Australia looks towards space with force restructure, investment and training
Australia is looking to improve its presence in space with a focus on communications and creating a dedicated segment of its defence forces committed to the domain.
BAE Systems has received a contract from DARPA to develop an undersea navigation system to enhance the US Navy’s ability to provide precise global positioning across the ocean basins, the company announced on 16 May.
The contract is part of DARPA's Positioning System for Deep Ocean Navigation (POSYDON) programme.
Current navigational methods pose a detection risk for undersea vehicles as they are forced to surface periodically to access the space-based Global Positioning Systems (GPS), which cannot sufficiently penetrate seawater. Access to GPS is also limited by enemy signal jamming. POSYDON aims to replace these methods to allow undersea vehicles to navigate accurately while remaining below the ocean’s surface.
Under the contract, a BAE Systems-led team will develop a navigation, positioning and timing system designed to permit vehicles to remain underwater and navigate using integrated, multiple, long-range acoustic sources at fixed locations around the oceans.
The programme will also develop the vehicle instrumentation required to capture and process acoustic signals for navigation.
Joshua Niedzwiecki, director, sensor processing and exploitation, BAE Systems, said: ‘BAE Systems has more than 40 years of experience developing underwater active and passive acoustic systems. We’ll use this same technology to revolutionise undersea navigation for the POSYDON programme, by selecting and demonstrating acoustic underwater GPS sources and corresponding small-form factor receivers.’
Other members of BAE Systems’ POSYDON team include the University of Texas, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Washington.
Australia is looking to improve its presence in space with a focus on communications and creating a dedicated segment of its defence forces committed to the domain.
The Portuguese company’s naval communications system is in service across more than a dozen countries. It has turned to its home nation for support in developing a new vehicle based C2 system.
The Vision4ce Deep Embedded Feature Tracking (DEFT) technology software is designed to process video and images by blending traditional computer vision with artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to present actionable information from complex environments.
Persistent Systems has been cleared by National Security Agency (NSA) to transmit sensitive data on commercial networks. The devices are added to the NSA’s Commercial Solutions for Classified (CSfC) component list which also includes other companies’ products providing the same security.
The release of the UK’s Strategic Defence Review (SDR) has been long promised as mid-year. It is possible it could be as early as 2 June although the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) continues to play its cards close to its chest.
Intelsat outlines how its multi-orbit SATCOM architecture is enhancing connectivity and resilience for special operations forces operating in degraded and contested environments.