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17 June 21. USAF attempts to awaken spectrum ops after decades of waning electromagnetic warfare. The Air Force has taken a number of steps to improve its electromagnetic spectrum posture — from reorganizing offices to relying more on adaptable technologies. U.S. Air Force electromagnetic spectrum operations were so meager over the last few decades that the service’s top official said recently that it had been “asleep at the wheel” on electronic warfare.
Among the steps to turn around 30 years of decline and to modernize platforms that date to the Vietnam War, the Air Force reorganized how it manages such operations and is prioritizing easier-to-update technology to keep ahead of China, Russia and other highly adept nations.
At the same time, details about the Air Force plan are limited because the service has not publicly shared the electromagnetic spectrum superiority strategy it completed this spring. Lawmakers have called on the service to increase its efforts.
The Army, by contrast, has broadly discussed its plans in recent years to address how far it fell behind competitors, openly outlining a near complete overhaul of spectrum operations — from new systems to new personnel and units. But the Air Force does not provide top-line numbers for its spending on electromagnetic spectrum efforts.
The new strategy comes as nations have noted the opportunity to disrupt U.S. forces through the spectrum, adopting high-tech methods to block access and jam or spoof communications. They use advanced radars to detect U.S. assets from great distances to prevent sneak attacks, and the American military’s chances for success diminish when it can’t communicate reliably with friendly forces over electromagnetic waves or locate targets because munitions or other systems are jammed.
Now, software-defined systems, which drive electronic maneuvers that could save money over munitions, are a large part of the Air Force’s answer to these challenges.
As Chief of Staff Gen. Charles “C.Q.” Brown put it earlier this year: “In some aspects, an electron is much cheaper than a very expensive missile.” By adopting new capabilities with simple software upgrades, the Air Force could stay abreast with the latest technology to ferret out enemies through their spectrum activities and better shield communications, navigation and data transfers across the waves.
Col. William Young, spectrum warfare special adviser at the Air Force, cited software-defined radios as one adaptable technology example, calling them “the equivalent of a Swiss Army knife.”
“You can think of all the different activities that you can conduct in and through the electromagnetic spectrum — communications, sensing, jamming … you can make it do different things or the equivalent of a different blade just by changing the software,” he said in April at the C4ISRNET Conference.
Getting organized
Despite the lack of specifics on the Air Force spectrum plan, the service’s actions over the past few years and senior leaders’ comments help build a picture of a new course. The Air Force adopted three non-materiel conclusions from its 2018 spectrum superiority study:
- Establish an EMS superiority directorate in Air Force headquarters for more unified oversight.
- Consolidate EMS services and software programming into one organization to improve results.
- Create servicewide education programs to develop an EMS “warrior ethos” and incorporate EMS into more exercises to raise the concept’s profile.
Service officials have said getting the right leadership and organizational structures in place was the needed foundation to build on.
“What we looked at is that there were no shortage of previous studies that had identified materiel gaps,” Young said. “What we found was lacking [were] those other three things; we weren’t able to build sustainable momentum. We might buy something, but then if you don’t fix all the other structures around it, then you’re unable to continue to progress that initial investment or that capability that you bought so that it actually is able to reap the large return on investment that the technology initially promised.”
The new spectrum superiority directorate, located within the A5 strategy section of the staff, takes a day-to-day look at electronic warfare and electromagnetic strategy. And the Air Force elevated its Spectrum Management Office to headquarters level within the A2/6 intelligence and cyber section. The office defends and ensures access to the spectrum for the Air Force and other combatant commands.
The organizational changes already “paid some huge dividends,” Col. Kenneth Miller, the Spectrum Management Office commander, told C4ISRNET. Adding the office to the Air Staff “puts us on par with our service peers in the Army and Navy-Marine Corps,” he said, noting that his office is located with his counterparts in those services to help connect their efforts.
The office has graduated from simply assigning systems spectrum frequencies to supporting forces on spectrum activities that help with electronic warfare. While the office is not directly tied to materiel needs and purchasing, adding it to the Air Staff helps leaders share spectrum expertise with the acquisition community.
Beyond the headquarters shifts, the Air Force in 2019 created its first information warfare unit, 16th Air Force, the operational focal point for electronic warfare, and a Spectrum Warfare Wing will activate around June.
Increasingly, many people within and outside the DoD view electromagnetic spectrum capabilities as one piece of the larger information environment.
“One of the things we’re trying to emphasize more and more is in addition to any of the challenges that we have noted directly with things like EMSO [electromagnetic spectrum operations] is the overlapping and interrelationship with the broader information environment,” said Joseph Kirschbaum, director in the Government Accountability Office’s Defense Capabilities and Management team.
The creation of 16th Air Force to integrate various capabilities was encouraging, he said. “That’s a very good sign that they’re starting to think about these things holistically.”
Investing in new systems
Organizational moves alone aren’t enough, the service’s chief of staff has noted. As the Air Force modernizes older systems, Brown has lauded software-defined capabilities to adapt to rapidly changing threats and possibly save money.
“We’ve got to think about the cost curve” when weighing kinetic and nonkinetic maneuvers, Brown said earlier this year.
Brig. Gen. Mike Manion, director of Air Force EMS, said the service can’t retrofit all its systems but has a “significant effort underway” to update many platforms. “Especially if it’s going to be a software-defined fight as we think it is, then we need the infrastructure and the human capital in place that can rapidly reprogram to counter those threats.”
One example is the EC-130H Compass Call, the Air Force’s only dedicated electronic attack aircraft. The service is modernizing the system to a version called EC-37, transitioning the platform from a C-130 to a Gulfstream 550.
“It’s going to be software defined, hardware dynamic, and it’s capabilities are going to leverage off the rapid reprogramming of the spectrum warfare win,” Manion said.
The Air Force needs revolutionary tactics to create “multiple dilemmas for the enemy using multiple planes and multiple apertures to coherently disrupt and defeat the enemy,” he said.
Some outside experts warned the Air Force is not moving fast enough.
“The Air Force is evolving its EW [electronic warfare] and EMSO capabilities to a more distributed set of platforms and systems, but not very quickly. While the Marine Corps and to a lesser degree the Army are fielding more numerous EW systems and pushing them down to lower echelons, the Air Force still will mostly have its EW systems hosted on large, manned multimission platforms,” said Bryan Clark, director of the Center for Defense Concepts and Technology at the Hudson Institute. The approach increases pilots’ risk of detection, he said.
Lawmakers acknowledged progress but pushed the Air Force to do more.
“I appreciate the Chief’s commitment to restoring our EW pre-eminence,” Rep. Don Bacon, R-Nebraska, a former Air Force electronic warfare official, told C4SIRNET in a statement.
“Control of the electromagnetic spectrum underpins every aspect of our military power in air, land, sea, space and cyberspace so this isn’t a competition we can afford to lose,” he said. “We’ve recently seen some encouraging signs of life from the Pentagon, but I don’t believe we are aggressive enough.” (Source: C4ISR & Networks)
17 June 21. Leonardo launches bid for next phase of SEA 1442. The prime has thrown its hat in the race to provide the Royal Australian Navy with next-generation maritime communications capabilities.
Leonardo Australia has announced it has entered into an internal agreement with the Leonardo Global Group, aimed at securing the contract for the Royal Australian Navy’s SEA 1442 Phase 5 – Maritime Communications Modernisation (MCM) project.
SEA 1442 Phase 5, which is a long-term program designed to deliver an enhanced communications capability to selected platforms within the RAN, has been identified as the leading program for future integrated communications within the Australian maritime environment.
The program seeks to ensure warfighters receive an assured communications capability via a mission system capable of supporting current and future information exchange demands, while also ensuring it is interoperable with joint, coalition and allied systems.
As part of its internal agreement, Leonardo plans to leverage experience supporting the SEA 1442 Phase 4 program, which includes ongoing upgrades to the Anzac Class frigates.
Leonardo said continued service through Phase 5 would provide the RAN with “surety of execution”.
The Leonardo Global Group has also committed to leveraging its domestic and international networks and supply chains, while contributing to SIC and AIC by engaging with industry stakeholders.
Leonardo Global Group has invited stakeholders to join its SEA 1442 Phase 5 supply chain via the ICN led Industry Engagement process, scheduled to commence in the coming weeks.
“The Leonardo Global Group led by Leonardo Australia make for a formidable team when it comes to defence electronics,” Michael Lenton, Leonardo Australia’s executive chairman, said.
“It is a natural fit for the upgrade and modernisation of the RAN’s communications. The Leonardo Global Group of companies have proven themselves in terms of engineering, supply, and installation on the current Phase 4 of the SEA 1442 program.
“The fleet of Anzac frigates is well on its way to full operational capability, so it makes real sense to strengthen an already winning streak for SEA 1442 Phase 5 of the program for the modernisation of much of Navy’s current strategic assets.”
(Source: Defense News)
17 June 21. L3Harris launches new emergency responder radio ‘XL Extreme 400P.’ The new emergency responder radio is designed to meet the two-way, portable RF device standards. L3Harris has expanded its XL platform of Project 25 (P25) radios to include the new XL Extreme 400P. Credit: L3Harris Technologies, Inc.
L3Harris Technologies has unveiled a handheld only radio ‘XL Extreme 400P’ for emergency responder communications in extreme environments.
The device is an expansion of its XL platform of Project 25 (P25) radios and is designed for use by the military workforce, hazmat units and firefighters.
It includes a new speaker microphone developed to meet two-way, portable radiofrequency (RF) device standards.
The rugged L3 Harris XL Extreme 400P emergency responder radio will be capable of delivering optimal performance for any user operating in severe environments.
L3Harris Public Safety and Professional Communications president Nino DiCosmo said: “The XL Extreme is designed to meet, and in many cases exceed, the latest industry-accepted fire protection standards as we continue our mission to address the most demanding needs of our customers.
“We leveraged the breadth of L3Harris’ expertise in developing this product, combining the most advanced RF technologies used in military tactical radios, with product materials that allow space vehicles to survive the heat of atmospheric re-entry.”
The company claims that XL Extreme 400P can withstand flame exposure at more than 1,700°F (950°C). It features advanced noise cancellation capability to deliver clear audio transmission and reception.
It operates over multiple broadband networks and includes integrated Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and a global positioning system (GPS).
DiCosmo added: “From start to finish, L3Harris went ‘All In’ on the development of the XL Extreme radio to make sure that our customers have exactly what they need for their missions.
“We incorporated best-in-class features and functionality to make this device easy to use, and we backed it up with unprecedented testing to prove its durability and crystal-clear communications in the harshest environments.”
(Source: army-technology.com)
15 June 21. Teledyne e2v continues to address the most challenging of application scenarios, through the supply of mixed-signal technology that is capable of delivering exceptional degrees of reliability. The company’s EV12AQ600 has just been confirmed as the industry’s first 4-channel analog-to-digital converter (ADC) to be qualified for space deployment.
Subjected to comprehensive testing, the EV12AQ600 has shown that it can withstand a total ionizing dose (TID) of 150kRad. The TID and SEE results underline the suitability of this device for space applications like long-term missions or GEO satellites. In addition, the ADC had to endure multi-axis mechanical shock and vibration tests, plus electro-static discharge (ESD), extreme temperature and thermal cycling test procedures. Having successfully passed all of the tests described, it now meets NASA and ESA requirements, complying with the stringent MIL-PRF-38535 (QML-Y) and ESCC 9000 standards.
Teledyne e2v’s EV12AQ600 series devices are already employed in numerous mission-critical military and avionics applications, and space qualification will open up many new opportunities for their usage. These 12-bit ADCs support 1.6GSps data sampling rates on each of their channels, or 6.4GSps across a single channel when interleaved. Detailed studies have shown that they do not exhibit the poor interface stability witnessed on devices from other ADC manufacturers when placed into a space environment. Consequently, customers can have full confidence in their long-term operation once they have been deployed there.
As well as the leading-edge performance and operational robustness achieved by the EV12AQ600, this ADC has certain other attributes that will be beneficial for space applications. Thanks to the cross-point switch which is situated after the inputs, this device is much more versatile than other solutions. The ADC can easily be reconfigured remotely, once the hardware it has been incorporated into is in orbit. The number of channels, the bit rate and the dynamic range can all be altered via the accompanying FPGA – so that new functional requirements can be attended to. This inherent flexibility also facilitates design re-use, with engineers able to follow a platform-based strategy where the original system can be subsequently adapted to suit different application criteria. Consequently, development times can be accelerated significantly, with less engineering resources being required. A comprehensive collection of FPGA libraries are available to further assist with project development work, leveraging Teledyne e2v’s inclusion in the Xilinx ecosystem (XQRKU060) for space implementations.
“Through our space-qualified EV12AQ600 devices, we are able to offer customers high-performance data converter solutions that are ready to integrate directly into their systems,” explains Nicolas Chantier, Marketing Director at Teledyne e2v. “It means that they can benefit from flight-proven TRL9 technology, without the need for any further qualification effort.” “Also, with inventory now available, there are much shorter lead times associated with these ADCs than competing solutions currently on the market. Customers can therefore get access to samples straight away,” he adds.
The test data relating to space qualification of the EV12AQ600 from Teledyne e2v can be found here: https://semiconductors.teledyneimaging.com/en/products/data-converters/ev12aq600/#prodnav-1
15 Jun 21. US Navy accelerates TACAMO nuclear communications recap plan. The US Navy (USN) is accelerating plans to field the Lockheed Martin C-130J-30 Hercules in the Take Charge And Move Out (TACAMO) survivable nuclear communications role, with increased funding requested in the service’s fiscal year (FY) 2022 budget proposal.
The proposal released earlier in June lays out an accelerated plan to procure three C-130J-30 aircraft as test assets for the Boeing E-6B Mercury long-endurance command, control, and communications (C3) aircraft replacement programme.
“The E-6 Recapitalization Program (E-XX) provides for air vehicle replacement and mission systems moderni ation for the aging E-6B aircraft and TACAMO mission,” the proposal said, adding, “Funds increase from FY21 to FY22 due to acceleration of the E-XX, following [an] National Airborne Operations Center (NAOC) Executive Airlift TACAMO (NEAT) analysis of alternatives”.
With this accelerated funding for the three test aircraft, developmental test and funding is now slated for FY25. The budget proposal did not disclose intended aircraft numbers to be fielded operationally planned in-service date.
The TACAMO mission is flown out of Located at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma by Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron (VQ-3 and VQ-4). The 16 E-6B Mercury aircraft provides airborne capability for survivable, endurable and reliable airborne between the US National Command Authority (NCA) and the US strategic forces. “This mission is critical in the deterrence and management of a large-scale nuclear conflict,” the navy said. (Source: Jane’s)
15 June 21. Teledyne FLIR to develop first mass-wearable chemical detector for US troops. The five-year contract comprises a 12-month first phase and a ten-month second phase.
Teledyne FLIR has been contracted to develop the first mass-wearable chemical detector for US troops.
The company will develop the chemical sensor under the US Department of Defense’s (DoD) Compact Vapor Chemical Agent Detector (CVCAD) programme.
Teledyne FLIR received $4m in initial funding and the five-year contract comprises a 12-month first phase and a ten-month second phase. The contract also has two follow-on options.
With the new lightweight CVCAD sensor, each troop, especially US soldiers and marines conducting ground operations, will benefit from individual protection.
CVCAD is a ‘programme of record’, which is funded and jointly managed by the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s Joint Science and Technology Office, and by the Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical Biological and Radiological/Nuclear Defense.
It is the fourth instalment in the Next Generation Chemical Detector (NGCD) series of programmes that aim to field a family of improved chemical detectors to US Joint Services.
Teledyne FLIR unmanned systems and integrated solutions vice-president and general manager Roger Wells said: “This is an important effort for our nation’s chem-bio defence programme as toxic weapons represent a serious, growing threat to our military personnel.
“Putting a wearable CVCAD sensor on all warfighters will offer an unprecedented level of chemical threat awareness, enabling them to perform their primary mission with far greater safety.
“The award underscores our expertise in intelligent sensing, unmanned systems, and other mission-critical technologies Teledyne FLIR delivers to safeguard lives.”
For Pentagon’s CVCAD, Teledyne FLIR will produce a dual-sensor device that can detect chemical warfare agents and toxic industrial chemicals.
The device can also detect flammable gases and enriched / depleted oxygen levels, which may indicate an explosive atmosphere.
It will warn soldiers and marines of immediate danger and alert them if the air is safe to breathe.
The detector will also determine if the troops can safely fire a weapon without concern for explosion, especially in restricted spaces.
Furthermore, it can be integrated on an unmanned aerial system (UAS) for remote reconnaissance.
Earlier this year, Teledyne Technologies signed a definitive agreement to acquire FLIR Systems in a cash and stock transaction valued at nearly $8bn.
Last month, Teledyne Technologies completed the acquisition of FLIR Systems. (Source: army-technology.com)
14 June 21. Artificial intelligence (AI) integrated into weapons, particularly missiles, will take target identification and prosecution to the next level. AI will be able to process information quicker, but this does not mean a human will be out of the process that reaches a firing decision.
“A weapon, once fired, might be able to detect collateral or sensitive issues and be able to delay an attack or increase the explosive power needed,” said Group Captain Gareth Prendergast, the deputy assistant Chief of Staff (DACOS) Force Development within Air Capability, Royal Air Force, speaking during an Artificial Intelligence in the Weapons Domain seminar on 9 June and hosted by the Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS).
The advantages that AI is likely to bring will be a “reduce workload of the human operator” allowing them to make better decisions. AI employed in data fusion is also likely to give more definition and clarity to a particular scenario.
However, Prendergast was quick to add that AI was not a panacea for every task and that much development was needed during the initial programming, particularly in considering variables of outcome.
“Grey zone operations are rising,” he noted, which “could lead to AI decision making worsen the situation.” There were also legal and policy regulations to consider (such as the Rules of Engagement – Ed) and these were now lagging behind rapidly developing technology.
While AI is sure to improve many systems and capabilities, Prendergast warned that it will remain as “a tool within a system and not an end in itself.” He also cautioned about the need to protect newly developed capabilities against “counter-AI” technology. (Source: Armada)
11 June 21. Northrop Grumman Delivers First SEWIP Block 3 System to US Navy. Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE: NOC) has delivered the AN/SLQ-32(V)7 Surface Electronic Warfare Improvement Program (SEWIP) Block 3 Engineering and Development Model (EDM) to the U.S. Navy for land-based testing. The official transfer was marked at an event with company and Navy program officials at Northrop Grumman’s systems integration facility in Baltimore, Maryland.
“The AN/SLQ-32(V)7 EDM delivery to the U.S. Navy for continued government land-based testing following formal qualification testing is a significant achievement for the SEWIP Block 3 program,” said Captain Jason Hall, the Navy’s Major Program Manager of Above Water Sensors and Lasers. “SEWIP Block 3 provides a critical electronic warfare capability to the Fleet to pace the evolving anti-ship missile threat.”
Northrop Grumman successfully completed SEWIP Block 3 system integration and formal qualification testing as part of the engineering, manufacturing and development contract. This milestone indicates that the system is ready to transition to the U.S. Navy for formal land-based testing at the Naval Sea Systems Command Surface Combat Systems Center in Wallops Island, Virginia.
“This delivery represents the next step in a multi-year effort to take SEWIP from the laboratory to the hands of the warfighter,” said Mike Meaney, vice president, land and maritime sensors, Northrop Grumman. “Providing the comprehensive hardware-defined, software-enabled system to the Navy proves out the final design and signifies the end of the engineering, manufacturing and development phase.”
To learn more about the SEWIP program, visit https://www.northropgrumman.com/SEWIP.
10 June 21. What 5G Will Actually Do for the U.S. Military. Lots of sensors, lots of data, open up the possibilities of energy conservation, better security, robot teaming, and much more, military experiments show.
Imagine a city where self-driving electric cars anticipate when and where their passengers will need a lift long before the vehicle is called. Batteries to shore up energy shortfalls arrive before they are needed. City managers know the exact placement and condition of every city asset, and theft is immediately detected. There is no traffic, because every vehicle is in constant communication with every other car and traffic light. The residents know there will never be any delay in the services they need because the city around them functions as a perfect, seamless organism just beyond their perception.
That internet-of-things enabled city of the future looks a lot like the experiments with ubiquitous 5G cellular networking the military is doing today.
Marine Corps Lt. Col. Brandon Newell, the director of the Navy’s SoCal Tech Bridge, leads what he calls a 5G living lab. His experimentation, culminating in a demonstration later this month, looked at how 5G cellular connectivity across a base would unlock new uses for self-driving vehicles, greater energy efficiency on base, and even better teaming between drones and ground robots.
It turns out that a stronger cellular connection enables a lot more than video conferencing and reliable internet.
Newell spoke to Defense One as part of a special interview ahead of the 6th annual Defense One Tech Summit, taking place from June 21 to 25.
In 2017, he came to California to look at how innovative technology would change life on the battlefield, and he found that nearby tech companies, such as chip-maker Qualcomm, were far ahead of the military on building connectivity into devices. Newell invited them to use the proving grounds at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar to demonstrate and test new commercial capabilities, like hardware and software for self-driving vehicles. In return, Newell got market forecast data from one of the biggest players in the emerging market.
“We were able to learn what that self-driving unmanned future looked like, but also the key enablers to it,” he said.
Turns out that a robust cellular signal makes self-driving cars a lot more useful. So the following year, Newell worked with Verizon to build a 5G “living lab.” They looked at how better cellular connectivity would enable better on-base security; connected, self-driving vehicles; drones; and energy use.
A robust cellular signal makes all of those things more useful by interlocking them in a communication network, he said.
More cellular connectivity enabled more sensors and cameras to detect intrusions. In March, Newell and his team held a demonstration with Anduril Industries to show how more sensors made it easier to police more areas against a wider variety of threats.
“What you are seeing is that sensor suites with artificial intelligence and machine learning aggregate the data at the software level, at the user interface level,” he said. “You can actually expand to multiple threat vectors. So we’re showing ground perimeter, [and] drones. We’re showing maritime counter-intrusion. We were able to show how a single police officer can have that kind of local and regional look at the threat.”
More sensors connected to more robust cellular service also helped drones communicate.
“We started to see the future of drones would be cellular, and not just radio frequency,” Newell said. That enabled much better teaming with on-the-ground robotics. “We had two drones and a ground vehicle. We had system-to-system communication through this network as we projected networks onto the battlefield for the future.”
One of the big areas of interest and research was self-driving cars for resupply. Here, too, connectivity increased the realm of the possible.
“We set up an autonomous vehicle proving grounds not just to see what self-driving cars could do, but what are the concepts of employment across the Department of Defense that they are well suited for,” he said.
They looked first at logistics as part of a two-year program.
“The key here: don’t just do a self-driving vehicle the way you did a manned vehicle”: in large convoys requiring manned gun trucks at the front and back, he said. That form of resupply, which the U.S. military used heavily in Iraq, made convoys highly vulnerable to IEDs and other threats. Instead, said Newell, “Think FedEx: How they are going to roll into your neighborhood in the future with an unmanned truck and out of that truck, drones will fly off and deliver individual packages to your door.”
“What does that look like on the battlefield for us? What we can see is we are going to start disaggregating logistics, making it more dynamic in how we get logistics to the point of need. It’s all built around [self-driving] electric platforms, which was a key learning for us. We’ve found that connectivity and electric is the unlock to this battlefield of the future.”
On June 23, Marine Corps Air Station Miramar will hold a demonstration to show how that connectivity enables a new approach to logistics and resupply.
More interconnected sensors sending data wouldn’t seem to be a good way to cut down on energy consumption, but it is, Newell said, in large part because electric vehicles are much better suited for self-driving missions than mechanical ones, which must be retrofitted to accommodate fly-by-wire control and other capabilities. With an electric vehicle that has lots of data streaming off of sensors, it’s possible to predict, from those large data flows, which locations might need energy in the near future. But it also has a self-driving battery to meet that need.
“This becomes exportable energy. What if we can export off of that electric vehicle energy to the fire team, to the squad, energy that is in a usable form?” he said.
Of course, the military has a long way to go to embrace cellular communication in battlefield contexts, preferring radio and satellite communications using hardware it can better control.
The military is missing a key opportunity and rapidly falling behind the state of the art, Newell said. “Those traditional waveforms and communications types that we use in the military, who’s funding them? It’s largely us,” meaning the government, he said. “Compare that to my cell phone. There’s been billions of R&D [funds] that’s been invested…into the functionality of cellular…What we watched is that as the 4G [long-term evolution] started to unlock new capabilities for the private sector…we in the government stiff-armed it. We said, ‘We don’t do cellular on our missions, not even on our bases.’”
Sachin Shetty, the executive director of the Center for Secure & Intelligent Critical Systems at Old Dominion University’s Virginia Modeling, Analysis, and Simulation Center, has been creating a 5G warehouse for the military at the Marine Corps logistics base in Albany, Georgia.
He employs a zero-trust security model, he said, which ensures continuous authentication and validation of all the items on the network. It is possible, he noted, to use end-to-end encryption across the network, but that can slow down performance.
His work showed how sensors distributed across a warehouse allowed for much better management of all the items inside that warehouse. The data also allowed managers to much better predict when items would be used, allowing robots to preposition for that moment, thus saving energy.
In a conversation Thursday, Shetty said the same data that allows for predictive inventory control would also enable better security. A lot of data can allow managers to much more quickly and easily pinpoint when something isn’t working as it’s supposed to. Anomaly detection at scale is the basic principle that many common cybersecurity software and practices are built on.
“We are using a data-driven approach for security,” he said. For instance, if something in the warehouse changes the way it behaves, ubiquitous sensing allows for much faster identification of that fact.
The same goes for any item that is part of a 5G network. “We go from technical analysis to behavior analysis,” he said. (Source: Defense One)
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Spectra Group Plc
Spectra Group (UK) Ltd, internationally renowned award-winning information security and communications specialist with a proven record of accomplishment.
Spectra is a dynamic, agile and security-accredited organisation that offers secure Hosted and Managed Solutions and Cyber Advisory Services with a track record of delivering on time, to spec and on budget.
With over 15 years of experience in delivering solutions for governments around the globe, elite militaries and private enterprises of all sizes, Spectra’s platinum and gold-level partnerships with third-party vendors ensure the supply of best value leading-edge technology.
Spectra was awarded the prestigious Queen’s Award for Enterprise (Innovation) in 2019 for SlingShot.
In November 2017, Spectra Group (UK) Ltd announced its listing as a Top 100 Government SME Supplier by the UK Crown Commercial Services.
Spectra’s CEO, Simon Davies, was awarded 2017 Businessman of the Year by Battlespace magazine.
Founded in 2002, the Company is based in Hereford, UK and holds ISO 9001:2015, ISO 27001:2013 and Cyber Essentials Plus accreditation.
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