Will you defense news welcome to defense news t. Im vago muradian. The auauthor of a new book on hw the predator aircraft changed warfare forever. The service continues to develop new combat vehicicles. The biggest longrange program is the future fighting vehicle. It would replace the armys vast fleet of bradley fighting vehicles, including an armored vehicle. We met witthe Program Executive officer for armored vehicles, including the m1 tank and the and 113 person of character and the m113 personnel characr. A any ruest or future proposal is a n number of years away baseded on overall affordability. I think the real i intent here s we go into this next phase of the future finding vehicle is to take the years that we have and ththe resources cononstraint to understand the details of whahat the army is looking for in a futurere fighting vehicle. We will be lookingt science and technology. Re is some ongoing times Science Technology going on. We wilill look at some of the other investments. As we approach this next phase of trying to come up with a replacement for the bradley ghting vehicle, we have a sensof what technology is going to bring us in e future ashat potential as well as what potential requirents we could make. The next vehicle is something we want coming out the other end. There is a lot of Bad Information about cocombat vehicles. As that program concluded, it was probably ive argued it was the best live bng is looking program that army had. It was on budget and on schedule. The Vehicle Design that had been do were rely good instances of the requirements we had d ben given, within the afaffordabiliy tax the army had eablished caps the army had established. The army faces a difficult decision. Do you go after a bradley replacement or do you take t resourceces available and use those in a way which can touch a much broader setet of vehicl across the army brigade comombat formation . In the end, i think the armyys decision was to take our soources to resre the he could fight together as an entire formation. The m more presessing need was o replace the 113, which has been in the fleet for more ththan 50 years. S. Before we get to the m113 replacement, quick question on bradley. What is the modernization plan look like for the bradley fighting vehicle . Some of the resources went into what we call engineering change prosal, upgrade programs. In bradley, we will do it in three pieces. The first piece is a competitive prograthat was awarded recently. It is going to install upgrades to the suspension, load arms, track for the bradley nearterm. That program is already awarded. It is entering production right now. The send piece of that really addresses overall, more about power in the vehicle. So that we can host future army network. There is a rangege of things we doing to the braradley. We are addin the, essentially plumbing for a third g upgrade that will part the third part of the bradley upgrade or engineering change for Program Engineering change program we are currently undeaking. Towards the end of the gcv program, ther was a 20 million invesent. What are you getting for that investment . Will it shapape what the future fighng vehicle looks like . Absolutely. Those contracts the firirst part of what we think about is a thephase apprproach for future fighti vehicles. The rule of thumb is we wawant o start the program both when the army has the resources to produce the program all away through production and when we think technology is available that givess the ability to get a better leap ahead in cacapability over whatwas previously demonstrated. D. Those two small contracts, relative to the whole portfolio, the really keep both connected to the army through that process , running designgn concepts on a range of potential requirerement sets. I often ththink about talk about requirement sets as being ththe most interesting. Are we going to put 5, 7, soldiers , 7, 9 soldiers in the back ive heard a couple of other things. Having two vendors during gcb gave us an opportunity too look at a range of design us anunities gcv gavee opportunity to lk at a range of design opportunities. We are going to use the smaller contracts to look across the range of potential Material Solutions so that our user can get an idea of what that looks like within an army context. We are dealing with public address syste. Ampv. V. About amby, i dont have a parkiking spot nr any easy way to maintaiain one. It is a lovely vehicle, great for innercity traffic depending on how you drive it. There was a debate abo the program. One of the contractors was argug that a wheeled vehicle would suffice. Stuck with sayingng, well, it is important for this vehicle to be attractive. It has been a lorunning and robust debate. What are the attributes that are so importa in the armys estimation for that vehicle. Vehicle . I dont think we said it had to be attract vehicle a track vehicle. Ampv allows us to fight information across platforms. Relegated, it could not fight the way y it was inteed. As we replace e it, we want a vehicle that can fight and move and traverse all the sam for same terrain. It is not about track versus wheel. It is s about mobility. As you look across the range of operation miion profiles, particularly offroad terrains and wet and muddy conditions, there is a pretty substantial delta between the typical mobility you see in attract vehicle in a track vehicle and the kind of mobility you would get out of Something Like stryker. For more of this interview, go to defensenews. Com you u are watching defense ns. And Global Aerospace defense giant with 20 billion in annual sales and 53,000 workers worldwide. Half of its business is from commercial avionics and inflight information. The other half is a vast range of other products. The u. S. Defense market remains the largest in the world despite cuts. The company is expanding its long presence in america. Nearlyar, it generated 1. 7 billion dollars in sales, 70 of which was commercial. We met with the ceo of policy with america of tallus north america. We want to attack the market as we would othe in the world. We have al technological strengths. We want to help the government excel. You mentioned are e Tactical Communications product area. Its a real strength for us. Weve built upon the success you referenced to launch new and very innovative products. Tactical communications will be an area we focus on. We think we have big contributions to make in isr, specifically in surveillance products. Suppliers are both underwater and moving into above water, tactical radar products, which we think are truly differentiated in this market. A third area id suggest is in area of our company in chicago has made some breakthroughs, from the indonesian p perspective, the innovation perspective, designing a producthat is not only superior for pilots, butut also reduces the cost up to 50 . We are lookingng at areas wheree can provide the u. S. Government breakthrough differences. Electronic warfare is a very big topic for the United States, increasingly so. Would that be something you are terested in as well . It is an area that gets talked about less in the Public Forums for obvious reasons, but it is an area where we believe we have superb technology. With what weupled are doing in Tactical Communications, we can do someme very exciting things for the u. S. Government. We are certainly engaged in that area. You spend lge part of your career in the commercial industry. All of us frequent fliers, i thank you for that. Youre used to much quicker commercial cycles, shorter decisionmaking. Talk about some of the commercial products you think you guys can bring to the military sphere, but also maybe commeral ways of thinking to solve problems. As you mentioned, Inflight Entertainment is a perfect Training Ground for that kind of thinking. Not only i is it commercial expectations, Consumer Expectations that are with the passengers on board, but it also has to be made suitable for aircraft environment, which means a continuous investment in what you believe your Market Opportunities are. Big bets on technology. You want to bring into the marketplace without that guarantee commitnt of a return. Become very comfortab assessing that market landscape and making those that and investing those bets and investing signiftlicantly in r. We know we have to bring products to marketet in the commercial world very good very quickly. We have to outpace our competitors. In some cases, consumer electron companies. We have to have a very quick timetomarket with development. We know we have to drive price and cost points very competitively, which forces us to maximize utilization of commercial product commercial, offtheshelf project products. There may b be more bandwidth and productivity than military platforms ha a at this point. That is true. United, jetblue, they are offering about 50 megabitsts per second of bandwididth to a passenger on an aircraft. You can coare that to what you get at a consumer as a consumer in your home or office, its a lot of bandwidth. You guys have a longer quotation for making strategic investments. When you are truing where are you going to be placing yourig commercial and dense thats bets . We benefit from being a company that has a pretty bob broad portfolio o Solutions Across a very strong market. The markets are all about infrastructure, urbanization, missioncritical type of systet. We see whats going on in the organization around the world. Metrorail,ighspeed train will become increasingly important. We are significant playeyer a siificant layer there an we will continue to invest. In satellite comnications, we are one of the world leaders. We will continue to invest. Commercial invest commercial aviation continues to grow well. More passengers can afford to travel a around the world. We have strong positions in the cabin and the cockpit. Are not thinking about forgetting about the defense and security world also. We are a leader in security, not just from a Cyber Security safeguarde, where we about three quarters of all the Financial Transactions in the world, but we are also a leaeadr in physical security. As more of the world is looking to protect vital assets, whether gas, got the oil and airports, cities, like mexico city, we have emerged as a leader in physical infrastructure protection. With todays threats in the world, i would submit to you that is a very important market for us to continue. There are Innovation Centers in the United States and a mess multidomestic strategy. Do you see doing that in the United States atat some point . Yes. Our chairman is a very big believer in a coupuple of thing. One is globalization of our company. We are on a good path. Jeanbernard is continuing to expand that in many ways. I did focus on emerging markets. Setting up innovation hubs througho the world a b focus on emerging markets, setting up innovation hubs around the world. We are also not going to neglect the United States, where we still know that many, if not most of the truly innovative companies, are stitill coming from. Google, facebook. They are all u. S. Companiesn the cutting edge. We have to be in the flow of that technology. We have to be well connected with the institutions and the major universities that are andning these great ideas stimulating Young Companies to emerge, that we think can be exploited, and have a lot to offer to both the civil and defense markekets. Coming up, a technology that chged warfare forever. Youre watching defensnews. Chged warfare forever. Youre watching defensnews. I knew it could rough in there, but how rough . There was no way to know for sure. Hey guys. Daddy, its pink but hey. A new house its a blank canvas. And we got a great one thanks to a really low Mortgage Rate from Navy Federal Credit union. Pink so shes a princess. You got a problem with that . Oorah oorah open to the armed forces and their families for er 80 years. Navy federal credit union. The predator remotely guided piloted vehicle has revolutionized warfare mbcombining longrange reconnaissance systems and strike missiles. These aircraft are continuously collecting intelligence and ve the ability to strike when necessary. A former reporter who spent five years reseanghing the inside story of americas unmanned ircraft programs. His w book on a predator, the secret origins of the drum revolution his new bo, creditor, the secret origins of the drone revolution the secret ororigins of the drone revolution. Tryingmilitary has been to use Unmanned Aircraft since world wai. Until the predator came along and its inventor, who i know we want to talk about, an unmanned aerial vehicle, as the experts prefer to call it you like, or remotely call it or a remotely piloted vehicle. He built aircraft that could stay in the air 24 hours, 40. Ours, 48 hours that was a major breakthrough. One of the powerful reasonons it is a powerful tool is the ability to stay over battlefield for a long time. Talk about how he m managed o crack the problem. Baghdad inornrn in 1970. 1917. In his early 1930s in his early y 30s, he was a chief innovator for isrl aircraft industries. In 1973, he designed a drug decoy. Drone decoy. I think he became enamored of the idea of unnned aircraft. And emigrated to the united state immigrated to the United States. He went to work in his garage, where he developed the Building Tools himselto composite a uav that he called the albatross, which had phenomenal flight endurance, 48 hours without refueling, and that was about 10 times the flig endurance that anybody else had ever produced with a drone darpa got interested. He got a ctract to build a larger drone with the same configuration for the military. In the late 1980s, the politics of defense contracting and the failures of other uavs, namely one called aquila, that the army had spent 1. 2 billion on ,ithout getting it to work spelled the end of the process. In a small handful of people regarded the predator a as Something Special a small handful of people regarded the predator as Something Special then. What changed . Whenrmer secretary peters you doubt that the predator was formerit like a seetary peters pointed out thatat the creditor was a little bit like the predator was a little bit like the firstgeneration computer. They got their hands on it. The safari aeronautics group. Then wars came along. If necessity is the mother of invention, war is the mother of neceity. The war with kosovo and the war with it is what allowed the predator to change into a worord changing w weapon. What were the big acquisition lessons that came from predator . Yououldnt do every system like this. Predator was done under a very innovative procurement system called advanced Concept Technology demonstrations. John deutch, when he was undersecretary for acquisitions, his deputy c came itup with it. Offtheshelf technology, let the military use it in real operations. If they like it, you build more and improve it. If they dont, you get rid of it. Thats how the predator started. The chairman had gone bankrupt. His ideas an patents were bought by a very wealthy entrepreneur. General autony. Who had a genius for business. They turned one of his older drones into the predator in the space of six months. That was how the whole thing got started. Let me ask about the three biggest myths about t unmanned systems. To start with, bill maher, the tv personality, has calleded them robotic killer aircraft. They are not robots. There is not only a human in the loop, because there is a crew operating the predator, or the reaper, its big brother not big brother, derivatative. Rut there e are lots of other people involved. As you know, the number of intelligence analysts involved in the command structure the legal structure. There are a lot of humans in the loop. These arent robot aircraft dealers robot killer aircraft. And there are a lot of people involved in the operation. The other r idea is that they are indiscriminate. The missile they put on the predator, originly an antitatank missile, has a 20 pound warhead. In the earlrly downs early ys of the war on afghanistan, i understand that don rumsfeld was hitting trash cans. They would f fire into vehicles people wld walk awayay. It is laserguided. Is a very precise weapon. One last thing. There is a sense that these systems are in moral. Are immoral e they in a Historical Context . Hat goes along with what i would say is a third myth. That the pilot or the operator feelike they are playing a videogame and having fun. I interviewed captain scott swanson, the guy who fired the first missile. He and others have told me, no, they see the bodies live, fly, etc. Coming up next, my noteok. Recenaccidents have caused some to questi the future of space exploratation. Spaceshipactics filled on a test flight, killing one of two pilots. Preliminary reports suggest one of the pilots may have prematurely deployed a device that csesed the plane to disintegrate. Both incidents are under investigation. It may take a year to determine what hpened. Era ofgestion that the commercial space providers is over is ridiculous. This is rocket science. Putting anything into space is a compx undertaking. It doesnt take much for anything to o go wrong. Commercial firms have been a key part of f amecas Space Program since its inception. Veteran firms like orbital, boeing, rthrop grumman, spacex, version galactic, and others, will continue to excite ,he world Virgin Galactic and others, will continue to exexcite the world as they continue to compete. Thanks for wating. At thebe back next week same time. Until then, have a great week. [captioninperformed by the national captioning institute, which is respoponsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] [music] its a choice we make. I can either respond rightly and say, god, i dont understand this, but you must know something about me i dont know. You must be doing something in my life that i dont quite understand, but lord, i want you to accomplish your purpose and your plan in my life no matter what. Today on in touch, how to ew lifes trials. [music] around the throne of heaven a sea of the redeemed are bowing and proclaiming the praises of the king yet his wor