CA has simplified the task of putting together backup solutions with a collection of ARCserve Backup suites that handle specific backup tasks: file backup, mail system backup, database backup and virtualized server backup. Each bundles together a set of CA’s ARCserve software tools, plus XOsoft data replication software to move data offline from production servers for backup.
At the Army’s C4ISR On-the-Move Event 2009 in September, Lockheed Martin Corp. demonstrated its new Airborne Multi-Intelligence Laboratory. The AML aircraft, a repurposed Gulfstream III corporate jet, was converted to a test platform for evaluating the integration of multiple intelligence-gathering sensors onboard a single aircraft. The flight team includes analysts who correlate the intelligence data and make it available to ground units over a network connection.
“A little over 10 or 11 months ago, Lockheed Martin made investment decisions in particular that looked at where the customer set was going — some of their higher priority needs,” said Jim Quinn, vice president of Lockheed Martin’s Information Systems and Global Services-Defense. “This was driven both internationally as well as domestically, and the importance of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance in supporting operations around the globe.”
Lockheed Martin initially intended that AML would provide its civilian and defense customers a way to evaluate how well technologies worked together, and provide a testbed for connecting sensors to enterprise service-oriented architectures such as the Distributed Common Ground System, Quinn said during a press briefing at the Association of the U.S. Army annual meeting in early October. Now, the company is considering whether to partner with contract aviation companies to lease the capability to the DOD and other government agencies on a contingency basis, he said.
via Army fuses airborne sensor lab with ground networks — Defense Systems.
The Army’s Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Command CERDEC has demonstrated a new system that can be used both to locate electronic emitters on the battlefield — radios, remote-controlled improvised explosive devices, radars and other sources of electromagnetic radiation used by a potential adversary — and then jam them.
The system, called Sledgehammer, “is a combination of an airborne electronic support system named Airhammer, that was produced by L-3 Communications Applied Signal and Image Technology in Linthicum Heights, Md., and some existing government developed electronic attack capabilities,” said Kristen Kushiyama, business development coordinator for public affairs at CERDEC’s headquarters in Fort Monmouth, N.J. “It is flown and operated on board the rotary-wing vehicle, and it finds and jams signals from hostile forces. Sledgehammer can be installed and operational in about an hour on several versions of the UH-60,” she said.
via Army demos electronic jammer for helicopters — Defense Systems.
A (poorly recorded) video of Raytheon’s demonstration at AUSA of the company’s Counter IED trainer — a full-immersion simulation that the company has developed for squad-level training of troops in a highly realistic, 3-D environment that physically stresses them in similar ways to actual patrols.
Sorry for the quality — this was recorded on an iPod Nano.
At last month’s C4ISR On-the-Move Event ’09 exercise, the Army’s Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Command (CERDEC) hosted an additional event – the Persistent Surveillance Testbed, run out of Naval Air Engineering Station Lakehurst. In addition to the Lockheed Airborne Multi-Intelligence Lab, CERDEC tested two other ISR platforms – an internal electronic intelligence and electronic warfare project called Sledgehammer, and a prototype acoustic Hostile Fire Indicator (HFI).
Last week, I spoke with Charlie Maraldo, a special projects manager with the Intelligence and Information Warfare Directorate (I2WD) at CERDEC about the Lockheed AML test and the other elements of the Persistent Surveillance Testbed. Here’s the transcript:
Charlie Maraldo : Today, we can network disparate types of systems — sensor systems, e/w systems, ISR systems and ingest their data into DCGS A, normalize it on a database that is then accessible via other tools that are out on the data enterprise, and then allowing that information to be either posted or pulled or otherwise sent down to warfighters, you know. right down to the edge. That was our objective, and AML was a part of that, and a big part. So let’s talk about that for a little bit.
So, Lockheed Martin has a CRADA with RDECOM and I2WD, and as part of that CRADA we have an ongoing technical exchange of information with them. They made us aware several months ago that they were developing a testbed capability, which was the AML. It’s a capital asset of theirs — we don’t have any control over or can tell them what to do with it — it’s a solely Lockheed Martin entity. But we talked about ways that we could cooperate using it, and one idea was to have them participate in the C4ISR on the move demo, as a sub element of our Persistent Surveillance Testbed capstone demonstration that we were running at I2WD, which was part of the c4isr on the move e09 demo. So that’s what we did.
Last month, Lockheed-Martin brought an independently developed test aircraft, called the Airborne Multi-Intelligence Lab, to the Army’s C4ISR On-the-Move exercise,
Lockheed Martin's Airborne Multi-Intelligence Laboratory
which took place at and near Ft. Dix and Lakehurst, New Jersey. The AML is a repurposed used Gulfstream III corporate jet equipped with a large radome and commercial electronics racks; the aircraft is designed for testing the integration of multiple sensors and open architecture intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems, providing aggregation of multiple sensors right on the aircraft by analysts, who pass that data to operators on the ground.
I spoke with Lockheed’s Jim Quinn, vice president, and John Beck and Mark Wand, both with Lockheed’s business development group. Here’s the interview:
Jim Quinn: A little over 10 or 11 months ago, Lockheed martin made some decisions, investment decisions in particular that looked at where the customer set was going — some of their higher priority needs. This was driven both internationally as well as domestically, and the importance of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance in supporting operations around the globe.
We recognized that a lot of the difficulty that our customers were having were trying to take advantage of multiple sensors, and to fuse and correlate that data in a way that it provided meaningful and actionable intelligence to war fighters on the edge. Whether they be war fighters on the edge or a command post or ground station that were trying to turn that information into usable knowledge.
We know that a lot of the platforms and sensors that are in operation around the world do that in a single int. fashion. They are a dedicated platform that collects a single (form of) intelligence, whether it be synthetic aperture radar, or FLIR (forward looking infrared), kinds of electro-optic sensors, or whether it be a sigint (signals intelligence) sensor, and then usually that data is transported by data link to some sort of ground station, and in many cases those ground stations are dedicated to the platform and the sensor that they are affiliated with. So we recognize the value of trying to have at our customers’ disposal and for our own experimentation, a platform that could take and plug-and-play various sensors in a multi-intelligence configuration. That would allow us to investigate how we take multiple inputs from sensors, and then either cross-queue or show the benefit of merging and synthesizing that data onboard the platform, and then pushing it down to the users on the ground. Whether it is a ground station or a user on the edge
So we made an investment, and procured a used (Gulfstream III) in the aircraft market with partners that we worked with in industry, We constructed a first set of sensors, and perhaps more importantly, we put on the aircraft a hardware and a software infrastructure that allowed those sensors over time to be plugged and played — that is, we could configure the hardback of the aircraft and the software infrastructure of it, the ability to take a sensor from various suppliers, whether it be one of our own or from a supplier in industry that was wanting to partner with us, and put it onboard the aircraft, and do that very very quickly.
U.S. defense officials are insisting that by reorganizing their cybersecurity strategy to give new powers to the director of the National Security Agency, they are not attempting a power grab. The military will continue to focus on protecting its own networks, they said, rather than expanding the military’s role to protecting civilian-run electrical and transportation networks.
Still, the changes the Pentagon has announced for the next 16 months will be significant. The heightened role of the NSA will be reflected in a fourth star. From now on, the NSA director will be either a four-star admiral or general, and this person will lead a new U.S. Cyber Command, dubbed CyberCom, wrote Defense Secretary Robert Gates in a June 23 memo to military leaders.
via Cyber-overhaul – C4ISRJournal.com – Military Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance.
U.S. defense officials are insisting that by reorganizing their cybersecurity strategy to give new powers to the director of the National Security Agency, they are not attempting a power grab. The military will continue to focus on protecting its own networks, they said, rather than expanding the military’s role to protecting civilian-run electrical and transportation networks.
Still, the changes the Pentagon has announced for the next 16 months will be significant. The heightened role of the NSA will be reflected in a fourth star. From now on, the NSA director will be either a four-star admiral or general, and this person will lead a new U.S. Cyber Command, dubbed CyberCom, wrote Defense Secretary Robert Gates in a June 23 memo to military leaders.
Read the rest at: Cyber-overhaul – C4ISRJournal.com – Military Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance.
Operations in Southwest Asia have created an insatiable demand for satellite communications capacity — a demand that commercial providers have largely filled.
However, DOD has to compete for available capacity on commercial satellites with media and telecommunications companies and other high-volume satellite communications customers.
One of those providers is Xtar, a joint venture of Loral Space and Communications and Hisdesat Sevicios Estratégicos. Xtar’s commercial X-band service is now available as part of the Defense Information Systems Agency’s Defense Information Systems Network Satellite Transmission Services-Global program and through the General Services Administration.
“Hisdesat was formed to basically manage the Spanish military communications satellite program,” said Denis Curtin, Xtar’s chief operating officer. “They do some other things, but that was the first reason. Xtar is 56 percent owned by Loral, 44 percent owned by Hisdesat, and is a U.S. managed company.”
via X-band offers cure for congested spectrum — Defense Systems.
Making relatively small electronics rugged enough for use in extreme environments, such as the deserts of Iraq and mountains of Afghanistan, is a major challenge. But what if you need more than a laptop computer with you, perhaps a whole network operations center — from loading the equipment on a plane, truck or helicopter to dropping it in the middle of nowhere?
That’s the sort of task that VT Group, formerly known as VT Milcom, has performed several hundred times during the past four years. “We got into the containerized shelter business initially about four years ago,” said Scott Bohman, VT Group’s general manager. “We got involved in some air traffic control solutions being installed in Iraq for the Air Force and then worked some communications shelters with [Air Forces Central] for overseas work, [and we] did a couple of shelters on the Iraqi oil platforms in the Persian Gulf.”
via Sturdy containers offer shelter from the storm for network equipment — Defense Systems.