Sponsored by Oshkosh
www.oshkoshdefense.com
30 Aug 18. SNC to open new aircraft modification facility. Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) has broken ground on a new aircraft modification and logistics support facility at Huntsville (HSV) International Airport, Alabama, the company announced on 28 August. This will be SNC’s second modifications facility in the area, adding 60,794sq ft of operational space with room to house multiple rotary-wing aircraft. The modifications facility will offer services such as aircraft systems design, modification, upgrade and logistics support to military customers. It will also have the ability to perform on-site certification, inspection and certified maintenance. Planned in preparation for future fixed- and rotary-wing programme support, the complex is expected to be fully operational by early 2019. (Source: Shephard)
30 Aug 18. Windshield Wiper Fluid a Potential Battlefield Fuel. Fuel cells using methanol may finally be making inroads with the Army after years of research and development.
Beth Ferry, power division chief at the Army’s Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center, said resistance to the technology has come in the form of the service’s “one fuel forward” policy of sticking with JP-8 to power all its ground vehicles, aircraft and generators.
JP-8, however, has many impurities that make its use as stock for fuel cells inefficient. That, plus the desire to have only one fuel in the logistics tail, has impeded the use of methanol fuel cells in battlefields. But methanol is already widely distributed in the Army in the form of windshield wiper fluid.
“Look at the ingredients on the back,” Ferry told National Defense.
Brad McNeilly-Anta, command post consultant at CERDEC, said there will be a feasibility study to see if the dyes and cleaning agents can be stripped away from windshield wiper fluid. Doing so would make it an efficient stock for methanol fuel cells. Meanwhile, opposition to methanol-based fuel cells in the Army is breaking down, Ferry said. Special Operations Command is already using it for some niche applications. It has all of its safety certifications and — since it comes in bottles — is nothing more than “packaged energy” just like a regular battery, she said.
CERDEC is using an XX55 fuel cell made by Ultracell LLC of Livermore, California, that supplies energy to the experimental expeditionary joint battle command platform. The backpackable system — which is designed to provide dismounted troops satellite connectivity — once weighed 60 pounds, but is now down to 23 pounds, said McNeilly-Anta.
Part of the solution to reducing the weight was the fuel cell. It took two standard batteries to power the transceiver, pad and encryption device. Now, a 1-liter package of methanol coupled with the fuel cell does all that for more than 24 hours, he said.
Ferry said methanol fuel cells are being looked at more seriously for these niche applications.
There is also some disagreement within the Army on what the “one fuel forward” policy means. “Would we be running a vehicle on a methanol fueled battery? No. But when you look at methanol as a packaged fuel … how is it different from a battery?” she asked. (Source: glstrade.com/Defense News)
30 Aug 18. Honeywell, CMU to develop AI technologies. Honeywell is collaborating with Carnegie Mellon University to advance artificial intelligence and robotic technologies for connected e-commerce distribution centres, Honeywell announced on 28 August. The initiative brings together Honeywell Intelligrated and Carnegie Mellon’s National Robotics Engineering Center. The collaboration will focus on developing a next-generation architecture to control and operate multiple robotic applications. The platform will use machine learning to enable critical decision-making capabilities, intelligent motion, collision avoidance and reliable sensing making it practical to deploy advanced robotics in dynamic, unpredictable environments. The development will benefit distribution centres, which are becoming more integrated and complex and looking to robotics solutions to improve productivity and performance in fulfilling orders. Honeywell’s approach enables continuous learning and performance improvements to adapt to changing conditions in the enterprise. This allows for the automation of more complex warehousing tasks, such as unloading shipping containers and picking packets or individual e-commerce orders. (Source: Shephard)
30 Aug 18. PAE Government Systems Inc., Arlington, Virginia, was awarded a $138,516,865 modification (P00008) to foreign military sales (Afghanistan) contract W56HZV-17-C-0117 for ground vehicle support. Work will be performed in HKIA, Afghanistan, with an estimated completion date of Aug. 30, 2022. Fiscal 2018 other procurement, Army funds in the amount of $138,516,865 were obligated at the time of the award. U.S. Army Contracting Command, Warren, Michigan, is the contracting activity.
30 Aug 18. The Boeing Co., St. Louis, Missouri, has been awarded a maximum $128,865,600 undefinitized contractual action delivery order (SPRPA1-18-F-0LB6) against a five-year base contract (SPRPA1-14-D-002U) with one five-year option period for F/A-18 aircraft spare parts. This was a sole-source acquisition using justification 10 U.S. Code 2304(c)(1), as stated in Federal Acquisition Regulation 6.302-1. Location of performance is Missouri, with a Nov. 30, 2021, performance completion date. Using military service is Navy. Type of appropriation is fiscal 2018 through 2021 Navy working capital funds. The contracting activity is the Defense Logistics Agency Aviation, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
30 Aug 18. Local maintenance for the Taipan. Italian helicopter manufacturer Leonardo has now selected Fishermans Bend in inner Melbourne as the site for a helicopter repair and overhaul facility. Minister for Defence Christopher Pyne said the facility will be capable of servicing Australia’s multi-role helicopter, Taipan, as well as foreign military and certain civil helicopter main gear boxes.
“The facility will commence operation in mid-2020 and employ at least 15 technical staff for 30 years or more, with 25 or so staff employed indirectly,” Minister Pyne said.
The federal government is investing around $16m in the facility, with a similar amount being committed by Leonardo. This facility will be the only one of its kind in the southern hemisphere, and will generate new opportunities for local defence industry in the regional aerospace market.
Minister Pyne said, “Previously we had to send the gear boxes back to Italy for maintenance – now we’ll be able to do that work here, faster and cheaper, while transferring skills and know-how to Australian industry.”
This project is a true win-win situation for both Defence and local defence industry, creating more defence industry jobs in Victoria and leading to greater helicopter availability for operations. The MRH90 is one of the most advanced tactical troop transport helicopters of the 21st century. The Commonwealth of Australia ordered 46 MRH90s from Australian Aerospace under AIR 9000 Phases 2, 4 and 6 in a bid to rationalise the Defence Force’s helicopter platforms. When completed, the MRH-90 will be available for two airmobile squadrons, one special operations support squadron, and one maritime support helicopter squadron, able to provide airmobile and maritime support capability to the ADF from land bases as well as the Canberra Class Amphibious Assault Ships.(Source: Defence Connect)
28 Aug 18. US military procures two Nano Dimension’s DragonFly Pro 3D printers. Additive electronics provider Nano Dimension has completed the sale of two DragonFly Pro 3D printers to the US Army. Sold to two different branches of the armed forces, the DragonFly deals were closed a few weeks after the company was awarded the US Government Certified Vendor status. The sales were concluded by TriMech Solutions and Fathom, the two US value-added resellers working under Nano Dimension.
Nano Dimension USA president Simon Fried said: “Nano Dimension continues to strengthen its position in the US market, particularly in the US defence sector.
“These sales to tier one customers demonstrate the attractiveness of our additive manufacturing solution. The ability to create functional circuit prototypes quickly and securely in-house is a key factor in the increasing adoption of our solution in the multi-billion-dollar US defence sector.
“Nano Dimension’s DragonFly Pro 3D Printer makes it possible to 3D-print radically new designs and improve workflows by leveraging the agility of additive manufacturing.
“The defence sector is highly motivated to enable additive manufacturing in the field by bypassing traditional manufacturing processes.”
Nano Dimension’s DragonFly Pro 3D printer is used to transform electronics development by allowing companies to reinvent their development processes along with their products. Featuring a high-resolution system, the printer enables designers and engineers to 3D-print both metal and polymer simultaneously. Furthermore, the new printer technology facilitates Internet Protocol (IP)-secure, in-house production or prototyping of functional electronics such as sensors, antennas, moulded interconnect devices, and printed circuit boards.(Source: army-technology.com)
27 Aug 18. DARPA seeks new use for SHIELD. The Supply Chain Hardware Integrity for Electronics Defense (SHIELD) programme, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA’s) effort to stop the introduction of counterfeit parts into electronic systems, is partnering with IBM to create a way to verify and validate contracts. SHIELD is a 100×100-micron-sized device. It has five special systems on it, including a full Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) 256 encryption engine and a microscopic antenna that can only be contacted using a small device that plugs into an iPhone. SHIELD has sensors that can detect any intrusion or compromise from ultraviolet or X-rays, excessive voltage, or temperature. If an attempt is made to remove SHIELD from a package, it will self-destruct. Every microscopic chip has its own unique identifier and each SHIELD chip costs 1/10th of a cent.
“Is it really possible to get 100,000 transistors on a chip that you can barely see? Could you communicate with it? Can it really self-destruct if it senses it is being compromised? All those things, the performers did it,” Kerry Bernstein, a programme manager in the Microsystems Electronics Office for DARPA, and the programme manager for SHIELD, told Jane’s .
“The goal was to make it possible that at any time and any place an untrained operator with no special equipment other than an iPhone can go test the integrity of any electronic component or any product, for that matter, and get immediate results, on site, and do it essentially for free,” he said.
The SHIELD programme has entered a Phase 3, in which DARPA is using it in industry supply chains. Those companies volunteered their supply chains, so for now they wish to remain anonymous, Bernstein noted.
“We are very quickly pursuing transition partners, people that can commercialise this,” he said. “There are companies all over the world that offer turnkey solutions for smart credit cards and smart cards in electronics; this is what we are pursuing right now.” (Source: IHS Jane’s)
28 Aug 18. Indian Air Force launches SPEEDEX contract to ease cargo movement. The Indian Air Force (IAF) has officially launched the Stores, Proactive, Efficient and Expeditious Despatch of Extra Size / Wt Consignment (SPEEDEX) contract. Launched by IAF Maintenance air officer-in-charge air marshal RKS Shera, the SPEEDEX contract was concluded on 28 June with Balmer Lawrie & Co and Ashok Travel and Tours for the air and surface component respectively. The SPEEDEX contract was formally launched by air marshal RKS Shera, air officer-in-charge maintenance in the presence of senior IAF officers, MoD dignitaries and CEOs of the companies. The ability to ‘lift, shift and move’ forms the basis of an effective transportation management and has a significant impact on all principles of military logistics. Prior to this contract, the IAF used hired transport to move cargo to the different airforce bases, which often caused delays in the dispatch of critically required stores. In order to resolve the issue, the IAF intended to reduce the time taken for the movement of the cargo that would ensure early availability of stores to the field units. To this end, the IAF has designed the SPEEDEX programme, which aims to minimise delays in the dispatch of consignment, in addition to easily transporting operationally urgent stores by air, and normal consignments by land. The current contract will help increase support for the maintenance activities of the IAF while enhancing the service’s operational preparedness. (Source: naval-technology.com)
28 Aug 18. Microsemi Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Microchip Technology Inc. (Nasdaq: MCHP), today announced its RTG4™ high-speed signal processing radiation-tolerant field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) have achieved Qualified Manufacturers List (QML) Class V qualification by the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA). The designation, the highest level of qualification for space components and a necessary step to satisfy mission assurance requirements on many space programs, opens the door for Microsemi’s RTG4 FPGAs to be used on the most critical space missions with the highest standards for quality and reliability. As the first and only radiation-tolerant FPGA offering more than 150,000 logic elements to achieve a QML Class V qualification, Microsemi’s RTG4 FPGAs can now be used by developers in Class 1 space flight systems, bringing the cost and schedule advantages of FPGAs to the most demanding space missions. Many space programs are constrained to use these Class V-qualified components due to the need for the highest level of quality and reliability, and until now have been unable to use a high-speed radiation-tolerant FPGA in their signal processing systems. RTG4 FPGAs now fill this void in the marketplace, providing more signal processing bandwidth than has been previously available in radiation-tolerant non-volatile FPGAs and enabling designers of satellite on-board data processing systems to take advantage of the easy prototyping and fast design cycle times FPGAs provide.
“We believe it’s critical to support our customers with the availability of our flagship radiation-tolerant FPGAs qualified to the stringent QML Class V standard—the highest qualification level for integrated circuits operating in space,” said Minh Nguyen, Microsemi’s senior marketing manager of space and aviation. “This designation is the culmination of hundreds of thousands of testing hours, and underscores the high reliability of these unique devices as well as our team’s deep experience in developing radiation-tolerant FPGGAs with industry-leading flight heritage.”
Granted by the DLA, NASA and the U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Command (represented by The Aerospace Corporation), the QML Class V qualification is a strong endorsement by recognized subject matter experts on the quality and reliability of RTG4 FPGAs. This validation is increasingly important as a growing number of satellites are being built to perform a wide variety of missions, including imaging, communications, navigation, science and monitoring of weather, climate and natural resources. Many of these systems require the highest level of component quality, particularly when large revenue streams depend upon the satellites functioning correctly, or when there are national security considerations. Microsemi’s new QML Class V qualification adds to the existing designations the RTG4 FPGAs have achieved, including QML Class Q and MIL-STD-883 Class B qualifications. Details can be found in the company’s reliability report, as well as its DLA Cross Reference Guide. As the company is already a QML-V certified manufacturer of high reliability FPGAs for space applications, achieving the recent additional qualification for its RTG4 FPGAs further strengthens its leadership position in the market and reflects the company’s focus on developing innovative solutions to meet the increasing demands of modern satellite payloads. In addition to satellites, its RTG4 FPGAs are ideally suited for applications including space launch vehicles, planetary orbiters and landers, and deep space probes. Leveraging Microsemi’s 60-year legacy of innovation in the space market, its RTG4 devices are the latest development in a long history of radiation-tolerant FPGAs found in many NASA and international space programs. For more information, visit http://www.microsemi.com/products/fpga-soc/radtolerant-fpgas/rtg4.
27 Aug 18. DynCorp International Awarded Contract for Aircraft Maintenance at Joint Base Andrews. On August 23, The Department of Defense awarded DynCorp International (DI) a contract to support the United States Air Force at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. DI will provide executive airlift maintenance support for all management, personnel and equipment. Services performed will include fixed-wing flight line and back shop maintenance for the 89thAirlift Wing aircraft, as well as back shop support services to the 811th Operations Group rotary-wing aircraft. “Maintaining the aircraft that transport our nation’s leaders is a tremendous responsibility,” said Joe Ford, DynAviation president. “We are honored to have earned the trust and confidence of the United States Air Force in this exceptionally important mission and look forward to continuing our legacy of superior service on this contract.” DI was the first contractor awarded this contract, back in 2001. (Source: BUSINESS WIRE)
27 Aug 18. US Air Force tests ‘base in a box’ in Poland to prep for future wars. About 60 airmen from 14 different active, Reserve and Air National Guard units set up this tent city at Poland’s 31st Air Base during a July exercise meant to test a smaller, prototype version of the U.S. Air Force’s deployable air base system, or DABS, construct. If the U.S. Air Force finds itself in a conflict with Russia, it won’t be able to simply rely on its major operating hubs in Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom. So it’s getting more expeditionary thanks to a new “air base in a box” that will enable the service to rapidly move to a partner nation’s airfield, set up a squadron and begin flying combat missions.
Defense News traveled to Poland’s 31st Air Base near Krzesiny this July for an exclusive look at the first-ever trial of the U.S. Air Force’s new deployable air base system, or DABS — a series of humble-looking shipping containers filled with everything needed to stand up air operations, including temporary billeting and mess facilities, vehicles, airfield repair resources, and power and electrical equipment.
“When we deploy forward, we have very generous hosts, but in a crisis, they’re going to need their capabilities for their priorities, their mission sets, and we’re going to fight jointly and operate jointly,” said Brig. Gen. Roy Agustin, U.S. Air Forces Europe’s director of logistics, engineering and force protection.
“But rather than add a burden by adding our [requirements] — ‘Hey, can you provide us power, can you provide us lodging?’ — if we can bring that organic capability with us, we are both more capable and there’s more synergy as a result,” he told Defense News in a July 31 interview.
While this capability comes at a fraction of the cost of a new, permanent air base, it still entails spending hundreds of millions of dollars on DABS and storage facilities based around Europe. In fiscal 2019, the Air Force plans on spending $361m for DABS equipment. The budget also includes funding for storage facilities to house DABS, including $119m for Ramstein Air Base, Germany, and $87m for one at Royal Air Force Fairford in the United Kingdom. A further $48m will pay for production and deployment of “enhancements” to existing DABS infrastructure at undisclosed locations.
Gen. Tod Wolters, commander of U.S. Air Forces Europe, said funding these deployable air base packages is critical for improving the posture of the service on the European continent.
“Those funds have enhanced our lethality, our responsiveness and our resiliency, and we want to ensure that our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines are in a position where they can be quicker and faster and sharper and stronger than their predecessors,” he said.
Because the Air Force didn’t start buying DABS until the FY18 budget and still doesn’t have a complete system, a full-up DABS was not used for this first deployment. Instead, airmen hustled to deploy a more cost-effective prototype version that was about 20 percent the size of a normal DABS, said Capt. Alex John, who helped plan the exercise.
“The scale doesn’t need to be huge yet because right now what we’re doing is we’re scripting the process for how we would actually forward deploy DABS,” he said. “What we’re able to do at a small scale, we’re able to do essentially the same exact way on a large scale. So it’s the same process, just more people and more equipment.”
The exercise starts .
While planning for the exercise began almost a year ago, the proof of concept officially started in July, with the first members of the team arriving at Krzesiny on July 14, and the first trucks loaded on July 16 and then traveling from Sanem, Luxembourg, to Poland that day. About 60 airmen from 13 different active, reserve and Air National Guard squadrons participated in the exercise. But of that, only a handful of airmen in leadership positions were given full insight into what to prepare for on the ground.
“We wanted to see how they would do it. Clean slate, tabula rasa, how these engineers would set up the tents,” John said. “Maybe they’d do it better than we planned, or different.”
In total, 87 trucks, two C-130J military transport aircraft and a train moved the equivalent of 321 pallets of equipment — including about 60 vehicles and 161 containers — into Poland by July 31. That same day, airmen began sending materiel back to Luxemburg, with 25 trucks departing Krzesiny once everything had been received. The first equipment to arrive were things like forklifts and other vehicles needed for moving equipment. Following close behind were the materials needed to stand up the tent city — temporary housing, a main dining hall, shower facilities and a kitchen (port-a-potties were contracted by the service, but a real DABS would include latrines). Later on, two C-130 Hercules brought laundry facilities and air conditioning units. Tech. Sgt. Dennis Ferguson, an engineering assistant, was one of the first airmen to arrive at Krzesiny on July 14.
“When we showed up, this whole field was thigh- to waist-high grass. The Polish knocked everything down for us. We leveled a little bit of stuff out, and then they filled in some holes for us that were out here,” he said.
“When you look at a map, you can only see so much from an aerial picture. It might look like the greatest place in the world to put tents, and then you get there and it’s low lying and it holds water or its full of holes and not exactly ideal.”
What’s the US Air Force upgrading in Europe?
The U.S. Air Force is executing military-related construction projects across Europe as part of the European Deterrence Initiative. From there, the engineers figured out how to lay out the camp and began constructing the facilities. While there were no major problems, the process didn’t always go smoothly, Ferguson said. The main dining facility was a new piece of equipment that no one had experience setting up, and the written directions were packed in a separate box — turning its assembly into everyone’s worst Ikea furniture nightmare. Then, engineers realized they had put the tent city downwind from the port-a-potties and had to reorganize the camp to keep living quarters habitable. Air conditioning units broke and had to be repaired, generators needed to be refueled and fuel consumption had to be monitored.
“There’s always something to improve on,” Ferguson said. “As soon as everything is set up, there’s always something that’s going to go wrong. If it’s mechanical, it’s going to break.”
A little help from the Army
Another learning experience for the Air Force was using a train to transport goods; the service normally doesn’t rely on railroads and wanted to “stress test” that capability.
“We’re looking at all of our different options because in a contingency environment, if we don’t have enough trucks or we don’t have enough planes, we can use trains,” John explained.
For this exercise, the Air Force contracted with a commercial freight company, filling 19 rail cars with 31 shipping containers and 13 vehicles. It also leaned on the expertise of U.S. Army personnel temporarily deployed to Poland to provide logistical support for Operation Atlantic Resolve, the name for the U.S. mission meant to strengthen ties between NATO allies and other partners in Europe. When the train showed up, it wasn’t configured in a way that made it easy to offload, said Staff Sgt. Zane Trapp, a movement supervisor for the Army’s 612th Movement Control Team, which helped the Air Force with customs paperwork, getting diplomatic clearances and transportation logistics.
“They probably didn’t know what it would look like at the download site, but we did,” he said. “We sent the train back out [from the loading dock] and reconfigured it. It took about an hour. And then the download took about two and a half hours, versus about five or six if it wasn’t reconfigured.”
While Trapp was explaining the reconfiguring process, Tech Sgt. Michael Creech, who led the Air Force’s transportation efforts during the exercises, dropped by to greet Trapp and thank him for helping out with the paperwork needed to get 25 trucks worth of equipment shipped out that day.
“This is one heck of a ride today,” Creech said, taking a short break for a minute in the air-conditioned dining tent — a welcome respite from the hot, muggy summer day. “We’ve got 11 [vehicles] done.”
“I have the rest of the forms too,” Trapp said.
“I’m glad you did. That was like a weight off the shoulders, too, because [I’m] running back and forth out there,” Creech replied.
After Creech left to finish up a long day’s work, Trapp commended the effort that he and other airmen were putting into the exercise.
“Twenty-five trucks is a lot when you’re working in an expeditionary type of environment. I have a forklift. I have a crane. I don’t really have established throughput and stuff that can stack things up for me quickly,” he said. “Most of the vehicles we have require a dock, so a lot of the times we can only do two trucks at a time, if that.”
The proof of concept was designed to stress how much the Air Force could bring into a new base and how quickly it could be done. Much of the equipment moved into the area — large shipping containers filled with thousands of tons of concrete slabs to enable maintenance work, heavy high-voltage power generators that would be necessary to power a larger deployment — went unused.
“We have roughly an average of receiving 10 to 15 trucks a day. How much more than that are we able to handle is what we’re trying to figure out. Then we’ll come up with the maximum amount of the vehicles, trains, planes that we could receive in one day,” John said. “What is the fastest time frame to move all of this equipment?”
That may seem like a really simple exercise on paper, but logistics can break down on the smallest details, he said. Not being able to support flying operations for even a single day can have major consequences in a conflict.
“We’re proving our ability to respond to any activity or any kind of contingency anywhere within our [area of responsibility],” John said. “No matter where it is, no matter where we need to go, we’re proving that we can do it rapidly and effectively and be able to build up air power rapidly in a very flexible way.”
Where’s the Prime BEEF?
The Air Force already fields a number of organizations that enable a more expeditionary form of operations. It has established RED HORSE squadrons — short for Rapid Engineer Deployable Heavy Operational Repair Squadron Engineer — that can deploy to an area and conduct heavy construction, like building runways or performing major airfield repairs, and sustain itself for several months. Prime BEEF (base engineer emergency force) teams, which can deploy to do more minor construction work, have been around since the Vietnam War. And the service has also created “Harvest Eagle” and “Harvest Falcon” kits that would allow the Air Force to stand up shelters, latrines, messing and other basic facilities in austere environments. So what’s the difference between all of those organizations and DABS?
“It’s a bigger umbrella,” Agustin explained, himself a former RED HORSE and Prime BEEF engineer. Engineers and equipment from RED HORSE and Prime BEEF squadrons are part of the DABS concept. And compared to Harvest Eagle and Harvest Falcon, the DABS comprises a more diverse kit of equipment that includes medical support, various vehicles for transportation and construction, and tools for setting up airfield operations.
Another major difference is that DABS will be pre-positioned in Europe at locations including Sanem, Ramstein Air Base and RAF Fairford, allowing them to deploy more quickly than the Harvest Eagle and Harvest Falcon sets in the face of a crisis.
“What took us 120-plus days as we shipped from Holloman Air Base in New Mexico to this theater now is [taking] one day from Sanem to here,” Agustin said.
This first proof of concept didn’t involve supporting a full-up flying squadron, but Prime BEEF engineers got the chance to do some airfield maintenance for Poland on July 30.
Using a “Sustainment Pavement Repair” kit containing tools, a concrete mixer and materials like asphalt, a team of engineers fixed a sinkhole located on one of the base’s maintenance aprons. After digging the loose gravel out of the hole, the airmen used a chainsaw to dislodge damaged concrete before filling it with asphalt and repaving it with concrete.
“When you forward deploy this DABS, anything can happen to a runway to damage it,” John said. “This is just more practice for them.”
The next DABS exercise hasn’t been greenlighted yet, but it’s likely the Air Force will want to test whether it can be used by airmen to sustain a full expeditionary camp and to keep a combat squadron flying.
“As we get more of these equipment delivered,” Agustin said, “I think we definitely want to see if we can deploy and employ a greater part of this capability.” (Source: glstrade.com/Defense News)
23 Aug 18. US spies warn of increase in supply chain vulnerabilities. The U.S. intelligence community has seen an increase in hackers trying to exploit the supply chain exploits this year, a top intelligence official said Aug. 22. The warning comes as federal government leaders have raised concerns about security vulnerabilities for secondary parts and software, an industry that is worth more than $90bn.
“Hackers are infecting a wide range of users through official software distribution channels,” said La’Naia Jones, deputy CIO of the intelligence community, during an event sponsored by Splunk. “Users do not expect malicious code to be introduced by updates from trusted software vendors.”
She added that the vulnerabilities in the supply chain are “disrupting the way that we provide data, tools and information.”
While Jones did not identify any supply chain vulnerabilities, the recent cases of ZTE and Kaspersky are two well-known examples of the problem. The U.S. government has banned use of ZTE and Kaspersky products out of a fear they are vulnerable to hacking by the Chinese and Russian governments’, respectively. Jones’ warning comes a few weeks after a report that said the U.S. government’s action and knowledge of supply chain vulnerabilities “are not fully coordinated or shared.” That report came from MITRE, a private non-profit organization that conducts government research. “Nation-state adversaries have exploited cyber and supply chain vulnerabilities critical to U.S. security for hostile purposes,” the report said, adding that examples include industrial espionage, attacks on control systems for critical infrastructure and manipulation of software. According to MITRE, the market for cyber insurance premiums is estimated to be worth $2.5bn, and could rise to $7.5bn in a few years. Supply chains can be protected by threat awareness, identification and reduction of vulnerabilities at each stage of the life cycle and through use of a standardization process, according to NIST guidelines.
For month, the Pentagon’s senior leaders have said the Department of Defense and its contractors need to take a more rigid and uncompromising approach to cybersecurity, (Source: Fifth Domain)
————————————————————————
About Oshkosh Defense
Oshkosh Defense is a leading provider of tactical wheeled vehicles and life cycle sustainment services. For decades Oshkosh has been mobilizing military and security forces around the globe by offering a full portfolio of heavy, medium, light and highly protected military vehicles to support our customers’ missions. In addition, Oshkosh offers advanced technologies and vehicle components such as TAK-4® independent suspension systems, TerraMax™ unmanned ground vehicle solutions, Command Zone™ integrated control and diagnostics system, and ProPulse® diesel electric and on-board vehicle power solutions, to provide our customers with a technical edge as they fulfill their missions. Every Oshkosh vehicle is backed by a team of defense industry experts and complete range of sustainment and training services to optimize fleet readiness and performance. Oshkosh Defense, LLC is an Oshkosh Corporation company [NYSE: OSK].
To learn more about Oshkosh Defense, please visit us at www.oshkoshdefense.com.
————————————————————————