24 July 2013 naval-technology.com

The US Navy has received the first upgraded MQ-8C Fire Scout unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) from Northrop Grumman, in preparation for ground and flight testing.

The UAV will initially undergo ground testing to demonstrate its ability to communicate with the ground control station, followed by flight trials to validate its technology.

Northrop Grumman medium-range tactical systems vice-president George Vardoulakis said the upgraded Fire Scout UAV will undergo ground and flight testing to meet the US Navy's urgent requirement for maritime intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

"Testing on the naval air systems command test range provides us with extended air space to conduct and demonstrate long endurance and systems testing in a maritime environment," Vardoulakis said.

"The endurance upgrade doubles the time on station of the MQ-8 system, and will help reduce the workload for the ship's crew by cutting the number of times the crew will need to be in flight quarters."

The upgraded MQ-8 system features a modified commercially available airframe to provide enhanced range, more than double the endurance and three times the payload capacity when compared to the MQ-8B variant.

Currently in service onboard the US Navy aircraft carriers, the MQ-8B is also used in Afghanistan to provide intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities to maritime and ground commanders.

The new MQ-8C Fire Scout is capable of vertical take off and landing, and provides the navy with extended range, payload and cargo hauling capabilities.

The MQ-8C UAV's first operational deployment with the US Navy is scheduled in 2014.

25/07/2013 Par LEXPRESS.fr

La Chambre des représentants américaine vient de rejetter l'amendement Amash qui visait à restreindre le budget et la portée du programme de surveillance de la NSA.

La Chambre des représentants américaine a rejeté d'une courte majorité mercredi un amendement qui visait à mettre un terme au financement du programme de surveillance de la NSA aboutissant à la collecte de données téléphoniques de millions d'Américains. 

217 voix contre, 205 pour

Cet amendement, déposé après la révélation par Edward Snowden de l'ampleur des programmes de surveillance de l'Agence de sécurité nationale, était soutenu par une coalition hétéroclite d'élus allant des très conservateurs membres du mouvement Tea Party aux démocrates les plus à gauche. Il a été rejeté par 217 voix contre et 205 pour. 

L'ex-consultant américain, toujours en transit dans la zone internationale de l'aéroport de Moscou, avait notamment révélé début juin que la NSA collectait au nom de la lutte antiterroriste les métadonnées (numéro appelé, durée de l'appel) de communications de millions d'Américains avec l'autorisation d'une cour secrète. 

Ne surveiller que les personnes visées par une enquête judiciaire

Le texte rejeté mercredi avait été déposé par un jeune élu républicain du Michigan (nord), Justin Amash. "Le gouvernement collecte des données téléphoniques, sans que personne ne s'en doute, de tous les Américains aux Etats-Unis", a-t-il lancé au cours de débats tendus, peu avant le vote. Son objectif, a-t-il argué, était de faire en sorte que cette surveillance ne s'applique qu'aux Américains visés par une enquête spécifique. 

Le démocrate Jim Moran, qui a voté en faveur de l'amendement Amash, a jugé sur Twitter qu'il "n'était pas parfait, mais qu'il montrait clairement que la NSA avait besoin d'être réformée pour protéger l'intimité des Américains". 

Cet amendement était inclus dans un vaste projet de loi sur le budget du département de la Défense, actuellement à l'étude à la Chambre.

19/07/2013 Par Sofiane Frendi

Aux Etats-Unis le nombre d'attaques contre les institutions bancaires a connu un bond de 42% en 2012. Pour faire face, les autorités américaines multiplient les efforts pour les mettre à l'abri.

Aujourd’hui, une cinquantaine de grandes institutions financières et bancaires américaines se livrent à un exercice de simulation de cyberattaques contre leurs réseaux informatiques.  Dénommé "Quantum Dawn 2", en français "l’aube du quantum 2", cet exercice a pour but de préparer les grandes institutions américaines à répondre efficacement à une cyberattaque. 

Les programmes de la deuxième édition sont conçus par Cyber stratégies, une société  duVermont spécialisée dans la cyber-sécurité. Les services secrets américains font partie de ces exercices. Notons la présence du FBI, le département de la sécurité du territoire sans oublier la participation de l’autorité fédérale des marchés financiers (SEC) et le Trésor.

La nouveauté cette année, c’est le nombre de participants à cette manifestation : 20 institutions bancaires de plus par rapport à Novembre 2011. Ajoutant à cela, le scénario d’attaque est différent de celui de la première édition. Cette année, les employés sont soumis à des exercices de réflexion, de coordination et de prise de décisions.Les employés seront amenés à travailler en commun si leurs communications sont perturbées, et si les informations qu’ils disposent sont difficiles à vérifier.

L’association américaine des marchés financiers (SIFMA) prévoit une cyberattaque contre le Wall Street sans donner plus de précisions sur le scénario d’intrusion.  Sur ce point, Karl Schimmeck, ancien officier du corps de marines et actuellement employé par la SFMA, déclare que « Nous allons tester notre capacité à réagir, voir là où nous partageons bien les informations et là où nous avons une bonne connaissance de la situation ».

12 juillet 2013 La Presse Canadienne

On apprend donc que le ministère de la Défense nationale n'a pas utilisé, en fait, des milliards de dollars qui lui étaient alloués durant la dernière année budgétaire.

Ottawa, Ontario - Des chiffres récents du Directeur parlementaire du budget démontrent une tendance que des critiques décrivent comme une façon furtive de réduire le déficit.

On apprend donc que le ministère de la Défense nationale n'a pas utilisé, en fait, des milliards de dollars qui lui étaient alloués durant la dernière année budgétaire.

L'examen trimestriel des dépenses du gouvernement fédéral démontre qu'au terme de la dernière année fiscale, le ministère a dépensé 2,3 milliards de moins que ce qui lui était alloué. Cela représente plus de 10 pour cent du budget annuel de la défense, qui s'avère aussi le plus important poste «discrétionnaire».

Les chiffres révèlent un montant total de 9,6 milliards non dépensés depuis l'année budgétaire 2006-2007, un phénomène attribuable à une bureaucratie insuffisante et au retard des projets d'achat d'équipement, selon le ministère de la Défense.

Certaines de ces sommes, pour la plupart destinées à l'achat d'équipement, peuvent être déplacées sur d'autres budgets. Cependant, la longévité du phénomène fait douter des analystes et des critiques que cela soit délibéré de la part du gouvernement.

Dave Perry, de l'université de Carleton et de la Conférence des associations de la défense, affirme que c'est simplement une question de procédures et qu'un gouvernement désireux de mettre fin à l'inefficacité aurait déjà résolu le problème.

July 11, 2013 Source: Lockheed Martin

F-35 Pilot Cadre Grows To 100 As Training Ramps Up At Eglin Air Force Base

EGLIN AIR FORCE BASE, Fla.--- Maj. Robert Miller became the 100th pilot to fly the Lockheed Martin (LMT) F-35 Lightning II when he took to the skies above Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., for a training flight on July 9.

Miller's 90-minute familiarization flight included normal operations for aircraft handling and landings in an F-35A fighter. The flight followed academic and simulator instruction at Eglin Air Force Base's Integrated Training Center, which provides pilot and maintainer training for the three F-35 variants.

"It was great to get airborne today. The jet handles well and is very easy to fly. I'm looking forward to testing the combat capabilities of the F-35 over the next few years at Edwards," said Miller.

Miller, currently assigned to the 31st Test and Evaluation Squadron at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., has spent 11 years in the Air Force and has flown more than 1,300 hours in the F-16, including 369 combat hours. He joins an experienced cadre of F-35 pilots among the U.S. Air Force, Marine Corps, Navy, the United Kingdom and industry.

"Maj. Miller is representative of the highly-trained pilots populating the F-35 community," said Col. Todd Canterbury, commander of Eglin's 33d Fighter Wing. "This milestone is significant because it shows the program is maturing rapidly and highlights the successful implementation of a world-class training program and development of the F-35 Lightning II for the combat air forces. We are excited to have produced the 100th F-35 Lightning II pilot."

The joint service partners at Eglin Air Force Base have flown 2,292 F-35 hours and have 28 aircraft assigned, representing the largest fleet of F-35s in the world. Approximately 100 pilots and 2,200 maintainers will be qualified annually through the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II Training System at the base to support initial operational capability targets. The Lockheed Martin training system is also operational at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, Ariz.

The F-35 Lightning II is a 5th generation fighter, combining advanced stealth with fighter speed and agility, fully fused sensor information, network-enabled operations and advanced sustainment. Three distinct variants of the F-35 will replace the A-10 and F-16 for the U.S. Air Force, the F/A-18 for the U.S. Navy, the F/A-18 and AV-8B Harrier for the U.S. Marine Corps, and a variety of fighters for at least 10 other countries.

Headquartered in Bethesda, Md., Lockheed Martin is a global security and aerospace company that employs about 118,000 people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture, integration, and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products, and services. The Corporation's net sales for 2012 were $47.2 billion.

July 11, 2013 Source: International Relations And Security Network

For months it has been an entertaining parlor game in the nation’s capital: guessing what will happen next with U.S. Cyber Command, the military organization designed to defend the country’s networks and attack its adversaries. The topic will increasingly be in the spotlight as the head of that command, General Keith Alexander, is also the director of the National Security Agency, which is beset by revelations of cyber snooping—possibly a damaging link if the crisis does not blow over.

Cyber Command is only a few years old, but the history of its predecessors helps give clues to what is to come. For fifteen years, the military has tried to integrate or “normalize” cyber, but the meaning of normal and how to achieve that has shifted several times.

The U.S. military began to organize around cyber and information warfare just after the first Gulf War of 1991. The Air Force Information Warfare Center was launched in 1993 and the other services followed soon after. Offense and defense operations were combined in the operational 609th Information Warfare Squadron in 1995. These units, however, were all single-service and generally could not direct cyber defenses, only making suggestions with little Pentagon control.

To “normalize” cyber, in 1998 the Pentagon created the real predecessor to U.S. Cyber Command, the twenty-four-person Joint Task Force–Computer Network Defense (JTF-CND) to be in charge. Two years after it was stood up, the unit was given responsibilities for offense as well as defense, as one of the perceived lessons of the past was that the same commander should handle both.

However, this lesson proved to be transient, as offense and defense were split apart in 2004, with the National Security Agency getting the offensive mission and the Defense Information Systems Agency getting defense, since it seemed more “normal” to have the main military IT organization also defend all the IT. But that solution itself only lasted a few years, when to be more “normal” the missions were recombined into the new U.S. Cyber Command, whose commander was also the director of the NSA. Since NSA had so much cyber capability, it seemed natural to have the same four-star officer run both cyber and signals intelligence; the revelations of cyber spying might just break that connection if it appears having cyber warfighting responsibilities distracted General Alexander from his NSA job.

This history helps inform the debate about what should happen next with U.S. Cyber Command. There are a few leading options:

Splitting NSA and Cyber Command: This had already been a leading option, even before the recent leaks. General Alexander had planned to retire in early 2014, but it is possible he won’t last that long, now that President Obama has had to publicly discuss programs that the General’s organization was supposed to keep secret. This option of splitting the command is probably the most likely, as the president would understandably want a director of NSA able to work it as a full-time job, rather than sharing time with the sexier offensive missions of Cyber Command.

This division of roles would return to the command relationship of 2004, with a three-star NSA director from intelligence reporting and a four-star general from a more traditional warfighting background.

Combatant Command: Cyberspace may be so different from the other domains of air, land, sea and space that it makes little sense for U.S. Cyber Command to be subordinate as a subunified command to U.S. Strategic Command. Cyberspace and operations there transcend geographic regions, domains and the normal spectrum of conflict. Thus, an elevation to its own unified command is justified. This option makes sense if cyber is indeed important but unlikely to be a truly new domain.

In one sense, this is just the next step of a natural progression since 1998 of ever-larger commands with higher-ranking generals in charge. But proponents of creating a new command should be wary of the precedent set by U.S. Space Command. Created in 1985 when space was the domain of the future, it only lasted until 2002, since it turns out that space isn’t all that different or critical. In the rush to claim that the domain was different, the space community potentially overreached and their command is mostly forgotten today. Yet this remains a likely path for cyber.

Special Operations: Another argument is that cyber is so special it can’t ever be normal. After all, the geeks who dominate cyber often don’t excel in (or necessarily even need) traditional soldiering discipline, fitness or skills. In this option, U.S. Cyber Command should not belong to U.S. Strategic Command but rather should be under U.S. Special Operations Command. This option makes sense if cyber conflicts in the future are predominantly shadowy irregular conflicts and the Pentagon wants to emphasize this aspect above all others.

Even though the covert actions and proxy/irregular cyber conflicts are indeed increasingly prevalent, the special-operations model ignores the bulk of what happens in cyberspace, the day-to-day grunt work of cyber defense and network management. This does not require any particularly special expertise, just patience and attention to detail over time, which is one reason why this is not a likely option.

New Cyber Service: If cyber truly is important and a new domain of warfighting, then perhaps the most normal option is not to elevate or reassign a command but create an entirely new service. After all, the land, sea and air domains each have a respective service. This new Department of Cyberspace would then parcel cyber forces to the combatant commands and provide common cyber services to all, especially for technologies like long-haul networks.

This is the least likely option as it is too bold and not necessarily warranted by the current circumstances. The space domain again provides the example: there are consistent and periodic calls for it to have a separate service, yet the military seems fine without a space command, much less a separate service. Moreover, with the problems faced by NSA, there may be retrenchment as the Washington takes a less aggressive posture.

Status Quo: It is entirely reasonable if the national military leadership decides to keep the present arrangements. But with NSA in such trouble, this is increasingly unlikely.

The final decision may depend on the personalities of the generals and admirals available for command, the legacy of General Alexander, and above all, cost. Regardless of which is the smarter option in the long term, the overwhelming pressure of operating during the sequester suggests that the cheapest options—the status quo or splitting NSA and Cyber Command—are the most likely.

Cheap has another advantage: cheap is simple. Each redrawing of command lines has meant more distraction from actually solving the underlying cyber problems, which have been remained similar for decades.

Regardless of the final decision on U.S. Cyber Command, it will only be one more step—and by no means the last—as the U.S. military seeks to keep pace with conflict in cyberspace.

July 11, 2013 Source: U.S Department of Defense

Pentagon Contract Announcement

Navmar Applied Sciences, Warminster, Pa., is being awarded an $11,207,449 modification to a previously awarded cost-plus-fixed-fee, firm-fixed-price contract (N68335-12-C-0353) to exercise an option for the procurement of hardware in support of the persistent surveillance unmanned aerial system (PSUAS) for the U.S. Army.

This effort includes the procurement of 15 additional Tiger Shark PSUAS air vehicles and 15 i200 turrets, which will be integrated into the PSUAS.

Work will be performed in Fairfax, Va. (68 percent); Afghanistan (28 percent); and Raleigh, N.C. (4 percent), and is expected to be completed in January 2014. Fiscal 2012 Other Procurement, Army contract funds in the amount of $11,207,449 will be obligated at time of award, none of which will expire at the end of the current fiscal year.

The Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division, Lakehurst, N.J., is the contracting activity

July 12, 2013: Strategy Page

The U.S. Navy has asked missile manufacturers to quickly design and build them a target drone that will simulate sub-sonic Chinese anti-ship missiles. Previously the U.S. Navy had spent a lot of effort developing and building similar drones to simulate super-sonic anti-ship missiles. Apparently someone did the math and realized that the most likely near-term opponents (China, North Korea or Iran) all had a lot of Chinese sub-sonic missiles.  China sells a lot of these C-801 and C-802 anti-ship missiles. The C-801 is 5.81 meters (18 feet) long, 360mm in diameter, has a max range of 42 kilometers and weighs 636 kg (1,400 pounds) each. The C-801 is similar to the French Exocet, and is believed to have been based on that missile. An improved C0801 is the C802A which is a 6.8m (21 foot) long, 360mm diameter, 682kg (1,500 pound) missile, with a 165kg (360 pound) warhead. The C802 has a max range of 120 kilometers, and moves along at about 250 meters a second.

The French Exocet missile is the same size and performance of the Chinese missiles, but costs twice as much (over a million dollars each, but the manufacturer is known to be flexible on pricing.) The new Exocet MM Block 3 has greater range (180 kilometers) because of their turbojet engine. Exocet is a 670 kg (1,500 pound) missile that has been around for over three decades, has been proven in combat and is known to be reliable. The C802 is known to be less capable than the Exocet, but it looks similar and the Chinese continue to improve their Exocet clones.

The U.S. Navy asked for someone to build a sub-sonic reusable target drone that has a top speed of about 900 kilometers an hour, comes in about a meter above the water, can maneuver (pull 8 Gs) and have a max range of 700 kilometers. The target drone must float, last about for about 20 flights and cost less than $200,000. This missile would carry electronics to enable it to be maneuvered by a remote operator and monitor jamming efforts and all sorts of flight information.

The navy hopes to repeat an earlier success Three years ago, after nearly a decade of development effort, the U.S. Navy put its high-speed anti-ship missile simulator into service. This was the GQM-163A Coyote SSST (Supersonic Sea-Skimming Target), which  is a 31 foot long, 800 kg (1700 pound) missile with a combination solid fuel rocket and ramjet propulsion. It has a range of 110 kilometers and, because of the ramjet, a top speed of over 2,600 kilometers an hour. The Coyote is meant to give U.S. warships a realistic simulation of an attack by similar Russian cruise missiles (like the Klub.) At least 39 GQM-163As are to be built, at a cost of $515,000 each. The GQM-163A is the first U.S. missile to successfully use ramjet engines, and this technology can be now used in other missiles.

Coyote came to be in response to more countries arming themselves with high speed anti-ship missiles. In particular, there is fear that the Russian 3M54 (also known as the SS-N-27, Sizzler or Klub) anti-ship missiles used on Chinese subs, are unstoppable. But maybe not. India, (another major customer for the Klub) has feuded with the Russians over repeated failures of the Klub during six test firings three years ago. The missiles were fired off the Russian coast, using an Indian Kilo class submarines, INS Sindhuvijay. That boat went to Russia in 2006 for upgrades. India refused to pay for the upgrades, or take back the sub, until Russia fixed the problems with the missiles (which it eventually did).

Weighing two tons, and fired from a 533mm (21 inch) torpedo tube on a Kilo class sub, the 3M54 has a 200 kg (440 pound) warhead. The anti-ship version has a range of 300 kilometers, but speeds up to 3,000 kilometers an hour during its last minute or so of flight. There is also an air launched and ship launched version. A land attack version does away with the high speed final approach feature, and has an 880 pound warhead. What makes the 3M54 particularly dangerous is its final approach, which begins when the missile is about 15 kilometers from its target. Up to that point, the missile travels at an altitude of about a hundred feet. This makes the missile more difficult to detect. The high speed approach means that it covers that last fifteen kilometers in less than twenty seconds. This makes it difficult for current anti-missile weapons to take it down.

The 3M54 is similar to earlier, Cold War era Russian anti-ship missiles, like the 3M80 ("Sunburn"), which has a larger warhead (300 kg/660 pounds) and shorter range (120 kilometers.) The 3M80 was still in development at the end of the Cold War, and was finally put into service about a decade ago. Even older is the P700 ("Shipwreck"), with a 550 kilometers range and 750 kg (1,650 pound) warhead. This missile entered service in the 1980s.

These missiles are considered "carrier killers," but it's not known how many of them would have to hit a carrier to knock it out of action, much less sink it. Moreover, Russian missiles have little combat experience, and a reputation for erratic performance. Quality control was never a Soviet strength, but the Russians are getting better, at least in the civilian sector. The military manufacturers appear to have been slower to adapt.

It is feared that the navy has no defense against missile like Klub. Or, it may have developed defenses, but does not want to let potential enemies know how those defenses work (lest the enemy develop ways to get around those defenses.)

Jul 12, 2013 ASDNews Source : Lockheed Martin Corporation

Lockheed Martin [NYSE: LMT] recently completed a series of Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) captive carry flight tests at the Sea Range in Point Mugu, Calif., advancing the research program toward its first missile release and free flight test later this year.

The captive carry missions were flown aboard a U.S. Air Force B-1B from the 337th Test and Evaluation Squadron at Dyess Air Force Base, Texas. The primary mission objectives were to collect telemetry for post-flight analysis, verify proper control room telemetry displays and simulate all the test activities that will occur in later air-launched flight tests. All test objectives were met.

“Collecting telemetry data while flying in the B-1B bomb bay significantly reduces risk ahead of the first launch,” said Mike Fleming, LRASM air launch program manager at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control. “Initial assessments indicate the missile performed as expected.”

The LRASM program is in development with the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) and the Office of Naval Research. After a competition in 2009, Lockheed Martin’s LRASM was selected to demonstrate air- and surface-launched capability to defeat emerging sea-based threats at significant standoff ranges.

LRASM is an autonomous, precision-guided anti-ship standoff missile leveraging the successful Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile Extended Range (JASSM-ER) heritage, and is designed to meet the needs of U.S. Navy and Air Force warfighters in a robust anti-access/area-denial threat environment.

Armed with a proven 1,000-lb. penetrator and blast-fragmentation warhead, LRASM employs a multi-mode sensor, weapon data link and an enhanced digital anti-jam Global Positioning System to detect and destroy specific targets within a group of ships.

July 10, 2013 Source: US Department of Defense

WASHINGTON --- Leaps forward in simulation technology and cloud computing are making it possible for challengers from around the world to compete for support from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to create robots that can help people during natural and other kinds of disasters.

During a recent media roundtable, Dr. Gill Pratt, DARPA program manager, and Dr. Brian Gerkey, chief executive officer for the Open Source Robotics Foundation, told reporters about the ongoing DARPA Robotics Challenge, which launched in October 2012 and will end after the final event in December 2014.

The Open Source Robotics Foundation is an independent nonprofit organization in Mountain View, Calif., founded by members of the global robotics community to support open-source software development and distribution for robotics research, education and product development.

“DARPA is focused on the defense mission for DOD,” Pratt said. “Our primary reason for [creating the robotics challenge] is about the security of our citizens in situations of natural and manmade disasters. [But] the technology DARPA develops often finds its way into all sorts of other parts of life.”

The Internet is the best example, he observed, adding, “I expect that the robots we develop will be used very soon, at least in some form, … within people’s homes,” possibly as helpers for aging populations in nations like the United States and Japan.

The goal of DARPA’s Robotics Challenge, or DRC, is to generate groundbreaking research and development in hardware and software, according to the DRC website, helping future robots perform the most hazardous jobs in disaster-response operations, along with human supervisors, to reduce casualties and save lives.

Pratt calls this a way to make societies worldwide more resilient to natural and other disasters.

“We believe it’s important to develop robots that can go into areas that are too dangerous for people and that can be supervised by human beings despite the fact that communications might be quite difficult [during a disaster] both between human beings and between people and robots,” he added.

Through the DRC project, DARPA is helping create robots with three basic features. The first is that the robots should be compatible with environments engineered for people, Pratt said.

“That’s true even if those environments have been degraded. This gives the robots a certain size [and] it says exactly what their capabilities must be in order to interface for instance with doors and stairs and other things that human beings have engineered into the environment,” the DARPA program manager said.

The second feature is that the robots have to be able to use tools that were designed for people.

“This ranges all the way from a screwdriver to a fire truck,” he added, “so you’ll see in the different parts of the DARPA challenge that we are testing the ability of these machines to do that.”

Third is that the robots must be able to be supervised by people who aren’t necessarily trained to operate robots.

“Typically in a disaster there’s no time for training [and] there’s no time to acquire specialized tools. You have to use what you have on hand,” Pratt explained.

“If you want the robot to respond immediately,” he added, “the important thing is for the interface between that person and the robot to be intuitive to the people on the disaster response team who have the most expertise about what needs to be done … not the people who designed the machine.”

Overriding all the robot technology, though, is an assumption that communications between people -- and between people and the robot -- will be degraded by the effects of the disaster on infrastructure, Pratt said.

“So in the challenge itself,” he explained, “we will purposefully lower the bandwidth -- the number of bits per second -- that can go between the robot and the supervisors, and we will also increase the latency -- the amount of time delay -- in the communication between the people and the robots.”

The DRC has two kinds of events -- one for teams whose focus is software alone and that don’t have their own robots, and one for teams whose focus is both hardware and software and therefore have their own robots.

The first event, whose seven winners were announced June 27, was a software competition among 26 teams from eight countries.

The teams competed against each other using a virtual robot called Atlas inside the DARPA Robotics Challenge Simulator, an open-source tool created for DARPA by the Open Source Robotics Foundation.

A company called Boston Dynamics is using DARPA funding to build real Atlas robots that the winning teams have been awarded to use in upcoming DARPA challenges.

“Our reason for having this virtual challenge is that we wanted to open the contest to teams that were strong not just in building hardware for robots and programming them with software,” Pratt said, “but for a wider variety of teams, including those who had little expertise or experience with robot hardware.”

Pratt said work done by the Open Source Robotics Foundation with DARPA funding had advanced the simulation technology enough that the simulator could run in real time and a person could interact with the simulation to supervise the virtual robots.

The Foundation’s approach to simulation is to do the best possible job of reproducing the way physics works in the world inside a computer, Gerkey said.

Thanks to the increase in performance that allows the simulation to run in real time and the increased computational power available through advances in cloud computing resources, the seven teams who won the DARPA virtual challenge should be able to take the software they designed for the DARPA simulation and run it on the real Atlas robots.

“Our goal,” Gerkey said, “is always to have the simulator behave as close as possible to the physical system … so it should be the case that teams who … are awarded an Atlas robot from Boston Dynamics should be able to take the software that they develop for simulation and run it almost unchanged on the physical robot.”

He added, “That will actually be the test of how well we’ve done here in terms of building a simulation as a stand-in for the physical robot.”

All of what DARPA and the Open Source Robotics Foundation are building is open source, Gerkey noted, “so anyone in the world can do anything they want with this software.”

The next DRC live competition will be held in December 2013.

July 10, 2013 Source: ITT Exelis

ITT Exelis Teams With SAIC To Counter Future Radar Threats

CLIFTON, N.J. --- ITT Exelis has been selected by Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) to provide engineering support for the Adaptive Radar Countermeasures (ARC) program. The five-year contract could be worth $15.6 million if all options are exercised.

Administered by DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), the ARC program will enable U.S. airborne electronic warfare (EW) systems to detect and counter digitally programmable radar systems whose waveforms and behaviors are new, unknown or ambiguous.

“With radio frequency threats evolving, we need a capability that will anticipate and meet these threats as they emerge,” said Joe Rambala, vice president and general manager of the Exelis integrated electronic warfare systems business. “SAIC and Exelis are teaming to ensure our warfighters can perform their missions safely and securely.”

The ARC program consists of two major elements: the SAIC-led development of new processing techniques and algorithms in a software environment and the Exelis-managed implementation of these techniques with a prototype module within a target system. This process may lead to a new, adaptive EW protection system for airborne platforms within the next five years.

“We look forward to producing a comprehensive ARC solution that will potentially mitigate future advanced radio frequency threats to airborne platforms,” said John Fratamico, SAIC senior vice president and group general manager. “This technology represents the future of electronic warfare systems.”

Exelis is a diversified, top-tier global aerospace, defense, information and technical services company. Headquartered in McLean, Va., the company employs about 19,900 people and generated 2012 sales of $5.5 billion.

11 July 2013 naval-technology.com

The US Navy's Lockheed Martin-built 155mm long-range, land-attack projectile (LRLAP) has successfully completed four engineering verification flight trials at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, US.

Conducted as part of the US Navy's system design and development programme, the testing involved four rocket-assisted guided projectiles being launched and successfully destroying various hard and soft targets located 45nm away.

Engineers collected data and assessed warhead performance, which also provided the opportunity for the US Navy to develop new employment scenarios.

Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control LRLAP programme manager Richard Benton said the LRLAP would greatly enhance the US Navy's ability to respond to fire support requests by deployed troops onshore.

"These tests bring us closer to completing the 35 tests required by the US Navy to demonstrate the maturity and performance of the system," Benton said.

Designed to provide precision offshore fire support from a safe standoff distance to US Marine Corps, army and coalition forces, the LRLAP supports expeditionary assaults or urban operations in coastal cities with minimal collateral damage.

Expected to achieve initial operational capability in 2016, the LRLAP will also be deployed onboard the US Navy's DDG 1000 Zumwalt-class guided missile vessels.

Each of the DDG 1000's two advanced gun systems (AGS) can fire more than ten LRLAP rounds in a minute to support land-attack operations, while providing three times more effective than traditional 5in naval ballistic rounds at a lower cost.

The accurate and longest-range system features a GPS-based guidance system and a unitary warhead with an adjustable height-of-burst or point-detonation fuse and will serve as an affordable, ship-launched alternative to currently used missiles for expeditionary forces.