The US believes a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that was shot down over its territory is part of a wider fleet that has spanned five continents.
“The United States was not the only target of this broader programme,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.
[…]
Citing unnamed officials, the Washington Post reported that the US believes the suspected surveillance balloon project was being operated from China’s coastal Hainan province and targeted countries including Japan, India, Vietnam, Taiwan and the Philippines.
At a Wednesday news conference, Defence Department spokesman Brigadier General Pat Ryder confirmed that the US believed similar balloons had operated over North and South America, South East Asia, East Asia and Europe.
“We’ve learned a lot about these balloons and how to track them,” Gen Ryder said, adding that the US was now confident it had the ability to be “on the look-out for these kinds of capabilities”.
He said while the objects were all used for surveillance missions, there were “variations” in terms of their size and capabilities.
The US believes that balloons have operated over US territory on at least four occasions, but Gen Ryder did not give further detail on these instances.
Washington briefed 40 allied countries about the alleged espionage programme earlier this week, a senior Biden administration official confirmed to CBS News, the BBC’s US partner.
This information was included in the Defense Department’s annual Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China report, more commonly known as the China Military Power Report (CMPR), which serves as an assessment of China’s current defense strategy and military capabilities. While the CMPR analyzes a wide array of Chinese military advancements, it was especially beneficial in clarifying what exactly occurred during the country’s highly intriguing hypersonic weapon test that took place on July 27, 2021, which can be read about in detail here.
[…]
“On July 27, 2021, China conducted the first fractional orbital launch of an ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile] with an HGV [hypersonic glide vehicle],” the CMPR revealed. “The HGV flew around the world and impacted inside China. This demonstrated the greatest distance flown (~40,000 km) and longest flight time (~100+ minutes) of any land-attack PRC [People’s Republic of China] weapons system to date. According to senior U.S. military officials, the HGV did not strike its target, but came close.”
[…]
As The War Zone discussed in this previous breakdown of the FOB concept, the depressed flight profile and capacity to strike really any target near its orbital path pose quite the challenge for an opponent’s tracking and missile defense networks. The FOB system could attack from vectors that its opponent’s radars are not looking toward, affecting its ability to anticipate where and when a strike may occur, let alone counter one.
An infographic depicting the flight path of a FOB system. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
China’s FOB-like system, though, instead carries a maneuverable hypersonic glide vehicle as opposed to a traditional nuclear-armed reentry vehicle, allowing it to change course dynamically and fly at lower altitudes, even porpoising as it goes, during its flight through the atmosphere. This allows it to hit targets much farther off its orbital flight path and makes interception nearly impossible. As noted earlier, reports that China’s hypersonic glide vehicle had also released its own projectile while on its very high-speed descent complicates things further, as The War Zone explained in detail in this past article.
The Financial Times, which was the first to report on the test, even emphasized how caught off-guard the Pentagon was by this development considering how technically complex it would be for anything moving at high hypersonic speeds to launch its own projectile.
[…]
The Pentagon throughout the CMPR cited the U.S. military’s own advancements in the hypersonic realm as the predominant driving factor behind China’s innovations while admitting that most of China’s missile systems are “comparable in quality to systems of other international top-tier producers.” An underlying fear that the proliferation of hypersonic technology could soon “blur the line between nuclear and conventional escalation” was also highlighted as a potential motivator behind these advancements. These influences are being reflected in other Chinese strategic developments, as well.
Regardless, it is important to note that U.S. missile defenses, as they exist now, aren’t anywhere capable of deflecting a massive nuclear strike from a near-peer like China or Russia, which is something The War Zone has previously touched on. Defending against hypersonic weapons, especially ones that can attack from unpredictable vectors like this FOB-capable system would be able to, is an even more challenging proposition.
New, highly detailed images of the artificial islands China has built in the South China Sea have emerged. They show the intricacies of the radar installations, airfields, and naval gun emplacements, among buildings and other structures, located there.
Captured by photographer Ezra Acayan flying in an aircraft near the man-made fortresses in the Spratly Islands, the images are some of the most detailed yet available of what China is up to there and they give a totally new perspective compared to the daily satellite images we see of these locations.
Close-ups of one island in Cuarteron Reef show naval gun emplacements on a series of towers of increasing height, backed by a radar gunnery director. Atop the battlement-like setup is a large radome. The radar’s elevated position would give it a better line of sight over the horizon. These types of weapons installation have been something of a staple at these island outposts. In this case, it looks to host Type 730/1130 close-in weapon system (CIWS) and a H/PJ76 76mm multi-purpose deck gun. These would provide highly-localized defense against low-flying air threats, like cruise missiles, aircraft, and drones, as well as protection against vessels near the island.
An artificial island built by China in Cuarteron Reef on October 25, 2022, in the Spratly Islands, South China Sea. Ezra Acayan/Getty Images
Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images
Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images
A similar setup is seen on another structure that does not feature the large dome on the other end of the small island.
Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images
What could be a truck-mounted phased array radar is also visible, as are various objects covered with camouflage tarps. The main building is festooned with domes and antennae and also features deck-like extensions with some sort of systems mounted that are also covered. Tall antennas and lines connecting them dot the forested area.
Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images
Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images
Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images
A wider view shows all these features and a large helipad.
Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images
China has been arming its manufactured islands with weapon systems since not long after they took shape. As we pointed out in this previous piece, these close-in defensive weapons are installed on roughly 30-foot-wide platforms set atop clusters of hexagonal concrete towers, in some cases built near, or as part of, a larger radar system. These images are the best look we have gotten of these structures yet.
Several photos show the finished airfield on the island built out of Fiery Cross Reef. As seen in the image below, the runway is flanked by hangars and a large tower topped with a radome. Nearby is a field of what appear to be communications antennas and another assortment of domes. Across a harbor, another series of domed towers and a four-door garage-like structure on a concrete pad are seen. The exact use of these garages is unclear, but, as we have speculated before, they could be used to house, service, and rapidly deploy transporter-erector-launchers (TELs) used to fire surface-to-air, anti-ship, and/or surface-to-surface missiles.
Another angle on the same island gives a closer look and the relative size and arrangement of additional domes. Various trucks and other systems are also seen.
Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images
Two photos show one of the most built-up areas on Fiery Cross Reef. In them, a KJ-500 airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft is visible on the taxiway. These and other intelligence-gathering and submarine-hunting airframes frequently operate from the airfield there. You can also see examples of the much larger, multi-story hangars on the island. Along with residential and administrative buildings, Fiery Cross Island also includes a sports track and field, among other living quarters, recreational facilities, and administrative buildings. There is also a red-and-white lighthouse.
Ezra Acayan/Getty Images
Ezra Acayan/Getty Images
A closer look at the same facility shows the smaller hangars and what appears to be a medical landing pad, painted with a red cross. The smaller, more fighter-sized hangars can be seen here too, as well as the terminal building.
Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images
Another full-size runway and airfield are seen in great detail in the photo below of the artificial island on Mischief Reef. An aircraft can be seen inside the open hangar at the top of the image, but it is difficult to identify what type it may be. Something like a Y-9 or another four-engine turboprop aircraft is most likely what is in there. As with most of the photographs, there is little sign of activity on the ground at any of the installations. The images also give a good idea of just how large the airfield is. During a contingency operation, it could be loaded up with dozens of combat aircraft, from fighters to bombers.
Ezra Acayan/Getty Images
Ezra Acayan/Getty Images
A wider-angle view of the same island shows a collection of building at the near end and another array of radome-topped towers at the far end. A large low-slung structure that is covered in grass is also seen in the distance. It is not clear what this would be used for, but weapons storage is one possibility. Beyond the towers, four aids to navigation mark the visibly deeper channel between the island and another section of the reef.
Ezra Acayan/Getty Images
Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images
The harbor and part of the living and admin section of Mischief Reef. Notice it is a bit less congested than some of China’s other man-made island layouts. Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images
Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images
The picture of Mischief Reef above notably shows a pair of Type 022 Houbei class catamaran fast attack missile craft, readily recognizable by their distinct camouflage scheme. The first reports that the People’s Liberation Army Navy had deployed Type 022s to this outpost emerged last year. These boats are relatively small, but can carry up to eight YJ-83 subsonic anti-ship missiles, along with their bow-mounted 30mm H/PJ-13 Gatling-type guns.
A closer look at the two Type 022 Houbei class missile boats seen moored at Mischief Reef. Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images
The image below shows a relatively small artificial island on Hughes Reef, also in the Spratly Islands, with a large tower at one end, a narrow road and what appears to be a helicopter pad in the middle, and a multi-story building at the other end, complete with what looks like a large swimming pool. The main structure is very similar to the one on Cuarteron Reef with similar decks and roof elements. The large square pylons are of interest, although it is not clear what their purpose is or was.
Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images
Another of the smaller man-made islands is on Gaven Reef. It features a very similar central structure, but it also has gun platforms extending from it sporting 76mm deck guns. A harbor area and a handful of large domes are also visible.
Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images
Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images
Port facilities are visible in the below photo of an artificial island built on Subi Reef. Much undeveloped ground and planted areas are among a large cluster of buildings. The island also features a tall, slender lighthouse at one end, another of the four-door garage-like facilities, and at least one radar dome similar to those seen on other islands.
The artificial island built by China in Subi Reef. Ezra Acayan/Getty Images
Another angle of Subi Reef’s airfield shows the large number of hangars packed into the space, with the same smaller, fighter-sized ones set closer to the runway and the much larger, multi-story hangars set back. Also, note the vehicles seemingly blocking the runway. This could be a normal precaution when planes are nearby, in this case, the camera ship.
Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images
Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images
Another angle shows the extent of the support buildings and antennas farms.
Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images
A wider angle of the island. Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images
Beijing has aggressively asserted its claim to these and other disputed shoals in the South China Sea. By artificially expanding some existing islands, building new ones, and establishing a permanent military presence, China seeks to solidify these claims, regardless of what the international community or its neighbors think of them.
The reefs are strategically located between countries that contest China’s claim to the region and stake their own assertions on defensive and economic access. Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam all have territorial claims to the areas in which China has built islands and planted its flag.
A map showing Chinese military outposts in the Spratly Islands at the southern end of the South China Sea, including those seen in the pictures in this story, as well as other non-Chinese facilities in the hotly contested region. DOD
China has long sought to create a near-seamless anti-access/area-denial bubble covering almost the entire South China Sea. Building such extensive infrastructure on these manufactured spits of land is a key part of that plan. Aside from short-range weapons like the naval guns visible in these photos, China has deployed longer-range systems to some of these islands. Clearly, their infrastructure was designed to help conceal these mobile systems when not in use or not on high alert and they could pour in additional capabilities with little notice.
As outlined in the newly published National Defense Strategy, the U.S. military considers China the pacing threat as it contemplates potential future conflict. Each U.S. military service is preparing to operate across the vast distances of the Pacific as it challenges Chinese expansionism in the region. The U.S. Navy also takes responsibility for maintaining freedom of navigation through the contested South China Sea, often steaming carrier strike groups and other ships, along with those of allies and partner nations, through the area and within sight of Chinese naval vessels. This has led to some very tense maritime encounters.
With the complex installations seen on its archipelagos of artificial islands, China presents a solid deterrent to challengers of its claims and could rapidly shut down, or at least directly challenge, any movements through the region under threat of activating all its capabilities that can be deployed on and around its island outposts.
RAND Corporation researchers developed and supported the implementation of a methodology to assess the value of resource options for U.S. Navy cybersecurity investments. The proposed methodology features 12 scales in two categories (impact and exploitability) that allow the Navy to score potential cybersecurity investments in the Program Objective Memorandum (POM) process. The authors include a test implementation using publicly available historical U.S. Navy data to demonstrate how the methodology facilitates valuable comparisons of potential cybersecurity investments.
When compared with existing methods used by the Navy, this methodology could improve the consistency of ratings and provide a more defined structure for thinking through the risk reduction and prioritization of different investments.
[…]
A major advantage of this methodology is its simplicity
No complex modeling is required. The risk matrixes align with U.S. Department of Defense processes, making the methodology more approachable for analysts. The level of effort required is further reduced by the need to assess only the risk factors that are relevant to an investment.
Information security economic approaches are not directly applicable to the Navy context
Existing models have multiple issues that make it very challenging to apply them in the context of the Navy—not the least of which is their dependency on the monetization of loss. Ultimately, the lack of information that the Navy has at its fingertips regarding the cybersecurity state of systems and the potential impact of future and ongoing investments is a key limiting factor.
Although complex models offer greater potential for precision and accuracy, it comes at the expense of computational, data, and understandability needs, which are a key challenge area for the Navy.
This is a risk assessment methodology which is specific to the domain the navy works in, which is different from the domains of most commercial companies.
In recent years you’ve probably seen a couple of photos of tablets and smartphones strapped to the armor of soldiers, especially US Special Forces. The primary app loaded on most of those devices is ATAK or Android Tactical Assault Kit. It allows the soldier to view and share geospatial information, like friendly and enemy positions, danger areas, casualties, etc. As a way of working with geospatial information, its civilian applications became apparent, such as firefighting and law-enforcement, so CivTAK/ATAK-Civ was created and open sourced in 2020. Since ATAK-Civ was intended for those not carrying military-issued weapons, the acronym magically become the Android Team Awareness Kit. This caught the attention of the open source community, so today we’ll dive into the growing TAK ecosystem, its quirks, and potential use cases.
Tracking firefighting aircraft in 3D space using ADS-B (Credit: The TAK Syndicate)
The TAK ecosystem includes ATAK for Android, iTAK for iOS, WinTAK for Windows, and a growing number of servers, plugins, and tools to extend functionality. At the heart of TAK lies the Cursor on Target (CoT) protocol, an XML or Protobuf-based message format used to share information between clients and servers. This can include a “target’s” location, area, and route information, sensor data, text messages, or medevac information, to name a few. Clients, like ATAK, can process this information as required, and also generate CoT data to share with other clients. A TAK client can also be a sensor node, or a simple node-Red flow. This means the TAK can be a really powerful tool for monitoring, tracking, or controlling the things around you.
Standalone tools: Checking line-of-sight and camera coverage
ATAK is a powerful mapping tool on its own. It can display and plot information on a 3D map, calculate a heading to a target, set up a geofence, and serve as a messaging app between team members. Besides using it for outdoor navigation, I’ve used two other built-in mapping features extensively. Viewshed allows you to plan wireless node locations, and check line-of-sight their line-of-sight coverage. The “sensor” (camera) markers are handy for planning coverage of CCTV installations. However, ATAK starts to truly shine when you add plugins to extend features, and link clients in a network to share information.
Networking
To allow networking between clients, you either need to set up a multicast network or a central server that all the clients connect to. A popular option for multicast communication is to set up a free ZeroTier VPN, or any other VPN. For client-server topologies, there are several open source TAK servers available that can be installed on a Raspberry Pi or any other machine, including the official TAK server that was recently open sourced on GitHub. FreeTakServer can be extended with its built-in API and optional Node-RED server, and includes an easy-to-use “zero-touch” installer. Taky, is another lightweight Python-based server. All these servers also include data package servers, for distributing larger info packs to clients.
Plugins
If an internet connection is not available where you are going, there are several off-grid networking plugins available. HAMMER acts as an audio modem to send CoTs using cheap Baofeng radios. Atak-forwarder works with LoRa-based Meshtastic radios, or you can use APRS-TAK with ham radios.
Plugins can also pull data from other sources, like ADSB data from an RTL-SDR, or the video feed and location information from a drone. Many of the currently available plugins are not open source and are only available through the TAK.gov website after agreeing to terms and conditions from the US federal government. Fortunately, this means there is a lot of space for open source alternatives to grow.
For further exploration, the team behind the FreeTAK server maintains an extensive list of TAK-related tools, plugins, info sources, and hardware.
Tips to get started
At the time of writing, ATAK is significantly more mature than iTAK and WinTAK, so it’s the best option if you want to start exploring. iTAK is actually a bit easier to start using immediately, but it’s missing a lot of features and can’t load plugins.
Opening ATAK on Android for the first time will quickly become apparent that it is not exactly intuitive to use. I won’t bore you with a complete tutorial but will share a couple of tips I’ve found helpful. Firstly, RTFM. The usage of many of the features and tools is not self-evident, so the included PDF manual (Settings > Support > ATAK Documents) might come in handy. There is also a long list of settings to customize, which are a lot easier to navigate with the search function in the top bar of the Settings menu.
No maps are included in ATAK by default, so download and import [Joshua Fuller]’s ATAK-Maps package. This gives ATAK an extensive list of map sources to work with, including Google Maps and OpenStreetMaps. ATAK can also cache maps and imagery for offline use. ATAK only has low-resolution elevation data included by default, but you can download and import more detailed elevation data from the USGS website.
[…] A report today from Breaking Defense confirmed that Lockheed Martin delivered its LANCE high-energy laser weapon to the Air Force in February this year. In this context, LANCE stands for “Laser Advancements for Next-generation Compact Environments.” The recipient for the new weapon is the Air Force Research Laboratory, or AFRL, which is charged with developing and integrating new technologies in the air, space, and cyberspace realms.
Tyler Griffin, a Lockheed executive, had previously told reporters that LANCE “is the smallest, lightest, high-energy laser of its power class that Lockheed Martin has built to date.”
Indeed, Griffin added that LANCE is “one-sixth the size” of a previous directed-energy weapon that Lockheed produced for the Army. That earlier laser was part of the Robust Electric Laser Initiative program and had an output in the 60-kilowatt class. We don’t yet know what kind of power LANCE can produce although there have been suggestions it will likely be below 100 kilowatts.
For LANCE, Lockheed has been drawing from its previous experience in ground-based lasers, like this concept for a Future Mobile Tactical Vehicle armed with a directed-energy weapon. Lockheed Martin
As well as being notably small and light, LANCE has reduced power requirements compared to other previous weapons, a key consideration for a fighter-based laser, especially one that can be mounted within the confines of a pod.
If successful in its defensive mission, it’s feasible that LANCE could go on to inform the development of more offensive-oriented laser weapons, including ones that could engage enemy aircraft and drones at longer ranges than would be the case when targeting a fast-approaching anti-aircraft missile, whether launched from the ground or from an enemy aircraft.
LANCE has been developed under a November 2017 contract that’s part of the Air Force’s wider Self-protect High Energy Laser Demonstrator, or SHiELD, program, something that we have written about in the past.
SHiELD is a collaborative effort that brings together Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman. While Lockheed Martin provides the actual laser weapon, in the form of LANCE, Boeing produces the pod that carries it, and Northrop Grumman is responsible for the beam control system that puts the laser onto its target — and then keeps it there.
An engineer looks at a directed-energy system turret in the four-foot transonic wind tunnel at Arnold Air Force Base, Tennessee, in March 2021. U.S. Air Force/Jill Pickett
Kent Wood, acting director of AFRL’s directed energy directorate, toldBreaking Defense that the various SHiELD subsystems “represent the most compact and capable laser weapon technologies delivered to date.”
Wood’s statement also indicated that actual test work by AFRL is still at an early stage, referring to “mission utility analyses and wargaming studies” that are being undertaken currently. “Specific targets for future tests and demonstrations will be determined by the results of these studies as well,” he said.
Meanwhile, Lockheed’s Tyler Griffin added that the next stage in the program would see LANCE integrated with a thermal system to manage heating and cooling.
At his stage, we don’t know exactly what aircraft LANCE is intended to equip, once it progresses to flight tests and, hopefully, airborne firing trials. However, Griffin said that “a variety of potential applications and platforms are being considered for potential demonstrations and tests.”
Previous Lockheed Martin concept art has shown the pod carried by an F-16 fighter jet. And, while SHiELD is initially concerned with proving the potential for active defense of fighter jets in high-risk environments, officials have also talked of the possibility of adapting the same technology for larger, slower-moving combat and combat support aircraft, too.
Boeing flew a pre-prototype pod shape — without its internal subsystems — aboard an Air Force F-15 fighter in 2019. During ground tests, meanwhile, a representative laser, known as the Demonstrator Laser Weapon System (DLWS), has already successfully shot down multiple air-launched missiles over White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, also in 2019.
A decision on the initial test platform for the complete SHiELD system will likely follow once a flight demonstration has been funded, which is currently not the case. Similarly, there is not yet a formal transition plan for how LANCE and SHiELD could evolve into an actual program of record.
Boeing has hit a milestone with its anti-jam satellite communications.
According to the aircraft maker, it demonstrated successful integration of its Protected Tactical Enterprise Service (PTES) software elements with an industry partner’s user terminal.
The ground-based military satellite communications system allows Boeing-built Wideband Global SATCOM (WGS) satellites and terminals to transmit data using the US military’s jam-resistant waveform, the Protected Tactical Waveform (PTW).
Its intent is to make satellite communication possible in hostile environments, dodging and mitigating both interference and jamming from adversaries, potentially from a battlefield.
Initially the tech is being designed for the space service branch of the US Armed Forces, Space Force, but is eventually expected to appear in commercial satellites as well.
“Making use of WGS military-unique features in conjunction with its wide bandwidth for PTW spread spectrum hopping, PTES-over-WGS provides the US Department of Defense with crucial fleetwide protected communications anywhere on the globe,” said Boeing in a canned statement.
The demonstration Boeing is celebrating validated the system’s ability to interface with a PTW ground terminal, in the process proving that the network management software and virtualized mission planning components were also working properly.
Validating the integration is just one step in a series of milestones. The last one was in August 2021, when the PTES program had its first over-the-air forward-link with a PTW modem demonstration. The next over-the-air demonstration will include forward and return links later this year. The whole system is expected to be operational in 2023.
Thesis: pretty soon Russia will stop their war. They have linked up the landmass to the Crimea, control access to the Black Sea and that was their goal all along. They don’t have enough soldiers to take over and administer the Ukraine. The police forces in the Ukraine will never align with a Russian puppet government. The threat to Kiev stalled because Putin was never interested in taking the whole of Ukraine. It’s a red herring which allows Putin to consolidate in the East. Once “peace” is worked out and they pull the 65km convoy back up to Russia and empty away from the west of the country, they will be left with that great swathe of land to the east and no-one will be able to remove them. In practical terms they will have annexed a huge land route to the Crimea as they did the Crimea. They will have displaced the Ukranians that were living there and claim that the whole area is inhabited by their Russian brothers. They will “unite” the newly independent Donbas and Luhansk regions and the regions to the south and they will for all intents and purposes be Russian. NATO will never allow the Ukraine to join anyway and neither will the EU, despite pro-Ukranian sentiment. So Ukraine remains a “buffer state”. Win for Russia.
n undersea fiberoptic cable located between mainland Norway and the Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic Ocean has been put out of action in a still-mysterious incident. The outage on the subsea communications cable — the furthest north of its kind anywhere in the world — follows an incident last year in which different cables linking an undersea surveillance network off the Norwegian coast were severed, a story that we covered in detail at the time.
The latest disruption involves one of two fiberoptic cables that enable communications between the Norwegian mainland and Norwegian-administered Svalbard that lies between the mainland and the North Pole. The outage occurred on the morning of January 7, but was first widely reported yesterday. The extent of the damage is not clear from the official press release from Space Norway, the country’s space agency, which maintains the cables primarily in support of the Svalbard Satellite Station (SvalSat), but it is significant enough that it is expected to require the services of an ocean-going cable-laying vessel.
Bjoertvedt/Wikimedia Commons
The Svalbard Satellite Station atop the mountain of Platåberget on the island of Spitsbergen in Svalbard, Norway.
In addition to the SvalSat facilities, the fiber-optic cables provide broadband internet to Svalbard. The SvalSat site consists of more than 100 satellite antennas on a mountain plateau and is the largest commercial ground station of its kind.
Being located between mainland Norway and the North Pole means that SvalSat is in much demand with operators of polar-orbiting satellites, being one of only two ground stations from which data can be downloaded from these types of satellites on each of the Earth’s rotations.
Space Norway, which operates the undersea cables, confirms that the second is still functioning normally, but the loss of the first means there is now no redundancy available until repairs can be made.
The Federal Aviation Administration has finally put out an official statement regarding a still very mysterious ground stop order that it issued to all aircraft in the western U.S. and Hawaii yesterday around 2:30 PM PST. While the incident is now confirmed, there are still a significant number of unanswered questions, including the most important one: what triggered this decision in the first place? You can get up to speed first on what The War Zone had been able to determine in our initial reporting here
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued their statement just before 9:40 AM PST this afternoon, over 20 hours after the order was sent. The War Zone had already reached out to the FAA with a number of basic questions regarding the event, but we have still not received a direct response.
FAA’s full statement, so far, regarding this incident, is as follows:
As a matter of precaution, the FAA temporarily paused departures at some airports along the West Coast on Monday night. Full operations resumed in less than 15 minutes. The FAA regularly takes precautionary measures. We are reviewing the process around this ground stop as we do after all such events.
This statement is immediately curious for a number of reasons. For one, publicly available recordings of air traffic controllers on the ground talking with pilots at the time show that this pause was not limited to the West Coast of the continental United States. For instance, pilots in Honolulu, Hawaii were given similar instructions.
HONOLULU TOWER advising HAL278 that the ground stop orders came from the FAA Command Center. They never gave a reason for the ground stop. pic.twitter.com/XasWmFwGap
One source, a pilot flying into Yuma, Arizona, which lies around 150 miles inland from the West Coast, told The War Zone that the alert had been described to them as “national ground stop.” This also highlights that we know that the stop order did not only impact departures. Other air traffic control recordings make clear that even some aircraft were ordered to land as soon as possible, as well.
Re: the west coast ground stop of air traffic today, here’s Burbank ATC telling a pilot due to a national security issue he can’t just fly around to avoid the stop, and needs to land. “I need you to go ahead and land at Van Nuys at this time.” pic.twitter.com/hQPnvTxnf7
The FAA statement makes no mention of what prompted it to take this “precaution,” either. Air traffic controllers at Burbank in California can be heard in one recording referencing an unspecified “national security threat.”
Just a few minutes before they told that aircraft they weren’t allowing aircraft to maneuver in the area due to a “national security threat” and it had to land, another plane that had just taken off was told it had to turn around and land. “Something’s going on.” pic.twitter.com/KAWGM3ZWuf
There had been reports, as well as general speculation, that the ground stop may have been related to a North Korean missile launch that occurred right at almost the same time that FAA issued its order. This was not entirely out of the realm of reason.
[…]DARPA’s Guaranteeing AI Robustness against Deception (GARD) program […] focuses on a few core objectives. One of which is the development of a testbed for characterizing ML defenses and assessing the scope of their applicability […]
Ensuring that emerging defenses are keeping pace with – or surpassing – the capabilities of known attacks is critical to establishing trust in the technology and ensuring its eventual use. To support this objective, GARD researchers developed a number of resources and virtual tools to help bolster the community’s efforts to evaluate and verify the effectiveness of existing and emerging ML models and defenses against adversarial attacks.
“Other technical communities – like cryptography – have embraced transparency and found that if you are open to letting people take a run at things, the technology will improve,” said Bruce Draper, the program manager leading GARD.
[…]
GARD researchers from Two Six Technologies, IBM, MITRE, University of Chicago, and Google Research have collaboratively generated a virtual testbed, toolbox, benchmarking dataset, and training materials to enable this effort. Further, they have made these assets available to the broader research community via a public repository
[…]
Central to the asset list is a virtual platform called Armory that enables repeatable, scalable, and robust evaluations of adversarial defenses. The Armory “testbed” provides researchers with a way to pit their defenses against known attacks and relevant scenarios. It also provides the ability to alter the scenarios and make changes, ensuring that the defenses are capable of delivering repeatable results across a range of attacks.
Armory utilizes a Python library for ML security called Adversarial Robustness Toolbox, or ART. ART provides tools that enable developers and researchers to defend and evaluate their ML models and applications against a number of adversarial threats, such as evasion, poisoning, extraction, and inference. The toolbox was originally developed outside of the GARD program as an academic-to-academic sharing platform.
[…]
The Adversarial Patches Rearranged In COnText, or APRICOT, benchmark dataset is also available via the repository. APRICOT was created to enable reproducible research on the real-world effectiveness of physical adversarial patch attacks on object detection systems. The dataset lets users project things in 3D so they can more easily replicate and defeat physical attacks, which is a unique function of this resource. “Essentially, we’re making it easier for researchers to test their defenses and ensure they are actually solving the problems they are designed to address,” said Draper.
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Often, researchers and developers believe something will work across a spectrum of attacks, only to realize it lacks robustness against even minor deviations. To help address this challenge, Google Research has made the Google Research Self-Study repository that is available via the GARD evaluation toolkit. The repository contains “test dummies” – or defenses that aren’t designed to be the state-of-the-art but represent a common idea or approach that’s used to build defenses. The “dummies” are known to be broken, but offer a way for researchers to dive into the defenses and go through the process of properly evaluating their faults.
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The GARD program’s Holistic Evaluation of Adversarial Defenses repository is available at https://www.gardproject.org/. Interested researchers are encouraged to take advantage of these resources and check back often for updates.
If the Pentagon is going to rely on algorithms and artificial intelligence, it’s got to solve the problem of “brittle AI.” A top Air Force official recently illustrated just how far there is to go.
In a recent test, an experimental target recognition program performed well when all of the conditions were perfect, but a subtle tweak sent its performance into a dramatic nosedive,
Maj. Gen. Daniel Simpson, assistant deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, said on Monday.
Initially, the AI was fed data from a sensor that looked for a single surface-to-surface missile at an oblique angle, Simpson said. Then it was fed data from another sensor that looked for multiple missiles at a near-vertical angle.
“What a surprise: the algorithm did not perform well. It actually was accurate maybe about 25 percent of the time,” he said.
That’s an example of what’s sometimes called brittle AI, which “occurs when any algorithm cannot generalize or adapt to conditions outside a narrow set of assumptions,” according to a 2020 report by researcher and former Navy aviator Missy Cummings. When the data used to train the algorithm consists of too much of one type of image or sensor data from a unique vantage point, and not enough from other vantages, distances, or conditions, you get brittleness, Cummings said.
[…]
But Simpson said the low accuracy rate of the algorithm wasn’t the most worrying part of the exercise. While the algorithm was only right 25 percent of the time, he said, “It was confident that it was right 90 percent of the time, so it was confidently wrong. And that’s not the algorithm’s fault. It’s because we fed it the wrong training data.”
A contract for the sale of the 80 Rafales was agreed today between Eric Trappier, Chairman and CEO of Dassault, and Tareq Abdul Raheem Al Hosani, CEO of Tawazun Economic Council, which is responsible for security and defense acquisitions on behalf of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Dassault describes the deal as “the largest ever obtained by the French combat aeronautics industry.” The total value of the Rafale contract is $16 billion, on top of which will be added weapons for the jets. These deals fall within a larger French arms package for the UAE worth $19 billion that also includes 12 Airbus H225M Caracal military transport helicopters.
DASSAULT AVIATION
An artist’s conception of a UAE Rafale equipped for the air-to-air mission, with Meteor and Mica missiles.
Underlining the significance of the Rafale sale, the French President Emmanuel Macron and Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyane, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, one of the Emirates within the UAE and the country’s effective ruler, as well as vice-commander of its armed forces, were both present at the contract signing.
[\…]
the United Arab Emirates Air Force and Air Defense (UAEAF&AD) will also become the first export recipient of the F4-standard Rafale.
The latest F4 version of the Rafale is part of an ongoing process to continuously improve the fighter and is optimized for networked combat, with new satellite and intra-flight data links, as well as a communication server and software-defined radio. Aside from this, the F4 features upgrades to the radar, electro-optical system, and helmet-mounted display. New weapons are also being integrated, including the forthcoming Mica NG air-to-air missile and the 2,200-pound version of the AASM modular air-to-ground weapon.
[…]
The contract UAE comes as a boost to the French aerospace industry and the Rafale program in particular, which has now secured six export customers. The previous countries to select the French fighter are Egypt, Qatar, India, Greece, and Croatia. Other potential customers have been linked with the Rafale in the recent past, including Indonesia, although the type was rejected this year by Switzerland in favor of the F-35.
Draken International has signed a contract to bring yet more F-16 fighter jets to its fast-expanding “red air” fleet, as the adversary air support contractor adds ex-Norwegian Vipers to the dozen former Dutch examples it acquired earlier this year. Up to 12 F-16s acquired from Norway will form part of an impressive private tactical jet air force, already one of the world’s largest, which also includes a dozen ex-South African Atlas Cheetahs, and 22 ex-Spanish Air Force Mirage F1Ms, plus assorted other subsonic jets, as well as a deep backstock of MiG-21s.
Draken took to Facebook yesterday to announce it was buying the F-16s plus “supporting assets” in a deal signed with the government of Norway but which still requires approval from U.S. and Norwegian authorities. The value of the contract has not been revealed.
[…]
the Norwegian Defense Materiel Agency provided more details of the sale, noting that the jets could be delivered to Draken as early as next year and they will support training “against American fighter aircraft.” Headquartered at Lakeland Linder International Airport, in Lakeland, Florida, the company also provides contractor adversary services within Europe.
[…]
By adding another batch of F-16s to its adversary fleet, Draken will keep pace with rival red air provider Top Aces, which is now operating the first of the 29 ex-Israeli F-16A/Bs acquired from Israel.
[…]
As well as the former Norwegian F-16s, and the 12 already acquired from the Netherlands, Draken could expand its fleet still further, with the Dutch government having announced an option for the firm to acquire another 28 examples, which are planned to be retired from service by the end of 2024.
As it stands, Draken’s fleet currently includes two supersonic fighter jets for adversary work: a dozen ex-South African Atlas Cheetahs, and 22 ex-Spanish Air Force Mirage F1Ms. One of the latter jets was lost in a fatal crash near Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, earlier this year.
Apparently there are many people using drugs in the armed forces so Henk Kamp, idiot in charge, has decided that drug testing is needed. Besides it being a massive invasion of personal privacy, this problem needs another solution.
U.S. officials believe that a DJI Mavic 2, a small quadcopter-type drone, with a thick copper wire attached underneath it via nylon cords was likely at the center of an attempted attack on a power substation in Pennsylvania last year. An internal U.S. government report that was issued last month says that this is the first time such an incident has been officially assessed as a possible drone attack on energy infrastructure in the United States, but that this is likely to become more commonplace as time goes on. This is a reality The War Zonehas sounded the alarm about in the past, including when we were first to report on a still unexplained series of drone flights near the Palo Verde nuclear powerplant in Arizona in 2019.
[…]
“This is the first known instance of a modified UAS [unmanned aerial system] likely being used in the United States to specifically target energy infrastructure,” the JIB states. “We assess that a UAS recovered near an electrical substation was likely intended to disrupt operations by creating a short circuit to cause damage to transformers or distribution lines, based on the design and recovery location.”
ABC and other outlets have reported that the JIB says that this assessment is based in part on other unspecified incidents involving drones dating back to 2017.
[…]
Beyond the copper wire strung up underneath it, the drone reportedly had its camera and internal memory card removed. Efforts were taken to remove any identifying markings, indicating efforts by the operator or operators to conceal the identifies and otherwise make it difficult to trace the drone’s origins.
The U.S. Navy has successfully invented a special electronic device that is designed to stop people from talking. A form of non-lethal weapon, the new electronic device effectively repeats a speaker’s own voice back at them, and only them, while they attempt to talk.
It was developed, and patented back in 2019 but has only recently been discovered, according to a report by the New Scientist.
The main idea of the weapon is to disorientate a target so much that they will be unable to communicate effectively with other people.
Called acoustic hailing and disruption (AHAD), the weapon is able to record speech and instantly broadcast it at a target in milliseconds. Much like an annoying sibling, this action will disrupt the target’s concentration, and, in theory, discourage them from continuing to speak.
It is important to note that the device is unlikely to be used on the battlefield anytime soon and will probably be used as a form of crowd control.
[…]
“According to an illustrative embodiment of the present disclosure, a target’s speech is directed back to them twice, once immediately and once after a short delay. This delay creates delayed auditory feedback (DAF), which alters the speaker’s normal perception of their own voice. In normal speech, a speaker hears their own words with a slight delay, and the body is accustomed to this feedback. By introducing another audio feedback source with a sufficiently long delay, the speaker’s concentration is disrupted and it becomes difficult to continue speaking.”
If you want to see the thing in action, the patent filing handily also includes a sort of promotional video of another device that works in a similar way.
The device effectively annoys someone into not speaking
AHAD works by using a series of directional microphones and speakers that can target a speaker’s voice. The speech is then recorded and transmitted back in the same direction.
Interestingly, the broadcasted sound is on a narrow beam and will only be heard by the speaker. This will not only confuse the target but, ultimately, prevent them from being to concentrate and stop talking. The behavior of the target will be noticeably altered by the action, likely also confusing anyone who was listening to the target person. Put another way, such a weapon will make you think you’re going crazy — so too the people around you.
The wraps have finally, officially, come off the mock-up of Russia’s new light fighter, the Sukhoi Checkmate, also known as the Light Tactical Aircraft, or LTS in Russian, with a formal unveiling at the opening of the MAKS international air show at Zhukovsky, outside Moscow, today. Observers who had been given a succession of tantalizing, and mainly unofficial, glimpses of the new jet over the last few days now have the chance to examine the aircraft from all aspects. The actual ceremony ended up being delayed by several hours, perhaps to accommodate the visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was shown inspecting the mock-up after opening the show.
The end result is very much in keeping with the observations that The War Zone has been gathering based on initial, leaked, imagery, much of it that came when the aircraft was still literally under wraps. The United Aircraft Corporation and Rostec, for their part, which are responsible for the Sukhoi design bureau, seemed to actively encourage this process, harnessing it as something of a PR coup.
ROSTEC
The unveiling of the Sukhoi Checkmate, or LTS, earlier today.
You can read our full assessment of the jet here, based on its first fleeting appearance “in the flesh,” as well as our analysis of the single-engine concept and the potential sales prospects of such an aircraft.
The aircraft’s intake has been one of its most debated features over the last week. New imagery shows the angular ventral inlet, which wraps around the lower nose section, to share features with a diverterless supersonic inlet (DSI) design, but exactly how mature Russia’s take on this concept is, remains to be seen.
In terms of new developments, we now know that, as suspected, there is a larger main weapons bay within the lower fuselage. This is designed to accommodate three examples of the RVV-BD air-to-air missile, the export version of the very-long-range R-37M, or AA-13 Axehead, a weapon that you can read more about here. Furthermore, we now have confirmation that the long, conformal weapons bays located forward of the main landing gear are indeed intended to house smaller air-to-air missiles, for close-range defense.
Performance-wise, the manufacturer is apparently claiming a short takeoff and landing capability (rather than a full short takeoff and vertical landing capability, as in the F-35B), a range of up to 1,860 miles, combat radius of 930 miles, and a payload in excess of 15,000 pounds.
The airframe is said to be stressed to 8g, which is only slightly less than the 9g at which the airframe of the Su-35S Flanker heavyweight fighter is rated. This may reflect the fact the design focuses more on low-observable characteristics and range than maneuverability, although the final result is likely closer to the Su-57, concentrating on reducing the signature from the frontal hemisphere, rather than all-aspect stealth.
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The projected timeline for the LTS includes the first flight of a technology demonstrator in 2023, followed by construction of pre-series prototypes in 2024-25, and delivery of initial production examples potentially as early as 2026-27.
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The planned powerplant is not confirmed, but it is described as an engine in the 14.5 to 16-ton thrust class engine, utilizing off-the-shelf components. This rating would put it at the upper end of the output of the AL-41F1 turbofan now used in the Su-57, or at the lower end of the all-new Izdeliye 30, which is currently still in development.
[…]
In addition to the three long-range and two short-range AAMs that can be carried in the internal bays, a wide variety of air-to-ground ordnance is being offered as well. Unusually for a fifth-generation design, as well as different precision-guided munitions, the unveiling showed that the jet will also be able to carry various unguided rockets and dumb bombs. There will also be provision for an internal cannon, likely a 30mm weapon as on the Su-57.
YOUTUBE SCREENCAP/ROSTEC
YOUTUBE SCREENCAP/ROSTEC
The active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar, of undisclosed type, is intended to engage six targets simultaneously while operating in a hostile electronic countermeasures environment. The radar will be part of one of an all-round sensor suite, including passive devices, likely similar to those found on the Su-57.
[…]
As of today, the program is being funded internally, with investors being sought to launch production for export. Interestingly, officials said they hoped that Russia might opt for the unmanned variant, rather than the manned fighter.
As for the F-117s, part of their duties includes serving as low-observable aggressors, which has become a necessity in a world where stealthy aircraft and cruise missiles are proliferating. They also work in a developmental role for low-observable and counter-low observable technologies. For Red Flag, they are part of the bad guys’ team. While flying missions during broad daylight may not have been on the docket during their operational career, these jets provide a target unlike anything fleet aircrews have encountered before. One can imagine how their elusive radar signature can only become harder to detect while flying amongst the ground clutter.
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Also of note, the F-117s have their retractable antennas extended, which does impact their low-observable cloak from certain angles. This could be a necessity for taking part in the exercise or it could be because the aircraft are leaving the training area and can communicate more freely as they are no longer valid targets. It’s also worth noting that radar reflectors are not mounted on the aircraft, so they are in a low-observable configuration.
A total of 46 F-35 stealth fighters are currently without functioning engines due to an ongoing problem with the heat-protective coating on their turbine rotor blades becoming worn out faster than was expected. With the engine maintenance center now facing a backlog on repair work, frontline F-35 fleets have been hit, with the U.S. Air Force’s fleet facing the most significant availability shortfall.
At a hearing before the U.S. House Committee on Armed Services’ Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces yesterday, Air Force Lieutenant General Eric T. Fick, director of the F-35 Joint Program Office, confirmed that 41 U.S. Air Force F-35s, as well as one Joint Strike Fighter belonging to the U.S. Marine Corps, another from the U.S. Navy, and three that had been delivered to foreign air forces were grounded without engines. Those figures were as of July 8.
U.S. Air Force/Staff Sgt. Staci Miller
An F-35A assigned to the 61st Fighter Squadron at Luke Air Force Base, Arizona, takes off as the sun sets, during corrosion testing of the F135 engine.
The exact breakdown of how many of each F-35 variant lack engines is unclear. The Air Force and the Navy only fly the F-35A and F-35C, respectively, but the Marines operate both F-35Bs and F-35Cs and various models are in service with other military forces around the world.
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It is worth remembering too, of course, that the F-35 enterprise almost had an alternative engine to the F135. However, the General Electric/Rolls-Royce F136 turbofan was deemed to be an unnecessary expense and was eventually canceled in 2011, when the project was over 80 percent complete. With the benefit of hindsight, it can well be imagined that an alternative source of engines would be very valuable right now.
The Royal Netherlands Navy has now confirmed that its De Zeven Provincien class frigate HNLMS Evertsen, which has been sailing in the Black Sea together with the U.K. Royal Navy destroyer HMS Defender, was harassed by Russian fighter jets last week. The announcement comes after Russia and the United Kingdom entered something of a war of words last week when the Type 45 destroyer HMS Defenderconducted maneuvers in an area close to Russian-controlled Crimea. Both of these ships are currently part of the British aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth’smultinational strike group, also known as Carrier Strike Group 21, or CSG21.
The Royal Netherlands Navy today released a statement highlighting the events that occurred last Thursday, June 24. That was the day after Russia claimed to have dropped bombs and fired warning shots to ward off HMS Defender, which Moscow claimed had violated the Russian maritime border around the Crimean Peninsula. The Kremlin seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, an annexation that neither the Netherlands nor the United Kingdom recognizes as legal.
Royal Netherlands Navy
A pair of Russian Navy Su-30SMs fly over the Evertsen.
According to the Royal Netherlands Navy’s account, HNLMS Evertsen was “southeast of Crimea” on June 24 when Russian fighter jets “created unsafe situations” in the Black Sea. No further details are provided of the warship’s location at this point, although it seems, at least, the Dutch vessel did not follow the same course as HMS Defender.
A series of photos released by the Royal Netherlands Navy today shows a pair of Su-30SM multirole fighter-bombers, likely from the Russian Navy, flying low over the warship, with at least one of the aircraft armed with a pair of Kh-31 (AS-17 Krypton) supersonic anti-ship missiles under the engine nacelles.
Vitaly V. Kuzmin/Wikimedia Commons
A Kh-31 missile.
In what the Dutch Ministry of Defense describes as “repeated harassment,” between around 3:30 PM and 8:30 PM that day, the Su-30SMs flew “dangerously low and close by, performing feint attacks.” Su-30SMs were also involved in last week’s incident with HMS Defender, with at least one example seen shadowing the warship in an official Russian Ministry of Defense video. These Russian Navy jets are assigned to the 43rd Independent Naval Assault Aviation Regiment based at Saki in Crimea.
Royal Netherlands Navy
A Su-30SM armed with Kh-31 missiles passes alongside the Evertsen.
The Dutch account describes the Russian aircraft being armed with bombs (not immediately visible) and air-to-surface missiles. The jets also used their onboard electronic warfare systems to disrupt electronic equipment onboard the Evertsen, according to the Dutch. The Su-30SM is equipped with an internal Khibiny-U electronic warfare suite that includes powerful jammers to blind and confuse adversary radars.
one of the world’s largest private tactical jet air forces, is now set to add F-16A/B fighters to its roster after the Dutch government announced it had agreed to transfer 12 of the jets to the North American company. Draken will join fellow private contractor Top Aces in operating F-16s for “red air” adversary support, which is now in great demand, especially to fulfill the U.S. Air Force’s mammoth adversary air contract.
In a letter published today, the Dutch Secretary of State for Defense, Barbara Visser, confirmed that an agreement had been reached for the sale of a dozen ex-Royal Netherlands Air Force (RNLAF) F-16A/Bs plus associated unspecified items.
U.S. Air Force/Sgt. Richard Andrade
A Royal Netherlands Air Force F-16AM taxies down the flight line at Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan.
“Draken International has been contracted by the U.S. government for years to take on the role of the enemy in U.S. Air Force and Navy exercises,” the letter explains. “These aircraft will be used exclusively on the basis of government contracts for support tasks during (inter)national exercises and training on American territory.”
The F-16A/Bs are becoming available as part of the RNLAF’s planned phase-out of the jet, or End Life of Type (ELOT) program. The 12 jets in question are due to become surplus next year, as deliveries of F-35A stealth fighters to the RNLAF continue.
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As well as the 12 Vipers earmarked for Draken, the Dutch government has announced an option for the same firm to acquire another 28 examples, which are planned to be retired from RNLAF service by the end of 2024. Should that follow-on deal be taken up, Draken would end up with a fleet of 40 Vipers, compared to the 29 ex-Israeli F-16A/Bs that were acquired by rival Top Aces.
The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has announced that its Skyborg autonomy core system, or ACS, successfully completed a flight aboard a General Atomics Avenger unmanned vehicle at Edwards Air Force Base. The Skyborg ACS is a hardware and software suite that acts as the “brain” of autonomous aircraft equipped with the system. The tests add more aircraft to the list of platforms Skyborg has successfully flown on, bringing the Air Force closer to a future in which airmen fly alongside AI-controlled “loyal wingmen.”
The Skyborg-controlled Avenger flew four two and a half hours on June 24, 2021, during the Orange Flag 21-2 Large Force Test Event at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Orange Flag is a training event held by the 412th Test Wing three times a year that “focuses on technical integration and innovation across a breadth of technology readiness levels,” according to an Air Force press release. You can read more about this major testing event in this past feature of ours.
The Avenger started its flight under the control of a human operator before being handed off to the Skyborg “pilot” at a safe altitude. A command and control station on the ground monitored the drone’s flight, during which Skyborg executed “a series of foundational behaviors necessary to characterize safe system operation” including following navigational commands, flying within defined boundaries known as “geo-fences,” adhering to safe flight envelopes, and demonstrating “coordinated maneuvering.”
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The Avenger’s flight at Orange Flag was part of the AFRL’s larger Autonomous Attritable Aircraft Experimentation (AAAx), a program that has already seen the Skyborg ACS tested aboard a Kratos UTAP-22 Mako unmanned aircraft. The AAAx program appears to be aimed at eventually fielding autonomous air vehicles that are low-cost enough to operate in environments where there is a high chance of aircraft being lost, but are also reusable.
As part of that goal, the Skyborg program is developing an artificial intelligence-driven “computer brain” that could eventually autonomously control “loyal wingman” drones or even more advanced unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAVs). The AFRL wants the system to be able to perform tasks such as taking off and landing, to even making decisions on its own in combat based on situational variables.
The Air Force envisions Skyborg-equipped UAVs to operate both completely autonomously and in networked groups while tethered via datalinks to manned aircraft, all controlled by what the AFRL calls a “modular ACS that can autonomously aviate, navigate, and communicate, and eventually integrate other advanced capabilities.” Skyborg-equipped wingmen fitted with their own pods or sensor systems could easily and rapidly add extended capabilities by linking to manned aircraft flying within line-of-sight of them.
After the program was first revealed in 2019, the Air Force’s then-Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Will Roper stated he wanted to see operational demonstrations within two years. The latest test flight of the Skyborg-equipped Avenger shows the service has clearly hit that benchmark.
The General Atomics Avenger was used in experiments with another autonomy system in 2020, developed as part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Collaborative Operations in Denied Environment (CODE) program that sought to develop drones that could demonstrate “collaborative autonomy,” or the ability to work cooperatively.
Brigadier General Dale White, Skyborg Program Executive Officer says that the successful Skyborg ACS implementation aboard an Avenger demonstrates the Air Force’s commitment to remaining at the forefront of aerospace innovation. “This type of operational experimentation enables the Air Force to raise the bar on new capabilities, made possible by emerging technologies,” said White, “and this flight is a key milestone in achieving that goal.”
Russia was back up to its age-old spoofing of GPS tracks earlier this week before a showdown between British destroyer HMS Defender and coastguard ships near occupied Crimea in the Black Sea.
Yesterday Defender briefly sailed through Ukrainian waters, triggering the Russian Navy and coastguard into sending patrol boats and anti-shipping aircraft to buzz the British warship in a fruitless effort to divert her away from occupied Crimea’s waters.
Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and has occupied parts of the region, mostly in the Crimean peninsula, ever since. The UK and other NATO allies do not recognise Ukraine as enemy-held territory so Defender was sailing through an ally’s waters – and doing so through a published traffic separation scheme (similar to the TSS in the English Channel), as Defence Secretary Ben Wallace confirmed this afternoon.*
Yet, among yesterday’s drama and tension, Russia had previously spoofed maritime Automatic Identification System (AIS) signals to show Defender and her Dutch flotilla mate HNLMS Evertsen as sailing straight for the Russian naval base in Sevastopol, southwest Crimea. Neither warship was doing that: while Russia was claiming NATO warships were threatening Russia, both vessels were captured on live webcams in another Ukrainian port.
The latest batch of AIS fiddling took place on 17 June, according to naval analyst HI Sutton, writing for the US Naval Institute’s blog: “Despite the AIS track, there is clear evidence that the two warships did not leave Odessa.”
This week’s tensions should remind the world that Russia has no compunction about interfering with widely available tech systems.
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AIS works on an honesty-based system, at its simplest. The all-but-mandatory system (ships below 300 tons are exempt) works through each ship at sea broadcasting its GPS coordinates. Other ships receive those signals and assemble them onto display screens mounted on the vessel’s bridge for crew to monitor, usually as part of an integrated ECDIS system. It’s an insecure system insofar as vulns exist that allow spoofing of AIS data, as first revealed almost a decade ago. Shore stations can also receive and rebroadcast AIS signals, amplifying them – and providing a vector for the unscrupulous to insert their own preferred data.
[…]
AIS spoofing is similar to GPS spoofing in that broadcasting false data can mislead the wider world. Back in 2018, researchers built a GPS-spoofing unit out of a Raspberry Pi, transmitting false location data to confuse a targeted car’s satnav.
This proof-of-concept unit using consumer-grade, readily available equipment merely spells out what nation states such as Russia (and the West, naturally) have been toying with for years. Western GPS spoofing is a fact of life in the Eastern Mediterranean, as frustrated airline pilots and air traffic controllers know all too well, and the effects of AIS spoofing are very similar for those who depend on public datafeeds to keep up with the world around them.
The fallout from yesterday’s incident in the Black Sea involving the U.K. Royal Navy Type 45 destroyer HMS Defender and elements of Russia’s military and internal security forces has taken its next turn, with the release of a video showing some of the events from the perspective of a Russian Border Guard patrol ship. The footage clearly shows the Russian vessel opening fire, as the Kremlin had asserted, but it’s also obvious that Defender was so far away at the time that it may well not have been aware this were being directed at it, in line with what British authorities have said.
The video in question was published online by the Russian Ministry of Defense’s official television station, TV Zvezda, and the state-run media outlet RIA Novosti. It was taken from the bridge of a Russian Border Guard Rubin class patrol boat, one of those that purportedly “stopped” HMS Defender yesterday from sailing within what the Kremlin claims are its territorial waters around Crimea, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014. The United Kingdom, among many other members of the intentional community, does not recognize Russia’s authority over Crimea.
BBC NEWS SCREENCAP
A Project 22460 Rubin class border patrol vessel moves in close to HMS Defender, as seen in BBC News footage.
The video includes the discussions between the Russian Border Guards and the crew of the British destroyer, with repeated demands from the Russian security forces that HMS Defender leave the area. Two Border Guard vessels are seen trailing the destroyer, while Russian jets pass overhead, and at one point, one of the Russian vessels shadows the British warship closely — a BBC journalist’s account yesterday spoke of one of the Russian vessels getting as close as 100 meters (328 feet).
One of the Border Guards is heard to say that HMS Defender is breaking the rules of innocent passage, a part of international maritime law that allows warships to move through another country’s territorial waters so long as the transit meets various criteria, particularly that it is not intended to challenge the legitimacy of any such maritime boundaries.
After several more warnings, apparently ignored by the British, one of the crew members aboard the Border Guard vessel says, in Russian: “Perform precautionary fire! Perform precautionary fire! Avoid hit! Avoid hit! Fire!”
At that point, we see the AK-630 six-barrel 30mm Gatling gun on the bow of the Border Guard vessel opening fire with several bursts, although at this point the British destroyer is seen on the horizon. Interestingly, in the BBC News report, it’s confirmed that shots were fired by the Russian side, “but they were well out of range.”
After the shots, HMS Defender confirms that it will continue to follow its internationally recognized route into international waters. This suggests that the warship continued its planned passage and the available maritime tracking data doesn’t show it making any obvious changes in course.
Note that “Unverified maritime tracking data” of “around 10 nautical miles” seems to be supported by 🛰️Sentinel-2 imagery.
The available tracks are also consistent with official British accounts that the destroyer was sailing around 12 miles off the coast of Crimea. While Russia considered this to be “a flagrant violation of international norms and standards,” in the words of Sergei Tsekov, a Russian senator from the Crimea region, for the British, this amounted to “a routine transit [in] an internationally recognized traffic separation corridor,” according to the U.K. Minister of Defense Ben Wallace.
The thick purple line is for traffic separation. The Royal Navy is right, there is a shipping lane there, but it’s very much in the territorial waters around Crimea, and it’s not normal for them to use it.
Furthermore, since, as already noted, the United Kingdom does not recognize Russia’s claims over Crimea, the waters in question are considered Ukrainian from the British government’s perspective.
BBC NEWS SCREENCAP
A Crimea-based Russian Navy Be-12 Mail amphibian flies over HMS Defender.
All in all, the video shows that Russia did at least go through the motions of taking some aggressive action, but doesn’t provide conclusive evidence that this was sufficient to actually force HMS Defender out of waters that it claims as its own.
While it’s clear that some kind of warning shots were fired, it’s also plausible that the British may not have realized what these were, and instead connected them to training exercises that were already happening in the vicinity. At least, the British would have been aware of the threat of warning shots, but their response may have been intended to deliberately provoke the Russians.
Screenshots of a Black Sea Fleet Project 22160 patrol ship, likely the Pavel Derzhavin, and Su-24M bombers. 34/ pic.twitter.com/JvOxQjT2kK
“We believe the Russians were undertaking a gunnery exercise in the Black Sea and provided the maritime community with prior warning of their activity,” the U.K. Ministry of Defense tweeted yesterday. “No shots were directed at HMS Defender and we do not recognize the claim that bombs were dropped in her path.”
Those bombs were, according to Russian accounts, dropped across the path of the destroyer by a Su-24M Fencer combat jet, to provide an additional warning to the British warship. So far, we have seen no evidence of the bombs actually being dropped, although video from a BBC News report yesterday does at least show a Su-24M in the vicinity seemingly carrying high-explosive bombs. The BBC also reported that the crew of the Defender was aware of the presence of at least 20 Russian military aircraft flying the area over the course of the incident.
BBC NEWS SCREENCAP
A Russian Navy Su-24M buzzes HMS Defender, apparently carrying unguided bombs under its wings and below the fuselage.
Rosoboronexport
An OFAB-500 freefall bomb, as reportedly used by a Russian Su-24M as a warning to the destroyer.
All in all, it seems that this latest footage released by Russia is intended to bolster its account of what happened yesterday, which is based around its military and security forces taking strong action to ward off HMS Defender from what it deemed a territorial violation. Since the incident yesterday, Russian news outlet Kommersant has also published a map showing areas around Crimea that were reportedly temporarily closed for military drills, one of which HMS Defender apparently passed through.
Map from Kommersant of yesterday’s incident. The orange spots are the areas Russia temporarily closed from April 24-October 31, which they announced during the spring buildup. The HMS Defender apparently passed through one of these areas. 38/https://t.co/cqOsi7mfsApic.twitter.com/IrUB1V88Q4
While the British side has not mentioned these apparent restrictions, or whether it was aware of them, it was seemingly entirely deliberate in choosing this particular route for its warship and would have known that it would trigger a response of some kind from Russia. For the British, however, the importance of this incident was in demonstrating its right to innocent passage using a route through internationally recognized waters, while signaling its resolve to its partner Ukraine.
With the largest-ever Sea Breeze exercise due to start next Monday, there is every indication that tensions around Crimea and in the wider Black Sea region will only increase in the coming days, as 32 warships, plus dozens of aircraft, enter these region to commence U.S. Navy-led drills under the watchful eyes of the Russians.
As for the warning shots yesterday, while their effectiveness must be considered debatable at best, the fact that such belligerent actions are now being taken confirms the very differing views that Russia and NATO have when it comes to the movements of naval vessels and aircraft in the Black Sea region.
