This is the second brain dump on defense tech. Try not to read everything, because then you have so little time to enjoy the nice weather outside. Use my short summaries and click on the articles, videos, tools and more that you are interested in! Enjoy!
Table of contents:
Shorter articles [Netherlands]
Important readings
Longer articles and reports
Videos
Books
Cool Tools and Visualizations
Questions, Ideas, Comments
1. Shorter articles [Netherlands]
De Oekraïense delegatie deelt kennis uit met Nederlandse Defensiecollega’s.
Plaatsvervangend Commandant Commando Materieel en IT generaal-majoor Ludy Schmidt: “Oekraïense innovaties zijn belangrijk voor Nederland. Dat geldt ook voor de lessen die het Oekraïense leger leert tijdens de inzet van nieuwe technologieën in het veld. Het levert ons beproefde kennis op om zelf nog sneller en effectiever te innoveren.”
Om Defensie met technologische innovaties te versterken is nauwe samenwerking met de markt essentieel”, benadrukt Schmidt. “De markt biedt Defensie de mogelijkheid om flexibel in te spelen op veranderingen, sneller te innoveren en op te schalen. Daarmee verbeteren we de effectiviteit van militaire operaties."
Drones als onderdeel van datanetwerk
Drones zijn er in vele smaken, van grote ‘fixed wing’ vliegtuigen, zoals de MQ-9, tot multicopters met meerdere rotoren en alles daar tussenin.
De meeste mensen kennen drones vooral als sensor. Met een camera neemt de gebruiker vanaf hoogte de omgeving waar. Maar het apparaat kan inmiddels veel meer: van het vervoeren van cargo, het in kaart brengen van terrein door middel van multispectrale camera’s en lidar, en het fungeren als verbindingspunt voor communicatie.
Vanaf een commandopost werd een dataverbinding over 35 kilometer afstand opgezet met militairen van 11 Luchtmobiele Brigade die zich achter een heuvel bevonden. Hun drone fungeerde als ‘doorgeefluik’ van de verbinding. Die maakte vanaf grote hoogte verbinding met de zender op de commandopost en stuurde dat signaal weer door naar de operators. Over de lijn gingen zowel de communicatie als de videobeelden van de dronecamera.
Zij vertelden ons dat de ontwikkelingen door de oorlog in Oekraïne enorm zijn versneld. R&D roadmaps van jaren werden teruggebracht tot maanden door de ervaringen uit het veld”, weet de dronedeskundige
Hoe militairen in tijden van crises en rampen toch in connectie staan.
Hans Kuijper, directeur van Military INnovation by Doing (MIND). Innovatiemanagers kapitein Rick Zagers (Rotterdam), majoor Teus Meijering (Enschede) en kapitein Bas Klis (Eindhoven)
Het Britse leger werkt samen met de DE&S Future Capability Group (FCG) om de V60 Robotic Dog van Ghost Robotics te testen.
De Australische krijgsmacht heeft de eerste elektrische Bushmaster voor beproeving in gebruik genomen. Deze ePMV (electronic Protected Military Vehicle) vormt volgens staatssecretaris van Defensie Matt Thistlethwaite “een volgende stap om gereed te zijn voor de toekomst.”
Turkije grootte belangstelling drones
Denk aan de Anka-S, De SIHA en de inmiddels beruchte Bayraktar. Aan die lijst kan nu de STM Togan toegevoegd, bedoeld voor verkennings-, bewakings- en inlichtingenmissies.
Volgens de Turkse media is nu ook de serieproductie begonnen van Turkije’s eerste bewapende, onbemande, oppervlakteschip (AUSV). Dat is het eerste vaartuig onder het zogenoemde ULAQ-project.
Ze kan een topsnelheid bereiken van 65 km per uur, met een maximaal vaarbereik van 400 kilometer. Het onbemande vaartuig heeft dag- en nachtzichtapparatuur aan boord. De gecodeerde communicatie-infrastructuur kan worden op 200 kilometer afstand worden bediend.
ULAQ
Wil je meer lezen over de Nederlandse defensie industrie, bekijk hier het archief van jarenlange bundels van materiaalgezien.
2. Important readings
Retired Army Major General John Ferrari articulates why he thinks the Pentagon has been on the wrong track for decades.
Gerard Barron describes the role of deep sea polymetallic nodules in national security.
Christine Michienzi expresses skepticism around implementing the Pentagon’s industry base strategy.
Bessemer Venture Partners outline their roadmap for their move into the Defense Tech space.
3. Longer articles and reports
This edition of Defense News’ Out look project offers several forecasts for the year ahead. It includes interviews, essays and forward-looking arti cles, plus an infographic that details major U.S. defense contracts on the horizon.
Six reports from DefenseNews and C4ISRNET (I recommend report 2 and 5)
1) Complex data analysis and defense AI Intelligence
“You need AI, but you need it integrated into your workflow to help you solve those bigger and harder problems,” Rice said.
Intelligent Exploration is complementary to machine learning, but it differs in that it doesn’t just predict what will happen, but also helps users figure out what’s important before a full predictive AI model is built.
2) Enabling cloud-centric zero trust security for defense environments
Zero Trust has become an essential concept in cybersecurity.
“Zero Trust is a security model, a set of system design principles, and a coordinated cybersecurity and system management strategy based on an acknowledgment that threats exist both inside and outside traditional network boundaries. The Zero Trust security model eliminates implicit trust in any one element, node, or service and instead requires continuous verification of the operational picture via real-time information fed from multiple sources to determine access and other system responses.”
How are Zero Trust and AI connected? AI can also be used within a Zero Trust framework to improve security. For example, it can automate the performance of continuous risk assessments and agile log analysis to detect threats, as well as powering proactive responses. Generative AI models can use the latest threat intelligence to help determine whether a request for access can be trusted, speeding access to critical resources.
3) Sensors to shooters: Using data to make decisions on a connected battlefield
As other organizations come into play, such as individual services within the U.S. military, each one will keep replicating data — making it a governance problem and not a technology problem, which means the risk of metadata loss, data spills and other technical failures. Solving these issues isn’t as simple as just going to a singular cloud-based system. The real technical challenge is to work toward commonality and then set standards on how to integrate the systems and data exchange.
“One of the big challenges right now is data overload. How do you parse all the data that's available out there and figure out if it is fit for mission?” -which companies are working on this problem?
4) Building trustworthy ai solutions
While the foundation of a trustworthy AI system is the human element, because ethics can’t be built into an AI system, officials must ensure that AI is operated in an ethical way
“In a perfect world, our analysts and decision-makers would see common data sets across the community,” she said. “Where correlated data sets are shared and leveraged so our analysts’ insights are built upon when we are faced with hard problems.
5) The state of missile defense and hypersonic weapons
Hypersonic missiles — weapons that travel at speeds of at least Mach 5 while maintaining maneuverability and the ability to change course during flight — represent a new threat to U.S. forces around the world.
Hypersonic missiles spend most of their flight in the Earth’s atmosphere, and they fly much faster than cruise missiles.
The hypersonic missiles the U.S. is developing must incorporate miniaturized elements such as batteries and computerized processors. The more rugged these elements are, the better able they are to support the successful operation of the missile. Reducing the size and weight of these components leaves more room for payload and other parts of the system
Ballistic missiles and cruise missiles are developed since the world wars, and are capable of carrying conventional payloads as well as nuclear warheads at hypersonic speeds; however, they have limited maneuverability and fly on set trajectories (see the picture).
Two types of hypersonic missiles have been developed:
Hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV); it’s an extention of ballistic missile technology that can travel with Mach 20 or more. It is carried along by a rocket, then gets seperated and flys on a lower altitude with extremly high speed. Their path is involuntary, so radar defense systems can’t intercept them.
Hypersonic cruise missile (HCM); are like high speed suicide drones. They are much slower then HGV’s (around 5 mach) but they can fly on much lower altitude.
Russia has also fielded a hypersonic weapon capability and has used these missiles in warfare, attacking Ukraine with Kh-47M2 Kinzhal hypersonic missiles
Russia has reportedly developed an even more sophisticated weapon in its Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle, which it says can reach speeds as high as Mach 27. The ship-based glide phase interceptor is the next evolution in hypersonics missile defense. Defending against missile defense attacks requires a layered defense system that can track and intercept both ballistic and hypersonic missiles.
The US army has the Patriot tactical air defense system and the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system for short range threats,
the SM-3 for longer range attacks and
the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense, which is used to protect against intercontinental ballistic missiles.
6) Network requirements for Army 2030
It all comes down to what’s known as mean time to detect (MTTD), or the time it takes for an existing problem to be identified. Achieving near real-time intelligence means a major paradigm shift for how the Army will operate the cybersecurity side of its house.
The first step will be upgrading the older, legacy systems, whether adding things like quantum encryption capabilities or new tools for data analysis through artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Finally, all Zero Trust tools must embrace the concepts of automation and orchestration, the two pillars of the security system’s philosophy. “If you don’t take those last two pillars and infuse them into everything else you do from a Zero Trust capability, you won’t be successful in the long run,”
The techno-optimist manifesto by Marc Andreessen
no notes needed
4. Videos
Dutch documantary: Zo komt Rusland via Nederland tóch aan gesanctioneerde technologie
Van Gorssel, een klein dorpje in Gelderland, naar de Maldiven, Hongkong en Rusland. Een verhaal hoe een internationaal netwerk (onder leiding van Michail Volovik) tot stand is gekomen om gesanctioneerde technologieën voor meer dan een miljoen naar Rusland te krijgen.
5. Books
The Kill Chain - Christian Brose
The new technology comes in many forms. There now are missiles that fly 2 or 3 times faster than what is available now. The missiles can reach out many many thousands of miles more, enough to hit America from the other side of the world. Now computers are recently coming out on the market which are smaller and 2 or 3 times faster than previous computers. All of that combines to radically speed up the decision time for war operations. The author calls it the kill chain.
6. Cool Tools and Visualizations
Ground News is a platform that makes it easy to compare news sources, read between the lines of media bias and break free from algorithms. Under every article you see this:
