Defence Science and Technology Group

• Amentum has been awarded a five-year contract with a maximum value of $441.3 million by USINDOPACOM to deliver critical command, control, communication, computers, cyber, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C5ISR) systems.
• Amentum will provide complex analysis, experimentation, and testing, to optimize the effectiveness of DoD missions and advance USINDOPACOM priorities.
• Under this contract, Amentum will advance organizational agility with innovative solutions in an extremely collaborative and dynamic national security environment.
• Amentum will also play an important role in defensive cyber analysis, national and adversary vulnerability assessments, strategic adversary resistance.

• “G2S is another great opportunity for Amentum to provide our cutting-edge solutions and leverage our expertise in technology and engineering modernization for the U.S. Army,” said Jill Bruning, President of Amentum’s Engineering, Science, and Technology Group.
• Amentum will provide aggressive, scaled, and agile engineering solutions on the G2S IDIQ contract to drive the fast-paced acquisition and deployment of systems including counter-IED and mine detection; electronic warfare; aircraft survivability; and training.
• Amentum is also poised to provide ancillary engineering, obsolescence monitoring, and test and evaluation services that could be ordered on G2S.
• “G2S offers Amentum the ability to work with the government to sustain our operational forces,” said Jack Kasiski, Senior Vice-President Operations.

• Safire Technology Group, Inc. (“Safire Group”) announces it has been selected by AFWERX for an additional SBIR Phase II in the amount of $1.25M focused on adapting the company’s innovative Lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery safety technology, SAFe Impact Resistant Electrolyte (SAFIRE™), to enhance the performance and survivability of Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) and AI-driven surveillance systems in extreme temperature environments for the Department of the Air Force (DAF).
• Safire Group’s proprietary ballistic/fireproof additive for Li-ion batteries offers enhanced thermal stability and performance in extreme climates, greatly improving the next generation of assets being deployed for Force Protection.
• View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230525005252/en/
  Picogrid Lander, a highly configurable remote sensor terminal.
• (Photo: Business Wire)
  The Air Force Research Laboratory and AFWERX have partnered to streamline the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) process by accelerating the small business experience through a faster proposal to award timelines, changing the pool of potential applicants by expanding opportunities to small business and losing bureaucratic overhead by continually implementing process improvement changes in contract execution.

• There’s no God mode in real life, of course, but the world’s military organisations are very interested in weapons that promise something like it: lasers and other “directed energy weapons”.
• The US government, for example, is spending nearly US$1 billion per year on directed energy projects.
• And directed energy technology is a priority in the new A$3.4 billion Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator (ASCA) program.

What is directed energy?

• In the interest of brevity, we’ll concentrate on laser-based directed energy weapons here, but much of the argument also applies to the other types.
• Directed energy is not affected by gravity like missiles and bullets are, so it travels in a straight line.
• And because directed energy weapons cause damage by heating up a target area, they have less potential to hit nearby objects or send shrapnel flying.

So why doesn’t everyone use directed energy weapons?

• Although directed energy weapons have all these advantages over conventional weapons, useful ones have proven difficult to build.
• One problem faced by laser weapons is the huge amount of power required to destroy useful targets such as missiles.
• For this reason, even portable directed energy devices are very large.

Directed energy weapons will need a whole industry

• But suppose all the technical problems of directed energy weapons are overcome.
• However, to develop and mass-produce directed energy weapons requires an industrial capacity for the fabrication of the necessary laser diodes and high-quality optics, which does not exist in Australia.
• The potential military advantages of directed energy weapons, and the consequences of an adversary having them, mean Australia and many other countries will maintain an interest in developing them.