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11 Sept 24. Intel Agency’s Director Discusses Organization’s Post-Declassification Era. If you’ve never heard of the National Reconnaissance Office, you’re not alone.
Established by the Defense Department in August of 1960 and tasked with the mission to “develop and operate the world’s most capable and innovative overhead reconnaissance systems to collect intelligence for U.S. national security and to support disaster relief and humanitarian efforts,” the very existence of the NRO was kept secret by the government until it finally declassified the organization in 1992.
“For a good 30 years, the NRO was very much a secret organization. You couldn’t even say whether NRO ,” NRO Director Chris Scolese explained today during a fireside chat at the Global Aerospace Summit 24 in downtown Washington.
During the brief chat, Scolese discussed the NRO’s mission, explaining how the organization partners with the U.S. intelligence community, DOD and international partners to acquire satellite intelligence that is then distributed to several different organizations.
“We look, listen and sense; and that gives us a global view,” Scolese said. “We see the whole Earth all the time, and we make that information that we collect available to many organizations that serve a lot of different purposes.”
In addition to providing information to intelligence community agencies and DOD to assist its warfighters, Scolese said that the NRO also provides information to numerous civil agencies.
“When there’s a natural disaster, there because we’re looking from up above, and we can provide that information very quickly to the first responders that need it,” Scolese said.
Noting that the fireside chat was taking place on the 23rd anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Scolese mentioned that the NRO lost three people that day.
“And I’m sure many people in the audience … probably know people who were either lost or know people who lost people; and that’s one of the reasons that keeps us working every day,” Scolese explained.
He also added that NRO members realize the information they provide can prevent a future attack.
For all the NRO’s successes, Scolese said there are challenges to operating in the space domain that the organization has to vigilantly stay on top of.
“The challenge we have is to stay ahead of the people, organizations and nations that want to keep us from delivering the information,” Scolese said.
“So that requires us to constantly be innovating not only in technology … but we also have to innovate in our way of how we work with industry, how we work with academia … how we work with other departments … and other government agencies.”
As the chat wound down, Scolese talked about how he views the quality of people working for and with the NRO as being the biggest benefit of the entire organization no longer being classified.
“Now that we’re no longer secret, we can recruit … the best and brightest to come work with us,” he said.
“Without them, we couldn’t do the great things that we’re doing each and every day.” (Source: U.S. DoD)
12 Sept 24. Seal Team 6, the clandestine US Navy commando unit that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, has been training for missions to help Taiwan if it is invaded by China, according to people familiar with the preparations. The elite Navy special forces team, which is tasked with some of the military’s most sensitive and difficult missions, has been planning and training for a Taiwan conflict for more than a year at Dam Neck, its headquarters at Virginia Beach about 250km south-east of Washington. The secret training underlines the increased US focus on deterring China from attacking Taiwan, while stepping up preparations for such an event. The preparations have only grown since Phil Davidson, the US Indo-Pacific commander at the time, warned in 2021 that China could attack Taiwan within six years. While US officials stress that conflict with China is “neither imminent nor inevitable”, the US military has accelerated contingency preparations as the People’s Liberation Army rapidly modernises to meet President Xi Jinping’s order that it have the capability to take Taiwan by force by 2027. Seal Team 6 is a “tier one” force — the most elite in the US military — alongside the Army’s storied Delta Force. It reports to Joint Special Operations Command, which is part of Special Operations Command. The unit rescued Richard Phillips, the captain of the Maersk Alabama container ship that was taken hostage by Somali pirates in 2009, in another mission that has helped cement its place in military history. The Pentagon has in recent years sent more regular special forces to Taiwan for missions that include providing training for the Taiwanese military. The Seal Team 6 activities are far more sensitive because its covert missions are highly classified. The people familiar with the team’s planning did not provide details about the missions. Special Operations Command, which rarely discusses Seal Team 6, referred questions about its Taiwan planning to the Pentagon, which did not comment on specific details. A spokesperson said the defence department and its forces “prepare and train for a wide range of contingencies”. As the threat from terror groups has receded, special operations forces have joined the rest of the US military and the intelligence community in intensifying their focus on China. CIA director Bill Burns told the Financial Times last week that 20 per cent of his budget was devoted to China, a 200 per cent rise over three years. “That Seal Team 6 is planning for possible Taiwan-related missions should come as no surprise,” said Sean Naylor, author of Relentless Strike, a book on Joint Special Operations Command who runs an online national security publication, The High Side.
(Source: FT.com)
10 Sept 24. U.S.-India INDUS-X Initiative Convenes in Silicon Valley for Third Summit. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and Indian Ministry of Defence (MoD) participated in the third India-U.S. Defense Acceleration Ecosystem (INDUS-X) Summit in Silicon Valley, California on Monday, September 9. The summit was co-hosted by the U.S.-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF) and Stanford University. The INDUS-X initiative continues to vitalize U.S.-India defense industrial cooperation and produce new innovations in technology and manufacturing by facilitating partnerships among defense technology innovators, investors, and researchers.
Speakers at the INDUS-X Summit explored opportunities to co-produce advanced military capabilities, create new funding streams for defense technology development and resilient defense supply chains, and enhance U.S.-India military interoperability in support of both countries’ shared vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell and U.S. SPACECOM Commander General Stephen Whiting delivered keynote remarks at the INDUS-X Summit, providing insights and perspectives on the future of defense cooperation between the United States and India.
The summit featured the signing of an upgraded Memorandum of Understanding between the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) and the Indian Ministry of Defense’s Defense Innovation Organization (DIO) and the release of a new official INDUS-X webpage. The Memorandum of Understanding demonstrates a shared commitment to expanding cooperation on defense innovation between DIU and DIO to expand their respective militaries’ access to cutting-edge technologies through non-traditional processes. The INDUS-X webpage is a resource for investors and startups to learn about the program, its goals, and partnership opportunities. It features a directory of participating companies and upcoming events.
At the summit, U.S. and Indian companies, universities, and nonprofit organizations discussed new technology testing and experimentation opportunities available to companies through INDUSWERX, a testing consortium led by private-sector organizations. The consortium will continue exploring pathways for defense and dual-use companies in the INDUS-X network to test, refine, and integrate their technologies at premier testing ranges across the United States and India.
The summit also convened meetings of the INDUS-X Senior Advisory Group and Senior Leaders Forum, the two advisory forums under INDUS-X that enable DoD and Indian MoD senior leaders to engage stakeholders on new initiatives and advance progress on current activities under INDUS-X.
The DoD released an INDUS-X Fact Sheet in February 2024 to outline accomplishments and priority near-term efforts under the INDUS-X initiative. (Source: U.S. DoD)
10 Sept 24. U.S.-Republic of Cyprus Roadmap for Bilateral Defense Cooperation. On Monday, September 9, 2024, Celeste Wallander, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, and Vasilis Palmas, the Minister of Defense of the Republic of Cyprus (ROC), signed the U.S.-ROC Roadmap for Bilateral Defense Cooperation in Nicosia. The two issued a joint statement on the signing, available here.
The roadmap is a foundational agreement on the priorities and direction of the bilateral defense relationship over the next five years, a welcome step forward in our security partnership. This signing builds on the second U.S.-ROC Defense and Security Cooperation Dialogue held in Washington last June to enhance stability and security in the Eastern Mediterranean.
During her visit from September 9 to 10, Assistant Secretary Wallander also discussed regional events and bilateral cooperation with ROC President Nikos Christodoulides and visited the Joint Rescue Coordination Center in Larnaca. She thanked the ROC for its continued leadership in regional humanitarian aid and for its support of citizens in crisis in the Eastern Mediterranean. (Source: U.S. DoD)
06 Sept 24. US Army’s next budget invests heavily in drones and electronic warfare. The U.S. Army is buying hundreds of Coyote counter-drone systems in a deal worth $75m. (Photo provided/RTX)
The U.S. Army is planning to ask for more flexible funding for unmanned aircraft systems, capabilities to counter them and electronic warfare tools in its next budget as it takes lessons learned from Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s invasion, according to Christine Wormuth, the service’s secretary.
“I think some of the areas that [Gen. Randy George], the chief [of staff of the Army] and I feel very strongly that we need to invest more in, both from the perspective of the Army… but also the needs of the joint force, is in the areas of unmanned aerial systems, counter-unmanned aerial systems and electronic warfare,” she said Wednesday at the Defense News Conference.
For instance, a Ukraine battalion commander told Wormuth earlier this year during training in Germany, that Russian electronic warfare capabilities were increasing “in ways that were concerning,” Wormuth detailed.
“I think you’ll see that in the budget that goes up to Congress next spring,” Wormuth said. “That’s an area where I think we also need to have more agility in our funding mechanisms because of the technology in those capability areas is changing so rapidly that we can’t afford to get locked into something and then be only allowed to use that something for the next 10 years.”
Both Wormuth and George have discussed the possibility of budgeting differently in order to get some capability into the hands of soldiers much more quickly. One of those possibilities is asking Congress to fund pots of money dedicated for a specific capability rather than budget across a number of specific line items that tend to be a specific product or program.
But both have also acknowledged that getting congressional appropriators on board might not be so easy. “Historically, they’re generally… very skeptical of what they see as kind of slush funds. They have a lot of scar tissue around [overseas contingency operations], and how the department has used that over the years,” Wormuth said.
Even so, “there is such a deep realization that we have got to change more quickly and that technology is changing rapidly right now that we do need to have more agile mechanisms,” she added.
Overseas contingency operations, or OCO, funding, used during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to pay for operations abroad, was a separate account with bns outside of the Pentagon’s base budget. It was often used to get extra funding for a variety of things rather than commit to paying for it within regular funding. Congress eliminated OCO funding beginning in FY22. Now the Defense Department must budget for any overseas operations within its base budget.
The Army plans to present a budget in these areas, according to Wormuth, that, for example, used to have 10 to 12 individual line items and now may have two or three.
“If we keep it relatively narrow and focused and we demonstrate that we can use that agility in those areas effectively, we may be able to sort of have a proof of concept,” she said. “I’m cautiously optimistic.”
(Source: Defense News Early Bird/Defense News)
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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.
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