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17 Aug 18. UK RAF Sentinels watch Crimea. Key Points:
- RAF Sentinel R1 surveillance aircraft have been flying patrols around the Crimean peninsula since 13 July
- The aircraft’s radars can provide coverage of major Russian ports, airbases, missile sites, and troop positions
UK Royal Air Force (RAF) Sentinel R1 surveillance aircraft have been flying patrols around the Crimean peninsula to monitor Russian forces in the contested territory. At least five missions have been flown by the Sentinel from RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus since 13 July, according to open source monitoring of the aircraft’s ADS-B transponders. Tracks of the missions show the aircraft, from No 5 (Army Co-operation) Squadron, flying in international airspace over the Black Sea for extended periods. (Source: IHS Jane’s)
16 Aug 18. USAF, Army team for sensor to shooter prototype. The US Army and the US Air Force (USAF) recently convened for a summit focused on applying and integrating open architecture technologies and approaches to enhance sensor to shooter speed, precision and agility on the battlefield. The summit, held on 6 August, was the precursor to a sensor to shooter demonstration planned for spring 2019, which will prototype an open architecture, machine-to-machine capability to integrate targeting solutions generated from the USAF’s ISR platforms into army’s long-range precision fires to shorten the kill chain. The event also allowed military, civilian, laboratory and academic representatives to share best practices in standards design, rapid prototyping and demonstration and government-industry partnerships. The USAF presented business models designed to keep pace with increasing threats, evolving mission requirements and the obsolescence of equipment. The operational benefits of open architecture standards include a common interface, fewer data sharing challenges and increased decision speed. In spring 2019, the army and Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office will collaborate on a sensor-to-shooter operational assessment to show how air, ground and space sensors can be used to cue long-range precision fires. The demonstration will use open architecture standards to pass and translate data between multiple systems, expand the information available in the command post and enable commanders to adjust and prioritise resources much faster than current methods. After leveraging the summit to compare various open architecture standards, capabilities and best practices, the two services will continue to identify ways to work together to integrate relevant technologies, conduct prototyping and experimentation and shape future requirements. (Source: Shephard)
15 Aug 18. French army trains for anti-drone warfare in Jordan. France has nearly 1,100 soldiers deployed as part of its mission in support of the Iraqi government and its fight against ISIS. To back those soldiers, the country’s military is planning to work from an airbase in nearby Jordan. Of course, in today’s environment, any airbase needs some protection from airborne threats, and in this case, that means specialized squadrons of ground troops to defend against drones. The news of this squadron comes from a short release by the Ministry of the Armed Forces, and it could hardly be more timely. Throughout July and August 2018, insurgent-launched drones attacked a Russian airbase in Syria. While Russia has yet to report any casualties or damage, the pure persistence of the attacks requires some form of interception. But traditional anti-air defenses are either overkill or not well suited to the task at hand.
So, what to do? France has a new idea.
The country’s anti-drone air defense force is training with a rifle-shaped antenna that can jam the remote control signals of a drone. The jammer-wielding soldiers are paired with other shotgun-armed squad members, whose shotguns fire specialized shells. (As to how those shells are specialized, the Ministry doesn’t say, but there is at least one counter-drone system which fires shotgun shells that release nets on the target). Rifle-shaped jamming devices are more common in the counter-drone world, and the United States had adopted them to such a degree that even the National Guard trains with drone-jammer rifles. But French fighters in Jordan are likely to face the same limitations Russia’s counter-drone efforts faces in Syria. Drones are hard to detect at range by any means except specialized radar, and when in easy detection range for infrared binoculars or telemetry sensors, the drone is likely close enough to pose a threat unless it is stopped immediately. ISIS also has years of experience in building drones from scraps and parts ordered online, as well as adapting existing commercial drones into grenade dropping machines. It was a joint Kurdish-French EOD team that first encountered an ISIS drone booby-trapped to explode in 2016, an incident that killed two members of the Kurdish Peshmerga and injured two French paratroopers. The French military appears to be tackling the threat head-on, proactively training for drone interception. The counter-drone soldiers even have their own drone to scout around the base when need be, one more set of unblinking robotic eyes ready to warn of any danger buzzing about nearby. (Source: C4ISR & Networks)
15 Aug 18. The Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE: NOC)-developed Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD) Battle Command System (IBCS) successfully demonstrated its ability to scale up and network across long distances during a recent U.S. Army-led test. The evaluation was conducted by U.S. Army soldiers over a five-week period with air and missile defense assets located at sites in New Mexico, Texas and Alabama. The ability of Northrop Grumman’s Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System (IBCS) to integrate sensors and shooters over a vast area and grow the single integrated air picture offers huge advantages to air defenders and the joint forces.
“The ability of IBCS to integrate sensors and shooters over a vast area and grow the single integrated air picture offers huge advantages to air defenders and the joint forces,” said Dan Verwiel, vice president and general manager, missile defense and protective systems, Northrop Grumman. “This was demonstrated using an operationally realistic equipment laydown across several states and showed how IBCS is truly a force multiplier.
“This Soldier Checkout Event (SCOE) demonstrated the ability of IBCS to scale broadly. It further demonstrated IBCS’ robust network management technologies to efficiently and effectively maintain voice, data and video connectivity for the warfighter’s increasingly complex and challenging environment,” said Verwiel.
As part of SCOE 4.0, the multi-node distributed test examined IBCS’ scalability, resilience and performance under stressing threat conditions. The open-architecture IBCS networked more than 20 nodes across White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico; Fort Bliss, Texas; and Redstone Arsenal, Alabama. Integrated to operate as a single system, the test involved nine IBCS engagement operations centers and 12 IBCS integrated fire control network relays, along with Sentinel short range air defense radars and Patriot radars, Patriot Advance Capability Two (PAC-2), PAC-3 and PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement interceptors. The test required IBCS to virtually form an IAMD task force to defend four critical assets while tracking ‘red’ and ‘blue’ fighter aircraft, cruise missiles and tactical ballistic missiles. Multiple two-hour scenarios were run to check IBCS abilities, including: providing and managing a network to maintain voice, data and video connectivity; performing friend-or-foe identification of air objects and forming the single integrated air picture; and planning, executing and monitoring simulated threat engagements. The test also included dynamically adding and removing nodes to confirm IBCS’ ability to self-configure as a mobile ad hoc network.
14 Aug 18. Construction issues still plague Polish Aegis Ashore site. Construction issues that have plagued the Polish Aegis Ashore missile defense site remain unresolved, but the U.S. Missile Defense Agency continues to work toward a resolution, according to the MDA director. Earlier this year, Gen. Samuel Greaves testified during several congressional hearings that the Aegis Ashore site in Poland would not reach its initial operational capability in 2018, but instead was delayed until calendar year 2020. He attributed the delay to the contractor in Poland hired to build the site, but also pointed at poor weather on location. Manpower and other resources were also slow to ramp up, according to Greaves.
“The current construction contractor has been directed to take action to address the construction delays,” Greaves told Defense News in an emailed statement.
The contractor “remains committed to the project but has failed to meet contractually required schedule milestones for multiple reasons, including insufficient on-site management and tradecraft personnel,” Greaves said.
While some improvements have been observed, “senior Department of Defense leadership, the MDA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are engaging corporate leadership to improve contractor performance,” he added.
The Pentagon is still trying to pursue “all means available to address the contractor’s performance challenges and mitigate as best possible the impacts of construction delays on the overall effort to deliver Aegis Ashore Poland,” Greaves said.
The delays will not impact the cost to the U.S. to build the missile defense radar site, as the project was awarded with “significant incentives” to meet the original completion date and “significant costs” if the original schedule is not met, according to Greaves. The director added that while the construction phase has suffered, all other aspects of the project, such as the maturity of Aegis Ashore radar software, is on track. Aegis equipment is also on site and ready to go once construction has reached the stage for installation. The delay for the site should not be seen as a lack of commitment by the U.S. to complete of the European Phased Adaptive Approach to regional missile defense, according to Greaves. The EPAA is designed to defend against threats from Iran and includes Aegis radar-capable ships based out of Rota, Spain, an AN/TPY-2 radar in Turkey, and another Aegis Ashore site in Romania that are both operational. The TPY-2 radar was stood up in Turkey in 2011 and the Romanian Aegis Ashore site in 2016. (Source: Defense News Early Bird/Defense News)
13 Aug 18. Coast Guard partners with Air Force to protect eyes from lasers. Human eyeballs are the oldest sensor used by pilots, and they’re increasingly at risk from lasers. To counter the harmful effects of directed energy, the Vision Science Lab at the Naval Medical Research Unit Dayton is looking at ways to protect eyeballs from low-intensity lasers, while still allowing pilots to see clearly enough to fly. This evaluation is done at the behest of the Coast Guard’s Office of Aviation Forces, which wants a way to mitigate the threat handheld lasers post to safety and search and rescue missions. Lasers, even and especially hand-held laser-pointers, are bright enough and powerful enough to interfere with eyeballs, even ones at altitudes far above the person waving the pointer. The FAA has guidelines for how people should responsibly use lasers outdoors, and where they should keep them pointed (down, away from planes or other aircraft).
“Handheld lasers can produce levels of solar radiant energy that exceed the maximum FAA exposure recommendations. Non-lethal continuous wave (CW) laser exposures can produce veiling glare, obscuring a significant portion of an aircraft windscreen while reliably reducing speed and accuracy of responses to aviation-relevant visual tasks during critical phases of flight,” write Dr. Michael Reddix and Lt. Cmdr. Micah Kinney, the researchers leading this project. “These factors are also capable of producing visual impairments such as temporary scotoma or a temporary disturbance in vision.”
The work was done in partnership with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, specifically the branch that works on photonic materials. The goal was to develop low-cost laser eye protection glasses, to mitigate the flight safety risk lasers pose to planes and rotary-wing craft.
“In short, there is no good and complete defense against the wide variety of laser wavelengths and powers out there,” says Phil Broughton, certified laser safety officer. “That said it isn’t hopeless, as there’s only so many good deployable lasers for the field.”
To meet those threats, there are to go-to options: glasses with reflective coatings or plastic with absorptive dyes. But reflective coatings have three drawbacks: the coating is easy to scratch and useless one scratched, which is a hard sell for a military use. They are also heavy, since they need to be on glass, and the reflective coating is only useful for a narrow band of wavelengths, a range a few nanometers wide. Within that, and unscratched, the reflective coating is incredible, but unless it’s fielded against a specific laser with a known frequency, it’s unlikely to be the most effective option here.
“Absorptive are dye based, tinting plastic. Plastic is light & comfortable, you can form them in any shape you like for eyewear. The dyes can be broad spectrum but not necessarily great. Their real problem is that they always tend to work at half of the wavelengths you need,” says Boughton, “So, if there’s a 1064nm beam, it’s only half the optical density you need to block the other beam that’s at 532nm. Also, depending on how the laser is operating, the dyes can saturate and stop working.”
There is also the not-insignificant matter that absorptive glasses, in blocking a range of laser wavelength, also block a significant amount of the visible spectrum, which replaces temporary vision obscurity for permanently decreased vision. Not super great when flying a plane. One way future planes plan to mitigate the risk to pilot eyeballs is to feed information through cameras on the plane into a heads-up display on the pilot’s helmet, but that’s still a future solution, and doesn’t address the needs of pilots encountering lasers now. Whatever method Reddix and Kinney picked for their solution, they recommended that the new laser-mitigating goggles receive flight acceptance training in the next few months. If the Coast Guard’s experience with the goggles is successful, it’s possible the other services could adopt them for protection, too. Which means the next time Airmen fly near the gulf of Aden, it may be safe to check out Djibouti without risking temporary blindness. (Source: C4ISR & Networks)
13 Aug 18. AN/APG-83 is in production and meets desired schedule as low-risk Hornet upgrade option. Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE: NOC) has successfully installed a production APG-83 Scalable Agile Beam Radar (SABR) on a U.S. Marine Corps F/A-18C Hornet at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, California. The fit check, performed August 2 at the request of the Marine Corps, demonstrated SABR is a low-risk option for installation on F/A-18C/D Hornets and that the radar can be integrated with the aircraft’s power, cooling and avionics systems.
“The Marine Corps asked for an Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) solution due to the radar’s increase in reliability and sustainability with no decrease in operational performance,” said Greg Simer, vice president, integrated avionics systems, Northrop Grumman. “The Marine Corps’ stated objective is to modify an in-production, fielded AESA while meeting the current size, weight, power and cooling requirements of the F/A-18 C/D. We have proven our production APG-83 SABR radar fits into the F/A-18 C/D, achieving the objectives and bringing the technical maturity needed to attain the Marine Corps fleet insertion timelines.”
The APG-83 is a multifunction AESA fire control radar that delivers fifth-generation fighter capabilities to counter and defeat increasingly sophisticated threats. Northrop Grumman is competing to replace the mechanically-scanned radar on F/A-18C/Ds with an AESA radar. The Marine Corps plans to upgrade the radar on approximately 100 F/A-18C/Ds. The APG-83 will address survivability, reliability and maintainability concerns for the U.S. Marine Corps.
13 Aug 18. Malaysia considers mix of manned, unmanned aircraft for maritime surveillance requirements. Key Points:
- The Malaysian government is studying further options for the country’s maritime surveillance requirements
- Country will likely operate a combination of manned and unmanned systems to fulfil the role
The Malaysian government is considering a mix of both manned, and unmanned aerial platforms to fulfil the country’s maritime patrol requirements. In his response to a question from the member of parliament for Mersing, Defence Minister Mohamad Sabu assured that the new administration, which came to power in May 2018, will honour plans made under the previous government. These include a programme to equip the Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF) with new maritime patrol aircraft (MPA). (Source: IHS Jane’s)
13 Aug 18. The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) has awarded an urgent capability requirement contract for a counter-UAS (C-UAS) capability to Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. Valued at £7.6m ($9.7m) the contract was awarded on the 2 August and made public on 10 August. The Israel-based company carried out a demonstration of its Drone Dome C-UAS capability to the UK’s MoD in January 2018. The MoD required that the solution should be able to detect, track, identify and defeat UAS’s with weight ranges of between 2-150kg. A specific area of focus is also highlighted on the 2-22kg size drone and a minimum defeat range of <500 m. The contract required the solution to be at technology readiness level eight minimum. The Drone Dome was unveiled in April 2016 and is known to be operational in an unspecified Asian country. There has been an explosion of interest in C-UAS systems over the past few years as a result of drones being used by adversaries in conflict zone such as Syria.
‘That has really spurred a lot of innovation,’ Justin Bronk, research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, explained to Shephard. ‘Particularly given how much of it in urban sieges, where quadcopters and the like really shine. There’s absolutely been a sudden wake up moment over the last three or four years for a lot of western militaries.’
Bronk noted that while some C-UAS technologies are still being developed the US and Israel have been ‘particularly good’ at the detection element of C-UAS. The Drone Dome is made up of three main components: RADA’s RPS-42 radar; Controp’s MEOS observation; and Netline’s C-Guard RD and NetSense subsystems for detection and jamming. A report published in February 2018 by the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College suggests that there as many as 230 C-UAS products produced by 155 manufacturers. (Source: Shephard)
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Blighter® Surveillance Systems (BSS) is a UK-based electronic-scanning radar and sensor solution provider delivering an integrated multi-sensor package to systems integrators comprising the Blighter electronic-scanning radars, cameras, thermal imagers, trackers and software solutions. Blighter radars combine patented solid-state Passive Electronic Scanning Array (PESA) technology with advanced Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) and Doppler processing to provide a robust and persistent surveillance capability. Blighter Surveillance Systems is a Plextek Group company, a leading British design house and technology innovator, and is based at Great Chesterford on the outskirts of Cambridge, England.
The Blighter electronic-scanning (e-scan) FMCW Doppler ground surveillance radar (GSR) is a unique patented product that provides robust intruder detection capabilities under the most difficult terrain and weather conditions. With no mechanical moving parts and 100% solid-state design, the Blighter radar family of products are extremely reliable and robust and require no routine maintenance for five years. The Blighter radar can operate over land and water rapidly searching for intruders as small a crawling person, kayaks and even low-flying objects. In its long-range modes the Blighter radar can rapidly scan an area in excess of 3,000 km² to ensure that intruders are detected, identified and intercepted before they reach critical areas.
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