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.
ViaSat has announced that it has been selected by the US Marine Corps (USMC) to help bring smartphones and tablets to the battlefield. The company has been awarded a contract to engineer advanced information security into common, off-the shelf mobile devices to enhance the communication capabilities of deployed soldiers.
The contract award includes a series of progressive developments, with an initial award of approximately $2.4 million and options for further engineering and design.
According to the company, arming soldiers with smartphones and ViaSat security software will allow warfighters to ‘become a sensor on the network, contributing information to multiply force effectiveness at a fraction of the cost, with faster network access, and more capability compared to traditional handheld radios’.
The company said: ‘adding ViaSat cyber and information security to commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) smartphones and tablets can enable personnel to communicate securely over 3G/4G/LTE cellular and Wi-Fi networks, store sensitive data, and protect their devices against malware attacks’. While this development is for tactical warfighters, the ViaSat system is designed to provide secure communication of sensitive information for any government or commercial customer.
The first phase of the this contract will see ViaSat develop and deliver 150 mobile proof-of-concept devices for US Department of Defense testing and integration. The development is expected to be complete by spring of 2013 with the new secure mobile system available on any Android device.
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.