Defence`s Feeds

The two primary contenders for Germany’s heavy-lift helicopter requirement are waiting on confirmation from the Bundeswehr that the project has indeed been signed off as reported. Both Boeing and Lockheed Martin confirmed to Jane’s on 19 December that neither has received notification

Ammunition official Abu Ayoub and offensives administrator Abu Sulayman announced their defection from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham's 'Badiya' branch and pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda.

The Indian Air Force (IAF) has begun modifying some 40 Sukhoi Su-30MKI multirole fighters to enable them to carry the BrahMos-A (Air) supersonic cruise missile, and thus boost the aircraft’s long-range precision-strike capabilities. Official sources told Jane’s that the state-owned

At least nine people were killed and 56 others were wounded when an Islamic State suicide bomber detonated their explosives targeting a prayer hall at Bethel Memorial Methodist church in the city of Quetta in Pakistan's Balochistan province on 17 December, Reuters reported. Reports added that a

The cabinet of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on 19 December approved the introduction of two Lockheed Martin Aegis Ashore ballistic missile defence (BMD) systems to counter the growing threat posed by North Korea's nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. "North Korea's nuclear and missile

US science, technology, and services group Leidos has been contracted by the US Office of Naval Research (ONR) to build a second Sea Hunter-type Class III Medium Displacement Unmanned Surface Vessel (MDUSV) to support science and technology (S&T) advancement of autonomous technologies and

Eurofighters of the Luftwaffe’s Taktische Luftwaffengeschwader (Tactical Air Force Squadron, TaktLwG) 31 “Boelcke” in Nörvenich have gained an air-to-ground capability to deliver laser- and GPS-guided Guided Bomb Unit 48 (GBU-48) bombs, the Luftwaffe announced on 18 December.

On 18 December at 17:15 CET, a Polish Air Force MiG-29A jet fighter from the 23 Tactical Air Base crashed near Marysin village around 13 km from Minsk Mazowiecki airfield. Despite not ejecting, the pilot survived the crash and was found in the wreck and evacuated with only minor injuries. It was

On 16 December, the last intake of 250 members of the Polish territorial army, the Wojska Obrony Terytorialnej (WOT), were sworn in in Białystok after completing their basic training. It was the second such ceremony of the 1st Podlaska Territorial Defence Brigade. In addition to

Event Two rival Sahel jihadist groups – the Al-Qaeda-linked Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) and the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) – announced on 14 December that they were joining forces against counter-terrorism operations, following reports that their

The Qatari military unveiled its previously unseen Chinese-made Joint Attack Rocket & Missile systems (JARMs) on 18 December, when two launchers and two transporter-loader vehicles participated in the National Day parade in Doha. The JARM is promoted by the China National Precision Machinery

The Russian Ministry of Defence (MoD) announced on 19 December that it had donated defence equipment to Tajikistan as part of an effort to modernise the Central Asia country’s armed forces. The military products, which included small arms, artillery, armoured vehicles helicopters,

Near Urvan, Kabardino-Balkaria, the security services held a counter-terrorism operation killing one alleged Islamist militant; two police officers were wounded.

South Korea’s state-run military research and development (R&D) agency has appointed a new chief, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) in Seoul has announced. Nam Sae-kyu will assume the position of the president of the Agency of Defense Development (ADD) from January 2018 for three

A CIVILIAN was killed and five others were wounded when an unidentified militant detonated a suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (SVBIED) targeting a NATO convoy on the airport road in the city of Kandahar in Afghanistan's Kandahar province on 17 December, Reuters reported. There was

AT LEAST 14 soldiers were killed and an unspecified number of others were wounded by Taliban militants in an attack targeting police outposts in the city of Lashkargah in Afghanistan's Helmand province on 17 December, VOA News reported. Reports added that an unspecified number of militants were

Twenty-five EU countries legally formalised their commitment to European defence integration on 11 December. Please find below a link to the press release.
Further information
Press release
Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

How do new and constantly evolving Big Data methodologies and techniques impact defence Modelling and Simulation and how may their increasing potential be best used? To shed light on these and other questions related to Big Data in defence, the European Defence Agency (EDA) launched the ‘Big Data in Defence Modelling and Simulation’  (BIDADEMS) study whose findings are now available and has led to a new project researching new methodologies (MODSIMMET).  

While Big Data is already extensively used in the civil domain, for instance helping companies to improve decision-making based on customer spending (big) data, its potential benefits for the defence sector still needs to be explored and investigated. 

Against this backdrop in September 2016, the EDA initiated the BIDADEMS study aimed at better understanding Big Data methodologies, techniques and their potential applications in the defence domain, in particular for modelling and simulation (M&S) purposes. In the M&S domain, Big Data could potentially help to provide simplified military simulation designs, generate more realistic simulation scenarios and environments, improve the exploitation of simulation results or provide new opportunities for M&S support to military test and evaluation (T&E) activities.
 

Recommendations

The study identified some emerging Big Data technologies with high potential for defence M&S (such as cloud computing, non-relational databases, data analytics or visual analytics) and formulated recommendations for the EDA and Member States’ future work in this domain, notably:

1. Future M&S applications should be designed with Cloud Computing in mind, setting up cloud based environments to provide “sandbox” test areas to analyse new data sets.

2. Further investigation into the application of Data and Visual Analytics techniques and to data analytics to M&S models focussing on: 
a) Models and data available through predictive analytics as inputs for M&S models; 
b) Current data mining techniques and their applicability to M&S output data.

3. Given the high innovation rate of these techniques it seems to be necessary to both inform and educate analysts on new data analytics techniques and to provide M&S developers with Big Data considerations when developing future models. 
 

Outcome

The outcome of the BIDADEMS project supported EDA’s contribution to the 2nd Annual European GeoInformation Symposium & Exhibition on Big Data and the Global Big Data Defence 2017 Summit, both held in Berlin during June 2017. Also the project has motivated the EDA’s ‘Simulation’ Capability Technology Group (CapTech) to initiate a new study, MODSIMMET, which will analyse how to approach very complex scenarios like hybrid warfare with different methodologies like Data farming and War gaming supported by Big Data and Artificial Intelligence. 

The collection, storage, analysis and management of a huge amount of real and simulated data is inevitable and will increase in the future. It will be used to take advantage of existing and future related technologies. The use of Big Data tools and methodologies is likely to be a recurrent issue in the Agency where growing attention is being devoted to these innovative technologies.  
 

More information:

• EDA Cap Tech Simulation
• EDA Cap Tech Information

 

North Korean M1981 Self-Propelled Gun

From 11-15 December 2017, ICAO organised two air navigation events bringing together global partners from the aviation industry, air navigation service providers and States. 

The first event, Second Global Air Navigation Industry Symposium (GANIS/2), provided a platform for global and regional industry partners to share their latest developments, thus identifying commonalities/differences between the systems to ensure interoperability and facilitating the harmonisation of air navigation systems. While the second event, the First Safety and Air Navigation Implementation Symposium (SANIS/1), showcased the Safety and Air Navigation implementation strategies with ICAO’s Global Aviation Safety Plan (GASP) and Global Air Navigation Plan (GANP) as complimentary global plans and thereby drivers for performance improvements and promoted collaboration amongst all stakeholders.

The Single European Sky (SES) partners (the European Commission, Eurocontrol through the European Network Manager, European Aviation Safety Agency, European Defence Agency and EUROCAE as the European leader on industry standards in aviation, as well as the SESAR Joint Undertaking (SESAR JU) and the SESAR Deployment Manager (SESAR DM)) joined forces at the event with interventions in the conference focusing on key areas of SES/SESAR relevant to the ICAO vision, as well as a joint SES/SESAR exhibition stand which showcased how Europe is working together in a harmonised way to modernise our European Skies. 

A number of SES representatives and SESAR members participated in the conference sessions and discussions, promoting the central role of SESAR and EU industry in driving forward ATM modernisation in the context of the EU aviation strategy. Christophe Vivier, Head of the European Defence Agency’s SES/SESAR Unit, participated in different sessions on civil-military cooperation, including on RPAS integration and interoperability. The event also served as a platform to emphasise the need for global harmonisation and interoperability and helped to demonstrate the synergies of the European ATM Master Plan with the Global Air Navigation Plan (GANP).
 

More information:

• Read more about these events and access the full agenda on the GANIS SANIS 2017 event page