WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Defense is within the midst of an information revolution.
A pivot away from the Greater Middle East, where it sunk a long time of effort and manpower, to confront the broader ambitions of Russia and China is forcing the department to reevaluate the way it collects its battlefield intelligence and the means through which it’s shared. Long-range weapons, sensitive radars and powerful jammers mean the U.S. military must glean details from farther away while further insulating digital systems.
Bombardier Defense has taken note, in line with Vice President Steve Patrick, and is investing internally to fulfill the changing demands. The corporate is among the many winners of two recent U.S. Army intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance contracts, price a whole lot of thousands and thousands of dollars, and has been working overseas with Saab on early warning aircraft.
In an interview with C4ISRNET, Patrick said flexibility is vital to satisfying the needs of contemporary militaries, as hurdles in Europe differ from those within the Indo-Pacific.
Portions of the conversation below were edited for length and clarity.
The U.S. Army has made clear it must see farther into enemy territory, strike harder from that greater distance and be more precise — all at the identical time. They’ve dubbed a part of the equation deep sensing. Where do you see that idea now and in the long run, and the way is Bombardier contributing?
I feel deep sensing is a component of the Army’s vision for the Multi-Domain Sensing System, the MDSS, as they call it. Really, it’s all about having the ability to see, as you say, farther into enemy territory, and the territory itself is farther away from the homeland.
There’s an actual need for capability that lets you not only see farther, but see farther from farther. So where Bombardier Defense will help in that equation is to bring our platforms to bear. Those platforms are designed to be high-altitude, long-endurance assets that may persist in and across the battlespace and provides that ability to look further into enemy territory.
How does it play into this top priority of long-range fires that the Army has?
Whenever you consider long-range fires, the extra word is precision. Precision implies that you simply need a goal. For those who’re going to have a goal, it’s essential to give you the option to surveil the realm and to discover a goal of interest.
Where the Bombardier platform plays is we offer that asset that hosts a radar, or another sensor, that may discover the goal after which pass it back to the command-and-control functions.
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What makes this converted business jet an excellent candidate for serious military operations? What would you say to skeptics that imagine possibly an alternative choice, or something more military hardened, is the higher approach?
What we might say is that the attributes that the military needs from a platform are literally quite consistent with the attributes that a few of our business-jet customers search for.
To start with, its reliability. The business customer expects the aircraft to perform after they need it, as does the military customer. The mission is critical. So reliability is vital, as his performance. A variety of our aircraft have exceptional endurance, high altitude, high speed. They’ll operate from short runways. That performance gives flexibility to the military customers.
There’s also the proven fact that they’re modern, in-production assets. Our aircraft are in production today. They’re going to be in production for a few years. So we cope with things like obsolescence and the newest technology in our course of business.
After which, perhaps, the largest thing that brings the business jet into the equation is the advancement of technology. Twenty years ago, sensor payloads, radars, electronic equipment would fill a room the dimensions of this. Now, that’s shrunk all the way down to the dimensions of possibly an iPhone — so a much smaller footprint to accommodate the identical sensors. That makes a business jet very appealing in that market.
Bombardier is participating within the Army’s recently awarded ATHENA-R and -S contracts and the Air Force’s BACN. Why your aircraft? And what are some examples of the payloads?
Why our aircraft? It’s for the explanations I just indicated. It’s all about reliability, performance and availability of the airframe itself.
When we predict of every of those missions, the BACN program with the Air Force, it’s really a communications node. Some call it flying Wi-Fi within the sky, linking together all the various waveforms from different users so that everybody can communicate on the identical network over vast areas of terrain, whether it’s airborne, maritime or ground assets.
The Army programs, however, the ATHENA programs, those are really beginning to look into intelligence gathering slightly than communication, bringing onboard signals intelligence packages, radars, to supply the commanders on the bottom with an summary of the battlespace.
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Where is Bombardier Defense investing internally? What’s the corporate taken with achieving within the near- or medium-term?
Bombardier Defense has been a component of Bombardier Aerospace for a lot of, a few years. What we’re now seeing, though, is an increased demand for our services. So we’re starting to accumulate our capability, predominantly in Wichita, Kansas, as the middle of activity for engineering and modification.
What we’re bringing forward, what we’re investing in, is reusable solutions.
We discover that many shoppers want additional electrical power, they need cooling capabilities, they need payload volumes. So we’re creating and investing in those sorts of capabilities, in addition to our power plants, to make the aircraft almost a Swiss Army knife, able to be used for multiple missions at very short notice. Highly reusable. Low price. Rapid to deploy.
Bombardier recently delivered the seventh Global aircraft to Saab to be made into the early warning GlobalEye. How would you describe that international relationship, like you’ve across the U.S, and what are you hoping to realize with that program?
One in all the things that Bombardier Defense prides itself on is our collaboration with prime integrators. Whether it’s L3Harris Technologies, Sierra Nevada, Raytheon within the states, or Saab overseas, we’ve a really strong collaborative relationship.
The GlobalEye is an incredible example of how we work well with one other prime mission-system integrator. Our platform, their system coming together to bring an incredible capability to the market.
The GlobalEye is an airborne early warning aircraft, fundamentally, but in addition with additional surveillance capabilities. The truth is, Saab calls it the Swing Role Surveillance System. The aircraft has been very successful with its launch customer within the United Arab Emirates. We even have an extra customer in Sweden. Along with Saab, we see numerous opportunities all over the world for this product, in markets in Asia and Europe, after which the Far East.
Do you foresee growth or additional opportunities for this contractor-owned, contractor-operated arrangement within the defense world?
I feel the one thing all of us see is a growing demand for intelligence. And the way you satisfy that demand will be either through service-owned and -operated assets, or contractor-owned, contractor-operated assets within the COCO model.
We’re here to support each models, whether it’s a direct sale to the federal government or to one in every of these third-party corporations, our aircraft to their payload gives the aptitude in a short time.
How do you see aerial surveillance or electronic warfare needs changing depending on the theater? The Pentagon is currently attempting to balance Russia and China, the Greater Middle East and Africa, et cetera.
The Pentagon has been quite clear with the thought of great power competition and the necessity to interact with China at distance. That requires a certain sort of asset to give you the option to perform the mission at an extended range.
The recent activity with Russia in Ukraine has, type of, pivoted back towards Europe. It’s a unique theater in comparison with the Far East. Perhaps what that underscores, most of all, is we don’t know exactly what the long run theater will probably be. So it’s essential to be flexible.
The best way that we view the issue set will not be to have a single solution for a single problem, but have an answer that may satisfy multiple problems, that’s redeployable across the globe in a short time, that will be pivoted to where the present crisis is.
The Bombardier solutions, we predict, fit that area of interest thoroughly.
Colin Demarest is a reporter at C4ISRNET, where he covers military networks, cyber and IT. Colin previously covered the Department of Energy and its National Nuclear Security Administration — namely Cold War cleanup and nuclear weapons development — for a each day newspaper in South Carolina. Colin can also be an award-winning photographer.