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28 Apr 22. US Army wraps review of ‘future battlespace’ network tools. The U.S. Army this week finished evaluating a set of technologies that will better align soldier radios, satellite terminals, mission command software and more to help deliver the robust network the service is seeking.
The completion of the critical design review for Capability Set ‘23 signifies the gear is relevant, conceptually sound and cost effective, among other considerations. It also cracks open the door for procurement.
“With each one of the design reviews, there are four things we take a look at,” Army Maj. Gen. Robert Collins said during an April 26 demonstration, which was hindered by inclement weather. “We look at the requirements, we look at the concepts, the technology maturity and the affordability.”
Capability Set ‘23 is meant to enhance communication and data sharing abilities, and focuses on Stryker brigades, a move away from the infantry-first tack of the previous set. The systems will soon be sent to Europe, where further testing and demonstration will shape fielding decisions.
Collins, as the program executive officer for command, control and communications-tactical, or PEO C3T, oversees the development and distribution of enhanced Army hardware and software alongside Brig. Gen. Jeth Rey, director of the Network Cross-Functional Team.
“One of the things we say is that Gen. Rey, with the Network Cross-Functional Team, is really focused in on the ‘what,’ the vision, the types of data, the transport agnostic, the security and the zero-trust,” Collins said. “And then where I come into play is kind of the ‘how,’ the acquisition. How do we acquire, how do we procure?”
The Army is seeking $2.65bn in fiscal year 2023 for the NCFT, up from $2.6bn this year.
Army officials demonstrate what’s possible with the Command Post Computing Environment, or CPCE, during an April 26, 2022, event at Fort Myers, Virginia. (Colin Demarest/C4ISRNET)
Capability Set ‘23 also opens the aperture for electronic warfare and cyber, ropes in additional players for a more-comprehensive approach, underlines the division as a unit of action, and begins to lay a foundation for Joint All-Domain Command and Control, the Pentagon’s campaign to connect disparate systems and better share information across land, air, sea, space and cyber.
“In previous wars, the difference between a good decision and a bad decision may be minutes,” Collins said. “In the future battlespace, that difference between a good decision and a bad decision may be seconds or milliseconds. And so the network allows you to tie all that together, synthesize that information and be able to present that to the folks that need to make that decision.”
Network modernization is a focus for the Army as the service transitions to multi-domain operations and contends with jeopardized communication environments.
Elements of Capability Set ‘23 will be included in Project Convergence ‘22, the Army’s JADC2 experiment during which cutting-edge tech is put to the test. What is learned will likely influence Capability Set ‘25 more so than ‘23.
The capability set initiative kicked off in fiscal 2021, with compounding upgrades expected in 2023, 2025, 2027 and beyond. The two-year increment, Collins said Tuesday, is the “sweet spot.”
“Now obviously, we do things from a cyber vulnerability, from a patching” perspective much faster, he said. “But when you look at logistics, you look at training, two years is about the right capability set.”
Capability Set ‘21 was foundational to Capability Set ‘23, and the Army was almost finished outfitting a seventh brigade combat team with the related gear as of April 20. Nine teams were expecting the upgrades.
The Army on April 26 said Capability Set ‘23 was “in near-term development”; ‘25 was “in technology maturation and prototyping”; and the design goals for ‘27 were coalescing.
“The network is the backbone of everything we do, and data is our new ammunition,” Lt. Gen. James Richardson, acting commanding general of Army Futures Command, which oversees the cross-functional teams, said in a statement. “All of the experimentation we are doing today is informing where we are going for the future.” (Source: C4ISR & Networks)
28 Apr 22. Research Innovations, Inc. Awarded Contract by the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) to Support Experimentation with Multi-Domain Mission Management Capability. Research Innovations, Inc. (RII), a provider of critical national security technology solutions, today announced the award of a contract by the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) to expand the piloting of RII’s Collaborative Mission Management (CMM) capability to support Strategic Command. The contract follows a successful piloting of RII’s CMM capability to support the British Army’s Information Activities and Operations Program through a previous contract awarded in 2021. By experimenting across a myriad of use cases, this contract will explore the advancement of joint all-domain and artificial intelligence-enhanced technology that promotes true situational awareness and quickens decision making across Defence and with allies.
“As Allied Defence Ministries seek to quickly organize around principles core to Multi-Domain Integration, the British Military is among the leaders in this space, which makes this project that much more exciting for our team,” said Nick Woodruff, Vice President of Information, Analytics, and Command and Control (IAC2) at RII. “The Ministry of Defence is leaning forward, preparing to fail fast and learn, and truly partnering with commercial experts as opposed to preserving the norm of historically transactional relationships between industry and government. Strategic Command is at the forefront of all of this and their willingness to dive in and partner in the evolution of cutting-edge capability, and not just ‘buy’ technology, is incredibly encouraging, especially given the extraordinary national security challenges our nations face.”
The software solutions will be built using RII’s RapidAdapt™ platform, which currently provides Multi-Domain Command and Control (MDC2) solutions for a variety of requirements from the highest strategic levels to the tactical edge, with thousands of users across the U.S. joint forces and with selected allied partners.
“This contract directly supports Strategic Command’s transformative strategy to help Defence become more agile, responsive, and able to act in an integrated way,” said Doug Greenlaw, Chief Growth Officer at RII. “Our technologies go to the heart of Strategic Command’s role as Defence’s integrator, ensuring every part of Defence can work seamlessly together, with other Government departments, and with allies, enabling the optimisation of Defence’s global posture.”
The underlying technologies used on this contract were built expressly to support Multi-Domain Integration, operations in the information environment, and globally integrated operations. This effort will be executed primarily in the UK, leveraging RII’s growing team of scientists and operational specialists.
About Research Innovations, Inc.
With offices in Alexandria, VA, Melbourne, FL, San Antonio, TX, and St. Petersburg, FL, as well as staff embedded with key customers globally, RII supports critical defense, intelligence, and cyber customers across the U.S. Government and select international customers. RII is a leader in Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) efforts with its cutting-edge solutions, rapidly delivering transformative technology to customers and end-users to achieve its core purpose of “Creating RIIdiculously Awesome® solutions that make the world safer.” Visit www.researchinnovations.com for more information. (Source: PR Newswire)
28 Apr 22. NSA re-awards secret $10bn contract to Amazon. Amazon Web Services beat out Microsoft for the contract after a bid protest battle. The National Security Agency has re-awarded a once-secret cloud computing contract worth up to $10bn to Amazon Web Services, an NSA official confirmed to Nextgov Wednesday. Codenamed “Wild and Stormy,” the contract was first awarded to AWS in July 2021 and subsequently protested by tech giant Microsoft, which also competed for the contract. While the Government Accountability Office sided with Microsoft on its protest in October and recommended the NSA reevaluate proposals from both companies, the NSA ultimately selected AWS again.
“NSA recently awarded a contract to Amazon Web Services that delivers cloud computing services to support the agency’s mission,” an NSA spokesperson told Nextgov. “This contract is a continuation of NSA’s Hybrid Compute Initiative to modernize and address the robust processing and analytical requirements of the agency.”
The NSA spokesperson added that, consistent with GAO’s decision, the agency “reevaluated the proposals and made a new best value decision” in selecting AWS.
“We’re honored that after thorough review, the NSA selected AWS as the cloud provider for the Hybrid Compute Initiative, and we’re ready to help deliver this critical national security capability,” an AWS spokesperson told Nextgov in a statement.
For almost ten years, the NSA has moved its data, including signals intelligence and other foreign surveillance and intelligence information it ingests from multiple repositories around the globe, into this internally operated data lake, against which analysts from the NSA and other IC agencies can run queries and perform analytics.
The Wild and Stormy contract is part of the NSA’s years-long modernization of its Hybrid Compute Initiative, which aims to move some of NSA’s crown jewel intelligence data from internal servers to those operated by a cloud service provider—in this case, AWS.
AWS, the most profitable business unit within Amazon, has won several major cloud computing contracts in the defense and intelligence communities, dating back almost a decade. AWS first inked a $600m cloud contract with the CIA called C2S in 2013, through which it provided cloud services to the CIA and sister intelligence agencies, including the NSA. Last year, AWS secured at least a portion of the CIA’s multibn-follow-on C2E contract. AWS was also one of four companies—including Google, Microsoft and Oracle—that were named by the Pentagon as contenders for the DOD’s $9 bn Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability contract. Those companies have been asked to submit proposals for the contract. (Source: Defense Systems)
11 Apr 22. CBRN Danger Persists. Despite the impact of COVID-19, there is still good reason for governments to affirm their commitment to new CBRN equipment and training.
The long delayed UK Defence Command Paper (DCP) published in March 2021 made reference to Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) warfare. It stated that the proliferation of CBRN weapons and advanced conventional weapons, combined with new technologies, will increase the risk of conflict and serve to increase their ferocity. While international agreements have long sought to limit the development of these capabilities, adversaries are increasingly breaching their terms or altogether withdrawing from these commitments.
While CBRN weapon use remains an enduring and growing threat to the UK, deployed forces and international stability, the DCP claimed that the UK MoD will have capabilities in place that will allow the country to maintain its political and military freedom of action despite the presence, threat or use of such materials. The DCP also stated that the MoD should be prepared to provide counter-forces to support a homeland resilience response to multiple threats and maintain its contingent capability to operate overseas. The UK should support efforts to improve its preparedness to deter and defend against an incident and to ensure that its forces are best equipped to fight and prevail in a threat environment, both today and in the future. The DCP maintained that the MoD’s world leading science and technology capability will continue to play a vital part in countering current and emerging CBRN threats.
CBRND Confusion
This has not always been the case. The UK’s Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Defence (CBRND) capabilities have been largely neglected for the last two decades with responsibilities being passed from the British Army to the Royal Air Force (RAF) and back to the Army.
The importance of the UK’s CBRND capabilities has been highlighted both in the conflict in Syria and closer at home, in the response to the Salisbury Novichok nerve agent incident in 2018 which saw former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter poisoned. Military personnel from the Army and the RAF worked in support of the civil authorities with the recovery operation in Salisbury in the aftermath of the nerve agent attack during Operation Morlop, including personnel from the Falcon Area Survey & Reconnaissance Squadron. The Falcon Squadron is the British Army’s only mounted CBRND unit and is manned by the Royal Tank Regiment, and equipped with 11 Rheinmetall Landsystems 6×6 Fuchs TPz vehicles which are capable of chemical and radiological hazard detection. They are crewed by four CBRN specialists. However, the unit has only 70 personnel and the Fuchs, which were delivered in 1990 to support ground operations during the First Gulf War, are approaching obsolescence, and although the MoD awarded RBSL a $21.4 m (£16 m) contract in October 2020 to upgrade and sustain nine vehicles and a training simulator, they will not be returned to service before 2024.
Exercise Toxic Dagger, the largest annual chemical warfare exercise in the UK, involving 40 Commando Royal Marines and personnel from the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), and supported by Public Health England (PHE) and the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), took place soon after the Salisbury attack. DSTL delivers specialist support to military operations, provides specialist technical advice to support counter-terrorism, offers impartial advice and analysis to the UK Armed forces and supports the delivery of intelligence capability within the MoD.
The three-week exercise included company-level attacks and scenarios concerning typical CBRN features, concluding with a full-scale exercise involving government and industry scientists and more than 300 military personnel. It climaxed with a full-scale casualty treatment exercise involving the RAF Regiment. A chemical decontamination area was set up to treat ‘polluted’ Royal Marine commandos. Once cleansed, the casualties could be moved to local hospitals.
The Royal Marines have also set up a unit specialising in chemical warfare skills. Yankee Company from 45 Commando based in Arbroath, Scotland, are the first marines tasked to assist the civil emergency services when military support is requested to respond to a CBRN incident through the Military Assistance to Civil Authorities (MACA) process.
Preparing for Toxic Attack
Exercise Toxic Dagger was planned to be an annual exercise but was cancelled this year (2021) due to a backlog of activity from the COVID-19 lockdown periods. Other CBRN-themed exercises cancelled or postponed included the NATO multinational exercise Clean Care which first took place in 2016 with over 200 personnel from seven countries. Conducted at the military training area Tisá in the Czech Republic, this CBRN and medical training event was aimed at NATO interoperability at a tactical level.
UK personnel also participate in Exercise Precise Response at Canadian Forces Base Suffield in Alberta. This annual NATO exercise provides the Canadian Armed Forces, along with participants from various NATO allies and partner nations, the opportunity to participate in CBRND training in a multinational environment.
The NATO directed Joint Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Defence Capability Group (JCBRND-CDG) is responsible for several multinational CBRN exercises including Toxic Trip which involves the training of different aspects of CBRND related with air operations in a multinational scenario. Exercise Toxic Fjord is a similar exercise in the maritime sector.
Exercise Toxic Valley is a live exercise organised by Slovak Armed Forces conducted to train specialist teams and laboratory crews in sampling and identification of chemical agents in conditions close to operational needs, in accordance with NATO AEP-66 standards for sampling and identification of biological and chemical, and radiological agents.
Germany has hosted Exercise Coronet Mask where NATO CBRN battalions undergo a series of drills based on scenarios demonstrating the identification, reconnaissance, analyst and decontamination of chemical agents. Six NATO allies participated in Exercise Yellow Cross held in the Czech Republic to train in detecting and responding to CBRN attacks, including the decontamination of soldiers and materiel.
While many of these live CBRN exercises have had to be modified, with soldiers undertaking precautions against COVID-19 by social distancing and wearing masks, some have had to be conducted virtually.
The United States has continued to hold regular individual CBRN exercises for all its Armed Forces both in Continental United States (CONUS) and overseas. One such was the annual Exercise Patriot 21 that took place in June 2021 at Volk Field Air National Guard Base in Wisconsin involving specialists from the US Air National Guard Emergency Management, US Army National Guard CBRN along with insight from Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) WMD Coordinators. The exercise focused on local, state, federal and private sector organisations responding together to a natural or man-made emergency. It tested responders ability to deal with such scenarios as earthquakes, collapsed buildings, blocked roads, mass casualties and the need for search and rescue. Participants in Patriot 21 included National Guard soldiers and airmen and Naval Reserve sailors in various career fields from 26 states.
Back to Business
“It’s been more than a year that we’ve been in a pandemic, and we’ve also had civil disturbance and natural disasters along the way, and we’ve been in response mode,” said exercise director, Lt Col Roger Brooks. “But we’re getting back to the business of training for those situations now. It’s all about training with our local civilian agencies and partners and improving our communication and ability to work seamlessly with different entities.”
Recent events have shown that Russia is fully capable of developing and producing an advanced range of biological and chemical weapons, and its troops are well equipped and trained for nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) warfare. In February 2017, Russia’s Southern Military District announced that NBC field exercises involving some 2,000 specialist personnel and more than 350 NBC vehicles were taking place in training areas across Russia.
The latest Russian Arzamas Machine-Building Plant RKhM-6 chemical reconnaissance vehicles have recently entered into service with NBC troops. Based on the BTR-80 8×8 wheeled amphibious armoured personnel carrier, the RKhM-6 features a conventional layout accommodating the driver’s compartment at forward hull, and an NBC laboratory in the middle and engine at the rear. The vehicle features the PRKhDD-2B, a fully automated long-range chemical reconnaissance device that analyses the composition of toxic substances at a distance of up to three kilometers.
Although large scale Russian NBC exercises have been reduced due to COVID-19, more than 800 troops from the Black Sea Fleet NBC Protection Force took part in several weeks of training during August 2021 while NBC protection units of the Guards tank army of the Western Military District completed training during the joint Russian-Belarusian Exercise Zapad-2021 a month later.
Australia Invests
On the other side the world, the Australian Defence Force (ADF) continues to invest in CBRNE capabilities, counter-measures and autonomous systems, against a backdrop of escalating tensions with the People’s Republic of China and the unpredictability of North Korea. The Australian Army has embarking on a major modernisation programme following the publication of its 2016 Defence White Paper that confirmed the transformation of its land forces by 2035. A lot of time and effort has gone into ensuring the ADF can operate effectively with allied and coalition partners across all domains. When considering CBRND interoperability, it is essential that Australia is aligned closely with partners. Following an agreement at the Joint Warfare Council in November 2016, the ADF is now adopting the NATO CBRND tactical level doctrine.
In 2017 the Australian Department of Defence (DoD) announced that the ADF would receive equipment worth almost $216 m (AUD300 m) for protection against CBRN threats as part of Project LAND 2110 Phase 1B. The project will deliver individual and collective protection from CBRN hazards including detectors, suits, masks, protection tents, decontamination systems, contaminated equipment containers, warning and reporting software and simulation systems. The project also included the provision of new and upgraded facilities at 14 sites nationwide to support individual and collective CBRND training.
In September 2018 the $176 m (AUD243.5 m) contract for the Land 2110 Phase 1B project was awarded to Leidos Australia for an initial phase of five years with an options to extend to 2026. It also includes an $8m (AUD11m) contract to AirBoss Defense for the delivery critical PPE including gloves, overboots, and the recently launched Low Burden Mask.
Following exhaustive trials, OPEC CBRNe was informed that the Kestrel CBRN ensemble was identified as the preferred Medium Weight Protective suit for LAND 2110. The versatile two-piece Kestrel which is made in Scotland, is ideally suited to high-heat environments while delivering long-term comfort, breathability and ease of movement and its low weight was a key feature in OPEC’s successful tender to the Australian Government.
Soldier wearing the CBRN Personal Protective Ensemble consisting of the Opec Kestrel suit and an AirBoss Low Burden mask. (Commonwealth of Australia)
Recently the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Rocket Force stepped up its CBRN warfare exercises, in what its military experts say is preparation for a possible nuclear attack by the United States. CBRN exercises have become a major training focus in the PLA’s Western Theatre Command and with Rocket Force troops and earlier this year (2021) these troops took part in the largest ever anti-nuclear weapon drill involving combat troops wearing chemical protection suits while working in the Gobi Desert, where the temperature is over 40 degrees Celsius.
North Korea, which withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2003, has recently threatened several regional neighbours, including Australia, with nuclear weapons. In the September 2021 military parade to celebrate the 73rd anniversary of North Korea’ founding, hundreds of troops were seen wearing chemical protection suits and respirators for the first time. (Source: Armada)
BATTLESPACE Comment: With the CBRN threat rising daily in the Ukraine conflict, one would have expected the UK to major on such issues. However, sources close to BATTLESPACE suggest that the Home Office remains tight lipped on the subject because of the failure of the Cyclamen Project to get over the starting blocks since its inception in 2106. Thus, the UK remains vulnerable to any CBRN attack.
27 Apr 22. Intelligence agency takes over Project Maven, the Pentagon’s signature AI scheme. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency will take operational control of part of the Pentagon’s signature artificial intelligence program, the agency’s director announced April 25.
Project Maven is the Department of Defense’s most visible artificial intelligence tool, designed to process imagery and full-motion video from drones and automatically detect potential targets.
At the GEOINT Symposium in Denver, Colorado, NGA Director Vice Adm. Robert Sharp announced that his agency would take over operational control of Project Maven’s GEOINT AI services from the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security under President Biden’s proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2023.
“That includes responsibility for labeled data, AI algorithms, test and evaluation capabilities, and the platform,” said Sharp. “From the NGA perspective, we very much appreciate his [Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security Ronald Moultrie] confidence, and this tremendous opportunity.”
The NGA is commonly understood as the intelligence agency in charge of processing and analyzing satellite imagery, but it also leads the intelligence community’s efforts to map the Earth and process other types of overhead imagery.
The agency has been heavily involved with Project Maven since it launched in 2017.
“It really started with this idea that commercial industry – Silicon Valley – had come up with techniques going back to, you know, 2008, 2009, when the sort of deep-learning kind of revolution happened,” NGA’s Deputy Director of Data and Digital Innovation Mark Munsell told reporters at the GEOINT Symposium. “The idea was, let’s bring in industry, let’s sort of translate what you’re doing in commercial. We want to give you some military scenarios to see how well you can do that.”
“It’s really DevOps in terms of bringing in a company, develop a model, test the model to learn from [it], see what the customers like about that particular AI model and then do it all over again and also get a sort of broad breadth of companies and capabilities to bring in,” he added.
The Department of Defense has worked to test Project Maven capabilities in demonstrations, including at Project Convergence, an annual U.S. Army exercise in the Arizona desert where the service tests its advanced battlefield technology. The Army equipped an MQ-1C Gray Eagle drone with a Maven Smart System and Algorithmic Inference Platform created through Project Maven. The system was one of several automatic or aided target recognition solutions tested in the desert.
NGA was a big part of Project Maven from the start, said Munsell, feeding data to companies to help them develop AI algorithms. Most of the lines of effort within Project Maven entail geospatial intelligence, he said.
“It made a lot of sense to take what they’ve learned and take the infrastructure they’ve built and the experience they’ve learned from the companies and find a GEOINT home for it,” said Munsell.
There will not be a pause in development when the agency takes over Project Maven, said Munsell, but it will bring in its own subject matters to assess the effort and better integrate it with the NGA’s other AI and computer vision initiatives.
The NGA has long worked to harness AI for its own missions in an attempt to manage the massive torrent of data flowing into the agency from government and commercial sources. Officials say there is too much data for human analysts to process, banking on AI to flag patterns that need further scrutiny from human operators. This concept of human-machine teaming is an important part of how the agency wants to operate moving forward.
“We already have ongoing efforts to leverage AI, and apply machine-learning algorithms to enable GEOINT analysis at scale,” said Sharp. “This move brings together two major DoD AI and ML [machine learning] efforts under one roof. And we’re proud that our close partnership with the OSD staff is actually what created Maven in the first place.” (Source: C4ISR & Networks)
25 Apr 22. DARPA Seeks Ionospheric Insights to Improve Communication Across Domains In-space Measurements Could Enhance HF Radio Capabilities.
- In-space measurements could enhance high-frequency radio capabilities
Warfighters depend on high-frequency (HF) radio transmissions to operate military systems across the space, air, ground, and maritime domains. Current understanding of how HF waves propagate through the electromagnetically noisy ionosphere typically depends on ground-based methods. To more accurately understand HF propagation in space requires scientific measurements taken from within the ionosphere itself.
DARPA’s new Ouija program aims to use sensors on low-orbiting satellites to provide new insights into HF radio wave propagation in the ionosphere, which spans the upper edges of the Earth’s atmosphere to the lower regions of space. The program seeks to quantify the space HF noise environment and improve characterization of the ionosphere to support warfighter capabilities.
“Ouija will augment ground-based measurements with in-situ measurements from space, in very low- Earth orbit (VLEO), to develop and validate accurate, near real-time HF propagation predictions,” said Jeff Rogers, Ouija program manager in DARPA’s Strategic Technology Office. “The VLEO altitude regime, approximately 200 km – 300 km above Earth, is of particular interest due to its information-rich environment where ionospheric electron density is at a maximum. Fine-grained knowledge of the spatial-temporal characteristics of electron density at these altitudes is required for accurate HF propagation prediction.”
The program includes two technical areas. The first technical area, announced in a solicitation issued April 21, 2022, seeks to develop, qualify, launch, and operate multiple small satellites carrying scientific and mission instrumentation. The Ouija scientific payload will measure electron density by both direct sampling and indirectly via radio occultation using navigation satellites. It is anticipated that the scientific payload will use or adapt commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) components, but innovative instrumentation proposals that enhance the functionality of the scientific payload over a COTS baseline are welcome.
“The HF mission payload will require a high sensitivity, high dynamic range, low noise HF measurement subsystem,” Rogers said. “The antenna for this subsystem is a particular challenge, as efficient HF antennas that operate at the lower end of the frequency band are long, presenting deployment and space vehicle drag challenges.”
The second technical area, which will be fully detailed in a separate solicitation at a later date, aims to develop assimilative models that ingest direct, in-situ, measurements of electron density from a satellite in VLEO. The derived electron density models will be fed into HF propagation code then validated with data measured on-orbit. The goal is to improve fidelity over current state-of-the-art assimilative models by incorporating high resolution (in time and space) local measures with low latency updates.
Ouija employs a simplified Other Transactions (OT) process aimed at lowering the bureaucratic barrier for companies to make proposals, especially those seeking to work with DoD or DARPA for the first time. (Source: ASD Network)
25 Apr 22. ‘Tremendous’ momentum seen as US Army upgrades network tech. U.S. Army officials spearheading the development and rollout of upgraded network technology and tools say they are making significant progress in achieving one of the service’s most pressing goals.
“What I would say is we continue to make a tremendous amount of momentum on our capability set initiative for one of our primary modernization focuses for the Army and the network,” Maj. Gen. Robert Collins, the program executive officer for command, control and communications-tactical, said April 20 at the C4ISRNET Conference.
Collins was accompanied by Brig. Gen. Jeth Rey, the director of the Network Cross-Functional Team.
As of last week, the Army was almost finished outfitting its seventh brigade combat team with gear associated with Capability Set ‘21, the first in a series of compounding two-year improvements informed by industry and soldiers. Nine teams are expecting the upgrades.
The capability set endeavor kicked off in fiscal year 2021, with goal posts planted in fiscal years 2023, 2025, 2027 and beyond. Army officials in 2019 likened the incremental approach to Apple’s iPhone strategy: new, enhanced hardware rolling out on the heels of the last release.
Capability Set ‘21 focuses on infantry brigades, increased connectivity and making communications gear smaller, lighter, faster and more flexible.
Collins earlier this year said the set was 50% fielded.
“That’s everything from kit that goes down to the brigade combat teams that we’ve done there, and that does include capability we put out to the 82nd Airborne, that did deploy,” the general said at an event in Belcamp, Maryland.
Capability Set ‘23 will focus on Strykers, boosted bandwidth and additional paths for communication, among other goals. C4ISRNET in February reported that officials believe Capability Set ‘23 begins to lay the foundation of Joint All-Domain Command and Control, the Pentagon’s campaign to make seamless communication and data sharing reality.
Network modernization is a major focus for the Army, as the service shifts toward what’s known as multidomain operations — the ability to fight and win across land, air, sea, space and cyber — and the threat of a contested and congested communication environment proliferates.
“As our nation’s adversaries increasingly contest our historical dominance in all operational domains, the unified network is the critical enabler to the success of the future force,” guiding documents published by the Army last year stated.
Those involved have full plates. Beyond wrapping up Capability Set ‘21, a critical design review for Capability Set ‘23 is set for this week, marking a key acquisition milestone, and a technical meeting for Capability Sets ‘25 and ‘27 is planned for May.
“I would say right now, we have four of our capability sets that are going on in parallel,” Collins said at the conference. The general further recognized Capability Set ‘21 as “foundational,” generating great insights that will be applied in the near future.
“The Capability Set ‘21 effort has provided us a tremendous amount of feedback as we get ready to head on into, and embark upon, the Capability Set ‘23 fielding process,” Collins said. (Source: Defense News)
22 Apr 22. Rohde & Schwarz unveils new UMS400 outdoor spectrum monitoring and radiolocation capability. The universal monitoring system is able to detect frequencies from 8 kHz to 8 GHz – extendable to 20 GHz with the company’s CS-MC20 converters.
According to the company, the capability better helps users overcome difficulties posed by broader frequency ranges used by modern systems and can be used for fixed and mobile spectrum monitoring, radiolocation of short radio messages, identify sources of sporadic interference or even emitter hunting.
The new UMS is expected to provide improved capabilities, with previous sensors needing to be placed as close to the antenna as possible to mitigate cable losses and enhance sensitivity.
The model features compact outdoor housing using lower levels of power, making it impactful for temporary missions including event monitoring. This is facilitated by an independent internal computer to collect data.
The capability is in line with ITU recommendations, with the company confirming that it can be incorporated into systems utilising the Rohde & Schwarz ARGUS software which networks stations utilising the UMS400.
Late last month, Defence formally accepted the first Austal-built evolved Cape Class vessel into service for the Royal Australian Navy, with Rohde & Schwarz designing customised Naval Integrated Communications System (NAVICS) capabilities within five months of contract execution.
The patrol boat, which is the first of six Australian Defence Vessels (ADVs), will be deployed for border protection, fisheries and constabulary duties ahead of full operational capability of the Arafura Class offshore patrol vessels.
Contracted to develop customised NAVICS for the assets, managing director of Rohde & Schwarz Gareth Evans congratulated the company’s swift five-month design of tailored communications solutions for the vessel.
“It’s a great day for Austal and Navy, but also for Rohde & Schwarz Australia, which as Communication Systems Integrator (CSI) has achieved a number of record milestones that have significantly contributed to this day becoming a reality,” Evans said.
“Within just five months of contract execution, we completed the design of our customised NAVICS internal and external communications solution for the Cape Class.”
According to the company, the Factory and Harbour Acceptance Testing were completed within 11 months and 17 months each.
“I’m extremely proud of the effort of the Rohde & Schwarz Australia team and their counterparts at Austal,” Evans continued. (Source: Defence Connect)
25 Apr 22. China: Rising trend of zero-day attacks will continue to expose strategic industries to Beijing-backed nefarious cyber actors. On 22 April, cyber security firm Mandiant claimed that cyber threat actors launched an increased number of zero-day attacks over the last year. A zero-day attack is a cyber attack enabled by a software vulnerability that has yet to be discovered by security professionals. Nearly 80 such vulnerabilities were exploited in 2021 according to Mandiant, compared to the 62 attacks recorded between 2019 and 2020. The Chinese government has been the most active threat actor targeting these vulnerabilities, with at least eight zero-day attacks launched in the last year being attributed to Beijing-linked hackers. The most notable incident was the Chinese state-affiliated group Hafnium’s targeting “tens of thousands” of entities in early 2021 through Microsoft’s Exchange email software (see Sibylline Cyber Alert – 8 March 2021). With the sustained proliferation of Covid-induced working from home technology, such as cloud services, likely to continue to provide Beijing’s hackers with additional vulnerabilities to exploit, there is a heightened risk of further such state-linked attacks being launched in the coming months. Industries of strategic interest to the Chinese government, such as renewable energy, will remain the most at-risk for such nefarious activity. (Source: Sibylline)
22 Apr 22. Finland wins NATO cyber defense competition. A team of cyber-defense professionals from Finland recently won an international competition involving dozens of squads, thousands of virtualized systems and “live-fire” digital attacks.
The NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence in an April 22 message crowned the Finnish crew the winner of Locked Shields 2022, the largest exercise of its kind. A joint Lithuania-Poland team secured second and an Estonia-Georgia team locked in third.
Carry Kangur, the head of cyber exercises at the CCDCOE, in a statement said the competition was “very close,” with the winner edging ahead because of solid defense against network and web attacks and excellence in situation reporting.
“Overall, they scored above average in all categories, and this is one of the important aims of Locked Shields,” Kangur said. “The most successful are the teams who manage to tackle all challenges in different categories, as the strategic decision makers and technicians will have to work together to properly address all the elements of a large-scale cyberattack.”
This year’s Locked Shields specifically focused on the interdependencies of international IT systems.
The multi-day event is typically conducted under intense conditions, replicating a spreading crisis that ropes in the military and civilian worlds and the public and private sectors. Simulation specifics were not immediately clear.
“All 24 participating teams can consider themselves winners,” Kangur said, “as hopefully they will go home with a valuable, cutting-edge and relevant training experience that only Locked Shields can offer, since it provides a unique opportunity for teams to test their skills in a safe environment.”
The need for combined cyber exercises is increasingly evident given current events, including the coronavirus pandemic and Russia’s unprovoked belligerence in Ukraine, the CCDCOE said in a statement this month.
Hackers and other malign actors have pelted Ukraine with cyberattacks in the run up to, and during, Russia’s latest invasion. Moscow has denied involvement.
“Societies have become more dependent on virtual solutions and this has greatly increased the attack surface for malicious actors, requiring effective collaboration between public and private entities to ensure the systems we depend on can be protected,” the CCDCOE said.
Ukraine joined the center of excellence as a contributor this year.
The CCDCOE, located in the Estonian capital of Tallinn, is staffed and financed by the U.S., United Kingdom, France, Germany, South Korea and others. It serves as medium for cyber education, cooperation and research and development.
Finnish leaders are debating formally joining the NATO alliance, with a decision whether to apply expected in the coming weeks, Reuters reported April 20. Finland is already considered a close partner and supports the cyber center. (Source: C4ISR & Networks)
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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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