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US Navy Gears Up for Cyberwarfare
TechNewsWorld Although any kind of warmaking offensive carries risks, "cyberwarfare can be an effective deterrent in two ways," noted Vasco Data Security VP John Gunn. "It can make our assets less attractive for fear of retaliation — and used in a preemptive manner … |
Engadget |
The US Navy is taking cyber warfare to the enemy
Engadget The US Navy will soon operate as a cyber warfighting platform, ready to attack rogue nations when ordered by the White House. A top military commander tipped the initiative at a defense conference, saying "you don't win a knife fight without swinging a … U.S. Navy To Add Cyber Warfare Capability US Navy prepares for cyber warfare offensive The Navy Is Stepping Up Its Cyber Defenses |
The systems used to fly the MQ-8 Fire Scout, the robotic helicopter developed by Northrop Grumman for the US Navy’s Littoral Combat Ships, are about to get an upgrade—one that’s based on the Linux operating system. Raytheon has been awarded a $ 15.8 million contract to deploy a new version of the Vertical Takeoff and Landing Unmanned Air Vehicle Tactical Control System (VTUAV TCS) that takes the operator’s console off its legacy Sun Microsystems Solaris 8 platform and brings it in line with military standards for drone control platforms—allowing it to be used with other compatible unmanned aircraft.
Raytheon started development of the original TCS system more than 10 years ago as the Navy was evaluating the Fire Scout and when Solaris 8 was the approved Unix platform for many Department of Defense systems. And it remained the basis of the platform when Raytheon started delivering an upgraded version of TCS, called Block 2 Version 4, in 2007. The Navy kept adding new requirements to B2V4 for the next three years.
The latest contract, originally posted in February, calls for Raytheon to create a new version of TCS called B2VL—Block 2, Version Linux. It also calls for Raytheon to continue moving the drone control system into line with the Office of the Secretary of Defense’s Unmanned Aerial System Control Segment (UCS) Architecture—a service-oriented open architecture for unmanned aircraft that will allow the plug in of new features for future drones and for parts of the TCS to be re-used for other systems across the DOD.
By moving to a Linux platform, the Navy also hopes to save money on support in the long term, making it easier to upgrade hardware. The Fire Scout program is in a bit of a holding pattern right now as Northrop Grumman works on the next version. The Navy is also slowing down its purchasing of the Littoral Combat Ships, ships the Fire Scout was originally supposed to deploy on, so the new TCS software will hopefully allow the Navy to operate other ship-based drones across the fleet.
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The US Navy has completed another round of tests in its quest for the ultimate ship’s gun: a functional weapon based on railgun technology. The next step is to take the gun to sea for tests aboard the USNS Millinocket (JHSV 3), a high-speed transport catamaran built by Austal. “We’re beyond lab coats—we’re into engineering now,” said Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jonathan Greenert during a speech at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space Expo in National Harbor, Maryland.
The railgun is just one of a number of high-energy weapons being tested by the Navy. The first to go to sea will be the Laser Weapon System (LaWS), which will be put to sea aboard the USS Ponce late this summer, the Office of Naval Research confirmed yesterday.
But the LaWS is a relatively low-power directed energy weapon intended to take out drones, small boats, and other threats at fairly close range. The electromagnetic rail guns, which are being tested at the Naval Surface Warfare Center’s Dahlgren Division in Dahlgren, Virginia, are capable of launching a projectile at speeds over Mach 7 and would have ranges exceeding 100 miles. A 23-pound projectile flying at Mach 7 has 32 megajoules of energy. That’s roughly equivalent to the energy required to accelerate 1,000 kilograms (1.1 US tons) to 252 meters per second—or around 566 miles an hour.
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