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29 Mar 24. US takes another step to stem the flow of technology to Russia for weapons. The U.S. is asking American companies to stop shipping goods to more than 600 foreign parties over fears the items could be diverted to Russia for use in its invasion of Ukraine, a U.S. official said on Thursday.
The Commerce Department sent letters in recent weeks to at least 20 companies with the warning, the latest effort to stymie the Russia war effort in Ukraine, a U.S. Commerce Department official said.
The companies make and sell products found in missiles and drones recovered inside Ukraine.
Since Moscow invaded Russia in 2022, the U.S. and a more than 30 other countries have put in place a raft of sanctions aimed at degrading Russia’s ability to wage its war by cutting off access to Western technology. Yet American components continue to be found in Russian weapons left on the battlefield in Ukraine.
“In the last several weeks, we’ve sent letters to more than 20 American companies, each containing a list of more than 600 foreign parties,” Assistant Secretary Matthew Axelrod said at the department’s annual export control conference in Washington, D.C. “In those letters, we’ve requested that the American companies voluntarily stop shipping to these parties due to the high risk of transshipment to Russia.”
Axelrod said senior U.S. officials in the Commerce, State and Treasury departments have also been reaching out directly to senior leaders in U.S. companies to discuss further steps they can take to help prevent their products from ending up inside Russia. (Source: Reuters)
26 Mar 24. US Army leaning into launched effects for modernized battlefield. The U.S. Army is speeding up its plan to procure launched effects capable of flying at different ranges and deploying from a variety of air and ground vehicles.
With cancellation of the Army’s manned Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft, the service has more funding to pursue launched effects, a major unmanned element of a modernized aerial tier that will be able to deliver capabilities such as targeting, reconnaissance, surveillance, network extension and lethality in a complex environment.
The Army has added resources that are enabling the Future Vertical Lift cross-functional team and Program Executive Office Aviation to integrate additional payloads on its unmanned aircraft and launched effects and shift some scheduling for acquiring capability — like a long-range launched effect platform — more quickly, program executive officer Army aviation, Brig. Gen David Phillips, said at the Association of the U.S. Army’s Global Force Symposium.
A year ago, the strategy was still murky. The Army was considering several size classes for launched effects and was prototyping the first version of a small capability. This version was meant to help the service decide how to procure and employ these systems on the battlefield.
The medium-range launched effects prototype is the result of a contributions from five companies that teamed up.
In 2020, the service selected 10 companies to provide mature launched effects technologies. From those, the Army then chose five companies in early 2023 to come together to build a prototype with each bringing a different element to the system.
Anduril Industries is providing the air vehicle. The company purchased Area-I, the original developer of the Altius 700 vehicle, in 2021. The Altius 700 has been in use by the Army to evaluate launched effects for over five years. Collins Aerospace, a Raytheon Technologies company, is the mission system provider, and Aurora Flight Sciences is the system integrator. Technology Service Corp. and Northrop Grumman Information Systems are providing modular payloads.
The Army still plans to wrap up evaluation of the prototypes in September and will then weigh a number of options, from rapid fielding to low-rate initial production to more prototyping, according to the Army’ project manager for uncrewed aircraft systems, COL Danielle Medaglia.
But the Army is also working on a short-range LE and a long-range version.
During recent experimentation and demonstration, the Army validated that even flying about 30 to 45 knots, it was still able to “successfully see launched effects as being a major contributor as a sensor on the battlefield,” said Brig. Gen. Cain Baker, who leads the Army’s aviation modernization efforts.
The service held an industry day in February for launched effects with a large turnout.
The Army will hold an operational demonstration at the end of fiscal 2024 of its medium-range LE prototype followed by more integration efforts on the platform to get after a fielding decision, Medaglia said.
The service released a request for proposals last week for short-range LE. It plans to begin the prototyping process for that effort in earnest in early FY25 and will continue through FY29. The Army will begin short-range LE production beginning in late FY26.
The plan is to select at least two vendors to provide short-range effects, Medaglia said, because the industry is saturated in capabilities in the category.
And while just a few short weeks ago the Army had yet to secure funding for long-range LE, money now exists to move on the effort, Medaglia said. The long-range version is considered more of a Corps level asset and prototyping will begin to develop the capability at the tail end of FY25 with production beginning at the start of FY27.
“That is fast,” she said, but the effort is underpinned by an open architecture approach. “We’re not compromising on that open system approach because of the capabilities that we need; we don’t know what we might need in FY28. We might get a non-traditional threat.”
The launched effects will also all be controlled by the same controller and that will be the same as is used for other UAS and for ground robots too, she added.
UAS is “a wide open space, we will not be vendor locked, whether it’s the air vehicle, whether its payload, whether it’s mission system,” Medaglia said.
The Army plans to focus heavily at its aviation demonstration event EDGE in the fall on its launched effects capabilities. Some LEs will focus on countering aviation threats, others on maneuver threats and others on intel threats.
“We want you to show up with your payloads, your devices, your software and then we’ll give you the mission task and say, ‘Hey, let’s see what you can do against these high-end threats to really get a sense of where we are inside the industry on capability,” Baker said. (Source: Defense News)
25 Mar 24. Navy wish list seeks Red Sea missiles, backs submarine-industrial base. The U.S. Navy sent lawmakers a $2.2bn wish list for fiscal 2025, which includes several items that would fill in gaps that arose this year due to high-tempo operations in the Red Sea and Congress not yet passing a supplemental spending bill.
This unfunded priorities list, which supplements the Navy’s $257.6bn FY25 budget request, asks for 13 items, ranging from repairs to infrastructure in Guam to buying another KC-130J transport plane for the Navy Reserve to accelerating classified program development.
The No. 1 priority on the list is $403m to invest in the submarine-industrial base — something the FY25 budget already does, with $3.9bn included in the budget request released March11.
However, the FY25 request was written assuming Congress would pass both a FY24 defense spending bill and a $105bn national security supplemental request the White House requested in October. Neither of those two had been passed into law when the FY25 budget request was released, leaving Navy officials concerned.
This unfunded priorities list notes that, absent the supplemental and its $3.3 bn to bolster the submarine-industrial base, the Navy needs $403 m in specific additional spending so that it can fully implement its FY25 plans to grow vendor capacity, support workforce development efforts and more.
The list also includes $92.9m to address how quickly it’s been shooting Standard Missile-2 weapons to knock down Houthi-launched missiles and drones in the Red Sea since October. The militant group is based in Yemen.
This money would procure SM-2 Block III and Block IIIA/B recertification materials to address a backlog of these older missiles that need to be recertified before they can be used in combat. The Navy asked for $157m in FY24 and $134m in FY25 for this weapons maintenance work, but the document notes it could need to accelerate this work “based on the duration and nature of conflict in the Red Sea and other areas of responsibility.”
The sea service also wants $50m to buy four more Mk 48 heavyweight torpedoes, which the document calls a top service priority for long-range maritime fires. The Navy is already working to restart production lines in support of its Mk 48 inventory, and this money would increase spares and buy new fuel tanks and electronics sections to support the fleet inventory.
Service officials cited the weapons-industrial base as another one, in addition to the submarine-industrial base, that the Navy was trying to support and that needed stable funding from FY24 into FY25.
Elsewhere in the request, the Navy asks for $208m for aviation readiness, including four F-35C engines to support deployed carrier air wings; Super Hornet Block III upgrades; and MQ-25 Stingray carrier-based tanker drone initial deployment activities.
For the surface force, the unfunded priorities list includes $200m meant to reduce cannibalization of parts on destroyers and in critical surface warfare systems.
The Navy asks for $75.3m for a subsea and seabed warfare payload for the Navy’s TETRA remotely operated vehicle, which completed its critical design review in November. The FY25 budget requests just $15m for the effort, and the additional $75m would accelerate payload development and integration work.
It also asks for $184m to accelerate the development of a payload for the Orca Extra Large Unmanned Undersea Vehicle. It also seeks a combined $90m to accelerate two classified programs, COPPERFIELD and GRANDSTAND.
It wants $105.5m to accelerate the development of communications equipment for the strategic deterrence fleet.
And it includes $109.9m to develop and procure a Long Endurance Electronic Decoy countermeasures system. Its funding was cut from $249m in FY24 to just $83m in FY25.
The Navy separately requests nearly $1.5bn in military construction projects, including upgrades and repairs to hangar facilities in Guam, a dry dock and a water treatment plant in Hawaii, and an aviation training complex in Nevada.
The defense budget is capped in FY25, due to the Fiscal Responsibility Act. If lawmakers chose to add in any items from the unfunded priorities list, they would have to offset them with cuts elsewhere in the defense budget. (Source: C4ISR & Networks)
22 Mar 24. Congress offers procurement boost for F-35 jets in FY24 spending bill. The U.S. Air Force would receive enough money to buy 51 F-35A fighter jets in fiscal 2024 under the compromise Pentagon spending bill lawmakers released Thursday — three more than the service originally requested.
If enacted, the allotment would mark the most Joint Strike Fighters the Air Force has bought in a single year since 2021, when it procured 60. The service had included 48 F-35As in its fiscal 2024 budget request.
The FY24 defense appropriations bill would provide the Air Force more than $5.2bn for F-35A procurement, an increase of nearly $361 =m over the original budget request. The program increase of three additional F-35As would account for $277m of that growth.
The purchase would still remain far below the minimum annual buy of 72 F-35s the service argued for years it needed to modernize its fighter fleet, while keeping up with the pace of older jets leaving the inventory. The Air Force plans to buy more than 1,700 F-35As, totaling nearly $250bn, over the life of the program, according to FY25 budget documents.
Congress in FY24 also looks to give the Marine Corps and Navy funds for 16 short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing F-35Bs as well as 19 F-35Cs, which can take off and land from aircraft carriers.
F-35 fighters act as combat quarterbacks, conducting airstrikes as well as vacuuming up data on other nearby military assets and communications to share with the rest of the joint force. The program remains the Defense Department’s most expensive at more than $1.7trn to buy, operate and sustain.
Boosting spending on the Pentagon’s most advanced fighter jet is one piece of Congress’ agreement to put more than $40bn toward militarywide aviation procurement in FY24 — $3bn above the initial request, appropriators said in a legislative summary.
Congress would also approve the Air Force’s request to buy 24 F-15EX Eagle II fighters for $2.4bn, seven MH-139 Grey Wolf patrol helicopters for $223m and 15 KC-46A Pegasus refueling tankers for $2.8bn.
The bill also offers an extra $840m to purchase eight additional C-130J airlifters that would replace an older version flown by the Air National Guard; and $400 m to buy 10 HH-60W combat search and rescue helicopters, rebuffing the service’s plan to cease procurement.
And appropriators would provide $1.6bn for procurement related to the Air Force’s B-21 Raider stealth bomber, about $55m shy of its request because of a classified reduction. It’s unclear how many aircraft that might fund; the stealth bomber was approved to begin low-rate production last fall.
Meanwhile, lawmakers are pledging $2.3bn to fully fund development of the F-35′s successor, known as the Next Generation Air Dominance program, and to further mature drone wingmen under the collaborative combat aircraft initiative.
Lawmakers on Friday were still scrambling to pass the FY24 defense budget ahead of a midnight deadline to fund the federal government or enter a shutdown. (Source: C4ISR & Networks)
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Founded in 1987, Exensor Technology is a world leading supplier of Networked Unattended Ground Sensor (UGS) Systems providing tailored sensor solutions to customers all over the world. From our Headquarters in Lund Sweden, our centre of expertise in Network Communications at Communications Research Lab in Kalmar Sweden and our Production site outside of Basingstoke UK, we design, develop and produce latest state of the art rugged UGS solutions at the highest quality to meet the most stringent demands of our customers. Our systems are in operation and used in a wide number of Military as well as Homeland Security applications worldwide. The modular nature of the system ensures any external sensor can be integrated, providing the user with a fully meshed “silent” network capable of self-healing. Exensor Technology will continue to lead the field in UGS technology, provide our customers with excellent customer service and a bespoke package able to meet every need. A CNIM Group Company
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