AI News. Sweden’s Saab last week said it has acquired Britain’s BlueBear Systems Group, a provider of artificial intelligence-enabled software for autonomous swarm systems of uncrewed and crewed vehicles. The acquisition of BlueBear, which has 65 employees and sales of $10 million, is part of Saab’s growth strategy in key markets that include the U.S., U.K., Australia, and Germany, and adding emerging and disruptive technologies such as AI, machine learning, and autonomous systems for defense and security applications. BlueBear will be a center for rapid concept development providing expertise and scaling-up innovation within Saab.
…ViDAR with AI. Sentient Vision Systems last week said its AI-enable visual detection and ranging (ViDAR) was successfully demonstrated aboard Edge Autonomy’s VXE30 vertical take-off and landing small unmanned aircraft system, providing a passive, wide-area search capability for various maritime operations. Sentient’s ViDAR uses computer vision and machine learning integrated with electro-optic and infrared sensors to passively detect objects that are difficult to spot by the human eye or conventional radar, the company said. Over time, the ViDAR has been engineered into a small, lightweight form factor for integration on Group 1 and 2 small UAS.
CR Impact. Bill LaPlante, the Pentagon’s acquisition chief, told reporters on Aug. 28 a long-term continuing resolution (CR) would be “very problematic” for the department’s efforts to continue ramping up munitions production capacity. “If you applied the rules [of a CR] purely in a very black-and-white way, we would have a problem. We’d have a big problem,” LaPlante said. Several initiatives are underway across the department to boost munitions production as DoD looks to replenish its own stockpile of weapons sent to Ukraine and continue meeting requirements for allies and partners. Under a CR spending is locked in at the previous fiscal year’s level and the Pentagon is restricted from starting new programs.
USSPACECOM HQ Docs. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), chair of the House Armed Services Committee, has “demanded” that Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall and Army Gen. James Dickinson, head of U.S. Space Command, provide the committee with documents related to the decision to keep USSPACECOM headquarters in Colorado. In an Aug. 28 letter, Rogers said he’s requested documents related to the matter five times since May 25 and asked that any relevant materials be provided by Sept. 8. President Biden in late July decided to keep Space Command in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where its interim headquarters have been located, reversing a Trump administration recommendation to base the command in Huntsville, Alabama. Rogers has already invited Kendall, Dickinson and Space Force Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman for a public hearing to discuss what he said was a “politically-motivated decision” and has called on the Government Accountability Office report to conduct an investigation of the process.
Acting NAVSEA. Vice Adm. William Galinis, Commander of Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), retired from the service in a ceremony on Sept. 1, with command moving to two-star Rear Adm. Thomas Anderson as acting commander of NAVSEA. Anderson is serving on an acting basis since Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) still has a blanket hold on military confirmations in opposition to the Pentagon’s reproductive health and abortion policies. In March, the White House nominated Rear Adm. James Downes to lead NAVSEA, promoting him from his post as Program Executive Officer for aircraft carriers.
INDOPACOM Lasers. The commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command recently said he is “encouraged by the high energy laser capability that’s being experimented with and utilized.” Adm. John Aquilino, commander of Indo-Pacific Command, said at the NDIA Emerging Technologies for Defense conference on Aug. 28 that he is looking for asymmetric advantages that U.S. challengers have not yet developed, including directed energy laser weapons. Aquilino said if these kinds of weapons are ready to deliver in 18 to 24 months, then he is “ready to plug it in, I’m ready to experiment with it tomorrow. So I got the largest test range on the globe, it’s called half the globe.”
DDG-125. The Navy’s first Flight III Arleigh Burke-class destroyer is set to be commissioned in Tampa, Fla., on Oct. 7. As the first Flight III ship, it includes several upgrades focused on incorporating the AN/SPY-6(V)1 Air and Missile Defense Radar. After the ship is commissioned it will travel to its homeport of San Diego.
AUKUS Hearing. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee announced a Sep. 6 hearing on the AUKUS agreement on the “generational opportunity to deepen our security partnerships with Australia and the United Kingdom.” It will feature testimony from Jessica Lewis, Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Political Military Affairs; Mara Karlin, Performing the Duties of the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Policy and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy, Plans, and Capabilities; and Kin Moy, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs.
Hill To CSIS. The Center for Strategic and International Studies said on Aug. 31 that the recently retired Vice Adm. Jon Hill, former director of the Missile Defense Agency, is joining the think tank as a non-resident senior adviser with the International Security Program’s Missile Defense project and as a member of the project advisory board. “Our project’s effort at CSIS to shape and inform the conversation about the full spectrum of missile defense challenges will be enriched by his counsel,” CSIS Missile Defense Project Director Tom Karako said in a statement. Hill also serves as vice president and chief engineer for training and logistics solutions at Lockheed Martin’s Rotary and Mission Systems business division. Hill served in the Navy for over 30 years before finishing his career as the 11th director of MDA from 2019 to July 2023.
‘Astounded and Dismayed.’ Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro recently said he was dismayed at the state of the Department of the Navy when he first came into office. “You’d have to go back seven acting or appointed Secretaries of the Navy, back to Secretary Mabus, before you’d find someone who could say they’d been in office long enough to go to any conference three years in a row,” Del Toro said during an Aug. 29 speech at the SENEDIA Defense Innovation Days event at Newport, R.I. He heavily implied the Trump administration’s succession of acting and appointed Navy Secretaries was destabilizing to the organization. “President Kennedy famously said: ‘When we got into office, the thing that surprised me most was to find that things were just as bad as we’d been saying they were.’ Well, I was astounded at the state of the Department of the Navy when I first came into office. Astounded and dismayed—and all the more determined to turn the ship around.”
CNO Wargames. Vice Chief of Naval Operations (VCNO) Adm. Lisa Franchetti, who is performing the duties of the CNO, hosted the annual CNO Futures Wargame at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, R.I., Aug. 29-30. The wargame is used to allow senior officers and civilians to discuss roles and missions for the future Navy. The service noted that Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Warfighting Development, Vice Adm. Jeff Hughes, developed this iteration and it seeks to help senior leaders explore new and existing concepts of operations in different threat environments, acting as a capstone event to familiarize readers with Force Design. The results of the wargame are to be analyzed for months and help guide implementation of the force design across the fleet.
AI News. Sweden’s Saab last week said it has acquired Britain’s BlueBear Systems Group, a provider of artificial intelligence-enabled software for autonomous swarm systems of uncrewed and crewed vehicles. The acquisition of BlueBear, which has 65 employees and sales of $10 million, is part of Saab’s growth strategy in key markets that include the U.S., U.K., Australia, and Germany, and adding emerging and disruptive technologies such as AI, machine learning, and autonomous systems for defense and security applications. BlueBear will be a center for rapid concept development providing expertise and scaling-up innovation within Saab.
…ViDAR with AI. Sentient Vision Systems last week said its AI-enable visual detection and ranging (ViDAR) was successfully demonstrated aboard Edge Autonomy’s VXE30 vertical take-off and landing small unmanned aircraft system, providing a passive, wide-area search capability for various maritime operations. Sentient’s ViDAR uses computer vision and machine learning integrated with electro-optic and infrared sensors to passively detect objects that are difficult to spot by the human eye or conventional radar, the company said. Over time, the ViDAR has been engineered into a small, lightweight form factor for integration on Group 1 and 2 small UAS.
FAA C-UAS Selectee. D-Fend Solutions last week said the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has selected the company’s EnforceAir counter-unmanned aircraft system (C-UAS) for evaluation at Atlantic City International Airport as part of the agency’s Airport UAS Detection and Mitigation Research Program. The EnforceAir radio frequency-based solution detects and takes over suspect drones, providing a precision C-UAS solution that allows nearby authorized drones to continue operating with no collateral damage to navigation and communications systems.
TSA Biometric e-Gate. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) said it plans to award IDEMIA a contract to develop and test a prototype biometric e-Gate solution for potential use at airport security checkpoints. The AutoCAT solution will integrate an electronic gate and next-generation credential authentication technology-2, which is IDEMIA’s facial comparison technology that TSA is currently deploying to PreCheck lanes at U.S. airports. TSA has said the AutoCAT solution will essentially be a self-service gate that will allow one Transportation Security Officer to staff multiple security gates simultaneously. The agency has not determined where and when the AutoCAT will be deployed.
Navy Eyes C-UAS EW. The Naval Air Systems Command last week issued a Request for Information (RFI) about counter-unmanned aircraft systems (C-UAS) electronic warfare (EW) systems that are available or will be during fiscal year 2024. The RFI does not mention any upcoming evaluations of the C-UAS EW systems. The Navy wants to know the detection and mitigation ranges and methods of the systems, their ability to identify UAS, including those that give off unknown signals, ability to track multiple drones, artificial intelligence assist for operators, technology readiness level, current use by other customers, unit cost, and whether it has been integrated into current Defense Department command and control software.
Tranche 0. The Space Development Agency (SDA) pushed back the scheduled Aug. 31 launch of 13 Tranche 0 satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif., to the morning of Sept. 2–a delay that may have been due to an engine problem with the payloads’ SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The manifest for the launch includes 10 Lockheed Martin Transport Layer satellites, one York Space Systems’ Transport Layer satellite, and two SpaceX Tracking Layer satellites. The SDA Transport Layer satellites are to provide rapid sensor to shooter data, while the Tracking Layer satellites are to provide a significant leap in the detection and tracking of hypersonic and ballistic missiles.
…Last NRO Atlas V. The SDA Tranche O launch was not the only scrub this week. The National Reconnaissance Office and the U.S. Space Force were to launch the NROL-107 SILENTBARKER mission on Aug. 29 from Cape Canaveral, Fla. “Out of an abundance of caution for personnel safety, a critical national security payload and the approaching Tropical Storm Idalia, the team made the decision to return the rocket and payload to the vertical integration facility,” United Launch Alliance (ULA) said. “We will work with our customer and the range to confirm our next launch attempt and a new date will be provided once it is safe to launch.” NROL-107 is to be the last NRO mission for the Atlas V rocket.