Warfare has always been dependent on intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. Good ISR is a force multiplier; a force with inferior ISR is trusting to luck. Military operations today are even more reliant on ISR and this trend will continue. The reason? Ubiquitous and more precise guided weapons shift more targets from the “easy to find, hard to kill” category (a Soviet tank army crashing through the Fulda Gap was the Cold War exemplar) into the “hard to find, easy to kill” column. Osama bin Laden typifies the last category.
For an idea of where intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance could be headed in the future, a good place to start is the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), which prides itself in looking well beyond even the most far-sighted of its service customers.
A massive U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan next year will trigger a shift in Pentagon priorities and force structure, but do not expect any major changes for the Air Force's intelligence collection fleet. At least, not for now.
Turning raw information into useful intelligence for commanders and operators is one of the biggest challenges in intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance (Istar). The process involves managing the collected data and fusing it into comprehensive products, which has become more complex as better sensors gather more information and new sources are exploited.
The arrest of Finmeccanica's chairman and CEO and the prospect that the company could be barred from doing business in India's lucrative defense market is shaking the foundations of the Italian aerospace and defense giant, which already was struggling to restructure in the wake of high debt and declining government spending in Europe.
Hand-launched, electrically powered small unmanned air vehicles (SUAV) are usually attached to small formations and in special operations units. However, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Ground Forces Command (GFC) has been looking at their use at division level, as sensor performance and networking technology improve.
Shortly after the Obama administration unveiled its so-called pivot to Asia-Pacific in early 2012, top Pentagon leaders began warning everyone that the new defense strategy could not survive further budget cuts. So sure were they that the 2011 Budget Control Act's automatic, across-the-board spending cuts would not be allowed to occur that White House and Pentagon officials had no qualms with pegging the pivot's foundations to the last five-year defense budget plan.
A simple graph explains Australia's declining strategic position. Relative to the two countries that its defense planners must consider most carefully, Australia will by 2017 have just a quarter of the economic clout it enjoyed 25 years before.
Boeing and Abu Dhabi Autonomous Systems Investments Company (ADASI) have signed a teaming agreement for the two companies to address the growing Middle East market for unmanned systems.
Performance worries over military and commercial helicopter operations in the harsh conditions of the Middle East deserts could be eased with a new distributorship deal signed today.
A global terror threat of missile attack against fixed wing aircraft or helicopters is being met head on by one exhibitor at IDEX – the defence and security event opening in Abu Dhabi today.
NEW DELHI — The Finmeccanica bribery scandal has prompted the Indian government to defer a decision on the much-awaited $1.5 billion purchase of 197 light utility helicopters for its military.
Government offices may remain open if government-wide budget cuts take effect on March 1, but if sequestration is allowed to take effect it will have serious economic consequences, the U.S. government controller told senators Feb. 14. “I do not think it’s prudent at all to think that because the lights do not shut down across government on March 1 that we can cross that precipice and then pull back later,” Daniel Werfel, controller of the White House Office of Management and Budget, told the Senate Appropriations Committee.
BEIJING — A South Korean defense ministry think tank is publicly opposing development of the proposed KF-X indigenous fighter. The Korea Institute for Defense Analysis told a public meeting that the country is not technologically equipped to develop the aircraft, that the project is economically unviable and that the KF-X would not be a successful export product.
To keep operations going through the continuing resolution (CR) and tighter budgetary environment, the U.S. Marine Corps has already had to shift funds and the service will likely have to cut some of its mainstay deployments if sequestration hits, according to Gen. James Amos, Marine Corps commandant. Marines stand at the highest possible state of readiness and training, Amos said Feb. 14 during a speech sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute. “But I’m paying for that by eating my seed corn from other accounts,” Amos says.
NEW DELHI — The Indo-Russian BrahMos supersonic cruise missile joint venture will expand this year into perhaps its toughest domain, with the company announcing it is nearly ready to conduct the first test of the BrahMos-A, an air-launched version of the weapon.
NEW DELHI — France is working to ensure that no ripple effect of the Finmeccanica bribery scandal disrupts the long-anticipated contract to supply 126 Dassault Rafale fighters to the Indian air force. “We will do nothing contrary to the principles that we stand for and rules of trade that are based on the principles of competitiveness and fairness,” says French President Francois Hollande, during his two-day visit to India, in which he discussed the estimated $18 billion fighter aircraft deal with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
ALLIED PAIN: Pentagon programs are not the only weapon systems set to see budget cuts under the so-called sequestration automatic reductions taking effect March 1. Military aid for up to about 150 allies around the world would face a $551.6 million cut, according to House Appropriations Committee Democrats. Within the total, sequestration would cut foreign military financing by $317 million. Affected would be aid to Israeli defense technology efforts, anti-cartel efforts in Mexico, counternarcotics border operations and counterterrorism ops around the world.
