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K N O W L E D G E T E C H N O L O G I E S A N D N E T - E N A B L E D W A R F A R EVolume 9, Number 3 | www.DefenseSystems.com

DEFENSESYSTEMSMay/June 2015

Military services explore the possibilities (and the limits) of robotics PAGE 18

MARCH OF THE ROBOTS

K N O W L E D G E T E C H N O L O G I E S A N D N E T - E N A B L E D W A R F A R E www.DefenseSystems.com

DEFENSESYSTEMSMay/June 2015

Military services explore the possibilities (and the limits)

PAGE 18

MARCH OF THE ROBOTS

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BATTLESPACE TECH

25 NRL is making Star Trek’s armor a reality

26 Marines, DARPA show the real meaning of real-time air support

DEFENSE IT

28 It could be time for DOD to put IPv6 back on the front burner

29 Air Force, NASA test a jet with shape-shifting wings

MOBILE

30 Army is all-in on Rifleman radios

31 DOD teams with Commerce on spectrum sharing

DEPARTMENTS6 FORWARD OBSERVER

32 INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE

34 COMMENT

CONTENTS | MAY/JUNE 2015

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The Defense Systems Network

FEATURES

16 Sense-and-avoid and other key technologies that will direct the future of UAS

18 The military services are driving the innovation being put into the next generation of robots

C4ISR

20 China and Russia prompt the U.S. to explore ‘counterspace’ measures

21 The Army is making its global intelligence system more user-friendly

CYBER DEFENSE

22 DOD’s updated strategy brings cyber ops more out in the open

24 Attacks reveal China’s new Great Cannon cyber weapon

SPECIAL REPORT

The future of unmanned vehiclesFull autonomy is the next logical step, but getting there won’t be easy

PAGE 10

DefenseSystems.com | MAY/JUNE 2015 3

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4 MAY/JUNE 2015 | DefenseSystems.com

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ForwardObserver


Image is everythingInspecting an aircraft for flight-worthiness has to date involved a

1,200-pound piece of equipment, which could cause some logistical

problems, especially in deployed environments. The Air Force Research

Laboratory has now made lighter work of it, with a first-of-its-kind

handheld imaging tool, known as HIT, that weighs just under 7

pounds and connects to an 11-pound backpack. An not only is it

about 63 times lighter than the old equipment, it does the job better,

collecting more data of equal or better quality in less time. In one zone

configuration, for instance, one HIT operator can image an entire zone

in 15 minutes; with the existing equipment, it would take two operators

about three hours to do the same thing.

Software’s BRASS ringImagine having software that, rather than having the

lifespan of an insect, could even outlive you. That’s the

idea behind DARPA’s Building Resource Adaptive Software

Systems, or BRASS, program, which is looking to

change the way software is developed, aiming

for components that can dynamically adjust

to available resources and operating

environments. This kind of AI approach

theoretically could produce software

that lasts 100 years or more, but if

nothing else, researchers expect the

program to produce software that’s a lot

more resilient and reliable.

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Tracking space junkThe Air Force and lead contractor Lockheed

Martin have started construction on the

large-scale Space Fence radar system

that could increase the amount

of space debris the service can

track by an order of magnitude.

Space Fence, an S-band radar,

will be located on the U.S. Army

Garrison Kwajalein Atoll, although

its operations center (depicted

here in an artist’s concept) will be

co-located at Kwajalein Atoll and the

Reagan Test Site Operation Center in

Huntsville, Ala. Space Fence will replace the

Air Force Space Surveillance System, which

dates to the 1960s and could track up to

about 20,000 objects, whether working

satellites, retired satellites or debris. The

increased fidelity of the new system, which

is expected to come online in 2018, will

boost that tracking ability to well over

100,000 objects, perhaps even several

hundreds of thousands.

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ForwardObserver


Free-range refuelingThe Navy took a big step recently toward extending the range of its unmanned

aerial fleet by successfully refueling an X-47B UAV in mid-flight. An autonomous

functionality allowed the X-47B to hook up with an Omega K-707 tanker, a task

that can be tricky even with manned aircraft, which opens to door to mid-air

refueling of other platforms as well. The X-47B, a test aircraft that also was the

first UAV to take off from and land on an aircraft carrier, will now be retired,

having laid the groundwork for the navy’s next-generation Carrier Launched

Airborne Surveillance and Strike aircraft.

A little more than zeroA problem with the Internet of Things that all of

those Internet-connected devices require power,

often from batteries that will run out pretty

quickly and have to be replaced or recharged.

DARPA is looking to change that with its Near

Zero Power RF and Sensor Operations, or

N-ZERO, program, to develop passive sensors

that essentially lie dormant, using less than

10 nanowatts of power, until triggered by a

signature such as a specific radio signal or type

of vehicle. Since current sensors are persistent,

running even when there’s nothing to report,

the program could allow batteries to last up to a

thousand times longer than they do now while

reducing their size by a factor of 20 or more.

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The next deep Web

EDITOR’S DISPATCH

B Y K E V I N M c C A N E Y

W ith the right equipment, you can get Internet access

from pretty much anywhere on the surface of the Earth,

from Death Valley to Mount Everest. Below the surface though,

specifically under water, it’s a much different story.

Water poses a problem for wireless communications

because it interferes with radio waves. As a result, underwater

communication systems like those used by the Navy have

often relied on sound waves or very low radio frequencies with

low data rates, such the frequencies between 3 and 30 kilohertz

used in submarine communications. There’s no Internet down

there, no broadband wireless, no GPS navigation.

But could there be? The Defense Advanced Research Projects

Agency wants to find out, with separate projects aimed at

exploring the possibilities for an underwater Internet as well as

a GPS-like constellation that would operate under the sea.

For the first project, the agency is looking for technologies

that would allow submerged manned and unmanned systems

to operate together just like they do on the surface and in the

air—and communicate with airborne systems as well. The goal

is to extend the network below the surface, unencumbered by

water.

The second project, Positioning System for Deep Ocean

Navigation, or POSYDON, aims to seed the ocean floor with

acoustic signaling sources that would work similarly to GPS

satellites, so that submerged vehicles could get precise

positioning information without having to surface. Currently,

submerged vessels use inertial measurement units and

other dead-reckoning sensors to calculate their positions on

short-term missions, but eventually have to surface to get an

accurate GPS reading.

Of the two, the underwater Internet is the more far-reaching,

since it’s looking for some technologies that haven’t been

invented yet. It’s so nascent, in fact, that DARPA, known for

ginning up clever acronyms (like POSYDON) for its projects,

hasn’t even given it a name yet.

But there has been some progress. Researchers sponsored by

the National Institutes of Health, for example, have tested using

the 2.4 GHz ISM frequency band in an underwater environment

(wireless data transmits between 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz).

There is still a long way to go, and considering the

challenges, an underwater Internet could prove to be a pipe

dream. But then again, the Internet itself, not to mention

worldwide wireless and GPS navigation, was once a pipe

dream too.


The science of sweatSmartphone apps that monitor health and fitness

are increasingly popular, from devices used to

monitor specific diseases, like diabetes, to those

that keep track of weight or exercise. The Air

Force Research Lab is on the verge of going one

better, with a system that tracks many of the

same biomarkers as a blood test, but does it by

monitoring sweat. The system uses a sensor that

looks like a Band-Aid, which collects a sample of

a person’s perspiration and relays that information

wirelessly to a smart phone. AFRL, working

with the University of Cincinnati’s Novel Devices

Laboratory, started on the project five years ago

and recently completed the first successful test of

its prototype. Researchers say the app could have

a significant impact for all of the military services,

since it provides a way to monitor hydration, heat

stress and other factors that can affect the health

and performance of service personnel.

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UNMANNED VEHICLES UNMANNED VEHICLES UNMANNED

UAS& R O B O T I C S

THE FUTURE OF

AUTONOMY IS THE NEXT LOGICAL STEP, BUT IT WON’T BE EASY BY MARK POMERLEAU

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UNMANNED UNMANNED VEHICLES UNMANNED VEHICLES UNMANNED


The Marines and Army have tested the autonomous AMAS convoy system, here against a simulated IED.

Unmanned systems have been widely successful for the military, keeping soldiers out of harm’s way while serv-ing as advanced intelligence platforms and attack craft, performing both long-range and short-range missions. The Defense Department, not surprisingly, is interested

in continuing to procure drones small and large, for missions rang-ing from the squad level operations to medium- and high-altitude surveillance. The combined allocation of the service branches’ bud-get for unmanned aircraft for fiscal year 2015 totaled $2.4 billion.

But the Pentagon isn’t just looking for more drones. It also wants more capability, moving from the current semi-autonomous state of the art—systems that can perform certain tasks without human in-tervention but cannot operate entirely freely—to fully autonomous weapon and surveillance systems. DOD wants systems than can op-erate independently, in unison with each other and in concert with manned systems.

And while full autonomy could be a decade or more away, the military services have so far successfully tested new autonomous platforms in the three main physical domains – air, sea and land.

AIRThe Office of Naval Research – in line with the Pentagon’s desire for the next generation of unmanned aircraft to not only enjoy greater (if not full) autonomy, but communicate with each other – recently conducted testing for the Low-Cost UAV Swarming Technology, or LOCUST, program. LOCUST encompasses small, three-foot long Coyote drones manufactured by BAE Systems that serve to overwhelm an adversary that might be assaulting a base utilizing a swarming technique.

The Coyote drones can be operated by humans or autonomously direct themselves toward a predetermined path. The small drones are launched from a sonobouy container and a parachute slows the aircraft before its wings open and the motor takes over.

SEAONR has also demonstrated swarmboats that, independently or in concert with manned boats, swarm an approaching vessel that might pose a threat. The boats were outfitted with Control Architecture for Robotic Agent Command and Sensing (CARACaS) system, which can be installed on most vessels to retrofit them for unmanned op-eration, operating either autonomously or by remote.

The swarmboats also have firing capability as an extra layer of defense against a potential approaching threat. The Navy said the boats could be used to patrol harbors or escort high-profile manned vessels.

Such capabilities are attractive for commanders in maritime the-aters. For example, this swarming technology could have proved useful during the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in the Gulf of Aden, where a small boat armed to the teeth with explosives blew up alongside the guided missile destroyer, killing several sailors sta-tioned aboard. Unmanned swarmboats could have, at no risk to per-sonnel, intercepted such a threat long before it reached the destroyer.

AUTONOMY IS THE NEXT LOGICAL STEP, BUT IT WON’T BE EASY BY MARK POMERLEAU

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LAND The Marine Corps and the Army have tested vehicles to be used in autono-mous convoys, as one way to prevent casualties caused by improvised ex-plosive devices. During the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, IEDs were a major cause for concern and injured or killed many American and coalition service men and women. The Autonomous Mobility Appliqué System (AMAS), being developed by Lockheed Martin, employs a light detection and ranging sensor, GPS receiver, algorithm soft-ware package and a control system that allows large land vehicles to either be controlled by humans remotely, or en-able fully autonomous capabilities.

Base security has also become an important task that has been outsourced to artificial intelligence. The Serenity Pay-load system, an advanced multifaceted platform equipped with weapons and sensors to detect threats approaching a base, is capable of autonomously alerting personnel to the direction of the threat. The system has seen multiple deploy-ments in the Middle East.

THE NEXT STEPSThe Defense Department issued a directive in 2012 guiding the policy and acquisition of autonomous and semi-autonomous platforms, stating: “Human-supervised autonomous weapon systems may be used to select and engage targets, with the excep-tion of selecting humans as targets, for local defense to intercept attempted time-critical or saturation attacks.” The policy says that autonomous weapon systems can be used for static defense of manned installations and onboard defense of manned platforms.

In terms of fully autonomous weapons or systems, the directive stated that they “may be used to apply non-lethal, non-kinetic force, such as some forms of electronic attack, against materiel targets.”

With the underlying policy framework in place, and with the success unmanned platforms have already achieved, the desire for fully autonomous is stronger than ever. Some believe that the military is only 10 or so years away from bringing some of these autonomous capabilities, which could save the lives of personnel, to fruition. “When you start looking at the mid-term, five to 10 years, we start talking about tapping into

external systems,” Mark Mazzara, robotics interoperability lead for the Army’s Pro-gram Executive Office told an audience at a panel discussion during the National Defense Industrial Association Ground Robotics Capabilities Conference and Exhibition.

However, this process will not be easy and will require heavy lifting from all sides—government and industry alike. “The process to reach the goal of autonomous capabilities is a three-phase approach… starting with driver-safety and driver-assist technologies that are upgrades to vehicles,” Mazzara said. “To reach autonomous capability, the Army needs incremental hardware and software enhancements to existing systems/chassis; sensor and payload upgrades; modularity; open architecture in [interoperability pro-file], or, in- and out-processing software; standardization; miniaturization and light weight; and, intelligent behavior.”

One of the draws for autonomous sys-tems is the ability to continue to operate on mission even if links are compromised, as opposed to, say, a remotely piloted aircraft that would be lost if its wireless

UAS & ROBOTICS

ONR’s CARACaS can turn almost any craft into an autonomous unmanned ‘swarmboat.’

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signal were interrupted. According to the Stimson Center’s Recommendations and Report of the Task Force on U.S. Drone Policy, “[a]utonomy could be a major enabler in anti-access and area-denial (A2/AD) zones, where remote-piloting and real-time links may be compromised. Autonomy could grant UAVs the ability to continue with pre-programmed plans even if data connections are lost or com-munication links are compromised over A2/AD areas.”

The Defense Advanced Research Proj-ects Agency has invested a great deal of time and energy researching and courting proposals from the private sector in devel-oping autonomous systems for various missions. One such program is the Fast Lightweight Autonomy (FLA) program, which would create small autonomous vehicles that can navigate in tighter spaces such as stair wells or inside buildings to alert humans of unforeseen surprises. DARPA envisions such autonomous air-craft to be capable of flying through doors or windows at speeds of up to 45 miles per hour while resembling the size and maneuverability of small birds or insects to avoid collisions. These micro UAVs, as they are sometimes referred to, would significantly aid squad level intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

In addition to outright autonomy, DARPA also is looking to put multiple UAVs under the control of a single opera-tor, through its Collaborative Operations in Denied Environment program. CODE seeks to develop collaborative autonomy among several aircraft while airborne under the supervision of a single operator. The collective aircraft would be capable of con-tinuous evaluation of themselves as well as their surroundings in order to present recommendations to mission supervisors that can approve or disapprove of contin-ued action.

“Just as wolves hunt in coordinated packs with minimal communication, mul-tiple CODE-enabled unmanned aircraft would collaborate to find, track, identify and engage targets, all under the command of a single human mission supervisor,” DARPA program manager Jean-Charles Ledé said.

THE KILLER QUESTIONThe notion that systems can become fully autonomous has drawn some push-back, since they still will have at least some direc-tion from a human. Paul Scharre, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, believes that the phrase full autonomy is “meaningless” and that a more appropriate term is “operationally-relevant autonomy.” For example, Scharre cites thermostats that, while they work without human interven-tion, only have a limited set of functions, or toaster ovens that require the initial action to get it started, but then operate entirely on their own.

Scharre describes operationally-rele-vant autonomy as a platform that is good enough to get a mission or task done. He also says that current unmanned aircraft, such as the Air Force’s Global Hawk or the Army’s MQ-1C Gray Eagle, fall into this category because “[i]n the air domain, operationally-relevant autonomy might mean the ability for the aircraft to take off, land and fly point-to-point on its own in response to human taskings, with a human overseeing operations and making mission-level decisions, but not physically piloting by stick and rudder.” Those UAVs, Scharre

said, already do this.Inevitably, talk of full autonomy raises

fears about killer drones and robots, though DOD policy states that, in person or by remote, only a human can give the OK to pull the trigger. The Stimson Task Force report notes that “[f]or the time being, DOD policy states that no UAV will be allowed independently to launch any kind of weapon without human approval.” The key phrase there, however, could be “for the time being.” The report states that “cur-rent DOD directives raise the possibility of permitting the use of such autonomous weapons in the future, with the approval of high-ranking military and civilian offi-cials.” Current guided munitions, the report notes, are to some degree autonomous since, once fired by a human, their geo-locating systems takes over. The prospect of additional autonomy has some worried and presents distinct legal questions.

Those questions won’t go away, but for now, the military’s focus is on developing, testing and using autonomous systems that could save time on training, reduce certain errors, allow continued operation in contested environments and, most impor-tantly, save lives. n

UAS & ROBOTICS

Autonomy could work on a small scale, too; DARPA’s CODE program envisions small, fast UAVs that could search buildings in advance of troops’ arrival.

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UAS& R O B O T I C S

KEVIN MCCANEY

T he future of unmanned vehi-cles is pretty much the future of vehicles, at least as far as many military applications are

concerned.While Google and other companies

work on their self-driving cars, the military services are striving toward autonomous unmanned ground vehicles of their own, whether via kits that can be fitted onto existing vehicles or designed-from-the-ground-up unmanned vehicles like the Ripsaw, made by Howe and Howe Tech-nologies, which the Army says could one day lead soldiers into battle.

The Navy, likewise, has plans for a variety of unmanned systems, to operate both on the surface and below it. And the perva-siveness of unmanned vehicles could be most dominant of all in the air. Secre-

tary of the Navy Ray Mabus has said the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter “should be, and almost certainly will be, the last manned strike fighter aircraft the Department of the Navy will ever buy or fly.” Air Force officials have disagreed with that, at least concerning the Air Force’s plans, and even if Mabus is right, the F-35 has a planned lifecycle of 55 years, so an all-unmanned fleet won’t happen tomorrow, it at all. But unmanned vehicles are a major part of the Pentagon’s short- and long-range plans.

Long-term, the military wants to increase the autonomous capabilities of its vehicles, whether on land, at sea or in the air, as we point out in this issue (Page 10). But there are other key technologies in play for the unmanned fleets. Here is a look at a few of them.

SENSE-AND-AVOIDThis is a key technology for domestic drone flights, whether commercial civil-

ian flights or military training exercises. As the name suggests, the idea is for un-manned aircraft to identify the presence of other aircraft or obstacles and maneuver to stay clear of them, the way human pilots practice see and avoid.

While private companies race to develop reliable sense-and-avoid technologies to meet Federal Aviation Administration requirements, the military and its con-tractors have been making progress on several fronts.

The Army late last year began installing five Ground-Based Sense-and-Avoid radar systems, the first at Fort Hood, Texas. The system incorporates 3D radar, known as LSTAR, along with data fusion, tracker and classifier systems, separation algorithms and other features. It will allow the Army to replace the see-and-avoid method for meeting FAA requirements, which involved visual observation from either the ground or a manned chase plane.

Key tech for UASIt’s more than just flying and spying

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The Army opted for a ground-based sys-tem because its drones are smaller than the Air Force’s, so they have less room inside them for radars and other systems. Fort Hood hosts two companies of MQ-1C Gray Eagles, the Army’s largest UAVs. The other bases to get GBSAA systems are Fort Riley, Kan., Fort Stewart, Ga. and Fort Campbell, Ky.

Up in the air, General Atomics earlier this year successfully tested the first air-to-air sense-and-avoid radar aboard one of its MQ-9 Predator B, which is widely used by the Air Force. The pre-production system is a version of “due regard radars,” which have automatic collision avoidance and sensor fusion capabilities, and typically are interoperable with the traffic alert and collision avoidance systems used in most commercial aircraft. A working system like this would qualify remotely piloted aircraft for flights in international airspace.

The Air Force, meanwhile, has been

working on sense-and-avoid kits that could be fitted onto UAVs without modifying the aircraft itself. The Air Force Research Lab has been working with Defense Research Associates for over a decade on sense-and-avoid technologies and late last year gave the company a $23.5 million contract to continue development of its Electro-Optical Small Sense and Avoid System as part of a multi-spectral sensor suite. In recent years, DRA’s focus has been on miniaturizing its technology so that it can be used on smaller UAVs.

ELECTRONIC WARFAREWith ever-more systems, whether manned or unmanned, being connected and in-teroperable, effective electronic warfare capabilities become ever more paramount. The basic idea behind EW—protect your own communications while being able to disrupt or interfere with an enemy’s—is as old as radio waves, but the technolo-gies are becoming more sophisticated as the electromagnetic spectrum gets more crowded.

The Air Force, for example, is looking to develop new EW-focused technologies through a couple of new programs—Spec-trum Warfare Assessment Technologies (SWAT) and Virtual Integrated Electronic Warfare Simulations (VIEWS) II.

SWAT will use multispectral synthetic battlespace simulations to assess how new EW technologies would perform in the real world, according to the Air Force Research Laboratory, which launched the program. VIEWS II will develop simulations for testing and evaluating how well advanced sensors and fused systems on aircraft stand up against EW attacks. In April, the service awarded Avarint an $84 million contract for the work.

Technological developments also could bring EW capabilities to new platforms. Excelis, a longtime maker of EW equip-ment, late last year unveiled its Disruptor SRx family of systems that put multiple capabilities into a small package. Rather than have one device each for electronic attack, protection, support, intelligence gathering and jamming, the company puts all of those capabilities into one program-mable “system on a chip” that can shift between functions in real time.

The combined technology of the plat-form-independent Disruptor would allow it to be used on crafts that previously were too small to carry EW technology, while also saving on space and weight on larger craft.

AUTONOMOUS COPILOTSOne of the things about developing auton-omous capabilities is that they don’t have to be just for unmanned vehicles. They can be used to back up manned crews or even serve as a member of a crew if its man-power has been reduced.

The Defense Advanced Research Proj-ects Agency recently awarded contracts in a program to do just that, the Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System, or ALIAS, program. The drop-in system will be designed to be added to existing aircraft. With both touch and voice interfaces, it would be able to take over in the case of system failures or for specific missions.

Aurora Flight Sciences, Lockheed Mar-tin and Sikorsky Aircraft were awarded prime contracts for Phase 1 of ALIAS, which DARPA intends to develop with feedback from flight crews. n

Key tech for UAS

DARPA’s ALIAS would augment manned crews with autonomous capabilities.

General Atomics tested the first air-to-air radar this year aboard an MQ-9 Predator B.

0615ds_010-017.indd 17 5/13/15 11:36 AM


ROBOTS18 MAY/JUNE 2015 | DefenseSystems.com

Robots in the military have a longer history than you might think. Dur-ing World War II, radio-guided target drones were launched from Navy ships, directed by sailors toggling joysticks on small control boxes. At least one explosives-packed, unmanned B-17 boasted a television cam-era, enabling monitor-equipped ground personnel to maneuver it to a target.

But things have changed a lot in the 70 years since.The most striking example will be on display June 5-6 in Pomona,

Calif., during the finals of the DARPA Robotics Challenge, the De-fense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s increasingly global and ground-breaking competition. Twenty five commercial, university and government teams will vie for $3.5 million in prize money in a disaster-response scenario whose degree of difficulty has increased as the teams have shown progress over the past couple of years.

DRC entries must be battery-powered and unconnected to power cords, “fall arrestors,” or wired communications tethers. Teams must communicate with their creation over a secure wireless network, which will be randomly degraded to simulate actual emergency situations. The robots will have to drive a vehicle, cut through a wall, remove debris, connect a fire hose and perform other tasks. And they’ll have to stay upright; inability to recover from stumbles means failure.

“Come June, we’ll see [government/academic cooperation] in action,” Defense Secretary Ash Carter said during an April 25th ad-dress at Stanford University. “This event will showcase how work on smaller sensors, pattern recognition technology, big data analysis, and autonomous systems with human decision support, could combine into a rescue robot ... that navigates a disaster-stricken area with the same speed and efficiency that you or I would … but without putting anyone at risk.”

DOD’s Office of Naval Research (ONR) is developing its own auton-omously controlled machines, and helping oversee others. One is the Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot (SAFFiR.) (Among ONR’s collaborators is Virginia Tech, whose ESCHER robot is contesting the DARPA Challenge.) A 2014 Navy-filmed Va. Tech. video shows hose-wielding SAFFiR onboard facing a roaring fire—the first such demo of its kind.

Although still tethered, unlike the robots in DARPA’s challenge, SAF-FIR is being developed with impressive speed. The Navy hopes one day all ships will have robot fireman and safety inspectors.

FOUR-WHEELED FRIENDSHumanoid robots might be getting a lot of attention, but the military has long relied on radio-controlled “tractor-type” robots—IED-hunt-ing mini-tanks, mostly—as regular tools. An entire Pentagon enter-prise—the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO)—exists solely for this purpose. The capabilities for these unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) have, though, moved well beyond familiar “find ‘em, explode ‘em” tasking.

The Marines’ MAARS is emblematic. Built by Britain’s QinetiQ North America/Foster-Miller, the Modular Advanced Armed Ro-botic System is a true multi-tasker. An advanced test-bed dating to 2008 and laden with technology, it can feature various combinations of ISR sensors, such as pan-and-tilt day/night and zoom-lens cameras, FLIR night camera, thermal imagers, front and rear and infrared drive cameras and laser rangefinders that work out to 10 kilometers. It also could include a high-intensity spotlight, siren, a “dazzler” to temporar-ily blind restive crowds, voice projector, M240 machinegun, hostile-fire detection system, Uzi submachine gun, even smoke generators if required to quit the battle space. Not to mention a quad-40 milimeter rocket or grenade launcher.

Like Army iterations, it’s tele-operated, with the controller remotely situated, tapping a keyboard and viewing a computer monitor. A wear-able option is a possibility. For now, its range is line-of-sight.

The project comes under the Combat Robotics System (CRS) program. “We started CRS to understand how the dynamics of man-machine interactions would work,” said Capt. James Piniero, a Marine Warfighting Lab robotics project lead handling multiple portfolios. “And essentially, we’re less concerned with the specific equipment piece than with concept-based experimentation.”

The focus is on how robots might help infantry Marines as they do static-post guards, explosive ordnance disposal crews and engineers. “MAARS acts as an advanced optics suite with a direct-fire weapon aboard,” he said.

COGNITIVE DISSONANCEIts multiple capabilities notwithstanding, MAARS isn’t perfect, though its limitations aren’t with the platform but with how it’s controlled. Ma-rine ground robots in general “don’t yet have the level of autonomy re-quired to navigate” glitchlessly, or understand certain basic commands,

BY DAVID C. WALSH

MILITARY SERVICES DRIVE THE NEXT GENERATION OF AUTOMATED MACHINESROBOTSR O L L I N G W I T H T H EROBOTS0615ds_018-019.indd 18 5/13/15 11:30 AM


ROBOTSROBOTSPiniero said. That lack of autonomy increases the “cognitive load” on Marines

when driving/controlling MAARS during offensive operations. “They just don’t have the time to deal with it, and it becomes a bur-den instead of something that helps.”

The Marines are still tweaking MAARS, expecting to improve its operations by year’s end. Meanwhile, the Marine Warfighting Lab has a “brand-new” tracked-vehicle project—the Robotic Vehicle-Modular. (RV-M), Piniero said.

At about 800 pounds, the next-gen vehicle is smaller than a jeep but larger than MAARS. It’s also highly mission-configurable, like MAARS, but with lots more “elbow room.”

The RV-M project utilizes a one-off Polaris Defense/TORC Ro-botics vehicle. It carries the Marines’ Ground Unmanned Support Surrogate (GUSS) autonomy package, yielding, Piniero said, “a higher level” than the MAARS. He’s planning for a remote weapons station for direct fires experiments, plus a targeting package with laser designator. And MAARS-type ISR pieces, optics and other components are under discussion.

As part of another project, Unmanned Tactical Autonomous Control and Collaboration (UTACC), the robots share informa-tion. “If one identified a target it can pass it to another of the same or different type, say, aerial – for them to have a shared awareness of the battlespace. ... If the air robot sees something the ground can’t see, together they can solve a complex problem.” A Feb-ruary demo validated this.

Regarding so-called “swarming” or “ganging” of ro-bots, he said, “Yeah – that’s exactly what we’re driving towards. That command-and-control project is called Unmanned Tactical Autonomous Control and Col-laboration (UTACC) – and that’s the overarching backbone of all of this. RV-M hits on modularity and multi-mission packages for the infantry squad or company [with] a higher level of mission autonomy.”

“The biggest thing to fight on the ground and be safe is to have time and space from the threat,” he said. “And that’s what autono-mous systems buy us, because you can put an enhanced camera on it; you can have software that does change detection, visual recogni-tion and so on.” n

The Navy’s fire-fighting SAFFiR could one day be a part of every ship’s crew.

MILITARY SERVICES DRIVE THE NEXT GENERATION OF AUTOMATED MACHINES

Florian, which will compete in the DRC, is produced by Team ViGIR, whose members include researchers from TORC Robotics, Virginia Tech and Oregon State.

0615ds_018-019.indd 19 5/13/15 11:30 AM

BY GEORGE LEOPOLD

The Air Force is stepping up its “counterspace” operations as concerns grow about Chinese

antisatellite weapon capabilities and the side effects of continuing friction with Russia over Ukraine.

Congress added more than $32 mil-lion to the Air Force’s space budget in fiscal 2015 to study future antisatellite capabilities, including offensive and “active defense” capabilities. It also in-structed DOD to “conduct a study of potential alternative defense and deter-rent strategies in response to the exist-ing and projected counterspace capa-bilities of China and Russia.”

Concerns have grown in the after-math of Chinese antisatellite tests, most recently in July 2014, that demonstrated the capability to destroy military com-

munications satellites, perhaps even those in geostationary orbits. Analysts suspect the test involved a prototype kinetic kill weapon. That possibility has U.S. military officials especially nervous given the debris fields that could be gen-erated in a space conflict.

Air Force officials have taken a harder line on counterspace since the Chinese antisatellite, or ASAT, tests. Before the 2014 test, China had in 2007 destroyed one of its old weather satellites using a ballistic missile, and in 2013 conducted another apparent ASAT test. China has denied that the recent tests involved ASAT^ capabilities.

“We’re aggressively looking at our current capabilities and our future ca-pabilities to figure out what we have to do to prepare for those threats,” Air Force Gen. John Hyten, commander of U.S. Space Command, told reporters re-

cently. Hyten cited ongoing Russian and Chinese counterspace development, including laser weapons and microsat-ellites. “They are very close to fruition, and we need to be prepared for that,” Hyton was quoted as saying. Hence, the Pentagon will spend an extra $5 billion over the next five years to protect mili-tary satellites.

Space security analysts have noted the steady drum beat from the Pentagon over ASAT development. “There’s a clear rhetorical strategy here,” said Theresa Hitchens, senior research scholar at the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland.

“The U.S. intelligence community and military leaders have been spooked by continued Chinese ASAT testing, es-pecially the last test which took place at an altitude near [geosynchronous orbit] where very important national security

DOD’s rising concern: Satellites as targets

C4ISRChina’s tests and Russia’s hard line prompt ‘counterpace’ efforts

The Air Force currently uses the Sodium Guidestar laser at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., for high-fidelity tracking and imaging of satellites; analysts think lasers that could blind, but not destroy, satellites are a possible counterspace measure.


0615ds_020-021.indd 20 5/8/15 4:09 PM


Service plans to reduce complexity, improve training for DCGS-A

satellites reside,” added Hitchens, who previously directed the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research in Geneva.

Referring to additional funding for counterspace development, Hyton cited the need for more resilient next-gener-ation satellites with defensive capabili-ties integrated into their designs. That translates primarily into satellites that could maneuver to avoid attack.

Meanwhile, Moscow has also taken a harder line on space cooperation since

the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine. Hitchens said those tensions “have translated up the chain to the White House. As a result, we’ve been hearing more aggressive rhetoric out of the U.S. space community regarding ‘deterrence’ and response.”

The Air Force has said little about what new ASAT capabilities it is devel-oping. Based on the fear of creating new debris fields in space—space junk that could knock out critical infrastructure on Earth—analysts think laser technol-

ogies that could blind but not destroy satellites are a likely focus of Air Force development.

Then there is the larger question of deterring China and Russia, each of which understands the United States has an ASAT capability. “The question is whether a harder line approach will deter Russia and China or push them into even more troubling developments, and begin an ASAT race,” Hitchens said, adding that such a competition “would increase risks to all space users.” n

BY KEVIN MCCANEY

The Army’s evolving global in-telligence systems has come in for a lot of criticism in the last

couple of years, with users complaining it is difficult to use and unreliable. Army leaders have taken those criticisms to heart, however, and are promising that future versions will be much more user-friendly.

The Distributed Common Ground System - Army, or DCGS-A, is used to collect, analyze and disseminate intelli-gence to soldiers around the world. But since it was first approved for deploy-ment in December 2012, the system has suffered from glitches and resistance from users.

At a hearing this week before the Sen-ate Armed Services Committee’s sub-committee on Airland, a top Army lead-er admitted the difficulties soldiers have had with the system and said the service is working to correct the problem.

“We have acknowledged that the complexity associated with the button-

ology … has been difficult,” Lt. Gen. Michael E. Williamson, military deputy to the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technol-ogy, told lawmakers. “So we have tried to invest a lot of time, and we have also engaged with over 150 vendors through a series of industry days, to find out how we can improve the existing system.”

DCGS-A is a complex system, draw-ing information from more than 600 sources, including GPS satellites, sur-veillance drones, ground and biometric sensors and other systems. It combines a number of commercial and military software tools as well including Google Earth and Query Tree. The combination of so much disparate software resulted, perhaps inevitably, in some usability problems.

“Buttonology” was one of the terms used in a memo from late 2013 in which members of five units in Afghanistan were cited as saying DCGS-A was “un-stable, slow, not friendly and a major hindrance to operations,” with up-grades that wipe out users’ data. Several

also said that, while they could see the system’s potential value, they had not received enough training to manage its complexity. As a result, they often opted to use commercial tools instead. Last summer, the Army scrapped DCGS-A from a major exercise because of soft-ware glitches.

Since then, the Army has been work-ing to smooth out the system’s rough edges and improve training. To go with the industry days Williamson men-tioned, the service has issued a series of solicitations seeking input on the next iteration, DCGS-A Increment 2, for which the Army is planning to hold a competition in 2016. It also is forming tactical engagement teams of subject matter experts to train users in making the most of the system.

Meanwhile, work on the current increment has improved its usability, which the Army plans to demonstrate during evaluations scheduled for May, Williamson said. “I think you will see a completely different perception of how that tool is provided,” he said. n

Army making its intelligence system more user-friendly


0615ds_020-021.indd 21 5/8/15 4:09 PM


BY MARK POMERLEAU

The Defense Department recently released a much-needed update its 2011 Strategy for Operating

in Cyberspace. The new version, while hitting on many of the same general points—information sharing, bolster-ing alliances in the cyber realm and pro-tecting DOD infrastructure, to name a few—clearly reflects the evolution and escalation of threats and cyberspace op-erations over the last four years.

One of the most glaring distinctions between the two documents pertains to specific threats. In 2011, DOD’s strategy only spoke in broad terms regarding the threats facing the U.S. in cyberspace, citing “external threat actors, insider threats, supply chain vulnerabilities, and threats to DOD‘s operational abil-ity,” among its concerns.

Conversely, the updated strategy overtly names a litany of state and non-state actors that pose a threat to U.S. while citing specific accounts in which they were culpable. The strategy names Russia, China, North Korea and Iran as well as ISIS, which uses cyberspace to recruit new fighters and disseminate propaganda, and offers something of a scouting report on them.

“Russian actors are stealthy in their cyber tradecraft and their intentions are sometimes difficult to discern,” the strategy states. “China steals intellectual property (IP) from global businesses to benefit Chinese companies and under-cut U.S. competitiveness. While Iran and North Korea have less developed cyber capabilities, they have displayed an overt level of hostile intent towards the United States and U.S. interests in cyberspace.” Also, criminal organiza-

tions are generally mentioned as a col-lective body.

Furthermore, the report notes blurred lines that can occur in cyber-space in which “patriotic entities often act as cyber surrogates for states, and non-state entities can provide cover for state-based operators.” An example of that could be the Syrian Electronic Army, which supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad but apparently is not part of the government.

TOP THREATAnother change has been the serious-ness of cyber threats. The report soberly points out that from 2013-2015 the Director of National Intelligence iden-tified cyber threats as the number one strategic threat to the United States—a

significant statement because it is the first time since Sept. 11, 2001 that ter-rorism did not top the list.

The 2015 strategy also differs from its previous iteration in that it identi-fies in more specific terms how the U.S. can respond in to threats in cyberspace. Previously, DOD only held a defensive posture when it came to cybersecurity. DOD since has indicated that it is ready to go on the offensive in the cyber do-main against perceived threats.

“If directed by the President or the Secretary of Defense, the U.S. mili-tary may conduct cyber operations to counter an imminent or on-going at-tack against the U.S. homeland or U.S. interests in cyberspace,” the strategy says. DOD could order “cyber opera-tions to disrupt an adversary’s military

DOD’s updated strategy puts cyber operations more out in the open

CYBERDEFENSE

The 624th Operations Center at Joint Base San Antonio is home to Air Forces Cyber, the Air Force component of U.S. Cyber Command.


0615ds_022-024.indd 22 5/8/15 4:10 PM


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BY KEVIN McCANEY

China has developed a powerful new cyber weapon capable of extending its censorship efforts

and targeted cyberattacks around the world, researchers say.

According to a report released by Cit-izen Lab, the tool was used earlier this year to conduct large-scale distributed denial of service attacks on websites and servers, run by GreatFire.org, that were trying to provide access to blocked Chinese websites.

The attacks originally were attributed to China’s Great Firewall, the Inter-net filter China uses to censor content within the country, but researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, University of Toronto, International Computer Science Institute and Princ-eton University, after studying the at-tacks, attributed it to a new weapon they dubbed “the Great Cannon.” While the Great Firewall is known for blocking

content within China, the researchers said the Great Cannon could export censorship activities as well as outright cyberattacks.

The tool, co-located with the Great Firewall, can hijack a computer and put it to use in a DDOS attack, the research-ers said, and could easily be adapted to inject malicious code into any system that communicates with a website in China while not using encryption.

In the attacks on GreatFire.org, a non-profit that helps users get access to censored Chinese sites, the Cannon initially intercepted unencrypted, non-Chinese Web traffic intended for the Chinese search engine Baidu and di-rected it at servers rented by the organi-zation. Ten days later, two GitHub Web pages run by GreatFire suffered similar attacks.

The tool is capable of intercepting traffic to and from individual IP ad-dresses and replacing unencrypted con-

tent in a “man in the middle” attack. It also could also intercept unencrypted email, replacing legitimate content with malicious code, the researchers said.

The Great Cannon, in fact, shows similarities to QUANTUM, used by the National Security Agency and the U.K.’s GCHQ intelligence agency to redirect large streams of traffic, according to documents leaked by Edward Snowden.

The researchers said they were sur-prised that China would make such a high-profile, public use of the Great Cannon, but concluded that, “Conduct-ing such a widespread attack clearly demonstrates the weaponization of the Chinese Internet to co-opt arbitrary computers across the web and outside of China to achieve China’s policy ends.” They said coopting foreign computers for a country’s purposes sets a “danger-ous precedent” that goes against inter-national norms and many countries’ domestic laws. n

Attacks reveal China’s ‘Great Cannon’

related networks or infrastructure so that the U.S. military can protect U.S. interests in an area of operations.” The report also notes that not all cyberat-tacks will warrant a cyber response, with sanctions or other diplomat5ic and economic responses as options.

The trouble with responding is that it can be difficult to attribute attacks to a specific source. So deterrence has gained a new focus in the 2015 strategy, with deterrence tactics and capabilities peppered throughout the 42-page docu-ment. The strategy describes a measured three-tiered approach that focuses on effective response capabilities to deter adversaries, effective denial capabilities to prevent attacks from succeeding and strengthening the resilience of networks to withstand attacks.

The only mentions of deterrence

in DOD’s 2011 cyber strategy were in reference to collective deterrence that could come from bolstering partner-ships with allies and taking steps to pre-vent insider attacks.

GATHERING FORCEAn obvious difference between 2011 and 2015 is the size of DOD’s cyber workforce. The U.S. Cyber Command was established in 2009 as a subcom-mand of U.S. Strategic Command to focus exclusively on cyber operations. In 2012, DOD began to build a Cyber Mission Force (CMF) that will include nearly 6,200 military, civilian and con-tractor personnel. It expects to fill out that workforce by 2016.

Within the CMF, DOD is construct-ing 133 teams that, according to the 2015 strategy, will consist of three

forces: Cyber Protection Forces, which will defend priority networks and aug-ment traditional defense measures; Na-tional Mission Forces that, along with associated support teams, will defend against cyberattacks “of significant con-sequence;” and Combat Mission Forces, which will support combat commands through integrating cyberspace effects into operation plans and contingency operations.

DOD began to restructure the mili-tary and civilian workforce infrastruc-tures in order to ensure mission success in 2013 by integrating the CMF into larger multi-mission military forces. Since the CMF has not reached its de-sired force levels yet, DOD stressed in the updated cyber strategy that it will continue to build and mature necessary command and control. n

CYBER DEFENSE


0615ds_022-024.indd 24 5/8/15 4:10 PM


NRL’s spinel is a potential game-changer for military and commercial uses. from aircraft windows to smartphone screens

BY KEVIN McCANEY

In the 1986 movie “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home,” the Enterprise crew travels back from the 24th century

to present-day Earth where, among other things, Scotty barters for enough Plexiglass to build a giant whale tank by offering the formula for “transparent aluminum.”

As it turns out, the movie was not too far off in placing the technology closer to present times, as we may soon be see-ing—and seeing through—something similar. The Naval Research Laboratory is developing a version of the gemstone spinel that, rather than being transpar-ent aluminum, is a transparent ceramic that could produce armor-strength win-dows, as well as make camera lenses and smartphone screens that don’t scratch or break.

And because it’s much stronger than glass, thinner, lighter layers of it would be required for, say, aircraft windows, sensors or any other purpose now per-formed by glass. “For weight-sensitive platforms—UAVs [unmanned autono-mous vehicles], head-mounted face shields—it’s a game-changing technol-ogy,” Dr. Jas Sanghera, NRL’s lead re-searcher on the project, said in a release.

Spinel (pronounced spin-ELL) is magnesium aluminate, a mineral that is produced on a low-temperature hot press and an NRL-invented process called sintering that can shape it to fit the contours of an aircraft, dome or other design, and can be ground and polished in the same way as a gemstone. And because of its material, it also has

“unique optical properties,” Sanghera said, “not only can you see through it, but it allows infrared light to go through it,” unlike glass, which makes it ideal for military imaging systems.

NRL’s spinel is made up of crystal particles that prevent the kind of cracks that can happen with glass. “It’s like navigating through the asteroid belt, you create a tortuous path: If I have all these crystals packed together, the crack gets deflected at the hard crystals: you dissipate the crack energy,” he said. And because it can be mined or made syn-thetically, it’s fairly cheap to produce.

Sanghera sees a lot of possibilities for

spinel, from rugged consumer electron-ics to transparent armor and face shields. It could make for thinner bullet-proof glass and be used in protective covering for infrared cameras and satellite sen-sors. NRL also is considering using it in its next-generation, ceramic laser.

NRL made pieces of transparent spi-nel in its lab that were 8 inches in di-ameter, then licensed the technology to a company that produced plates up to 30 inches wide. But the size of a sheet is limited only by the size of a press. “Ul-timately, we’re going to hand it over to industry,” Sanghera said, “so it has to be a scalable process.” n

Lab is making Star Trek’s transparent armor a reality

The lab uses a hot press and a process called sintering to create and shape the spinel.

BATTLESPACETECH


0615ds_025-026.indd 25 5/8/15 4:19 PM



BATTLESPACE TECH

The prototype PCAS system dramatically cuts the time from identifying a target to delivering a strike in support of ground troops

BY KEVIN McCANEY

M ilitary research-ers and Marines recently demon-

strated just what they mean when they talk about “real-time situational awareness,” with a successful test of the prototype Persistent Close Air Support system.

Close air support—the delivery of bombs or other munitions to protect and assist ground forces—has long been a key tactic for the military. But even under the best of circumstances, the current system of re-lying on paper maps and voice instructions can take a half-hour or more to deliver support. During the Marine Corps’ Talon Reach training exercise this spring, ground forces us-ing an Android tablet identified a tar-get and sent its position to an MV-22 Osprey, which fired a (non-explosive) precision-guided Griffin missile from 4.5 miles away, hitting exactly where it was supposed to.

Total elapsed time: just over four minutes, well under the goal of six minutes.

The test was the first successful in-tegration of the full PCAS prototype, which uses digital data links and ad-vanced software to tie together ground controllers, aircraft and munitions in a system being developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Marines and a contractor team led by Raytheon, with assists from other

military research centers.“I am very pleased with the success-

ful PCAS demonstration that we had during Talon Reach,” Lt. Gen. Jon M. Davis, the Marine Corps’ deputy com-mandant for aviation, said in a DARPA release. “I have emphasized to my team that we will network every one of our aircraft.”

The big step forward in the project was integrating an air component with a ground component that has already been in use. Marines began using their version of PCAS-Ground—which they call Kinetic Integrated Low-cost SoftWare Integrated Tactical Combat Handheld, or KILSWITCH—in Iraq and Afghanistan starting in 2013. PACS-Ground is a suite of situational awareness and mapping software, de-veloped with the Naval Air Warfare Center and the Air Force Research

Laboratory, hosted on Android tablets. Since DARPA introduced the tablets, the Marines have employed thousands of them and have documented better navigation, situational awareness, fire coordination and communications be-cause of them, DARPA said.

At Talon Reach, the team incor-porated PCAS-Air, a combination of weapons management, ISR and communications systems, on a Smart Launcher Electronics (SLE) device with a modular design that allows it to work with almost any aircraft.

“On its first try, the full PCAS pro-totype system showed we could use a modular, system-of-systems approach to adapt an aircraft to provide close air support, and deliver that capability via real-time coordination with ground forces,” DARPA program manager Dan Patt said. n

Marines, DARPA show what real-time air support looks like

An MV-22 Osprey with a PCAS-Air component delivered the strike.

0615ds_025-026.indd 26 5/8/15 4:19 PM


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IPv4 might be fine right now, but its days are numbered

BY KEVIN McCANEY

Remember the IPv6 crisis? Four years ago, after the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority

(IANA) allocated the last blocks of IPv4 address space to the five regional regis-tries around the world, switching IPv6 was talked about with the urgency of correcting Y2K date code in December 1999. The message at the time: Get with the new protocols or get left behind on the mobile, everything-connected In-ternet.

Since then, the issue has dropped mostly off the radar, as engineers found ways to milk more use out of IPv4 ad-dresses and organizations found plenty of other things to worry about. Now, however, IPv6 could be an issue whose time has returned, a point underscored by a recent Defense Department inspec-tor general report on DOD’s failure to keep up with the IPv6 transition.

The report, issued in December 2014 but publicly released in a redacted ver-sion in April, notes that DOD made plans for IPv6 conversion in 2003 and hit some of its target dates, including demonstrating IPv6 on the depart-ment’s network backbone in 2008. But in recent years the department has missed a series of deadlines, including converting email, Web and Domain Name Systems to IPv6 by the end of fis-cal 2012, and using IPv6 for DOD ap-plications and networks by the end of fiscal 2014.

Among the reasons for the drop-off in activity: the costs of the transition, a lack of people trained to handle the pro-tocols, security concerns over running a “dual stack” of both IPv4 and IPv6

during the transition and a lack of co-ordination among various DOD com-ponents. In response comments to the report, DOD also alluded to a lack of a sense of urgency, saying it has enough IPv4 addresses to support future opera-tions.

But there are good reasons for mak-ing the switch, including IPv6’s better security and support for mobile com-puting, not to mention the capacity to accommodate all the IP-connected drones, sensors, munitions and count-less battlefield systems the military is developing. DOD may have stockpiled plenty of IPv4 addresses for the imme-diate future, but the number of those

addresses is finite and they are running out.

IPv4, which was released in 1978, be-fore most people had heard of the Inter-net, has a 32-bit address format, which equates to about 4.3 billion IP address-es. When IANA released its last blocks of addresses in 2011, the American Registry for Internet Numbers, which serves North America, had more than 86 million IPv4 addresses available. In February 2014, that number was about 24 million.

As of March 18 this year, ARIN’s blog said it was down to “.31 of a /8.” Trans-lation: A /8 (pronounced “slash eight”) is a block with 16,777,216 addresses, 31

Should DOD put IPv6 back on the front burner?

IT


IPv4 Address DepletionThe actual or projected dates, as of May 7 for when the Regional Internet Registries run out of available IPv4 addresses.

Registry Depletion date

APNIC (portions of Asia and Oceana)

April 19, 2011 (actual)

RIPE NCC (Europe, Middle East, Central Asia)

Sept. 14, 2012 (actual)

LACNIC (Latin America, part of Caribbean)

June 10, 2014 (actual)

ARIN (North America) July 5, 2015 (projected)

AFRINIC (Africa, portions of Indian Ocean)

Feb. 15, 2019 (projected)

Source: IPv4 Address Report

0615ds_028-029.indd 28 5/11/15 9:59 AM


Design cuts down on fuel use, emissions and noiseBY KEVIN McCANEY

F lying aircraft could be about to get cheaper, quieter and more environmentally friendly as a re-

sult of more than 15 years of research spearheaded by the Air Force Research Laboratory, with big assists from NASA and engineering company FlexSys.

A NASA team recently completed initial flight tests of a Gulfstream III jet with wings that “morph” in-flight, adjusting flap angles from -2 degrees up to 30 degrees. The technology, which could be retrofitted onto existing air-craft or built into new ones, could save millions of dollars in fuel costs each year, allow for lighter airframes and reduce the environmental footprint of any plane with morphing wings. It also would cut down on aircraft noise dur-ing takeoffs and landings, according to a NASA press release.

The test team at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, Calif., has flown 22 research flights over the past six months using the wings, formally known as Adaptive Compli-ant Trailing Edge (ACTE) flight control surfaces. NASA said the tests hit their primary and secondary goals on sched-ule and within budget.

The tests demonstrated the wings’ ability to withstand dynamic pressures and aerodynamic loads of up to 11,500 pounds per flap segment. The flexible

design reportedly could down on cruise drag by 3 percent for aircraft retrofit-ted with the wings and as much as 12 percent for new aircraft. In addition to reducing drag, the materials used for the flaps save weight, and the flap con-figurations would cut down on noise.

The flights took place as part of NASA’s Environmentally Responsible Aviation (ERA) program, but the re-search dates to an AFRL initiative in 1998, when Air Force researchers be-gan working with FlexSys though the Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) program. They developed sev-eral designs and tested them in wind tunnels through 2006. NASA came

aboard in 2009, agreeing to fit ACTE flaps, designed and built by FlexSys, onto the Gulfstream as part of its ERA project.

“We are thrilled to have accom-plished all of our flight test goals with-out encountering any significant tech-nical issues,” Pete Flick, AFRL program manager from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, said. “These flights cap 17 years of technology maturation, beginning with AFRL’s initial Phase 1 SBIR contract with FlexSys, and the technology now is ready to dramati-cally improve aircraft efficiency for the Air Force and the commercial aviation industry.” n

Air Force, NASA test jet with ‘morphing’ wings


Flap angles on the Gulfstream were adjusted from -2 degrees to 30 degrees during testing.

percent of which comes out to about 5.2 million addresses left. According to one site that tracks IPv4 address depletion, ARIN could run out as early as July, fol-lowing other regional registries, such as the one serving Asia, which ran out in 2011, and Europe, which ran out in

2012.IPv6 uses a 128-bit address format,

which produces a nearly unlimited number of IP addresses—the official number is 340 trillion trillion trillion, more than enough to handle the Inter-net of Things and all of the connected

devices DOD is planning as part of its future operations.

DOD hasIPv4 addresses saved up and will have plenty when ARIN officially runs out, so it might not be time to pan-ic. But it could be time to put IPv6 back closer to the front of the stove. n

0615ds_028-029.indd 29 5/11/15 9:59 AM


BY KEVIN McCANEY

The Army is going into full-rate production of Rifleman radios, with the recent award of

a maximum $3.9 billion contract to two companies for the hand-held, software-defined systems that deliver tactical communi-cations to soldiers in the field. Thales Defense & Security and Harris will compete for orders under the 10-year indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity con-tract, which ultimately could de-liver nearly 200,000 of the radios.

Rifleman radios are a key com-ponent in the Army’s plans to extend situational awareness to soldiers the tactical edge of the network. The lightweight, body-worn device acts as its own router, can connect to the Warfighter Information Network-Tactical, transmits voice and

data via the Soldier Radio Waveform and can link to Nett Warrior, a system that uses Android smartphones for situ-ational awareness, messaging and other

applications. Rifleman radios will be included in the Handheld, Manpack, Small Form Fit program, which sup-

ports all of the military services.The Rifleman has been in low-rate

initial production, under which the Army bought 21,379 radios from a

General Dynamics/Thales team. Those radios currently are sup-porting troops with the Capa-bility Set 13 network package as well as other brigaded teams as part of Capability Set 14. In a so-licitation issued in May 2014, the Army said it ultimately expects to field 193,276 Rifleman radios.

Thales and Harris also were among four companies—Ex-elis and Genneral Dynamics C4 Systems were the others—given a spot last year on a maximum $988 million contract for Soldier Radio Waveform Appliqué radio systems, which are single-chan-

nel systems mounted on vehicles that don’t require the two-channel Manpack systems. n

Army all-in on Rifleman radios…

MOBILE

BY MARK POMERLEAU

The Army is looking to create a “radio marketplace” for the full rate production of Manpack

radios, in which multiple vendors will compete for orders in the coming years.

The service is soliciting proposals for the two-channel, software-defined radios, saying it plans to award spots to multiple vendors under a contract that will have a five-year base period with a five-year option.

The Manpack Radios are considered to be an important tool for soldiers in the field given their versatile portabil-ity. They can fit into a backpack, en-abling soldiers to use their Rifleman radios and Nett Warrior smartphones, or be mounted onto vehicles. Last year, the Army took delivery of 5,326 Man-packs under a low-rate initial produc-tion contract with General Dynamics C4 Systems and Rockwell Collins.

As described in the Army’s draft RFP, the Manpack Radios “will support all domains for dismounted and mounted

communications as a multi-functional communications platform.”

The Army has been authorized to purchase up to 60,296 units through 2032. “We are relying on our industry partners to help us simplify the network and make systems such as the Manpack Radio easier to use and more intuitive for soldiers,” Col. James P. Ross, Project Manager for Tactical Radios said in an Army release. “The radio marketplace gives all vendors the opportunity to participate, driving down costs and promoting continuous innovation.” n

..and plans a marketplace for Manpacks

A soldier uses the Rifleman radio and Nett Warrior system last year in Afghanistan.

$3.9 billion contract to deliver nearly 200,000 devices


0615ds_030-031.indd 30 5/11/15 10:00 AM


BY MARK POMERLEAU

In a sign of progress toward goals outlined in the Pentagon’s Electro-magnetic Spectrum Strategy, the

Defense and Commerce departments are partnering in a new collaborative framework to share communication channels. Under a signed memoran-dum of agreement, both agencies have committed to increased spectrum shar-ing, something DOD has sought for some time.

In addition to working toward the goals of the Electromagnetic Spectrum Strategy, the agreement also lines up with provisions of the 2013 Presidential Memorandum, “Expanding America’s Leadership in Wireless Innovation,” which seeks to “further research, devel-opment, testing and evaluation of spec-trum sharing technologies and other wireless-related efficiencies.”

This new partnership will also create the National Advanced Spectrum and Communications Test Network, a key supplement to the new Center for Ad-

vanced Communications. The center is a joint effort of two Commerce agencies, the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the National Telecom-munication and Information Adminis-tration, to “leverage the ‘critical mass of NIST and NTIA research and engineer-ing capabilities.”

The Electromagnetic Spectrum Strat-egy, among three primary goals, set long- and short-term objectives to meet a 2010 order by President Obama to make 500 MHz of spectrum space available for commercial use by 2020.

Spectrum sharing, especially making the spectrum more available for com-mercial use, will be no easy task. “To-gether we must identify ways to make more spectrum available for commercial use, and find technologies that enhance spectrum sharing, all while improving how DOD accesses spectrum, where and when needed to ensure mission success,” then-DOD CIO Teri Takai said following the release of the strategy. An important balance DOD is attempting to strike is between national security and economic

competitiveness, though, as officials have noted, the military needs more bandwidth concurrently with spectrum reform.

The Defense Advanced Research Proj-ects Agency recently announced it will be moving on to Phase 2 of its Shared Spectrum Access for Radar and Com-munications program, which seeks to make efficient use of the spectrum and develop ways of sharing bandwidth between military radars and military communications systems, and military radars and commercial communications systems.

“Rapid advances in communications technology have created significant new demands for access to wireless channels,” Willie May, acting undersecretary of Commerce for Standards and Technol-ogy and NIST’s acting director, said of the new test network. “We need efficient and effective ways of sharing spectrum to continue to benefit from technology advances while balancing the needs of commercial broadband, national secu-rity and public safety.” n

DOD, Commerce team up on spectrum sharingAgencies will create a test network to evaluate techniques

BY MARK POMERLEAU

The Army has made it easier to access its primary website for training information, allowing

soldiers to log in with a username and password without requiring a Common Access Card. The move opens up the Army Training Network to access via smartphones and tablets that don’t have CAC readers.

Despite the associated security con-cerns with opening access, Army Chief

of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno directed the username and password implementation as a way to ensure the widest possible access to authoritative training informa-tion, according to an Army release. To ameliorate security concerns, the Army’s Training Management Directorate, or TMD, made a few changes to the net-work, such as segregating information that was For Official Use Only, which was only available to CAC card users.

“This is a big step forward for the Army,” TMD director Col. Thomas J.

Trossen said. “As we create more apps and websites for training and training management, we must include the sol-dier and unit-level training managers at the operational point of need.”

The changes will allow for easier access to ATN training resources such as Unit Training Management, NCO Corner, Combined Arms Training Strategies and leader development materials. The ATN also has useful links for training meet-ings, event rehearsals and after-action reviews, among other features. n

Training network opens up to non-CAC access


0615ds_030-031.indd 31 5/11/15 10:00 AM


BY BRIAN ROACH

At the 2014 Federal Forum in Washington, D.C., Terry Halvorsen, then-acting CIO

(now CIO) of the Defense Department, addressed the growing importance of software-defined networking (SDN) in government. “We have to embrace the software-defined mission of where we have to go with the networks – that in-cludes all the infrastructure,” Halvorsen said, adding that doing so would enable agencies to “respond to the changing threat environment faster.”

Halvorsen’s strong endorsement of SDN is driven by its ability to enable a more scalable, flexible and efficient network. It does this by decoupling the system that makes decisions about where traffic is sent—the control plane—from the underlying systems that forward traf-fic to the selected destination—the data plane—in an open standards-based and vendor-neutral environment.

Interest is growing. A recent survey conducted by Juniper Networks, in con-junction with General Dynamics IT and market research firm MeriTalk, found that 37 percent of federal IT profession-als are at least starting to implement SDN, while another 34 percent have plans for future implementation.

There are three big reasons behind the growing adoption:

1. The drive to consolidateAs agencies continue to consolidate net-works and operations across DOD, SDN can help. For example, it can be instru-mental in developing DOD’s Joint Infor-mation Environment framework, which is designed to consolidate DOD’s various networks into a single, massive entity.

SDN can simplify the department’s net-work infrastructure and provide federal administrators with a centralized point of control to manage the entire consoli-dated network.

SDN can also be pivotal in data center consolidation. Fea-tures such as virtualization and automation can help agencies do more with less as a result of highly constrained budgets while reducing infrastructure. Further, SDN deployments within DOD can actually help add to the millions of dollars already saved by the closures of data centers.

2. The need for greater automationManual network management is highly inefficient, which is why DOD has turned a laser-like focus on network automation – enabled as a component of SDN. Automation allows federal IT administrators to relinquish some of the responsibilities they have toward managing the network. This frees up administrators’ time to focus on other mission-critical items and allows the network to run more efficiently – exactly what DOD wants.

Decoupling the control plane from its underlying systems creates a more auto-mated network that can make decisions without manual input. For instance, SDN may automatically reroute traffic based on current demands, including those related to application delivery. In fact, 59 percent of our survey respon-dents said that SDN plays a key role in application rationalization planning, which involves changing and consolidat-ing an agency’s application inventory to facilitate application delivery.

3. The prospect of better securitySixty-two percent of Juniper’s survey respondents felt that SDN delivered bet-ter than expected network security and, in fact, SDN and automation can help

support DOD’s mission and goal of rapidly responding to changing threat environ-ments. Federal IT profes-sionals can receive real-time information regarding what is happening within the network, allowing them to quickly respond to potential threats.

It’s also worth noting that many fed-eral IT professionals are managing mul-tiple vendors and customers within their data centers, and data between these factions may need to be kept separate via tenancy bounding. SDN can enable ten-ancy bounding, which helps ensure that cloud-based data remains secure and in the right hands.

Finally, SDN analytics provide greater visibility and enable an automated deci-sion process of network faults, configu-ration updates and other error-reducing functions. Analytics can also trigger events that allow SDN or IT administra-tors to course-correct potential issues as they occur.

SDN is a tailor-made strategy for the current state of federal IT. It is a key tenet of network modernization that provides the ability to manage networks more freely and easily than ever before. It offers the chance to control ever-expand-ing networks from afar while streamlin-ing and automating operations. n

Brian Roach is Vice President of Juniper Federal and Managing Director World-wide Government for Juniper Networks.

SDN is tailor-made for consolidation, automation and security

3 reasons SDN works for DOD

Industry Perspective


0615ds_032.indd 32 5/11/15 10:01 AM


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BY CHRIS LaPOINT

W ith its ongoing effort toward a Joint Information Environ-ment, the Defense Depart-

ment is experiencing something that’s ex-tremely familiar to the enterprise world: a merger. The ambitious effort to consolidate communications, services, computing and enterprise services into a single platform is very similar to businesses coming together and integrating disparate divisions into a cohesive whole. Unlike a business merger, however, JIE will have a major impact on the way the DOD IT is run, ultimately providing better flow of and access to infor-mation that can be leveraged throughout all aspects of the department.

When JIE is complete, DOD will have a single network that will be much more efficient, secure and easier to maintain.

The JIE’s standard security architec-ture also means that IT managers will be able to more easily monitor and corner potential security threats and respond to them more rapidly. As DOD kicks the JIE process into high gear, they are establish-ing Joint Regional Security Stacks (JRSS), which are intended to increase security and improve effectiveness and efficiency of the network. However, the network will still be handling data from all DOD agen-cies and catering to thousands of users, making manual network monitoring and management of JRSS unfeasible. As such, IT pros will want to implement Network Operations (NetOps) processes and solu-tions that help support the efforts toward greater efficiency and security.

The process should begin with an as-sessment of the current NetOps environ-ment. IT pros must take inventory of the monitoring and management NetOps tools that are currently in use and deter-mine if they are the correct solutions to help with deploying and managing the JIE.

Network managers should then explore the development of a continuous moni-toring strategy, which can directly address DOD’s goals regarding efficiency and se-curity. As its name suggests, continuous

network monitoring involves 24/7 auto-mated reporting on overall network per-formance, availability and reliability. It also helps identify potential security breaches, unauthorized users and areas of vulner-ability.

Three key requirements to take into account in planning for continuous moni-toring in JIE are:

1. Optimization for dual use. Continu-ous network monitoring tools, or NetOps tools, can deliver different views of the same IT data while providing insight and visibility to the health and performance, as well as the security and compliance, of a much larger and more complex environ-ment that will be created by the JIE. When continuous monitoring is implemented with “dual use” tools they can serve two audiences simultaneously – the network operations team that focuses on keeping

the network operational, and the informa-tion security team that focuses on compli-ance and security.

2. Understanding who changed what. With the implementation of JIE, DOD IT pros will be responsible for an ever-ex-panding number of devices connected to the network, and this type of tool enables bulk change deployment to thousands of devices. Network configuration tools also perform automatic, scheduled network configuration backups, protect against

unauthorized network changes, and detect and report compliance violation – all of which will be increasingly time-consuming to manually manage as JIE networks grow.

3. Tracking the who, what, when and where of security events. Security information and

event management (SIEM) tools are an-other particularly effective component of continuous monitoring, and its emphasis on security and could be an integral part of monitoring JRSSs. SIEM capabilities enable IT pros to gain valuable insight into who is logging onto DOD’s network and the devices they might be using, as well as who is trying to log in but being denied access.

Like any merger, there are going to be stumbling blocks along the way to the JIE’s completion, but the end result will ben-efit many – including overworked IT pros desperate for greater efficiency. Because while there’s no doubt the JIE is a massive undertaking, managing the network that it creates does not have to be. n

Chris LaPoint is group vice president of product management at SolarWinds.

Continuous monitoring could streamline JIEDOD’s network merger will create a lot more traffic to keep track of

COMMENT

Manual network monitoring and management of JRSS is unfeasible.


0615ds_034.indd 34 5/11/15 10:02 AM


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