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16 May 19. MIV On Track. Sources close to BATTLESPACE suggest that ARTEC is on track to a Main Gate decision for 514 MIV Boxer vehicles. The initial batch will be manufactured in Germany by Rheinmetall and KMW with assembly moving to Telford in the UK. Other unconfirmed sources suggest that lack of money may have caused DE&S to take a second look at the affordability of the Challenger 2 Smooth Bore option. JLTV is believed to be through IAB and ready for Main Gate.
16 May 19. Tokyo resumes plans to replace JGSDF’s Type 96 armoured vehicles. The Japan Ministry of Defense’s (MoD’s) Acquisition, Technology, & Logistics Agency (ATLA) has resumed plans to acquire a new wheeled armoured vehicle to replace the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force’s (JGSDF’s) ageing fleet of Komatsu Type 96 8×8 armoured personnel carriers (APCs). The agency held an explanatory meeting on 14 May for companies looking into possible proposals to develop a prototype vehicle. When contacted by Jane’s an ATLA spokesperson refused to disclose details of the meeting citing “the fairness of the selection procedures”, but revealed that the new vehicle is expected to be armoured, armed, and capable of rapidly deploying JGSDF troops in a wide range of situations, including “for the defence of remote islands in the face of the enemy’s armed threats”. (Source: IHS Jane’s)
14 May 19. This Chinese truck can launch a salvo of drones. What is most striking about modern warfare is the synthesis of technologies. A light truck for carrying troops is over a century old. Tube-launched artillery mounted on trucks was a stable of World War II. Explosive-tipped drones are a new variation on loitering munitions that have been around in some form since the 1980s. Combined, however, these components turn a light and mobile troop carrier into not just an artillery piece, but an artillery piece that can potentially scout an entire battlefield and then launch multiple precision strikes across it. It is the synthesis that makes the machine.
On display at the Beijing Civil-Military Integration Expo 2019 from May 6 to May 8 was a truck outfitted with 12 tubes capable of launching drones. Developed by Yanjing Auto, the 4×4 vehicle can drive off-roads and has a top speed of around 77 mph. The truck is arguably the least impressive part of the whole package, but the mundanity of its appearance and the easy mobility it provides likely make it a perfectly viable platform for shoot-and-scoot attacks.
The heart of the truck’s striking power is in its tubes.
Four of the tubes launch smaller SULA30 drones, which are scouts with over an hour of flight time, according to reporting from China’s state-owned Global Times. The remaining eight tubes will hold larger SULA89 drones, which can carry over 4 pounds of explosives and crash into targets at a speed of over 110 mph.
Notably absent from the report is the role of humans in the targeting. The scout drones can relay information back to humans in a command center, but it’s unclear if the one-way drone missiles will fly to targets selected by humans or make the choice of target while in transit. The volume of drones launched, and the way rocket artillery is designed to fire rapidly in salvos, suggest that human control would largely be limited to target selection before firing.
The duration of flight times for target-selecting munitions is already a major concern for nongovernmental organizations interested in stopping an AI arms race. The longer a drone-like weapon flies before ultimately exploding something, the more opportunity there is for the situation on the ground to change and the targets to change from lawful to lawful in the presence of civilians, and that’s without accounting for false positives. How command-and-control is built into the exploding flocks of flying robots launched from vehicles is a major concern with both tactical and ethical implications. This is hardly a unique problem for China; two U.S. companies announced plans May 7 for a scouting drone that can tube-launch other attritable aerial assets.
It’s also a risk that extends beyond just the formal militaries of superpowers. At the show, Yanjing Auto noted that the 4×4 has variants that can field multiple armed hexacopter scout drones or an array of eight missiles. All of these, including the truck with drone-launching tubes, are reportedly available for export. (Source: C4ISR & Networks)
13 May 19. Koluman rolls out LSA4 4×4 LSV. Turkey’s Koluman Otomotiv Endustri AS revealed a LSA4 4×4 light strike vehicle (LSV) that is being marketed in several different configurations. The first model has a crew of four and is fitted with an open roof with roll-over bar protection, and a left-hand drive configuration. The front passenger, typically the vehicle commander, is provided with a pintle-mounted 7.62 mm machine gun (MG) and with a .50 MG mounted on the roof. Mounted at each corner of the LSA4 is a bank of four electrically operated smoke grenade launchers. The company said it has a curb weight of 2,950 kg when fitted with the baseline armour, which is STANAG 4569 Level 1a/1lb, and with an integrated mine protection kit. (Source: IHS Jane’s)
11 May 19. Dirty work: Robots take on complex obstacles in US Army exercise. The U.S. Army has concluded an elaborate exercise at Yakima Air Base in Washington state to identify the ability for robots to take on dangerous and dirty work in battle.
Gen. Mike Murray, the head of Army Futures Command, landed via UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter on a high desert plateau at Yakima Training Center on May 7, with a University of Texas engineer in tow who specializes in robotics. They made the trip to check out progress made by the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment of the 1st Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division Stryker Brigade Combat Team, led by Lt. Col. Jonathan Fursman, in assessing robotic breach capabilities as part of Bayonet Focus and the Joint Warfighting Assessment 2019.
JWA is an annual exercise meant for experimentation of new and emerging concepts and capabilities. Previous iterations were held at Fort Bliss, Texas, and in Germany. This year it is stateside, but the plan is to return to Europe in 2020.
“We never, ever want to send another soldier into a breach, so how do we do this completely autonomously?” Murray asked, adding that this is the problem set he’s presented to engineers and the Army.
Murray’s command is less than a year old, but it hit the ground running to carry out it’s mission to rapidly modernize the Army with a focus on six priorities: long-range precision fires, the next-generation combat vehicle, future vertical lift, the network, air and missile defense, and soldier lethality.
Within the NGCV portfolio, the Army will evaluate and prototype robotic combat vehicles. However, the technology isn’t the challenge, according to Murray, but rather figuring out the utility of robots and how they can best be used on the battlefield, which means understanding shortcomings and advantages of the technology.
“It’s not necessarily the hardware, it’s about the employment of robotics and the human-robotics interfaces that we have to look at,” Murray told Defense News, who accompanied him on the trip.
The Army continues to introduce complexity to its breach exercises, adding more layers to this year’s evaluation, to include flying a Black Hawk that spits out two unmanned aircraft systems — called Air-Launched Effects — thousands of feet above enemy terrain to perform surveillance and reconnaissance. That capability is in its infancy but is part of the future vertical lift modernization effort underway.
“The robotics piece of this is not the hard part,” Murray said. “The hard part is figuring out where it makes sense, how they interact, how they adapt, how soldiers do certain things now that they have robotic capability.
“There are a lot of things we have to work through.”
What happened at the exercise?
Fursman and Capt. Nichole Rotte, commander of Bravo Company, 23rd Brigade Engineer Battalion, were tasked to design the breach obstacles and how robots might overcome them, while also challenging those robots in a complex and realistic scenario.
Bravo Company took on the challenge of figuring how robots can breach obstacles like mine fields, concertina wire and anti-tank trenches while under fire to clear the way for an assault into enemy territory.
The Army has come a long way in this area in just the past few years. In 2017, at Fort Benning, Georgia, the Maneuver Center of Excellence held a demonstration of robotic combat vehicle capability, showcasing its efforts to develop a robotic wingman within the maneuver force and how to incorporate robotic capability within a tank formation, but the demonstration lacked a complex operational scenario and difficult obstacles for the robots to overcome.
The breach exercise at Yakima challenged a wide array of robots with an obstacle layered with mine fields, wire and a deep trench.
In addition to surveillance from the Air-Launched Effects, the Alabama National Guard launched from a reconnaissance vehicle a chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear protective-measure quadcopter to assess any chemical agents present in the area. And a Puma UAS scouted obstacles ahead of advancing robotic vehicles.
And the unit deployed a smoke screen using a robotic Polaris MRZR vehicle that could maintain a thick and steady plume for roughly 30 minutes.
To conduct the breach, Rotte’s unit used two surrogate NGCVs to secure the area and provide suppression fire — a Humvee and an M113 armored personnel carrier, both equipped with a 7.62mm machine gun. The Humvee was controlled by another Humvee, and the M113 was controlled by an operator in a Stryker vehicle. Both controllers maintained a line of sight, positioned low, beneath the plateau.
With the enemy suppressed, two robotic assault breacher vehicles, or ABV, controlled by a Marine Corps unit began to tackle the obstacles. Both robotic vehicles were controlled from a single command vehicle.
The first ABV employed a mine-clearing line charge, clearing a path for the second ABV, inserting stakes in the ground as it moved forward to mark where it was safe for the second ABV to drive in and use a blade used to fill a tank trench.
Once the ABV filled in the ditch, it paved the way for an assault force to move in on the enemy location.
The first breach exercise took two and a half hours, according to Rotte, but the second time around, operators shaved off 30 minutes and proved that robots can accomplish the same breach in roughly the same amount of time as a manned operation would.
Sticking out like a sore thumb
A significant challenge is the electronic signature given off by a group of robots on a battlefield, and so the Army assessed the implications of that during the exercise.
“I worry about the links in terms of it being secure,” Murray said. There are lots of things we gotta work through.”
Fursman said a lot of thinking went into how to obscure the robotic activity, which was largely achieved through a physical smoke screen, but also electronically.
“This is a robotic breach, so you are going to have electronic signatures, so jamming is a threat, for example,” Fursman said.
The exercise included mounted and dismounted electronic warfare capabilities to detect enemy locations and to deploy anti-tank rounds — single multipurpose attack munitions, also known as kamikaze drones. The capabilities were also used to jam enemy frequencies.
But even with those capabilities, the noisy signatures of robots and the capability of an enemy to jam them is a cause for concern, Fursman noted. So the unit tried to deceive enemy forces by emitting a larger signature on the far side of the plateau to make it look like the Army was massing in another location through a lot of radio traffic and other signatures, Fursman said.
This would work if the enemy could solely see the force through electronic means, Fursman said: “They’d see a much bigger signature over here, while we were tucked in behind terrain here waiting to begin the operation.”
But once the enemy has eyes on the robots conducting the breach, “the last thing I’m worried about is electronic signature,” Murray added.
What if an 80-ton robot dies in a ditch?
A less-than-ideal scenario for the Army would be for an 80-ton robot filling in a trench to die while it’s still breaching the obstacle. “Can you just bring in another one?” Murray said, mulling over the scenario. “You can’t. You only have one lane, you are not going to push it out of the way, so you are starting a new breach lane if that happens.”
Rotte said she and her unit are thinking about solutions. “How do I push it through the breach? How do I recover it? What’s the next step?” she said.
“We have come up with a couple of TTPs if we lose the robotics or if something happens,” like bringing in operators via Stryker vehicles to manually move the trucks through a breach, Rotte added. “But are there other options?”
One idea, she said, might be to send in more expendable vehicles that are easier to push out of the way and leave on the battlefield.
Murray brainstormed the use of smaller vehicles to perform certain tasks like detonating mines, or perhaps using M113 armored personnel carriers. “We’ve got thousands and thousands of 113s that we could make robotic and that are completely expendable,” he said. “The more you can get to expendable assets to do this, the better off you are going to be.”
The robotic breach also triggers the debate over what the Army should procure and how those capabilities should be deployed: Should the Army send in high-tech, expensive and heavily armored optionally manned vehicles to conduct operations like breaches? Or can the service design robotic vehicles “that are a little bit more skeleton with all the breaching equipment so if it doesn’t make it, it doesn’t make it, and you just buy more for the redundancy factor?” Rotte wondered.
How much autonomy is ideal?
For most of the soldiers operating the robots, training began three weeks prior. Most operators said they were proficient in less than a few days. For simplicity purposes, the Army designed the control systems for the robots with Xbox controllers, with which a number of soldiers were already familiar.
Operators did observe latency when it came to the sensor and video feeds from cameras on the robots, but it was barely an issue. And the robots were not particularly difficult to maneuver, according to the operators.
However, Rotte’s team considered the level of autonomy that might be appropriate to remove some of the burden of manned crews. But for the purpose of the breach exercise, operators remained in the loop.
The Army will continue to add complexity in robotic operational exercises, according to Murray, as it figures out how to adopt capability into a modernized force, either through applications in the current fleet or in future vehicles. (Source: Defense News)
10 May 19. Major Problems Persist With JLTV, Zumwalt Destroyer, GAO Finds. The Pentagon’s purchase of $1.69trn worth of major weapons systems has been riddled by cost overruns, delays and other problems reflecting poor oversight, the Government Accountability Office said in its annual survey of Defense Department acquisitions.
The 229-page report subtitled “Limited Use of Knowledge-Based Practices Continues to Undercut DOD’s Investments” recommended that the DoD do a better job of checking out the design for a weapons system and what it’s supposed to do before buying it.
“Completion of a preliminary design review prior to starting development” would be advisable, the GAO said in its 17th annual survey of defense acquisitions, released Tuesday. “This lack of knowledge and the effects it can have throughout a program’s acquisition life cycle can increase the risk of undesirable cost and schedule outcomes.”
The report included breakouts on 51 of the 82 major weapons systems examined, including the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, Zumwalt-class stealthy destroyer, Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) and KC-46 aerial refueling tanker.
The GAO said that the DoD’s program office for the F-35 is continuing “to address over 900 deficiencies identified with the aircraft’s performance prior to the end of development testing.”
The report cited as an example the development of “a new helmet mounted display, which will resolve an existing green glow effect that can distort a pilot’s vision during night time carrier landings. Program officials expect installation of some of the new displays in 2019.”
The Navy is still trying to figure out what to do about the two 155mm deck guns that had been planned for the three Zumwalt-class destroyers, the GAO report said. In development, the Navy found that the cost for a single round for the guns was roughly $800,000.
“Following an evaluation of five other munition options, the Navy determined that no viable replacement, guided or unguided, was feasible,” the report said. “As a result, the guns will remain inoperable on the ships for the foreseeable future.”
In January 2018, the Navy changed the primary mission for the Zumwalt class from land attack to offensive surface strike.
“According to Navy officials, the Navy’s planned modifications to support the new mission will cost about $1bn,” the report said.
On JLTV, “the Army and Marine Corps recently concluded operational testing for JLTV and found the vehicles to be survivable for the crew and effective for small combat and transport missions,” the GAO report said.
However, the services also concluded that that the JLTVs were “not operationally suitable because of their high maintenance needs, low reliability, training and manual deficiencies, and safety shortcomings,” the report said.
For the Boeing KC-46 Pegasus air refueling tanker, one of several problems Air Force program officials discovered in development is that “the aerial refueling operator’s screen does not provide sufficient visual sharpness and adaptation to changing background and lighting to allow for safe refueling in all environmental conditions,” the report said.
Boeing is making software fixes without cost to the government, the GAO report said.
As in past surveys, the report hit on a lack of competition on contracts, and often no competition at all, as a factor in rising costs.
The department “did not compete 67 percent of 183 major contracts currently reported” on 82 major weapons systems programs, the report said.
In addition, the report said that the DoD “awarded 47 percent of these 183 contracts to five corporations and entities connected with them:” Lockheed Martin Corp., Boeing, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman and United Technologies.
The report noted that the annual survey is coming out at “a time of significant change at DoD” in how it purchases weapons with oversight responsibilities for many programs transferred to the military services that manage them.
However, “we found that costs continue to increase for many of these programs — even those that started after major acquisition reforms were adopted in 2010,” the report said. “This is troubling because these reforms were supposed to limit cost growth.”
The report said that the DoD “generally concurred” with the findings. In a letter to the GAO, Stacy Cummings, the principal deputy assistant secretary of defense, said the DoD “remains committed to driving down the costs of our weapons systems and reducing the time it takes to deliver them to our warfighters.”
The DoD is striving to implement knowledge-based acquisition practices and it “agrees that competition is the best way to reduce price, even as the American industrial base is evolving,” Cummings said.
10 May 19. First batch of assault vehicles for Philippine Marine Corps arrives home. The first batch of four Korean amphibious assault vehicles (KAAVs) procured for the Philippine Marine Corps has arrived in-country, a source from within the Philippine Navy confirmed with Jane’s on 10 May.
The vehicles arrived just days after the Philippine Marine Corps conducted an ‘activation ceremony’ for its Amphibious Assault Vehicle Company, which was formally stood up on 25 April, said the source.
The vehicles that have arrived in the Philippines are part of a PHP2.42bn (USD46m) contract that was signed between the Philippine government and South Korean defence firm Hanwha Techwin in April 2016.
The firm, which was formerly known as Samsung Techwin, clinched the contract after it emerged as the sole bidder for Manila’s AAV procurement programme.
The project was established to equip the Philippine Marine Corps with which a tracked armoured vehicle capability that can be deployed from the Philippine Navy’s 123m strategic sealift vessels (SSVs). (Source: IHS Jane’s)
10 May 19. JCB and US Army extend excavator contract. Construction equipment manufacturer JCB has secured an additional contract from the US Army for the continued production of high mobility engineer excavators (HMEEs). Under the $21m extended contract, JCB will manufacture HMEEs at its North America headquarters in Pooler until 2021. In addition, JCB and the US Department of Defense are in negotiations on a multi-year contract to further expand HMEE production into the middle of the next decade.
The US Army and its allies use the HMEE construction machine to carry out a range of military and disaster relief missions, including earthmoving, fortification construction and ground clearing.
The HMEE is available in several configurations, including an armoured specification. It has a top speed of 55mph, enabling it to travel with army convoys without an additional transport vehicle.
The design uses JCB’s commercial products, including the 4CX-15 SUPER, the largest backhoe loader available in North America, and the JCB Fastrac, which is claimed to be the world’s fastest production tractor. The machine is certified for military transport on ships, rail and aircraft, and for airdrop operations.
JCB North America general manager of government and defence John Kyler said: “This add-on to our existing contract means we’ll keep producing HMEEs while we finalise the next multi-year contract.
“It’s great news for the soldiers who depend on HMEEs for their important missions. And it’s great news for taxpayers as it preserves the cost efficiency of the program.”
The US Army awarded the first $209m HMEE multi-year production contract to JCB in 2005. The extensions of the contract and international sales reported to have increased production to more than 1,000 machines.
JCB North America manufactures skid steer loaders, compact track loaders and construction equipment for defence customers. (Source: army-technology.com)
09 May 19. China claims development of UAV-launching armoured vehicle. China claims to have developed a “highly mobile” armoured vehicle capable of launching up to 12 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and loitering munitions, according to an 8 May report published by the state-owned Global Times newspaper.
Developed by the Beijing Zhongzi Yanjing Auto Company, the 5.7m-long and 2.4 m-wide vehicle was displayed at the 6–8 May Beijing Civil-Military Integration Expo 2019, said the report, adding that the 4×4 platform, which can reach a top speed on 125 km/h, can operate in difficult terrain, including jungles and mountains.
The vehicle, the designation of which was not mentioned in the article, reportedly carries 12 pneumatic tubes, which are usually hidden within the vehicle and are only revealed upon use, that can launch the UAVs and munitions. (Source: IHS Jane’s)
————————————————————————-Millbrook, based in Bedfordshire, UK, makes a significant contribution to the quality and performance of military vehicles worldwide. Its specialist expertise is focussed in two distinct areas: test programmes to help armed services and their suppliers ensure that their vehicles and systems work as the specification requires; and design and build work to upgrade new or existing vehicles, evaluate vehicle capability and investigate in-service failures. Complementing these is driver and service training and a hospitality business that allows customers to use selected areas of Millbrook’s remarkable facilities for demonstrations and exhibitions.
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