US military, technology, arms, tactics

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NRao
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Re: US military, technology, arms, tactics

Post by NRao »

Army AI helper would suggest actions in multidomain fights
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Capt. Andrew Joski, commander of Alpha Troop, 2-136th CAB, delivers an operations order to his platoon and squad leaders ahead of a decisive action mission in July 2020. The Army's C5ISR Center is working on an artificial intelligence tool to recommend refined courses of action for commanders. (Sgt. Bill Boecker/U.S. Army)


WASHINGTON — The Army’s future capabilities lab is developing an artificial intelligence tool to help mission planners choose the best moves in multidomain battles.

The C5ISR Center tool, called the Artificial Intelligence Course of Action Recommender, allows soldiers to set their mission objectives and priorities, but it then suggests the best action to take.

The mission planning assistant will help as the military moves toward operations that span electronic domains, space and more dispersed geographic locations.

Battlefields are already enormously complex for commanders as they make quick decisions in the heat of battle. That complexity will only grow under the military’s unified war-fighting concept of Joint All-Domain Command and Control, in which any sensor connects to the best shooter across domains.

“That’s going to explode as we move towards MDO [multidomain operations] and JADC2. We’ve got multiple domains now that the mission planners need to consider, so it’s not just land, but also air, maritime, cyber and space that are all interconnected, much tighter than they have been in the past,” said Pete Schwartz, an AI expert who works on the action recommender tool with research and development partner MITRE. “It’s only going to become a more complex challenge to overcome, more combinations of decisions to consider, and shorter timelines in which to consider them.”

The development team is primarily working with the Mission Command Battle Lab on the tool in the proof-of-concept stage, but it also has reached out to the Army AI Task Force, the Network Cross-Functional Team and other Army components that could have an interest in the capability.

So far, the mission assistant is largely focused on land operations, but the C5ISR Center plans to expand it. The tool uses a ground combat system simulation, called the division exercise training readiness system. Units at the division level or below could use it.

“It is not a multidomain simulation, [but] that is what we will need in order to move beyond just the land domain and to make this a true multidomain capability, which we hope to do in the future,” Schwartz said.

As the team works to further the tool, Dan O’Neill, chief engineer of the C5ISR mission command capabilities division, said adding the cyber domain into the simulation poses one of the biggest challenges.

“Coming up with accurate models for the effects of cyber and electronic warfare vectors is really, really difficult,” O’Neill said. “You can think of a cyberattack taking down an entire operation instantly, but the chances that happens is very rare. So we have thought about developing proxies, even inside of our simulation to do some of that.”

For example, the team could mimic the effects of cyber and electronic warfare by manipulating combat power in the simulation or reducing systems’ ranges.

Another challenge for all artificial intelligence programs across the Defense Department is ensuring that tools explain how a decision was reached so users trust the systems. That challenge is amplified for a tool meant to help commanders plan missions.

“The user can select any one of those courses of action,” Schwartz said. “They can actually view a playback of the mission, just like you would watch a video, and they can speed it up, or they can pause it. So they can see exactly ... where the units are moving across the map and how they’re engaging with each other. And then they can decide whether they trust the output from the simulation in that instance.”

To accomplish this for the Army’s tool, the system tests different actions, showing the user a graph comparing the performance of those options with the original plan input by the commander.

Over the last year, the artificial intelligence system demonstrated that it could find improvements in commanders’ action plans. This year, the team is looking to make the tool more interactive, allowing commanders to work on more focused parts of a mission, Schwartz said. The system will highlight critical points in the mission with risk of failure, such as when military vehicles need to arrive on time at a specific location or when a unit would begin to run out of fuel.

“In the future, we are hoping that we can develop the artificial intelligence to a point where it understands the cause and effect enough that it can start to automatically extract some of those critical points and highlight them for the user,” Schwartz said.
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Re: US military, technology, arms, tactics

Post by NRao »

Lockheed Martin kicks off USAF F-16 sustainment contract with receipt of first jet
Image
Source: Lockheed Martin
Lockheed Martin F-16 at Greenville facility


Work on the aircraft is part of a $900 million indefinite delivery and indefinite quantity contract granted last December to provide sustainment support and depot over-flow services for the USAF’s fleet of F-16s. The contract also includes “depot-level maintenance activities, predefined programmatic work, aircraft modification and unplanned drop-in maintenance” says Lockheed.

Lockheed is calling its Greenville facility “the first ever US-based F-16 industry depot”. Much of the F-16’s sustainment had previously been done by USAF personnel.

“As the F-16 Fighting Falcon’s original equipment manufacturer, Lockheed Martin is uniquely positioned to provide the most comprehensive knowledge of the aircraft and tailored sustainment solutions to optimise the F-16 fleet for greater capability, readiness and performance,” the company says.

Lockheed and other aerospace manufacturers have pushed in recent years to take greater roles in sustaining aircraft. For example, the company has proposed a performance-based logistics contract for the F-35 stealth fighter that it claims would reduce the aircraft’s operating costs by allowing it to take greater ownership and control of the jet’s sustainment system. The Joint Program Office, which manages the F-35 programme for the USAF, US Navy, US Marine Corps and international customers, is evaluating Lockheed’s proposal.
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Re: US military, technology, arms, tactics

Post by brar_w »

This should offer a much needed stand off capability that would also help the IAF/IA AH-64 fleet IMO. While the Spike may not meet the US Army's future requirements for this range class (I think they initial feedback was that it couldn't meet the TTT requirement) but it is a great interim capability none the less. When combined with the sort of MUM-T capability being demonstrated by the AH-64 system overall, and what is in the works for FVL this does open up significant offensive capability against systems designed to deny attack helo ops over a certain region.

Test unit helps Army with Spike demo

Day 4 – This was the actual test day. The Apache launched the Spike from 32 kilometers away and scored a direct hit on a stationary vessel.
Another planned flight that included a strike on a moving target, was cancelled due to weather.

Based on the success of testing, the Spike NLOS will serve as an interim solution to the gap in precision targeting at extended ranges. The weapon can strike targets four times further than the Apache’s current carried munitions. It also serves a dual purpose in informing the requirements for Army Aviation’s enduring standoff weapon, the Long-Range Precision Munition.
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Aerial MUM-T reaches new heights at DPG

An historic milestone in manned-unmanned teaming (MUM-T) was reached at Dugway Proving Ground in October when three separate aircraft worked together and successfully executed a live missile fire. The three-way cooperative engagement included an Apache AH-64E helicopter, a Shadow RQ-7BV2 Block 3 tactical unmanned aircraft system (TUAS) and a MQ-1C Gray Eagle Extended Range (GE-ER) UAS.

During the engagement, the Apache pilot took level of interoperability (LOI) 3 control of the Shadow’s payload for reconnaissance and lasing of the target, while Gray Eagle fired a laser-guided Hellfire missile, successfully hitting the ground target more than 15,000 feet below.
Rakesh
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Re: US military, technology, arms, tactics

Post by Rakesh »

Interview from a current F-35 pilot in the USAF.

The Full Story: Did The Air Force Say the F-35 Failed?

brar_w
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Re: US military, technology, arms, tactics

Post by brar_w »

This guy has done a good job. But also note that there is nothing stopping the USAF from executing an OMS compliant mission system architecture on the F-16's. Boeing has done it on the F-15EX using company funding but also on the back of export orders giving it the margins on the program for that. Had Will Roper stuck around he would have likely done/demanded the same on the F-16 line with a switch to a new mission computer, OMS standards adopted across multiple sensors and interfaces, and a transition to full fiber. That's all doable in short order just as it was done on the F-15E to F-15EX (this is one area where the F-15EX will differ from even the most upgraded F-15E's that are going to be modernized) transition. But it will still cost around $60 million a pop which I think where a T-7 derived light attack aircraft can come in and undercut it. You could build something like that for well under $50 Million even with advanced avionics. And a production line for it already in the budget and will have the ability to pump out a lot of aircraft in short order (it is being built to sustain a max of 60 deliveries per year).

My guess is that the previous administration with its budget profile was probably getting ready to order b/w 100-200 F-16V's to complete the Guard modernization and to settle the F-16 upgrade work question that has been circling the last many budgets. The large contact to Lockheed basically gave it a pre negotiated vehicle to award a contract in short order and begin receiving deliveries inside 2 years. CQ Brown probably wanted to stop that. Looking at flatter budgets he probably wants this to be studied further to see if he can do this more affordably because there is little point if it begins to encroach upon the F-35 or NGAD steady annual procurement funding.

I think even an F-16V upgraded like the F-15EX is going to fall short. It is not what the USAF needs for the low end fight. Let's assume that a majority of these will be candidates for the ANG and AF Reserve modernization. The former (ANG) is going to be a very capable fighting force. In fact from an equipment perspective, it will be at par or superior to most other NATO air-forces. You are looking at a force (Air national guard) that will have 144 F-15EX's (at least), and at least 5 squadrons of F-35A's (one is already operational, 2 additional Guard squadrons will become operational by 2024, and three additional in the second half of 2020's) though it could have much more and then upgraded F-16's. If the upgraded F-16's do get replaced, there is a valid case to be made for a different capability perhaps one that may not be as capable as the F-16V but is cheaper, though still capable enough to do the missions the guard gets called to do. The reference to getting there "faster" is basically saying that the schedule impact of a less mature design (like a T-7 derivative) can be mitigated using the tools adopted for the T-7, and NGAD programs.
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Re: US military, technology, arms, tactics

Post by NRao »

Sorry Brar ji, could not resists. :)
brar_w wrote: Had Will Roper stuck around
He was not offered the post. Had he been offered, he would have "stuck around". However, he is still "involved" ;), not left the stage - yet.
he would have likely done/demanded the same on the F-16 line with a switch to a new mission computer, OMS standards adopted across multiple sensors and interfaces, and a transition to full fiber.
He never, speaking from experience, "done/demanded". He batted for the Digital Trinity (wrote 2 papers, which are out there for techies) AND challenged anyone to provide a better alternative. He *never* (as far as I know) interfered or provided guidance at levels as "mission computers". He left such details to those who proposed (as long as it fell within the Trinity).

Now, Digital Trinity is a political football - yes that is true. Not many are convinced that deviating from years of experience is prudent: except 1) Boeing and 2) private companies, that are flocking to provide solutions. Roper's contribution is establishing the gov-pvt link - it is not going away. This WILL face upheavals, no two ways about it. However, for the first time, within the past two weeks OSD sent a very high level to support "Roper's" vision. Roper's vision is NOT universal yet, but it is not going away from within the USAF - not happening. Digital Trinity is here to stay (within USAF). Not because the DoD believes in it (there is verbal support), but because the private sector *knows* it is the way.

Having said all that there is a good amount of resistance - babus are universal (bet they exist in Brahma Lok too).

Digital Trinity has the blessing of the OSD, no two ways about it (cannot provide links, because it is too recent - have audio).

Roper's Digital Trinity has been applied to every aspect one can think of by the pvt sector. The results should surface ...... some time - I would think that everyone would want the "e-" stamp (at least as far as the USAF is concerned)(not to be underestimated).
Rakesh wrote:The Full Story: Did The Air Force Say the F-35 Failed?
@3:00: he says something to: "Modern fighters have something common to your smart phone" ... and then provide Tesla as an example. That is NOT true AS YET - NO WAY to update a F-35 in real-time, not possible). Proof of Cybernetics, etc is very, very recent and it is only a test. Even the F-35 is NOT in the realm of Digital Trinity (which demands a twin - a digital and a physical = twin)(people do not realize this - those twins absolutely NEED to "do" what the other "twin" does)(check my post on two deshis who HAVE demonstrate a digital twin degrade JUST LIKE the real one - these two deshis have demonstrated it, not some mind game)

@3:22: "Same thing with F-35". He is comparing it to a Tesla (again). NOT TRUE. Tesla updates ONLY AFTER finding a solution to a problem. The F-35 has no means - as of today - to even let anyone know that there was a problem IN REAL TIME (like Tesla)(I can talk more on Tesla if needed)

@4:35: "my wife works in" - in agile software. So he feels he can talk to "agile software" because his wife works in agile software!!!!!!!!!!.

No, he has no idea of what it means WRT defense (or even finance I would say). Your fighter is air borne and headed towards the enemy lines AND now you need to update that fighter - that is agile as far as the USAF is concerned - that is what the upgrading of the U-2 proved.

What his wife would be doing at that point in time I would leave it your imagination

After watching 4:40, I give up. IF you are interested, I hope to answer his vid - look for my response as NRao

This guy is TOTAL joke. Hope his YT channel puts food on his table
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Re: US military, technology, arms, tactics

Post by brar_w »

NRao wrote: He was not offered the post. Had he been offered, he would have "stuck around". However, he is still "involved" ;), not left the stage - yet.
Yes, I understand that. What i was saying was that had he been retained, or had Trump won, and his FYDP survived, then Roper was probably going to work with OSD to get an F-16V buy in. The very last stage IDIQ award to Lockheed was one of the last major actions he took. But it is clear that the CSAF is not in favor of that (at least not at this time) hence shut the entire conversation down rather quickly when asked. A study basically means that nothing is happening for a couple of years.

The USAF is in the process of getting both the F22 and F35 on its OMS standards. The current block upgrade will address that on the F-35. The F-22 will be sooner. Each F-35 has been on fiber since LOT 1 so in a way it was even ahead of the now mandated requirement (as was on the F-15EX). As far as other standards are concerned, the F-35 has bits and pieces but obviously it doesn't have what didn't exist when it was developed. What it does have is a production line capable of producing 150+ stealth fighters TODAY (when LO aircraft have only existed as niche low volume capabilities in prior years/decades) and delivering an aircraft to the USAF that comes in at a lower cost than an equivalent F-15EX, the parent design of which has been in production for nearly half a century.

So yes, the F-35 doesn't currently use the design, production, or the software chops of the NGAD. But the NGAD is a decade away from existing in numbers. The CSAF in the same interview made it crystal clear, that he is not taking the F-35 account to pay for NGAD or in other words, no money from current modernization to pay for a long term future capability. The USAF needs to modernize and the most important ting is to retain that "Air Wing a Year" cadence of F-35A's till at least the end of the decade. Once NGAD is equally mature they can taper off and reassess, but at the moment they have to stick and buy an aircraft that is at high volume production and delivering what they need. Anything that comes in at the lower end, has to offer incredible value. And I suspect the F-16V is a bit too much of capability for this. A new aircraft, or a modified T-7 would look much more attractive and nicely slot in between the F-15EX and the F-35A in the ANG force structure. F-16V would have been nice as competition to the F-15EX procurement and the Guard could have probably done better (saved money) with a split buy.
NRao wrote:He never, speaking from experience, "done/demanded".
Perhaps others have a different experience? The ANG top boss is on record of saying that Roper went to Boeing and asked that their proposal meet OMS standards, have fiber optic and other changes that flowed through the main acquisition officer. Which basically means he was doing his job.
Last edited by brar_w on 19 Mar 2021 10:11, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: US military, technology, arms, tactics

Post by Mort Walker »

So Brown was referring to the F-36 Kingsnake?
* The U.S. Air Force has expressed interest in a new, non-stealthy fighter jet to replace the F-16.
* Several aviation experts have banded together and invented a new jet out of thin air.
* The result, the F-36 Kingsnake, would use the F-22’s engines, place less of an emphasis on stealth, and use digital engineering.
Image

This Is the F-36 Kingsnake. It Could Be the Air Force's Next Fighter Jet
The F-36 Kingsnake: the ‘fifth-generation-minus’ fighter USAF wants
Speculation of course.
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Re: US military, technology, arms, tactics

Post by brar_w »

LOL on Huskhit.

But in all seriousness, Lockheed has plenty of F-16 variants and proposals sitting in their vault that they can dust off and offer. But how does one make it cheaper (A new variant will only add to the cost) ? I think what the CSAF was asking for was a lower end capability. That or he just really wanted to kill the F-16V idea quickly before it picked up steam and found its way into budgets (like the F-15EX did). The F-16V, or any other capable variant (like the F-16U) is going to be at the very tip of the capability and thus still cost a fair bit (roughly $60 Mill for a F-16V) and still have a fairly substantial footprint. And this on top of the F-15EX and the F-35A already existing within the ANG in fairly decent planned numbers. I just don't see the F-16V or any other similarly capable variant offering value there. Not at current projected budgets. If the budgets continue to remain flat, the AF will continue to protect its main modernization priorities (which it successfully did even through sequestration years) which means the F-16 issue is likely to be kicked till outside the FYDP.

What the USAF actually needs would be a clean sheet digitally designed variant, that doesn't have the top end performance of something like an F-16V, F-18 E/F Block III or F-15EX (those requirements tend to drive sustainment cost) but something that goes beyond in terms of design, OMS application standards, and other design elements advanced via the 6GFA and 5GFA programs. So its cheaper to make and use and easier to upgrade than the legacy systems. I tend to think Boeing's T-7 has that potential of being able to solve for both an ANG-specific low end fighter, and a USAF specific light attack aircraft. Its biggest advantage being an active production line that is going to be bought for by the trainer program so you could tail off the trainer program and ramp up the light attack aircraft program in the late 2020s and early 2030s just when your oldest F-16's will be going to the boneyard at the highest rate.

The Active air force doesn't need a true F-16 replacement (they haven't used the F-16 as a lightweight fighter for decades). Between the F-35A on one end of the spectrum, the Reaper and eventually the MQ-Next at the other end, they cover all those mission needs and do it at different cost and capability points. The Guard and the Reserve are the main customers and you still need to provide them with fresh and young aircraft because you use them for a whole host of homeland defense missions and regularly deploy them where they are expected to fully meet COCOM needs just as an active AF unit would. So they still need to have a mix of manned fighters and can probably do with a light attack aircraft that can also double up as a light fighter if required. Congress should also like it as they tend to take favorably to the prospects of fielding a light attack aircraft in general because they are cheaper.
Last edited by brar_w on 19 Mar 2021 10:42, edited 2 times in total.
NRao
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Re: US military, technology, arms, tactics

Post by NRao »

NRao wrote:He never, speaking from experience, "done/demanded".
Perhaps others have a different experience? The ANG top boss is on record of saying that Roper went to Boeing and asked that their proposal meet OMS standards, have fiber optic and other changes that flowed through the main acquisition officer. Which basically means he was doing his job.
Absolutely, no two ways, there are "different experience?" In fact your statement is an understatement.

However, that ANG top boss is what some - for better or worse - see as "babu". The dividing line is for or against Digital Trinity. OMS falls under Agile Development - one of three Digital Trinity. So, *if* the ANG boss was *seen as complaining*, then he will be seen as someone who is against Trinity, and therefore .................. (Let us check where this boss is in 6/12 months.)

The problem - as I see it - is that people within DoD (a lot within USAF) are having a *very difficult time* understanding the Digital Trinity and therefore trust is nearly non existent. There is a huge *parallel* effort to "change the culture" within the USAF. It is openly discussed.

brar_w wrote:
NRao wrote: He was not offered the post. Had he been offered, he would have "stuck around". However, he is still "involved" ;), not left the stage - yet.
Yes, I understand that. What i was saying was that had he been retained, or had Trump won, and his FYDP survived, then Roper was probably going to work with OSD to get an F-16V buy in. The very last stage IDIQ award to Lockheed was one of the last major actions he took. But it is clear that the CSAF is not in favor of that (at least not at this time) hence shut the entire conversation down rather quickly when asked. A study basically means that nothing is happening for a couple of years.
OK. Thanks
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Re: US military, technology, arms, tactics

Post by brar_w »

NRao wrote:However, that ANG top boss is what some - for better or worse - see as "babu". The dividing line is for or against Digital Trinity. OMS falls under Agile Development - one of three Digital Trinity. So, *if* the ANG boss was *seen as complaining*, then he will be seen as someone who is against Trinity, and therefore .................. (Let us check where this boss is in 6/12 months.)
I don't know what anyone of this even means. All I am saying is that the OMS, fiber optic backbone, and other design features on the F-15EX weren't a gift from Boeing, but a program requirement communicated to the company by the USAF's top acquisition officer via hard coded programmatic requirements as per laid out acquisition rules and procedures. I don't know why that is controversial. It is merely stating a fact and not my opinion. The ANG boss confirmed this at the most recent AFA event from where the CQ Brown quotes are lifted. There is nothing that would suggest that had Roper been around, and still wanted to buy new F-16's, that he wouldn't have framed similar requirements for the F-16 buy too. Especially when they are doing it on all the TacAir fleet (as I said F-22 and F-35 are migrating to these very standards as well with many elements already in place).

Keep in mind this whole conversation/controversy started when Roper went to Aviation Week and told them that the USAF was considering buying new F-16's. The CSAF had to come out publicly in response to that to say that this was not the case and that they would study the fleet mix and and decide what sort of lower end capability they need which got twisted into what David Axe, and the MSNBC's of the world chose to run with.
“As you look at the new F-16 production line in South Carolina, that system has some wonderful upgraded capabilities that are worth thinking about as part of our capacity solution,” said Will Roper, former assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics, who spoke to Aviation Week a day before he resigned his political appointment on Jan. 20.

https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/ ... tion-shake
And this , as I've mentioned previously, was also not out of thin air. This at random, last day of job revelation, came just a few months after the USAF awarded a large IDIQ contract (worth up to $62 Billion) to Lockheed for the F-16 production for FMS customers etc. So it wasn't a coincidence that the same person who negotiated for nearly a year to get the F-16V configuration defined, and negotiate and sign the contract terms with Lockheed, wouldn't want to nudge the OSD/CAPE to also allow the USAF to buy some of these and bank those savings in time and money. But as it is clear from what followed, the new USAF leadership was not as enthusiastic about this as the now ex-acquisition officer was. Hence they've tabled it until a study is completed.
NRao wrote:However, that ANG top boss is what some - for better or worse - see as "babu"
Babu with 3000+ hours of flying experience, formal education in aeronautical engineering, and experience of having commanded a fighter unit in combat. And to his credit he never said anything controversial. All he did was state facts. As in, the USAF (Roper in this case since he was at the time the top non uniformed acquisition official) contractually demanded XYZ from Boeing on the F-15EX which is what they are delivering.
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Re: US military, technology, arms, tactics

Post by Rakesh »

brar_w wrote:This guy has done a good job.
He has quite an interesting collection of youtube videos about his experiences as an active duty USAF combat pilot.

https://www.youtube.com/c/HasardLee/videos
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Re: US military, technology, arms, tactics

Post by Manish_Sharma »

https://www.popularmechanics.com/milita ... t-concept/

This Is the F-36 Kingsnake. It Could Be the Air Force's Next Fighter Jet.

Meet the new, non-stealthy fighter that may replace the F-16.

By Kyle Mizokami MAR 18, 2021

The U.S. Air Force has expressed interest in a new, non-stealthy fighter jet to replace the F-16.
Several aviation experts have banded together and invented a new jet out of thin air.
The result, the F-36 Kingsnake, would use the F-22’s engines, place less of an emphasis on stealth, and use digital engineering.

Last month, U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. C.Q. Brown caused a stir when he announced the service was looking into buying a brand-new fighter jet to help replace the F-16 Viper. Such a jet doesn’t exist—yet—but thanks to new digital engineering techniques, it could actually enter service before 2030.
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Re: US military, technology, arms, tactics

Post by brar_w »

U.S. Army shows first element of its future hypersonic weapon system

The U.S. Army has publicly released images of the first element of its future hypersonic weapon system.

In photos released by the Pentagon, showing the first prototype hypersonic equipment for the Long Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW) battery.

The details were given in an Army’s release, to announce that the service began delivering the first prototype hypersonic equipment to Soldiers with the arrival of two training canisters.Hypersonic weapons, capable of flying at speeds greater than five times the speed of sound (Mach 5+), are a new capability that provide a unique combination of speed, maneuverability and altitude to defeat time-critical, heavily-defended and high-value targets, according to a recent service news release.

Hypersonics is part of the Army’s number one modernization priority of Long Range Precision Fires, and is one of the highest priority modernization areas the Department of Defense is pursuing to ensure continued battlefield dominance. The service press release also said that the Army will deliver all additional ground equipment for the Long Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW) prototype battery. LRHW battery fielding will complete in Fiscal Year (FY) 2023 with the delivery of live missile rounds.

The new weapon system will provide a critical strategic weapon and a powerful deterrent against adversary capabilities for the U.S. Army. Hypersonic missiles can reach the top of the Earth’s atmosphere and remain just beyond the range of air and missile defense systems until they are ready to strike, and by then it’s too late to react. Extremely accurate, ultrafast, maneuverable and survivable, hypersonics can strike anywhere in the world within minutes.
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Re: US military, technology, arms, tactics

Post by brar_w »

Boeing scores new test milestones for MQ-25A test asset

Boeing has chalked up two new milestones during flight testing of a pre-production version of the US Navy’s (USN’s) MQ-25A unmanned aerial refuelling aircraft.

T1 – the company’s own flight test asset – recorded its longest flight to date at more than six hours. The air vehicle has also achieved its highest altitude so far, with test points recorded at 30,000 ft.

Developed to meet the navy’s Carrier-Based Aerial-Refuelling System requirement, the MQ-25A is intended to provide USN carrier air wings with a robust organic refuelling capability to improve the combat range of embarked strike fighters. In August 2018 Boeing was awarded a USD805.3 million engineering, manufacturing, and development (EMD) contract by the Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) for design, development, fabrication, test, delivery, and support of four MQ-25A unmanned air vehicles, including integration into the carrier air wing for an initial operational capability in August 2024.

The MQ-25A is expected to deliver up to 15,000 lb of fuel to aircraft up to 500 n miles away. Aerial refuelling operations will be undertaken using two Cobham 31-301-7 Aerial Refuelling Store (ARS) pods – one under each wing – paying out a refuelling hose and basket. These buddy stores are already in service on USN F/A-18E/F Super Hornets.

T1 begin flying testing with the ARS pod in 2020. Flight testing initially focused on evaluating the aerodynamic effects of the buddy store at various points in the flight envelope.

The T1 will next test its ARS hose and drogue, including wake surveys. This will be followed by receiver flights with an F/A-18 Super Hornet.
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Both the high and low band arrays on the Blk 3 are utilizing Northrop's 2nd gen GaN T/R modules with the array architectures also being capable of supporting non traditional mission sets.

First SEWIP Block 3 Electronic Attack System Set for Land Testing Later This Year

The first array of a massive update of the Navy’s surface electronic warfare systems is preparing for its ground tests later this year. The work is part of the Navy’s AN/SLQ-32(V)7 Surface Electronic Warfare Improvement Program under Northrop Grumman Block 3 SEWIP effort, company officials told USNI News last week.

Now with the early testing nearing completion, the first engineering and manufacturing development system in Maryland is set for land-based testing at the Navy’s facility in Wallops Island, Va., Mike Meaney, Northrop vice president of Land and Maritime Sensors told USNI News last week...

The SEWIP program was born following the 2002 cancellation of over cost and underperforming the AN/SLY-2 (V) Advanced Integrated Electronic Warfare System that was designed to replace several electronic warfare systems across the fleet. Starting in 2008, Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics won contracts for the first two improvement blocks that focused on replacing legacy components to modernize the system and creating a new passive detection system for incoming threats. Elements of the early blocks have been spotted in the fleet. Spain-based destroyer USS Carney (DDG-64) was seen by Turkish ship spotters in 2018 sporting a Block 2 array during a transit into the Black Sea.

“SEWIP Block 3 will include improvements for the electronic attack by providing integrated countermeasures against radio frequency-guided threats and extending frequency range coverage,” the Navy said at the time.

Now, the first complete Block 3 system is undergoing tests in a custom-built anechoic chamber at the Northrop Grumman Mission Systems production facility adjacent to the Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport. The two-story-high assembly is designed to be nested in a sponson between the AN/SPY-1D(v) radar faces of an Arleigh Burke guided-missile destroyer on the ship’s superstructure. USNI News toured the facility last week.

The diamond-shaped sponson is configured with two faces at an angle from one another. Each face has a high- and low-band transmitter and a receiver, along with the Block 2 passive detection system, Bob Sacca, the company’s SEWIP Block 3 EMD program director told USNI News.

Far larger and more power-hungry than the existing Slick 32 systems, the Block 3 configuration is essentially additional spaces welded to the side of the destroyer that are serviced from inside the skin of the ship. Additionally, the installation comes with additional cooling and power conditioning equipment that will drive the server racks on the inside of the sponson, Sacca said.

The promise is that the new system will be able to actively jam incoming missiles that threaten a warship, cue decoys and could be updated quickly as the threats evolve, Meaney said.

SEWIP is software-defined, meaning that, unlike analog radars of the past, the transmitters and receivers can easily adjust to send and receive different waveforms and allow the system to be more easily adaptable.

The adaptability for active electronic attack comes as both China and Russia are developing several new classes of missiles simultaneously at a rate that is outpacing the U.S. military. Systems like SEWIP and new directed energy weapons are part of the Navy’s bet to improve the odds of survival in conflict without sinking billions into expensive missile systems.

While the Block 3 system is being designed for the cruiser and destroyer force, Northrop is studying whether the Navy could include elements of the Block 3 electronic attack capability in other hull designs.
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Very interesting relative performance comparison straight from the horse's mouth. New radar should allow the MSE to intercept out to 40+ km or so which is going to be very handy with the faster targets.

Lower Tier Air And Missile Defense System: The Army’s Future Super Radar


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Recently, we sat down with Robert (Bob) Kelley, the Raytheon Missiles & Defense Director for US Requirements and Capabilities. As a former air-defense officer in the US Army, Bob has been on both the user and the development side of some of the most integral components of America’s air and missile defense network, and was the perfect individual to explain some of the most interesting parts of the LTAMDS program.

What follows are excerpts from that interview.

Justin:Before we go into the radar, can we establish the threat paradigm a little bit more? What exactly are we facing?

Bob:Well, let me give you just a little bit of background upfront. When I was a second lieutenant in the air defense artillery, my biggest threat was probably, at the time, was a third gen fighter, or a helicopter. We were worried about Russian MiG airplanes and Russian helicopters. A second lieutenant in 2021 on the battlefield is worried about fifth gen fighters, far more advanced helicopters, UAS's. They're worried about cruise missiles, tactical ballistic missiles.

Even in 1990, when I came on active duty before Desert Storm, nobody really talked about tactical ballistic missiles until they were fired at Saudi Arabia. Now you're starting to think about not just all these different aerial attack techniques, but that they can be put together in time and space.

If you remember September 14th, I think it was 2019, the attack on a Saudi Arabian oil refinery? That came from 360 degrees, it was near-simultaneous, and ended up on the target.

So, we make the Patriot system, and it’s very, very good. It's a combat-proven system. Some of our partners are firing Patriot missiles every day in defense of their homelands. But it was developed during a time of linear battlefields.

Now we're starting to look at things like hypersonic weapons. When they looked at tomorrow's challenges, the Army determined they needed a new system to handle them. And so they put in the requirements for a 360-degree radar that could handle today's threats and then provide threat overmatch way out into the future. That's how you ended up with LTAMDS. The Army is thinking about the threats of the future.

Justin:What do you think of the lower tier, the UAS threat, in conjunction with the hypersonic threat. And does the LTAMDS deal with both of those or is that part of the integrated system you intend to provide or integrate with?

Bob:They don't even have to be armed UAS's. If you have UAS's flying over your sites, they're providing precision guidance to other armed weapons systems. If you look at the way adversaries can use UAS's, they may not be armed. None have to have any kinetic or explosive on them. They can just have cameras and it allows an adversary to take out an entire armored battalion in less than a minute.

Justin: Can you explain what makes hypersonics such a big threat in the future versus conventional missile systems? What does LTAMDS do to counter that?

Bob:All I can really say in that area is that they're fast. They're very fast. If you want to intercept something that's going at a speed like that, you're going to have to detect and track it at a much longer range than, say, radars of the 1990s could.

Justin: You will need time to launch an interceptor or some other kill vehicle.

Bob:Yeah. Because again, a radar has got to go through that whole process of search, track, classify, discriminate, and identify. At the end of the day, it's a human being sitting inside a van or a command-and-control system somewhere that's going to make a decision on whether or not to engage. The radar is not going to decide. The faster objects are coming at you, the less time you have to make those decisions, so your radar has to really be able to see further and provide precision. I mean, the gallium nitride not only increases the efficiency of how the radar works, it also enhances the sensitivity of the radar so that it can be more precise. At the end of the day, what you're trying to do is inform a soldier to make the right decision.

Justin: You mentioned gallium nitride. Will you explain what that is, why the government has such tight regulations on it, and what benefits it provides to a radar system like this?

Bob: So, it's a modern technology, and it really focuses on efficiency of power. We're one of the few places that has an actual US government-sanctioned approved gallium nitride foundry. When your new car beeps to warn that you're starting to get out of the lane a little bit- that's commercial-grade gallium nitride sensors in those cars. What we make is military grade.

Bob:What is a radar, really? I have a power source that I pump into it, and I have cooling systems. I have computers that are doing processing inside there. How do I get as much of that outside power that's coming in to go out the front of the radar as RF energy? The more power I can take from a source like a generator and push out the front, the further and more precisely I'm going to be able to see.

The LTAMDS is searching 360 degrees all the time. Once it acquires a target it's going to continue to track it while still searching everywhere else. Then it's going to take that track and do a couple of things. One, it's going to try to classify that track. What kind of track is it? Is it manned? Unmanned? Is it a cruise missile? Is it a fighter jet or a helicopter?

Tactical ballistic missiles, when they come back into the atmosphere, they sometimes break apart. There's pieces of them that are harmless, but then there's one piece that really is lethal. So how do I discriminate to find out exactly which one that lethal piece is? And so the more efficiently a radar can take input power and put it out as RF energy, the better off it's going to be.

Justin:How does our current weapons technology affect the development of something like LTAMDS? Do you design new weapons in concert with the sensor system, or does the Army give you a capability they want and say, "You must meet these demands, we'll figure out the rest later?"

Bob:So, in this particular case, the Army said, "Hey, here's the specifications we want for this radar." I would say, at the same time, we are also looking at how to make this radar operate well with other systems. We’ve already done extensive systems engineering analysis to make sure it can be integrated with Patriot, because we have 16 international partners that field the Patriot who we want to ensure have options as they consider introducing LTAMDS into their air and missile defense capability.

Justin:Speaking of the Patriot, I understand it uses one phased array for tracking, while the LTAMDS has three. I assume that that's what gives you that 360-degree capability. Can you talk about the design of the system itself?

Bob:The design of the radar is in accordance with the requirements given. The Army was worried about certain threats from the front, and then certain threats from a 360 perspective. If you look at a picture of an LTAMDS, it has two aft arrays and one in the front. Each one of those smaller aft arrays has more capability than an entire Patriot radar does today. So you can imagine the capabilities of the front array. At an unclassified level, I can say that we see about two and a half times as far as a Patriot radar does.

Justin:When it comes to the Army’s new highly-networked IBCS [integrated battle combat system], was Raytheon given guidance on where this new radar would fit into that emerging ecosystem? What does this actually look like on the battlefield of 2030?

Bob:So, we've gotten very technical guidance on how to make sure that LTAMDS will integrate into IBCS and how it will support. One of our goals is to make sure that IBCS can leverage all the capabilities that we're putting into the LTAMDS radar. It's a significant amount of capability that we're putting in there, a lot more than we, unfortunately, can talk about... LTAMDS is going to become the first native IBCS component. When you have a sensor of this kind of quality, it's going to enhance all the weapons that you have out there on the battlefield.

One of the things the Army told us was, "Look, we have this great PAC3 MSE missile [Patriot Missile Segment Enhancement—a Patriot missile variant] that they love, and we have this great GEM-T missile [Patriot Guidance Enhanced-T, another Patriot missile variant] that Raytheon made, so we want to make sure that we're using the full kinematic range of those missiles."

The current Patriot radar can pretty much utilize the MSE missile out to about 90% of its kinematic range, which is pretty good. I mean, it's not a problem against most threats. Now, when you field an LTAMDS radar, the MSE kinematic range is maximized with radar range to spare.

Bob:As I said, we're going out to 2.5, 2.7 [times] in terms of our range improvement in detection and tracking. There's going to be a constant evolution of adding sensors and shooters to this network, and I think that's the Army's strategy going forward.


Justin:Raytheon has developed a radar that's now beyond the capabilities of all relevant interceptors at this point. Now the rest of the military (and the world) has to catch up to what the LTAMDS has provided. Is that a true statement?

Bob:Yeah, I mean, we've gotten to the maximum level of every interceptor that's out there. One of the beautiful things we did about this is we tried to make sure that this radar could provide guidance to all of the current interceptors that are out there in the formations today, but also we designed in the flexibility for the next interceptors that come out. So when the Army does develop its next interceptor, this radar will already have the capability of talking to it and guiding it to where it needs to go.

Justin:From a design perspective, does that hurt you moving forward? You're trying to create a next-generation radar system, but you also have to build in the communications to be able to talk to legacy platforms. How do you meet that challenge?

Bob: It really doesn't hurt. It's about having the foresight to think, ”okay, how many interceptors does the army have today? How long are those interceptors going to be in the inventory?” Because those interceptors weren't cheap, and the Army doesn't want to get rid of them. So let's see how we can design this so that whoever the Army's next interceptor will be made by Raytheon or anybody else, we will be able to integrate it into this system as quickly as possible.

Justin:Final question. What are the major challenges or hurdles facing the LTAMDS over the next five to ten years?

Bob:I would say I don't see anything like that. The only thing that's always out there on the table is funding, right? It's not terribly predictable the way the budget's going to be. But I think with the appropriate funding I really don't see anything that we can't overcome. I also probably understated the level of cooperation that we've had with the government. I mean, it really has been a true collaboration, and I've worked on a lot of programs on both sides.

I worked on programs when I was in a green suit, and I've worked on programs now in the four years that I've been with Raytheon, and I think it's a pretty powerful statement to say that we're going to deliver three radars within two years of our contract award.

Maybe there's a lesson to be learned there about what true collaboration between industry and the government can achieve. When we've got our minds right and we're heading down the right direction, there's probably a lesson to be learned there as well.
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With CEW already funded for F-35 Blk 4 and the EA-18 Technology insertion, it seems the F-15E and F-15EX are going to be next in line. Fully cognitive airborne radars too can't be far behind though that R&D is unlikely to be in the open.

US Air Force looks at ‘cognitive electronic warfare’ for F-15

The US Air Force (USAF) is researching adding “cognitive electronic warfare” capabilities to the Boeing F-15 fighter.

In particular, the service is looking for artificial intelligence and machine learning “algorithms to advance the capabilities of airborne electronic warfare systems in development and production” for the F-15, it says in a sources sought notice posted online on 11 March.

BAE Systems provides the electronic warfare and countermeasures system, the Passive Active Warning and Survivability System (EPAWSS), for the F-15, including the latest “EX” variant.

Aircraft currently rely on a database of known electronic emissions from adversaries to identify and then counter threats. For example, identifying a surface-to-air missile battery’s radar frequency and then using already-developed electronic warfare tactics to jam or interfere with it.

However, as adversaries’ radar systems become more sophisticated they are able to track US aircraft with novel signals that are not in the US library of electronic emissions. Gathering information on these new signals and then developing countermeasures takes time, leaving aircraft vulnerable in the meanwhile.

Cognitive electronic warfare aims to use artificial intelligence and machine learning to quickly and automatically identify new signals. In the future, an aircraft’s onboard computer might even be able to rapidly come up with a countermeasure.

The extent to which the USAF wants to automate the collection of electronic intelligence and countermeasures is not detailed. However, the service says it wants “algorithms and technologies that provide the capability for [electronic warfare] systems to more rapidly and intelligently respond to emitter ambiguities, emerging threats, in both sparse and dense signal environments”.

The service wants to improve the F-15’s electronic warfare capabilities via an incremental process, by “injecting cognitive techniques into new and emerging” electronic warfare systems.

“Cognitive electronic support and electronic attack technologies will investigate and resolve challenges of adaptive, agile, ambiguous, and out-of-library complex emitters that coexist with background (signals that are not the primary signal of interest) signal challenges,” says the USAF notice. “The government is also interested in cognitive technologies which provide rapid [electronic warfare] reprogramming capability or leverage the interplay and accumulation of knowledge for improved system performance.”
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US DoD and USAF are a busy bunch. Are in talks with SpaceX to use their Starlink platform and have thought of using the Starship as a supply ship (= 1 C-17, within an hour anywhere on earth), here have used RocketLab:
Steve Trimble @TheDEWLine wrote: Rocket Lab just deployed the US Army’s Gunsmoke-J cubesat with a classified sensor to demonstrate sending “critical data” directly to soldiers that need it.
Rocket Lab @RocketLab wrote: We have lift-off! #TheyGoUpSoFast
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brar_w
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Project Pele is going to be essential for the survival of large-medium sized operational air-bases in the Pacific and to a lesser extent CENTCOM. If they can't get this offset technology to deliver then that is probably going to mean they'll have to continue to fragment and invest in more expensive, longer ranged systems which means a huge cost imposition and a tremendous advantage to China.
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and use the spacex vehicle to dump it in outer space for nuclear waste disposal?
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V_Raman wrote:and use the spacex vehicle to dump it in outer space for nuclear waste disposal?
Or even in the Sun. Not a bad plan. :wink:
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AI-Controlled F-16s Are Now Working As A Team In DARPA's Virtual Dogfights


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The goal of bringing artificial intelligence into the air-to-air dogfighting arena has moved a step closer with a series of simulated tests that pitted AI-controlled F-16 fighter jets working as a team against an opponent. The experiments were part of Phase 1 of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Air Combat Evolution (ACE) program, focused on exploring how AI and machine learning may help automate various aspects of air-to-air combat.

DARPA announced recently that it’s halfway through Phase 1 of ACE and that simulated AI dogfights under the so-called Scrimmage 1 took place at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) last month.

Using a simulation environment designed by APL, Scrimmage 1 involved a demonstration of 2-v-1 simulated engagements with two blue force (friendly) F-16s working collaboratively to defeat an undisclosed enemy red air (enemy) aircraft.

In the words of DARPA, the ambitious ACE program aims to develop “trusted, scalable, human-level, AI-driven autonomy for air combat by using human-machine collaborative dogfighting as its challenge problem.”

The February AI dogfight tests were the first since APL’s AlphaDogfight Trials that took place last August. On that occasion, a competition pitted eight teams who provided AI systems to fly simulated F-16s in 1-v-1 dogfights. The team with the winning AI then flew another five simulated dogfights against an experienced F-16 fighter pilot in a simulator, beating the human 5-0 in a significant demonstration of AI’s potential that you can read more about here.

Our biggest focus at the end of Phase 1 is on the simulation-to-real transition of the AI algorithms as we prepare for live-fly sub-scale aircraft scenarios in late 2021,” said Colonel Dan “Animal” Javorsek, the program manager in DARPA’s Strategic Technology Office. “Managing this transition to the real world is a critical test for most AI algorithms. In fact, prior efforts have been brittle to just these types of transitions because some solutions can be over-reliant on digital artifacts from the simulation environment.”

Compared to the AlphaDogfight Trials, which were gun-only, Scrimmage 1 introduced new simulated weapons, in the form of a “missile for longer-range targets.”

“Adding more weapon options and multiple aircraft introduces a lot of the dynamics that we were unable to push and explore in the AlphaDogfight Trials,” Javorsek added. “These new engagements represent an important step in building trust in the algorithms since they allow us to assess how the AI agents handle clear avenues of fire restrictions set up to prevent fratricide. This is exceedingly important when operating with offensive weapons in a dynamic and confusing environment that includes a manned fighter and also affords the opportunity to increase the complexity and teaming associated with maneuvering two aircraft in relation to an adversary.”

So far, ACE has demonstrated advanced virtual AI dogfights involving both within-visual-range (WVR) and beyond-visual-range (BVR) multi-aircraft scenarios with simulated weapons, plus live flying using an instrumented jet to measure pilot physiology and trust in AI.

Throughout the ACE program, which began last year, DARPA has stressed the importance of establishing human pilots’ trust in AI, allowing it to conduct the actual combat maneuvers while the human concentrates on overarching battle management decisions.

The process of “capturing trust data” has seen test pilots fly in an L-29 Delfin jet trainer at the University of Iowa Technology Institute’s Operator Performance Laboratory. This aircraft has been adapted with cockpit sensors to measure the pilot’s physiological responses, giving an insight into whether or not the pilot trusts the AI. In these missions, the L-29 has been flown by a safety pilot in the front seat, who makes flight control inputs based on AI decisions. However, for the pilot whose responses are being evaluated, it is as if the AI is flying the jet.

ACE Phase 2, planned for later this year, will add dogfights involving live subscale aircraft, both propeller-driven and jet-powered, to ensure that the AI algorithms can be moved out of the virtual environment and into real-world flying. Meanwhile, Calspan has also begun work on modifying a full-scale L-39 Albatros jet trainer to host an onboard AI “pilot” for Phase 3, a set of live-fly dogfights scheduled for late 2023 and 2024.

Once this concept is proven, DARPA plans to insert the AI technology developed in loyal wingman-type drones, like Skyborg, working collaboratively alongside manned fighters. In this way, the drones would be able to conduct dogfights with some autonomy, while the human pilot in the manned aircraft focuses primarily on battle management.
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"Animal" is a great guy. Very helpful, goes out of his way to get top notch experts to the table to help SB. The Roper of DARPA.




Wills: Quality Will Bring Acceptance of New-Method Pilot Graduates
March 24, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

Senior aviators are resistant to the idea of overhauling Air Force pilot training, but the quality of new flyers will sell them on the changes, 19th Air Force commander Maj. Gen. Craig D. Wills said March 23.

“I won’t sugarcoat it, there are a lot of folks in the pilot force that don’t like” the changes being made to undergraduate pilot training, helicopter pilot training, and streamlined ways for certified civilian pilots to take an accelerated path to wings, ” Wills told reporters in a virtual media roundtable.

But, “in the Air Force … complaints and criticisms of those programs usually stop with good flyers,” he said. The restructuring is designed not to save money or even increase the production of pilots, but to make better aviators with more relevant and credible flying experience, he noted.

To hasten that socialization, though, Wills said he and his wing commanders are trying to visit every Active-duty flying unit in the next few months, and as many Guard and Reserve flying units as possible, “to talk to them about pilot training transformation.” The objections usually center on shifting real-world flight hours to simulator time, he said. “It’s not going to be popular, and I totally understand that.” But the new system “makes better use of a student’s time” and shifts the instructor-pilot interplay to one more like “a coach-athlete relationship.”

Wills acknowledged, “We’ve got our work cut out for us” in gaining acceptance of the new system.

The new paths to wings include more simulator hours and some shortened phases, but with more personalized attention, going at one’s own pace, and more focus on the kind of specialized flying a pilot will do after graduation.

So far, Wills said, there isn’t much difference between the results of traditional methods and the new system, with about the same number of high-, medium- and low-performing pilots and washouts. His comments came about a week after the first class graduated from Undergraduate Pilot Training 2.5, which uses laptops, tablets, online courses, purpose-built video games, traditional instruction and “TED Talk”-style presentations in a learner-centric model that serves as a halfway point between the old methods and those of the future.

“It looks a lot like a normal class,” he said. Wills noted that one graduate of a pathfinder program is flying F-35s and his unit “seems to think pretty highly of him. So, the No. 1 thing is producing a quality graduate.”

Even though the purpose of the overhaul is to improve pilot quality, Wills said the various programs should help address the pilot shortage in the Air Force.

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Pilot Training Transformation looks to transform the way USAF trains its pilot, using a learner-centric model to create quality pilots. Air Education and Training Command graphic.

“Our task is to get to 1,500 pilots a year,” he said, reporting that last year, “we produced 1,263,” a downturn from the previous year’s 1,279, which Wills chalked up to COVID-19. The pandemic “cost us about 120 pilots’ worth of production,” he said.

But trends are up, he added, with increased funding from the Department of the Air Force, and “blue-suit instructor manning [will be at] at 100 percent this summer cycle.”

A drag on pilot production is in civilian simulator instructors, who Wills said are reluctant to move to places like Laughlin Air Force Base, Texas, and other out-of-the-way bases. One potential solution will be allowing instructors to teach multiple students virtually in simulators at many far-flung bases. A more immediate fix, he said, is “special salary rate increases” for civilian instructors, “which we hope will allow us to attract more quality candidates.”

Air Education and Training Command needs “high quality simulator instructors … in relevant numbers … to make all our plans a reality,” Wills acknowledged.

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Air Education and Training Command graphic

The “biggest bang” in production from one of the new initiatives will come from Helicopter Training Next, which shifts pilots from learning fixed-wing flying first to going directly to rotary wing instruction. This move will free up more slots in the T-6 trainer fleet and “automatically means 60-80-90 additional grads a year” in fixed-wing, he said. Additionally, HTN means “about six months” off the usual helicopter training period, he said, because pilots won’t have to make a permanent change of station from a fixed-wing UPT base to helicopter training at Fort Rucker, Ala., or to a civilian helo school. It also “shaves” about $250,000 per student off the bill.

Taking the T-1 Jayhawk out of the mobility pilot pathway—shifting to an almost all-simulator track—also will free up aircraft for assessment and training of alternate-source pilot candidates, Wills said.

“So, between the two of those, we see great potential on the production side.” Attracting civilian pilots to become USAF pilots is a “great unknown,” though, because it’s uncertain how long the current lull in airline hiring will last, and because the Air Force requires that “you be willing to fight and kill and potentially die for your country.”

Another 50-100 additional pilots might come from streamlined paths to wings for ROTC graduates of “aviation-accredited schools” that provide significant flying training, Wills said.

The Air Force is still looking at the track record of experimental versions of the new pilot training programs, checking grades and other factors to see if it has struck “the right balance” of simulator versus real-world flying time, but Wills thinks “we have it about right,” and the resulting pilots will be “safe and lethal.”

He’s also expanding the introductory flight training program, “pushing more hours to the left,” in a light airplane. The program assesses students’ ability to learn flying in a relatively inexpensive way, and by adding more hours—up to 50, with 40 of those flying under visual flight rules and another 10 on instruments—in this phase, USAF can cost-effectively enhance the chance of success.

“We’re probably losing candidates,” that, given more time in the introductory phase, “could do really well” when they advance to the “high performance turboprop” T-6.

Wills also said the Air Force is looking to “completely revisit the scoring method” of pilot applicants, so it doesn’t give undue advantage to those who can afford to rack up a lot of flying hours before entering the program. While such individuals tend to have low attrition, “the concern is, we’re leaving exceptional candidates behind,” he said. Neither grade point averages nor flying hours “tell the whole story,” Wills noted, saying USAF is looking for other indicators “of how well you’ll do at pilot training.” It’s looking for “grit, and determination, and resilience,” and may give greater weight to “someone working three jobs to get through school” versus someone who, with a “credit card, can rack up the hours.”

He insisted that the Air Force is “not going to lower the standard, but why would you exclude someone over something as arbitrary as GPA, or how many flying hours they have? We want the best candidate, … but we have to make sure we’re using the right measures.”
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Re: US military, technology, arms, tactics

Post by NRao »

There is a companion program to the one from Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Air Combat Evolution (ACE) program, cannot recall the name, with similar goals and a very close time table too. In 2015 a Univ of Cincinnati PhD student accomplish a 1v1 against a F-15 pilot and went on to start a company of his own. In 2019 he sold his company to Thales of France (not the Thales US), as a consequence he lost his clearance. So, Thales does have the IP to AI code that is capable of 1v1, but it is an older AI technology. To the best of my knowledge that tech cannot be scaled to more than 1v1. The tech used in ACE is NN.

Meanwhile, some notes form an USAF Armament (anything that is released by an air craft) meet:

• The Roper Digital Trinity “stack” is extremely mature. The dev env – very impressive (for armament only - so granted it is not as complex as a NGAD. But it does include Hypersonic A-G airframes)
• Goal is to make the entire acquisition pipeline digital, end-to-end. Any person in the pipeline should have access to the digital twin
• They have achieved software agility – ability to modify a missile while in flight. They are working on hardware agility – the ability to modify/change modified/corrected hardware within a few hours. They expect to retry a failed mission within hours
• In the works: Vendors with proposals can submit their digital armament that can be evaluated in real-time in the same way a gov article will be, by the entire pipeline
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Re: US military, technology, arms, tactics

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Will Roper oversaw exactly 2 end to end budget processes (FY19 and FY20) during his tenure (excluding FY21 because those investments haven't yielded results yet) and only one of them actually fully manifested in demonstrations by the time he left. Most efforts that he constantly spoke about were already in the works prior to his arrival and some will even remain now that he's gone (though the Congress has put brakes on a lot of things he wanted to accelerate and some for the right reasons). The fact that some in the media seem to have treated him as a cult is unfortunate (to him) given he's done some nice things at SCO and AF though most of what he championed was directing efforts to what was working or in place prior to his arrival and prioritizing what worked (which again is par for the course in the role he was in - that of an acquisition official). The USAF was on a digital path long before this and will continue to remain so as things are validate and it gains traction. Just clubbing everything into his creation is grossly unfair on the numerous people who have been working towards this goal for more than half a decade including acquisition professionals at the DOD/services/DAU, and within industry and academia. And the engineering and operator community that is leading the actual work on the ground. Next we are going to start giving credit of NGAD to an acquisition official who spent all of two budgets when the PO to handle ATD for it was set up more than 5 years ago. They are even crediting him with the digital tools on the ICBM when the preliminary RFI's incentivizing such tools for the said program were in the open many years before he even arrived on the scene. All he did was shine light on things that were promising and were delivering at a smaller scale and lobbied for higher investments to them. To call the collective things as "his work" is a gross overstatement. He neither ran a program, developed the technology, nor led any lab or research facility.
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Re: US military, technology, arms, tactics

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Yes, it is true that ALL projects related to "Digital Trinity" existed before Roper, no two ways about that. The Armament itself has been there for 7 years, invested $71 million (about 10/year). There is no way that anyone could have developed so mature a dev env as the one they demoed in the time frame Roper was there (2017-2020)

Yet at the Armament Roundtable, speaker after speaker mentioned Roper by name and many slides quoted him. They did not mention his technical skills, although he has a PhD in string theory. He is known for listening (from experience), pushing the vision (no idea how many mentioned his two papers), and his personality.

Aerospace Cos Wary Of Digital Design Revolution

Stars like: Richard Aboulafia of Teal, and Mark Gunzinger of Mitchell Institute opposed Roper. As recently as Nov, 2020. Plenty of people were out to squash "Digital Trinity", in the Congress too. There was a pic that was circulating on March 15, a (Caesar) salad with about 10 knives.

Barbara Barrett (boss) and Roper started AFWERX in 2017. Goal: align .com with .mil (Roper quote). Today, the budget is small - $11 M, but the number of small businesses participating is absolutely ridiculous. And plenty of small businesses hold patents on extremely important technologies, and, based on interaction with them they are not about/willing to sell them to the big players (AFWERX and many others hold meets - there are about 6 meets a month)(and, c-19 has actually helped, because they are all virtual and the tech (zoom, etc) has improved tremendously)

Roper's mention of NGAD, in Sept 2020, was not about NGAD, but to announce the success of the Digital Trinity to those who were skeptical and opposed to the technology.

The likes of Aboulafia and Gunzinger are unable to imagine what the Digital Trinity offers (they may have changed their tune by now - I do not know). But, at this point in time they are irrelevant. Everyone up and down the acquisition pipeline has seen what Digital Trinity offers and everyone has bought in (Armament at least).

*Anyone* out there can work on a A-G hypersonic airframe (that is a real topic - I am not making it up - and yes, anyone of you can) and submit your proposal. Anyone. That is what Digital Trinity offers and the USAF/AFRL are willing to set you up, including classified data, parts of which you will need to build a model so they are willing to declassify *some* of it.

The Digital Trinity stack is on offer

All this is Roper's work!! It is in his two papers.
He neither ran a program, developed the technology, nor led any lab or research facility.
Absolutely. And, no one claimed that - it is a known situation.

But, he came up with ideas that small businesses and the USAF have bought into: Align .com and .mil.

THAT is what is happening

(Long back the DoD (.mil) lead research. Today Silicon Valley (.com) and the likes lead research. AFRL/NASA/etc do provide leading edge research, but Silicon Valley is FAR ahead in some areas. Small business is commercially oriented, which is what the USAF is taking advantage of. When we send our proposals there is a section which deals with what are our commercial plans - right there in the proposal. USAF is expecting a small business to make more money on the commercial side (which is why the small started up) and taking advantage of the costs)

Roper
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Re: US military, technology, arms, tactics

Post by brar_w »

AFWERX was the brain child of a currently serving acquisition official in the DOD with a non USAF background (but who has spent a few of the last years in the AF). Will Roper was at the right place, at the right time, with the right acquisition authority to pick these initiatives. Many of the acq. authority he used were not his creation. He, like other acquisition officials saw him being empowered, saw what was paying off in terms of service's S&T bets and like I said he highlighted those aspects in his budgets. That's all he did. An acquisition official occupies a bureaucratic post mostly concerned with budgets, Congressional outreach, and reporting. It is not an S&T post irrespective of the technical background of the official leading the organization. You don't micromanage engineering projects or research. You build contracts, lead PM's, report, and prepare budgets.

At the leadership level, the AFWERX was set up under Heather wilson and the work predating it actually goes into the Obama administration. Same for NGAD. The ADT and technology for NGAD was in development, demonstration phase, or some sort of maturity demonstration long before Will Roper even arrived on the scene. In fact it can be traced back to 2015 at the PO level and even earlier as a tech development level at the AF Research lab. The major boost to the program came when the AF pruned one major design team from its advanced tech development on a major project and needed a next gen project to work for the design team to work upon. Digital design tools were involved then, and they are involved now. In fact they were even involved in acquisition programs pre 2015. Some of these teams have even published their work that traces back a number of years. The initial draft solicitations for the ICBM go back to 2016. Vendors were ready and willing to use their newly developed digital tools even back then. Same with several space programs.
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Re: US military, technology, arms, tactics

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Who cares about such details, true as they are (NOT contesting that)?

What counts is what a small business experiences in an interaction with AFWERX. What a small business experiences when filling out a proposal with SIBR. Experience! It is ALWAYS .com aligned with .mil.

Yes, there are LOT of players/actors who have made this possible - it is always the case. Fortunately or unfortunately, Roper is associated with what we have today. There has never been a mention of anyone else - even Barbara Barrett. IT .................... IS .............. always.................. Roper. (Aside, even Steve Trimble @TheDEWLine).

Focus is on .com and .mil, not who did what. That is the equation the USAF believes will reduce costs (for the USAF)(expect the NGAD to be cheap!) AND improve techs. USAF has experienced financial benefits, it is not a topic for discussion.

The "improve techs" is demoed. The cost part is TBD, BUT the .com believes they can deliver. And, if the .com cannot deliver the .mil has mechanism to cut .com out.

Simple.

I would expect a boat load to have contributed to this idea - extremely hard to believe Roper came up with ALL this. BUT, it is attributed to Roper - better or worse.

Roper is the Lewis and Clark.
Last edited by NRao on 26 Mar 2021 07:23, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: US military, technology, arms, tactics

Post by NRao »

BTW, towards the latter part of Roper's stay, he was the point man for the other services. We could send Roper a proposal and let him/secretary know whom that was meant for (USMC, USN, etc) and he would route it to the right person!!!!!

Consider that from a small business point of view and one will get a feel for what Roper means to one who has a proposal.

Rest is all water under the bridge.
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Re: US military, technology, arms, tactics

Post by brar_w »

It does matter because the said official is no longer a GOTUS employee but a private consultant. Many of the approaches he championed were severely impacted by Congressional actions and there are some highly capable folks trying to navigate all this and fix some of the mistakes. It would be helpful if the media spent a time trying to understand those actions and work rather than constantly trying to glorify an acquisition official (and the buzzwords like digital trinity) who had at best a marginal role to play in the development of these technologies, concepts, or plans.
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Re: US military, technology, arms, tactics

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Who has contested that Roper is no longer an "official". He is "no longer a GOTUS employee" - every .com, AFRL, AND USAF knows that.

YET AFRL and USAF personnel use his name!!!!!! Think about it for a second.

Yes, there is no doubt that Congress AND private actors (posted above)(yes, "highly capable" were against Roper - no two ways about it. I have never come across anyone who contests that.

However, look at it from a SB/.com point of view: who knows ANY of this dynamic? There is no .com/start-up company out there interested in ANY of this dynamics. Not one.

Which .com/start-up cares about "Congress"?

No one is contesting (again) that Roper played NO "role to play in the development of these technologies, concepts, or plans". You said "marginal", I am saying "no" role. Roper or anyone else claimed that he played any role in the technologies.

His role is about aligning .com and .mil. Trumpeting that the commercial/private companies have a role to contribute to the USAF.

It is happening

Congress saying anything is irrelevant. Granted they have a say in funds, but that will not matter. Politicians are politicians - votes, not ensuring USAF/AFRL gets what they want.

I did not say this earlier, USAF has brought VC to the table for SB that have good ideas - "ideas", NOT products. I can use a white paper and if they find it usable they HAVE funded it (experience) and brought a VC to the table.

Congress can do whatever they want. This has gone beyond gone funding - which is why I posted that NGAD could be very cheap
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Re: US military, technology, arms, tactics

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Re: US military, technology, arms, tactics

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Re: US military, technology, arms, tactics

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Office of the Secretary of the Air Force @SecAFOfficial wrote: Acting Secretary Roth & Vice Chief of Staff Gen David Allvin just wrapped up a visit to @USAirForce ’s Plant 42 where they met with reps from @LockheedMartin and @NorthropGrumman , as well as toured the B-21 production line. #B21 #Raider
Office of the Secretary of the Air Force @SecAFOfficial wrote: “It is impressive to see that in just three years the B-21 went from a digital design to two test articles on the production line. The Dept of the Air Force appreciates all the hard work & dedication by the joint @USAirForce & @NorthropGrumman team making it happen.” A/SecAF Roth
Office of the Secretary of the Air Force @SecAFOfficial wrote: The B-21 Raider production line is the only active bomber production line in the country. When fielded, the B-21 will be operated by Air Force Global Strike #Airmen based at Dyess, Ellsworth, and Whiteman Air Force Bases.

@AFGlobalStrike
@DyessAFBase
@28thBombWing
@Whiteman_AFB
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Re: US military, technology, arms, tactics

Post by brar_w »

The reference to Lockheed is notable. Lockheed has a major classified program operating out of Palmdale that is likely in production as they are now openly acknowledging its existence. Northrop too would have at least one classified program there besides the B-21. Lots of programs to review under the guise of "visiting the B-21 plant".
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Re: US military, technology, arms, tactics

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NRao wrote:
Office of the Secretary of the Air Force @SecAFOfficial wrote: “It is impressive to see that in just three years the B-21 went from a digital design to two test articles on the production line. The Dept of the Air Force appreciates all the hard work & dedication by the joint @USAirForce & @NorthropGrumman team making it happen.” A/SecAF Roth
Steve Trimble wrote: I don't think it's particularly impressive to have 2 aircraft on the production line 3yrs after completing a digital design.

Will Roper explained in January that the impressive part is that the first 2 aircraft will represent a production configuration, rather than purely test.
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Re: US military, technology, arms, tactics

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Programs aren't a race. They are designed around a set of milestones that are often as much budget profile dependent as they are technical and industrial limitations dependent. If you want to increase recruitment/hiring on a SAP by multiple orders of magnitude and then do so rapidly - the costs add up and it begins to get really hard to do and is often a real limitation. It takes time for suppliers to ramp up and hire in normal times but this is going to be a lot harder in this case for obvious reasons. And you don't want to accelerate design reviews, they are foundational elements. You want to go from a digital design to flying hardware in a 12-18 month process? You do that on a tech demonstrator or prototype (that's what NGAD did). When you are executing a large a acquisition program, you are executing a design + production effort which means that each of your production partner has to hire, ramp up and get certified and the production plan, tooling etc buttoned down for repeatability.

So while, Mr. Trimble with his journalism background might not consider something as impressive in reality what you are essentially talking about is sticking to a "Plan" and milestones on a next generation stealth bomber which is just about the most technically challenge aerospace project one could take up (also the USAF hasn't built a new bomber in a while) these days. So the fact that they seem to be on track despite all the bits and pieces and have multiple aircraft on the line and are going to be rolling out the first aircraft in the next year or so is pretty impressive by any modern (we are talking of the last 15-20 years of A&D work) standards. Northrop has to be a lot more careful on the B-21 here. Their production contract is fixed price which means they are on the hook for overruns in production of the first 21 aircraft. They aren't the size of Boeing or Lockheed, so a huge blowout there could potentially ruin the company (one of the reasons they refused to compete on the T-X or the MQ-25 programs).

One reason why NG seems to be nailing its milestones could well be that they have had a chance to validate their digital models and tools via yet another undisclosed* (but widely known) operational platform which served as a test case for their new approach. Whatever it is, given the technical hurdles encountered on the F-22 and F-35 the B-21 seems to be jumping the milestone hoops on time, on cost and as planned. They aren't building a demonstrator here. They are building a production standard first example, with production tooling and processes that are going to remain the same. They also lost a fair bit of time due to disruption. They lost a full quarter (Boeing's protest) just as they were put on contract and they couldn't even hire during that timeframe. They've been dealing with COVID related disruptions for the last year. So in totality, they seem to be doing really well (though the devil is in the details (which we don't have)).

These first examples will eventually support OT&E (you can't use prototypes/demonstrators or non production representative standards for OT). So not only are you delivering a design, and a first example (or two) you are also delivering a fully stood up, certified, and scalable production plan that can deliver 100+ stealth bombers that need to be at least a generation ahead of the B-2. That's not something you can dial your local contractor and farm out and even your most advanced suppliers don't have that sort of design or production capability/capacity on call. It requires a fairly expensive and time consuming spool up phase before you are ready for prime time production. You can't also hand build a one off demonstrator and try to use that as an OT asset. OT hardware has to be built using production tools and the design has to be a upgradable to rectify any DT discoveries. So they were never running a race to beat a time. They were being deliberating in delivering to a milestone. This is what you do on an acquisition program that has already risk reduced prior to source selection (The LRS-B program took both the Boeing and NG teams through Milestone B ). They didn't need prototyping or risk reduction because they already did that during the 2010 to 2015/16 timespan allowing them to go straight into EMD, final design freeze and production scaling.

*(speculation)

Possible Photo Of Highly Secret RQ-180 Aircraft Surfaces Online


Image
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Re: US military, technology, arms, tactics

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Leaders discuss digital engineering and acquisition, ABMS, more
By K. Houston Waters , 66th Air Base Group Public Affairs / Published March 26, 2021

HANSCOM AIR FORCE BASE, Mass. – Air Force and industry leaders came together to discuss digital engineering and acquisition, the Advanced Battle Management System, improvements in cloud and edge computing, artificial intelligence, and other topics during virtual presentations March 23-25.

The second week of New Horizons 2021, sponsored by AFCEA’s Lexington-Concord chapter, included briefings and panel discussions from Steven Wert, program executive officer, Digital, and Col. Amanda Kato, AF PEO, Nuclear Command, Control and Communications, both headquartered here.

During a PEO Digital panel discussion that featured senior materiel leaders from multiple divisions, Wert provided an update on his $19 billion dollar portfolio. He also detailed business opportunities, shared his thoughts on what makes for an ideal acquisition strategy, and discussed his priorities for 2021.

“Speed, innovation, and technology are major priorities for us,” he said. “We really seek out non-traditional (acquisition) strategies. We want to work with small businesses and start-ups and we want to avoid existential source selections that take years and become a make-or-break for the companies.”

Additional priorities are taking care of people, executing the mission, and using defense-assisted acquisition, he said.

Wert also said that Digital is very interested in leveraging partnerships with the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Rome Laboratory, MassChallenge, Northeastern University, Defense Digital Service, and the Defense Innovation Unit.

Over the last decade, PEO Digital has dramatically increased its reliance on small business. In 2012, just three percent of its contracts were with small businesses. That number is now at 24 percent in 2021.

“My notion of an ideal acquisition strategy is to include a large domain expert, a small business or two, and maybe a start-up or two,” he said. “Now, I don’t know if we have a single effort that fits exactly that, but Kessel Run may be close. So that to me is the definition of a healthy acquisition strategy, at least in my mind.”

New to this year's New Horizons were 'Fireside Chats,' where PEOs are able to connect directly with their stakeholders. Maj. Gen. Angela Cadwell, director, Cyberspace Operations, North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command, discussed opportunities relating to homeland defense. Of particular note was Pathfinder, a NORAD/USNORTHCOM program supported by PEO Digital that unites independent systems across air, land, sea, space, and cyber domains, creating a fused operational platform.

"Since homeland defense is a no-fail mission, we embarked on this prototype effort called Pathfinder, which is a data ecosystem that exploits machine learning to fuse disparate data sets to automate detection and characterization of threats against North America using pattern analysis," she said. "This gives our commanders the right information at the right time, instant and from the front lines. To accomplish this, we had to accelerate change and leverage promising technologies that were available."

ABMS was an important topic discussed frequently among panelists at this year’s New Horizons. Wert believes that effort requires program managers across the board, not just those starting something new, to adopt some core principles that will enable DOD to achieve Joint All-Domain Command and Control.

“We just need to start getting after it,” he said. “We need to follow design patterns that enable JADC2. That is, better instrumenting our systems and our software to expose data for many purposes; then to build systems to consume data from many sources to be more effective; [and] to leverage agile software development to enable machine-to-machine connections, as we are already doing in many cases.”

During a brief on NC3, Kato provided details on her $14 billion portfolio, discussed the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center organizational structure, and overviewed business opportunities.

During last week’s sessions, keynote speaker Adm. Chas Richard, commander, U.S. Strategic Command, discussed the importance of artificial intelligence and machine learning to the concept of strategic deterrence, and Maj. Gen. Mike Schmidt, PEO, Command, Control, Communications, Intelligence, and Networks, headquartered here, provided an overview of his portfolio and program updates.

New Horizons also featured an innovation panel titled “Accelerating Change Across the Services,” which included discussions by members of the 75th Innovation Command’s Cyber Electromagnetic Activities Team, AFWERX, NavalX, Google Cloud Computing Services, and the Silicon Valley Defense Group.

The conference kicked off last week with a panel composed of former Air Force Electronic Systems Division and Center commanders, all of whom had been stationed at Hanscom.
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