rounds or so in the inventory delivered, which encompasses the first five lots of production.”
Raytheon demonstrates swarm technology in DARPA’s fifth field exercise. (Air Force Technology) “During this field exercise, a single operator successfully controlled a swarm using the solution developed by a Raytheon BBN Technologies-led team. The swarm consisted of 130 physical drone platforms and 30 simulated drone platforms in an urban scenario.” [DARPA OFFSET program update]
Science, technology and doctrine come together in Navy’s program for unmanned surface vessels. (Federal News Network) “At roughly 40 meters in length, Small said the most diminutive USVs, called Sea Hunter, are destined for operations including mine-detection and sweeping or submarine detection. Small said the Navy envisions 200-meter, medium USVs, known as Seahawk, as distributed sensor platforms operating out ahead of manned ships or groups to extend their view.”
SCO ends Project Overlord, shifts unmanned vessels to Navy. (Breaking Defense) “It’s something on the order of $370 million” over three years invested by the SCO into unmanned vessels… In comments during SNA, Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., said she remains unconvinced the service has adequately connected its budget requests and the narrative and strategy of how the service will use the technology. Meanwhile, Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wisc., said he wants the Navy and industry to more effectively demonstrate what deterrent effects unmanned systems could have.”
For unmanned vessels, Navy still working out maintenance strategy. (Breaking Defense) “Any platform that you build is going to have to have a sustainment structure and obviously for an unmanned platform, we’re not going to be doing any planned maintenance at sea,” said Rear Adm. Paul Schlise, director for surface warfare requirements, also known internally to the Navy as N96. “I think that’s a picture still being painted… He suggested that “conditions-based maintenance” will be important to servicing the unmanned fleet.”
Army readies to deliver first set of Strykers with 50-kilowatt laser weapons. (Defense News) “The Army has dubbed its Directed Energy Maneuver-Short Range Air Defense system “Guardian.” After testing its first prototype last spring at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, against one-, two-, and three-class unmanned aircraft systems and rockets, artillery and mortars, the service is planning to conduct more tests this month… The Army first awarded a contract in mid-2019 to Kord Technologies, a KBR subsidiary, to serve as the prime contractor for the first set of prototypes. Kord subsequently awarded subcontracts to Northrop Grumman and Raytheon Technologies to compete to supply the laser module.” [Northrop experienced problems, including a fire that broke out in testing. Raytheon got another contract to move forward. Lockheed looks to enter the competition with DEIMOS.]
Destroyer Preble to get Lockheed high-energy laser in 2022. (Breaking Defense) “… the High-Energy Laser with Integrated Optical-dazzler and Surveillance, dubbed HELIOS, completed several tests at Wallops Island, Va., in the fall… “What’s interesting about HELIOS is that it’s not simply a standalone system — [it has] the initial pieces of integration to Aegis and the next steps would be to basically make it one of the selections in the weapon system component of Aegis so that you could use [it].”… HELIOS, a 60kw laser, is one of the latest iterations of the US Navy’s endeavors in developing and deploying a directed energy weapon… but [Lockheed] anticipated a problem if the service waits much longer to execute some of the production options in the current contract.”
DoD launches new university consortium for cybersecurity. (DoD) “The Department of Defense (DoD) has launched the DoD University Consortium for Cybersecurity (UC2) to better facilitate communication between the Secretary of Defense and academia, and fulfilling a requirement from the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, DoD announced Jan. 10.”
Soldiers ‘seeing’ outside the Bradley with Army high-tech goggle. (Army Times) “SEE is a program that clones feeds from three vehicle sensors: the front Drivers Vision Enhancer, the driver’s Commander’s Independent Viewer and the gunner’s Improved Bradley Acquisition Subsystem. Inside the soldier’s heads up display they’ll have a variety of views to see what’s going on outside the vehicle… first, soldiers don’t lose situational awareness; second, those same dismounted soldiers can use on-board vehicle sensors to see what the vehicle sees… Oh, and of course, they’ll have access to drone feeds from above.”
For their next acts, former Trump administration DoD officials look beyond traditional defense contractors. (Defense News) “McCarthy is not the only former DoD official who sought work apart from big defense contractors. Esper in the spring of 2021 joined the board of Epirus, which was founded in 2018 and offers a counter-unmanned aircraft system swarm capability that caught the eye of the armed services… Former Navy acquisition chief James “Hondo” Geurts last month joined Esper on the Epirus board, along with retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Joseph Reynes… Meanwhile, former Air Force acquisition chief Will Roper is now chief executive of Volansi, a commercial drone delivery company… Ellen Lord joined the boards of Denver, Colorado-based Voyage Space Holdings and of AAR, a provider of aviation services for both commercial and government operators… But, Callan added, he’s curious if these former top officials can help companies break into significant DoD sales.”
Raytheon, P&W and suppliers face civil suit related to alleged hiring manipulation. (Flight Global) “The US government said the executives agreed not to “poach” each other’s aerospace engineers, which had the effect of reducing costs by restricting the ability of those employees to find new jobs, and at higher pay… “Defendants eliminated outside opportunities and stripped skilled aerospace workers of any bargaining power,” the class-action suit adds. “Without the no-poach agreements, defendants would have been incentivised to pay their employees higher wages to prevent them from seeking or accepting competing opportunities.””
USMC NMESIS and naval strike missile logistics explained. (Naval News) “…
the USMC is developing Land-based Anti-ship Missile (LBASM) units centered on the 6×6 HIMARS, the Tactical Maritime Tomahawk missile, and the 4×4 JLTV… modified and armed with two stealthy 100+ nautical mile (115-mile or 185 kilometers) Naval Strike Missiles (NSMs)… The NSM cruises at subsonic speeds of 0.7 to 0.9 Mach and uses advanced passive seekers that can detect enemy sensors and then use evasive maneuvers to stay under or fly around the enemy’s radar coverage. [The NSM costs about $2.2M in FY21]… A CH-53K has demonstrated the ability to hoist a LAV-25A2 so the CH-53s should be able to hoist the JLTV NMESIS (and other JLTV variants) and fly to austere positions
KC-46’s new vision system in limbo as panoramic issues come into view. (Breaking Defense) “A preliminary design review (PDR) for the Remote Vision System 2.0 took place in May 2021 and was expected to close last fall… After years of disputes, Boeing and the Air Force reached an agreement in 2020 that the company would design a new “RVS 2.0” system comprising more modern cameras and sensors at no cost to the service… However, the RVS 2.0 deal did not include the panoramic displays at the boom station or the panoramic camera suite at the back of the plane… the Air Force is hesitant to approve the new RVS 2.0 design without having assurances that the panoramic display system will be fixed — and, just as importantly, unless it understands whether Boeing or the service will be responsible for paying for it.”
DARPA’s Space-BACN satellites so satellite communication sizzles. (Popular Science) “With stovepiping in effect, a soldier could see something in the field, but would then have to send it up to an Army commander, who would then have to relay it to a Navy commander, before it could be shared with the sailors nearby who need the information. Without stovepiping, the soldiers could share it more widely, giving it to pilots or sailors as needed… Chief among these hurdles is getting the cost of the platform down to about $100,000 for each node, or terminal, that can be incorporated into a satellite. A main telescope sensor will take in optical signals, reading and interpreting a range of existing standards. Converting and sharing the relayed information will come from a new modem, flexible enough to interpret many standards of data and powerful enough to transmit useful volumes to earth below.” [The modem will convert and send signals at up to 100GB per second.]
Winged luddites: aviators are the biggest threat to carrier aviation. (War on the Rocks) “The adoption of carrier-borne autonomous drones will upset the contemporary career model, so service leaders need to contemplate: How do you promote or retain talent when software can repeatably execute complex tactics better than your best human operators? What is the new “golden” career path, and which communities will suffer?”
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