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.
STRENGTHENING METALS: Precision Castparts Corp. (PCP) is strengthening its market position by acquiring Titanium Metals Corp. (Timet), the largest independent manufacturer in the U.S. of titanium billets used in aerospace structures. “This addition allows PCP to become better vertically integrated, so there should be considerable cost savings,” analyst Robert Stallard of RBC Capital Markets says of the acquisition. At an offered price of $16.50 per share, the cash purchase is valued at about $2.9 billion.
There is a new, secret White House document that may finally start codifying what an offensive cyber weapon is, who can generate it, what its legitimate targets are and who can authorize its use. The document, Presidential Policy Directive 20, signed in October, establishes a set of standards to guide the military and other federal agencies in responding to or perhaps pre-empting cyberattacks on U.S. military and commercial networks. To active cyber warriors and aerospace industry officials, it comes as a bit of a disappointment.
Ground control stations and the Fury tactical unmanned aircraft are the key reasons behind Lockheed Martin’s acquisition of small Huntsville, Ala.-based defense company Chandler/May. Chandler/May manufactures the OneSystem ground control station (GCS) for AAI Corp., which is used with the U.S. Army’s AAI RQ-7B Shadow tactical UAV and General Atomics MQ-1C Grey Eagle medium-range UAV.
The abrupt departure of CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus due to an extramarital affair and a war on Capitol Hill over the Obama administration’s performance in Benghazi, Libya, over the summer are overshadowing President Barack Obama’s efforts to replenish his national security team for a second term. Asked this week whether he will stay on as defense secretary for another four years, Leon Panetta quipped to reporters: “Who the hell knows?”
GILLIAM COUNTY, Ore. — The U.S. Navy is wrapping up the land-based portion of developmental testing of the Insitu Integrator unmanned air system (UAS) and preparing to shift to shipboard testing as company officials begin to look at new payload options for the platform.
The U.S. and Australian militaries have agreed to place two key U.S. space systems in Australia. A U.S. Air Force C-band space-surveillance radar – which can track up to 200 objects a day and can help identify satellites, their orbits and potential anomalies – will move from Antigua to Western Australia in 2014 and will increase coverage of space objects in the Southern Hemisphere, the Pentagon says. It will be the first low Earth orbit space surveillance network sensor in that hemisphere and will help track “high-interest” launches from Asia.
The U.S. Navy is so confident that it is on track with repairs necessary to deploy the first Littoral Combat Ship (LCS-1), the USS Freedom, to Singapore next year that the service has already begun to focus more on honing the overall LCS program and the development of the ship’s mission modules, says the admiral in charge of the effort.
