Boeing used the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) convention in Washington last month to provide more details about its new Joint Air-Breathing Multi-Role Missile (Jabmm) concept originally intended for the U.S. Navy's Littoral Combat Ship (LCS). The new, small, modular missile payload was revealed in early 2012. Boeing is pitching the concept as a “turbine-air-breathing missile solution to countering proliferating anti-access threats.” At AUSA, Boeing revealed that Jabmm now consists of two yet-undesignated cruise missiles.
Decisions that determine whether a program can be successful are often made before the contract is even won. But conceptual design is still more art than science, practiced by talented engineers without the sophisticated, integrated tools available for development and manufacturing.
Chris Kubasik's rise through the upper ranks of Lockheed Martin could not have been better scripted by the Chinese politburo. Since joining the U.S. defense giant in 1999, the onetime partner at accounting giant Ernst & Young was rotated through a succession of senior management positions, including chief financial officer and leader of the company's Electronic Systems business. Two years ago, Lockheed Martin telegraphed that Kubasik would be the successor to Chairman and CEO Robert Stevens by naming him president and chief operating officer.
Mark Maybury U.S. Air Force Chief Scientist Age: 47 Career: Maybury was previously executive director of the Information Technology Div. of Mitre Corp. Education: B.A., Mathematics, College of the Holy Cross; M.A., Philosophy in Computer Speech and Language Processing from Cambridge University, England; MBA, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Ph.D., Artificial Intelligence, Cambridge University.
Cascading, nationwide power outages. Communications in shambles. Breakdowns in the supply of water, food, medications and gas. Military operations crimped by failures in civilian infrastructure. Weapons blunted by tailored countermeasures. The most recent alarm about the worst-case scenarios of cyberwar was sounded by U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in October. Addressing business leaders in New York, Panetta invoked both Pearl Harbor and 9/11 in talking about “a destructive cyber-terrorist attack [that] could virtually paralyze the nation.”
An effort to shield the nation's computer networks and critical infrastructure may be tipping too far into trade protectionism, experts say. In trying to balance the need to protect sensitive computer networks with the cost of verifying the safety of the components that find their way into the supply chain, a House Intelligence Committee report recently recommended that the U.S. government and businesses steer clear of two Chinese telecommunications companies.
Once spy agencies drove development of advanced investigative cybertechnology, but now banks, credit card companies, PayPal, Google and Yahoo are driving development. The change is benefiting intelligence, military and law enforcement agencies because this new generation of investigative platforms is designed to deal with massive amounts of data. Elbit's Intelligence and Cyber Solutions unit is aiming its Wise Intelligence Technology (WIT) data manipulation platform at the growing dual-use market that this trend has created.
Indonesia's new offsets law is about to be put to the test. The Southeast Asian nation, which has woefully inadequate radar surveillance coverage, is poised to select a supplier for long-range, ground-based radar for its air force. “I have told my staff 'if they are ready to select a supplier for the ground-based radar, I am ready',” Defense Minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro told Aviation Week Nov. 6 on the eve of the IndoDefense exhibition here.
Sweden's parliament will probably decide to approve launch of the JAS 39E/F Gripen program in December, with a development contract to be issued in January, according to Lt. Col. Rickard Nystrom, head of aircraft programs in the requirements office at Sweden's armed forces headquarters.
Avic President Lin Zuoming said in April that the Chinese aeronautics group's first priority was engine development. As if to show that the boss was serious, group propulsion specialist Avic Engine unveiled two new turbofans at Airshow China here last week, one of them aimed at freeing the country from reliance on foreign engines—and therefore exposure to a foreign veto—in its quest to become a major military aircraft exporter.
A common central idea in defending military, government and commercial networks from cyberattack involves “operating through the attack.” To do so, the defender needs near-real-time awareness of an attacker's methods and targets and the ability to manage consequences on the fly.
Computer networks that control crucial industrial and manufacturing processes, and vital energy and water utilities, were once considered immune to cyberattack, because in theory they were “air-gapped,” with no physical connection to the worldwide Internet. But that notion has died as researchers have found obscure Internet connections in virtually every automated system.
U.S. Marines are known for being blunt and getting straight to the point, verbal or kinetic. But when USMC Lt. Gen. Richard Mills spoke to the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association's TechNet Land Forces East conference in Baltimore in August, his openness about cyberwarfare came as a shock. Mills, of the Marine Corps Forces Cyberspace Command (MarForCyber), made no attempt to disguise the fact that his service has been using offensive cyberweapons on the battlefield—a capability that is usually shrouded in secrecy.
UHAI, China – Bell Helicopter is appealing an FAA ruling against a higher gross weight for the Bell 429 helicopter. The FAA has approved the Bell 429 at 7,000 lb. maximum gross weight, but the manufacturer sought FAA approval to increase it to 7,500 lb. The higher gross weight would allow operators to either carry more equipment or more fuel. Twelve countries, including Canada and China, already have approved the helo at 7,500 lb.
Pilatus next spring is planning to unveil its PC-24 twin jet, the company’s first twin-engine business aircraft and first-ever jet product, company executives confirm. The company has publicly acknowledged development of the PC-24 over the past couple of years, but would not say whether the aircraft would be a twin or a jet. But Pilatus verified that the aircraft would be a twin jet as part of its announcement that COO Markus Bucher was named CEO, succeeding Oscar Schwenk, who remains chairman of the board.
Lockheed Martin will upgrade the avionics in U.S. Navy C-130Ts in the first application of an open-systems architecture developed by government and industry to cut the time and cost required to field new capabilities. The $30 million cockpit upgrade is the first acquisition to require compatibility with the Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE), a set of standards designed to ensure software is portable and reusable.
Raytheon says it has achieved two significant milestones on the Cobra Judy Replacement (CJR) program, meeting critical performance requirements. The company recently demonstrated the full-power radiation capability with the high-sensitivity CJR shipboard X- and S-band active phased-array radars for the first time. Both the X-band and S-band radars also successfully acquired and tracked satellites under the control of the CJR common radar suite controller, the company says.
The Senate shot down another attempt to shore up the nation’s cyber defenses legislatively this week. Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), the top Republican on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, and others insisted that the bill included important information sharing provisions that went beyond what the Obama administration could do through executive order that is likely to move in the bill’s absence.
BOMB RACKS: Marvin Engineering Co. of Inglewood, Calif., has been awarded a $17,929,710 contract to provide 420 BRU-32 B/A bomb racks for U.S. Navy F/A-18E/F and EA-18G aircraft, the Pentagon announced Nov. 15. The work will be performed in Inglewood and is expected to be completed by December 2015. The Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division, Patuxent River, Md., is the contracting activity (N00421-13-C-0002).
Hard on the heels of a presidential policy directive that is to lay down the rules for offensive cyberwar, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) has transferred responsibility for a nascent National Cyber Range to the Pentagon.
