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21 Oct 21. DOD Begins Fielding 5G Communications to California First Responders. First responders often face communications challenges that hinder collaboration and real-time situational updates, especially in remote areas while responding to natural disasters such as fires, storms, earthquakes and flooding. To alleviate this problem, the Defense Innovation Unit today announced a year-long prototyping project involving a private wireless 5G communications network for first responders in California, including the California National Guard. The service will provide reliable, ad hoc data and voice services to emergency responders operating anywhere in the state, said Jeff Kleck, director of the Cyber and Telecommunications Portfolio at DIU. The project has the potential to have emergency responders show up to any site with personal or government issued mobile devices and use networked applications such as push-to-talk voice, geolocation and live maps of their surroundings — all while outside the range of existing cellular networks, Kleck said.
The first to arrive can simply bring the private network with them using a vehicle-mounted, backpack, hand carried or wearable node, he added.
Radios are becoming obsolete and getting everyone a satellite phone is just impractical because of the expense involved, he said.
A full 5G mobile network isn’t possible today because some of the industry standards involving dynamic cellular frequency allocation for 5G services are still being written, and some required components such as ultra-low power 5G, aren’t yet available, Kleck explained.
This prototype has the potential to allow for immediate fielding of the capability while avoiding delays from spectrum policy debates, he said.
The private 5G solution could provide a path toward a full 5G implementation, which will provide the necessary bandwidth for tomorrow’s emergency responder applications, he said. At the conclusion of the successful year-long prototyping period, this solution could be scaled to other DOD organizations through other transaction agreements, he added.
DIU is partnering with the California Military Department to procure commercially available, Citizen Broadband Radio Service based private-5G equipment for mobile deployments.
“We are excited to partner with the Defense Innovation Unit,” said Army Maj. Gen. David S. Baldwin, the adjutant general of California. “We believe this effort is the beginning of a transformation that will take civil and military emergency response teams from having multiple redundant radios in the field to having unlimited connectivity and enable each individual to use cutting edge tools to communicate and understand their environment.”
“California is no stranger to natural disasters in areas with spotty or no commercial cell coverage. Fielding a hybrid 4G/5G solution to support thousands of users, that can also be easily upgraded to full 5G speeds within the next few years, is critical to our mission as protectors of our residents rather than waiting for programs of record to become available,” said Air Force Brig. Gen. Steven J. Butow, commander, California Air National Guard. “We should be leveraging the same agile, iterative approaches that companies use to deal with natural disasters.”
“DIU facilitated teaming arrangements among multiple companies to provide transparent roam-in to private 5G service that does not require replacing the commercial SIM card on bring-your-own-devices. This is critical since most apps used for communication identify the user by their phone number, and if that number changes the user loses their identity,” said Army Maj. Gen. Jay M. Coggan, commander, California State Guard.
DIU has awarded contracts to two companies.
Nokia Innovations, a business unit of Nokia America, will provide the Defense Department with portable cellular radios in a variety of sizes and power outputs, in order to quickly blanket an area with cellular coverage. It will also provide device provisioning, edge computing and dynamic frequency allocation solutions, Kleck said.
Somewear Labs wearable devices extend a mobile cellular network at the edge over or around terrain, allowing teams to move faster than the mobile cellular network deployment while remaining connected to it, and providing the necessary resilience to ensure critical communications continue in the event of equipment failure or dead spots by reverting to satellite network connections, Kleck said. (Source: US DoD)
15 Oct 21. Canada upgrades maritime COMINT/SIGINT capability under Project Strongbow. Canada is investing in an improved communications intelligence (COMINT) and signals intelligence (SIGINT) capability, known as Project Strongbow, for the Royal Canadian Navy’s (RCN’s) 12 Halifax-class frigates. Under a CAD40.9m (USD32.5m) contract, Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) is to supply a new COMINT/SIGINT solution that will replace the obsolete AN/SRD-504 VHF/UHF equipment suite. The new capability is expected to be delivered from 2023, and is projected to remain in service for at least the next 15 years. Project Strongbow will provide tactical radio direction finding and signals collection, analysis, fusion and exploitation strategic capability to the Halifax-class frigates. The requirement promulgated by Public Works and Government Services Canada called for a system combining new main mast antennas (with space and weight not to exceed that apportioned to AN/SRD-504) together with below decks processing and a below-decks human machine interface. It also specified a modular design architecture based on commercial, off-the-shelf (COTS) components in order to facilitate upgrades and technology insertions through-life. (Source: Janes)
18 Oct 21. Breaking down the US Army’s new network plan. The US Army wants to be able to freely send data back and forth from its legacy and business systems to the tactical edge. Key to doing that is its strategy to unify tactical and enterprise networks and creating a common “data fabric”. But will it work? The Army released its Unified Network Plan Oct. 8, detailing the path over the next 10 years to create a foundation needed to improve its data sharing and analytics capabilities — a need highlighted during the Afghanistan withdrawal that concluded in August.
“We had the legacy network in place. But, you now have a force that wants to do everything we just described, you have a generation of folks that want to be able to do things right away,” Maj. Gen. Chris Donahue, commander of the 82nd Airborne division, told reporters Aug. 12 at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference.
“Everything that happened out there, we were able to overcome and figure out what we needed to do. But you had the network that you have, so…when you look at where we know we want to go….We have to be able to share this information back and forth.”
The unified network plan, which aims to be a detailed focus of how the Army plans to sync up its tactical and enterprise networks over the next 10 years, should change that. The plan builds on the incremental development and deployment schedule via capability sets that drop every two years with technologies for each set prototyped, tested, and tweaked on a continual basis. Tech from some of these capability sets are slated to be demonstrated in its annual Project Convergence exercise coming up in November.
Brig. Gen. Jeth Rey, the director of the Army’s network cross functional team, told reporters at AUSA that the withdrawal taught the Army that data was not readily available for commanders on the ground.
“Currently, our network centric environment is just [the commander] going to reach for data when he thinks he needs it. We want a data centric environment to produce information for the commander to make informed decisions. That’s why we need a data fabric that we’re now having at [Project Convergence ’21 in November], we’re using it there, to inform what the future is going to look like,” Rey said.
Maj. Gen. Thomas Pugh, the director of networks, services and strategy for the Army’s deputy chief of staff, G-6, said the Army was currently staffing the implementation plan with a focus on what can be done in 2022 and 2023 to begin integrating the enterprise network and making the unified network operational by 2025.
“There’s a little bit of the integrated tactical network that is in there, but the integrated tactical network is integrated already. It just needs to be slightly improved upon, but the enterprise is not integrated at all. And so there’s a lot of activities that have got to occur to achieve the integrated enterprise network so that we can then converge the two,” Pugh told reporters.
But the questions that kept arising during discussions of the newly unveiled plan were what was truly different this time and is the new direction the right one.
Terry Halvorsen, the former CIO at the Defense Department turned general manager and client development leader for IBM’s federal and public sector business, told FCW that he thinks the Army has the right plan, especially with regard to the focus on data, but the execution — particularly with regard to resources — will be key.
“The Army, in some ways, has the biggest challenges…the Army’s got to do this network convergence within the Army but they also do with their allies, and it’s a lot harder for the Army than say maybe the Air Force or the Navy just because of the size of the allies, size of the ground forces. And a lot of the army allies are also working to do joint [networking], but …they’re not quite as technologically advanced, some of them, as the U.S. Army is,” Halvorsen said.
The former defense CIO said DOD as a whole has a lot of legacy data that can’t be moved at the same pace as commercial data: “It’s just too much, lots of applications that are very specialized that are old. So how do you do all this convergence, and then stay within budget? And that’s going to be the trick.”
Halvorsen noted that the Army will have to negotiate in a difficult budget climate, but has the right idea by trying to get a return on investment from “business systems by applying, maybe even more directly, commercial software commercial products, driving that cost, taking some of that ROI and putting it into the mission systems [for] modernization.”
But challenges are coming as the DOD is under a continuing resolution, which Halvorsen expects will extend into the New Year, and a potentially trimmer budget for the Army in 2022.
“That’s going to hurt all services, including the Army, as they try to execute with a continuing resolution, not being able to get their new money to new budget allocations and start some new projects. So they’ve got a hard environment to negotiate in, but they do have a really good plan.” (Source: Defense Systems)
18 Oct 21. Thales supports France with CONTACT tactical radio at NATO’s largest interoperability exercise. The CONTACT software-defined radios were put through their paces at the Coalition Warrior Interoperability Exercise (CWIX) from 7-25 June 2021. This annual exercise, which involves 22 nations across 10 time zones, is a major opportunity for Thales to demonstrate the maturity and interoperability of its latest solutions.
The Coalition Warrior Interoperability Exercise (CWIX) is the largest interoperability event of its kind, providing an opportunity for NATO and partner nations to test interoperability between their armed forces and ensure the readiness and resilience of the communication and information systems they deploy.
During the exercise, three CONTACT NCT-t (for Noeud de Communications Tactiques – terrestres or tactical land communication node) radios were connected to a variety of different networks and 30 tests were conducted with other nations with a view to developing the latest NATO standards.
The CONTACT radios, developed under the management of the General Armament Directorate (the general contractor), are designed to accommodate NATO waveforms with the appropriate levels of security and meet the specifications of Europe’s ESSOR (European Secure SOftware-defined Radio) programme.
The exercise was an opportunity to demonstrate the maturity and interoperability of Thales radio and encryption solutions, in particular in terms of security, data rates and latency, as well as new deployment concepts for coalition operations.
These radios (called SYNAPS for export) are designed to accommodate the requirements of international markets. They have in particular already been ordered by Belgium to equip the Belgian Army.
18 Oct 21. Northrop Grumman has developed a next-generation signals intelligence architecture. Northrop Grumman executives say the company is now offering a next-generation signals intelligence architecture that has won at least one contract.
Bill Thompson, director of Northrop’s signals intelligence operating unit, said the company wanted to update the legacy system it had been providing, the Airborne Signals Intelligence Platform.
“Several years ago, when the U.S. defense strategy changed focus from anti-terrorism to focus on peer, near-peer adversaries, we started hearing new requirements coming from our customer base and they were common requirements,” Thompson told C4ISRNET in an interview. “The needs we heard were first and foremost the need for speed to mission or speed to relevance.”
They developed a new architecture the company calls SAGE, which is comprised of transceivers and microservices that make up a holistic sensor. SAGE is a cloud-native, platform-agnostic open architecture.
With the new architecture, Northrop won an Air Force contract in June for the Global High-altitude Open-system Sensor Technology (GHOST) program. They were one of three companies (BAE Systems and L3Harris Technologies were the other two) chosen to compete in a 12-month prototyping design phase. After that period, the Air Force will choose one to move forward.
(Source: C4ISR & Networks)
19 Oct 21. L3Harris: First flight of future Compass Call paves way for 2022 delivery. The airplane that will one day be the Air Force’s next electronic warfare aircraft, the EC-37B Compass Call, has made its first flight and the contractor handling the program says it is on track to be delivered to the service for testing next year. The current version of the Compass Call, the EC-130H, played a lesser-known — but vital — role in the last two decades of war in the Middle East region, jamming the communications and bomb transmissions of militant groups such as the Taliban and Islamic State. But those decades-old air frames — some of which date back to the Vietnam War era — are aging and sorely need replacing. The Air Force in 2017 awarded a contract to L3Harris Technologies to carry out the Compass Call’s crossdeck program, which transplants the electronic warfare equipment from the legacy EC-130Hs into new Gulfstream G550 business jets. BAE Systems handles the electronic warfare components of the Compass Call.
L3Harris has carried out roughly a dozen test flights of its first Compass Call at the Gulfstream facility in Savannah, Georgia, Luke Savoie, president of the company’s aviation services sector, said in a Monday interview. The initial flight of the new Compass Call took place Aug. 25.
These flight tests — including high-altitude flights at around 40,000 feet and other tests to make sure it can operate in low temperatures — are meant to certify the structural changes L3Harris made to the aircraft to accommodate the massive amounts of electronic equipment it will carry, Savoie said.
“It’s about waking the aircraft up after its modification, before it gets into its next phase,” Savoie said.
The Air Force currently flies G550s under the designation C-37B to transport high-ranking government or Defense Department officials around the world.
But instead of luxury cabins and plush seating for VIPs, the EC-37B will be packed with a broad array of electronics meant to sow confusion in enemy ranks.
In a 2017 interview with Air Force Times, the former commander of the 43rd Expeditionary Electronic Combat Squadron said the Compass Call’s job in the war against ISIS was to jam their communications and radar on a daily basis.
“The bottom line is, if you can’t talk, you can’t fight,” then-Lt. Col. Josh Koslov, who is now a colonel, said at the time. “Our job is to create massive confusion in the [ISIS] network.” (Source: Defense News)
20 Oct 21. BAE Systems joins forces with the Center for Threat-Informed Defense. BAE Systems, a leading defense and security company, has joined the Center for Threat-Informed Defense (Center), operated by MITRE EngenuityTM, as a research sponsor to help the organization with its work to develop resources that protect against cyber-attacks. The Center was launched in 2019 in response to feedback from the cybersecurity community for a non-commercial, non-profit focal point that would sustain and accelerate the evolution of publicly available resources critical to cyber defenders. Since its inception, the Center and its members have produced and released a broad array of freely available resources and tools designed to help cyber defenders get ahead and stay ahead of adversaries. BAE Systems’ research collaboration will build on the MITRE ATT&CK® framework as the foundation for a threat-informed defense approach and look to identify trends in attacker behaviour that can inform the threat intelligence community. Over the past six years, BAE Systems has produced over 500 detailed research reports based on cases from its incident response team and threat intel investigations. Tactics and techniques have been extracted from these using the MITRE ATT&CK framework, with tactics such as Command and Control and Defense Evasion being most common.
Dr Adrian Nish, head of cyber at BAE Systems Applied Intelligence said: “Cyber threats continue to plague organizations, companies, municipalities, and governments around the world. Attackers are using new technologies and defending networks requires greater resources and attention to detail. Continual research and collaboration by the best and brightest in the field to secure the cyber world is critical and we look forward to working with the Center in this great fight.”
Richard Struse, Center director, said: “The Center for Threat-Informed Defense brings together the best security teams from around the world to identify and solve the most-pressing problems facing cyber defenders. We’re excited that BAE Systems employees from both its Applied Intelligence and Intelligence & Security teams have joined our efforts to change the game on adversaries by helping improve our collective ability to prevent, detect, and respond to cyberattacks.” (Source: ASD Network)
18 Oct 21. Thales and Streamwide boost the security of mission-critical 4G/5G mobile communications for emergency services and security forces.
- To support emergency services and security forces in their key missions, Thales and Streamwide are to offer a joint sovereign solution designed to boost the security of mission-critical mobile communications.
- The confidentiality and integrity of all communications from command posts and in the field will be guaranteed by integrating Thales’s encryption Key Management Server (KMS) with Streamwide’s Team on Mission communications solution.
- Thales’s KMS solution is compliant with the latest 3GPP1 standard, and integration with Streamwide’s Team on Mission solution, is expected to receive final validation shortly.
Long-standing partners and leaders in the French critical communications market, Thales and Streamwide are joining forces once again to boost the security, confidentiality and integrity of mission-critical radio communications for emergency services, security forces and critical infrastructure providers. Developed and controlled entirely in France, the joint solution will enable users to deploy private 4G and 5G networks with the guarantee that their communications are secure.
Security forces, emergency services and critical infrastructure providers seeking to transition their traditional 2G mobile communications capabilities to 4G and 5G technologies have various options at their disposal, ranging from dedicated private 4G/5G networks to hybrid networks using the coverage offered by national mobile operators. With the enhanced capabilities of 4G/5G, Mission Critical Services (MCS) can be combined with multimedia functionalities including voice, data and video communications and position information to allow more effective coordination of personnel on the ground and enhance operational effectiveness and security. Given the critical nature of the missions involved, boosting the security of such communications has become key to ensure their confidentiality and integrity, particularly when traffic is routed via mobile operators’ access networks as part of a hybrid solution. To support critical infrastructure providers and security forces in this transition, Thales and Streamwide have joined forces to offer a comprehensive MCS solution that provides guaranteed sovereignty, enhanced security and full compliance with international standards.
Thales’s sovereign key management server (KMS) is the essential building block for boosting the security and confidentiality of mission-critical communications. The server provides end-to-end encryption keys for group communications and ultra-secure distribution to all the terminals in a given user group. Thales controls all the components involved (hardware, software, cryptographic algorithms based on elliptic curves, etc.), guaranteeing the sovereignty of the KMS solution and ensuring unmatched levels of security and confidentiality for mission-critical communications.
The solution was developed in partnership with Streamwide, France’s leading provider of MCS software solutions. Thales’s KMS solution and Streamwide’s Team on Mission application perfectly join forces to provide a comprehensive MCS solution that is rich in functionalities and offers users unmatched end-to-end security for their critical missions. Team on mission is the next generation solution to address the challenges of the demanding public safety environment – voice, data, video, interoperability and location services all bundled in one solution in real time. Team on mission enables a smooth transition from PMR to MCPTT over 4G/5G LTE with the reliability and assurance that communications will be there when and where needed.
The Thales KMS is compliant with the 3GPP standard, and is interoperable with commercially available MCS products that meet the same standard. It will shortly be available to existing and future Thales customers using 4G/5G technologies for their critical communications. The solution allows any two systems based on these standards to interconnect with each other, providing the de facto interoperability needed to coordinate members of different organisations taking part in joint missions in France or cross-border and international operations.
This innovation enhances the security and confidentiality of mission-critical communications over commercial and private networks. Security forces, emergency services and critical infrastructure providers will be able to confidently share any type of data needed to ensure mission success (voice, data, video, position, etc.) within their organisation and with other organisations during joint missions.
“This partnership demonstrates how standards can support the creation of solutions that meet the high expectations of users in terms of new communication and security capabilities for routine operations, emergency situations and major events. Streamwide’s system is one of the most complete MCS solutions on the market, while the Thales KMS provides the assurance of sovereignty that users require.” Jean-Claude Schmitt, Vice President, Network and Infrastructure Systems, Thales.
18 Oct 21. Rafael Unveils Cyber Situation Awareness and Cyber Management Systems. RAFAEL Advanced Defense Systems Ltd. is participating at MILIPOL PARIS 2021 and will present its comprehensive suite of military and civil sector solutions. RAFAEL will unveil two of its groundbreaking cyber solutions: Cyber Situation Awareness (SA) and Cyber Management System (CyMng). Cyber Situation Awareness (SA) collects and aggregates information from across different infrastructure networks such as airports, railways, or seaports, and IT and OT operations networks to create a comprehensive image of current cyber threats. SA employs deep analysis of system vulnerabilities, risk and incident response parameters and characteristics to calculate the most effective and efficient defensive response to these threats.
Cyber Management System (CyMng) is a unique, holistic solution providing automated reactive and proactive information gathering and incident response processes. It enables analysis to identify threats and vulnerabilities in advance of impact while simultaneously tracking incident response metrics.
These operational, cutting-edge solutions are at the forefront of Rafael’s cybersecurity technologies and help secure critical assets from a range of modern and future threats including end-to-end protection of critical civilian infrastructure.
Rafael’s cyber defense solutions protect national-level critical services and infrastructure – including the transportation, oil and gas, water and sewage, energy, finance industries – from malicious cyber warfare activities conducted by state actors and independent rogue hackers. Rafael’s cybernetic qualitative edge is derived from a combination of extensive operational experience and understanding of evolving security requirements, cutting-edge technology. Most of all, it is derived from Rafael’s interdisciplinary and integrative knowhow and capabilities to protect the most critical and vulnerable assets.
15 Oct 21. Saab reveals MBDA link as Arexis air-launched decoy breaks cover. Saab and MBDA have disclosed that they are working together on the development of a miniaturised powered decoy that will form part of Saab’s Arexis airborne electronic warfare (EW) product portfolio. Revealed at the AOC Europe 2021 conference and exhibition in Liverpool on 12 October, the proposed Arexis air-launched decoy would integrate a Saab electronic attack (EA) payload into the air vehicle and wider weapons system architecture already in development by MBDA for the SPEAR-EW stand-in jammer. Saab describes Arexis as a family of airborne EW solutions addressing threat warning, situational awareness, self-protection, and EA. The company first announced its concept for a small, long range/long endurance EW decoy in 2017, and has kept the Swedish Air Force, the Defence Materiel Administration, and the Defence Research Agency appraised of its work. However, the presence of an Arexis air-launched decoy model at AOC Europe 2021 was the first time that the company had publicly revealed that it was co-operating with MBDA to explore an adaptation of SPEAR-EW. (Source: Janes)
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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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