AI-operated fighter jet will fly Air Force secretary on test run

On the same subject

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  January 7, 2019 | International, Aerospace

  New in 2019: Here’s what the Air Force is doing about aviation mishaps

  By: Kyle Rempfer The Air Force, like the other services, suffered a string of fatal aviation mishaps in 2018. A Military Times in-depth review of 5,500 aviation accidents that have occurred since 2013 found that accidents among the nation's manned fighters, bombers, tankers, tilt-rotor and helicopter aircraft has increased 39 percent. In the Air Force, the most serious Class A mishaps have declined, but the number of non-fatal Class C mishaps is increasing, causing some experts to warn that future problems could be on the horizon if the issue is not dealt with. To address concerns among the aviation community, Congress created an eight-person independent commission to review the mishap spike in the 2019 defense bill. For its part, the Air Force conducted a wave of one-day safety stand-downs of flying and maintenance wings over the summer. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Dave Goldfein ordered the stand-down in May, after several high-profile mishaps, including the May 2 crash of a WC-130 Hercules and the March 15 loss of an HH-60G Pave Hawk in western Iraq, both of which killed all on board. In a September news release, the Air Force said their review of the data identified six potential risks to aviation safety: stress caused by high operations tempos; a lack of time to properly focus on flying basics, mission activities and training; pressure to accept risk; a culture that pushes airmen to always execute the mission; decreased availability of aircraft; and the potential for airmen to become complacent when carrying out routine tasks. “The review proved tremendously helpful as we continue to seek both high levels of safety with intense and realistic training," Goldfein said in the release. The full report summary, provided at Air Force Times' request, also raised concerns about the increasing requirements on maintainers, and low experience among some maintenance personnel. The service has distributed those findings to the field, according to the release. The findings will help flying and maintenance leaders guide their decisions. “We're taking necessary steps to ensure our airmen operate as safely as possible in an inherently dangerous business,” Goldfein said. “I want to train hard and I want commanders to push themselves and their airmen to achieve high levels of readiness. Sometimes the right answer is knock it off ... sometimes it is push it up. Confidence in the air, safety on the ground and in the air, it's a commander's business.” The summary also cites the aging fleet of Air Force aircraft as a problem contributing to increased maintenance requirements and decreased aircraft availability. The Air Force has already started putting plans into place to address airmen's concerns, including adding more support back to squadrons, reducing additional duties, “enhancing information processes for aircrew mission planning” and cutting staff requirements, according to the release. https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2019/01/05/new-in-2019-heres-what-the-air-force-is-doing-about-aviation-mishaps

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  May 20, 2022 | International, Land

  Polish pick MBDA's Brimstone missile for their new fleet of tank-busting vehicles

  Brimstone has been in the news in the last few days after it emerged that Ukrainian troops had been using the British-supplied weapon to destroy Russian armor.

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  May 1, 2019 | International, C4ISR

  DARPA Tests Advanced Chemical Sensors

  DARPA's SIGMA program, which began in 2014, has demonstrated a city-scale capability for detecting radiological and nuclear threats that is now being operationally deployed. DARPA is building off this work with the SIGMA+ initiative that is focused on providing city- to region-scale detection capabilities across the full chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosive threat space. DARPA initiated a SIGMA+ pilot study last year known as ChemSIGMA to provide initial data and insights into how new chemical sensors using the existing SIGMA network would function. The chemical sensor package incorporates a chemical sensor, wind sensor and communications board into a weatherproof housing. Sensors report wind readings and real-time chemical information to a central cloud-hosted suite of fusion algorithms. “The algorithms were developed using a custom simulation engine that fuses multiple detector inputs,” said Anne Fischer, program manager in DARPA's Defense Sciences Office. “We built the algorithms based on simulant releases in a large metropolitan area – so we took existing data to build the algorithms for this network framework. With this network, we're able to use just the chemical sensor outputs and wind measurements to look at chemical threat dynamics in real time, how those chemical threats evolve over time, and threat concentration as it might move throughout an area.” In the pilot study, DARPA researchers from MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Physical Sciences Inc., and Two Six Labs, built a small network of chemical sensor packages. In partnership with the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and the Marion County Health Department, DARPA's performer teams deployed the network on-site at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in late April 2018. The chemical sensor network and the data collected during events such as the 2018 Indianapolis 500 were critical to the DARPA effort, allowing the team to assess the performance of the sensors and network algorithms. These tests were conducted in an urban environment to ensure that the system could handle complex and stochastic signals from species that are ever present in a city's chemical background. Significantly, the network-level algorithm successfully improved system performance by correctly suppressing false detection events at the individual detector level. The group of DARPA researchers was also able to collect a large relevant data set and valuable user feedback that will guide ongoing system development efforts. Further testing with safe simulant/concert smoke at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, August 2018 During additional tests in August 2018, a non-hazardous chemical simulant was released in the empty Indianapolis Motor Speedway at a realistic threat rate. Concert fog was also released to serve as a visible tracer. The propagation of the visible tracer was observed in aerial photography, and ChemSIGMA sensors and algorithms determined the release location with unprecedented accuracy. The web-based ChemSIGMA interface allows the user to view alerts in real time across a variety of devices. Multiple trials were conducted over the course of several days assessing performance over a variety of meteorological conditions. Releases occurred during daytime and nighttime with a full range of wind directions and speeds. The ChemSIGMA prototype system detected all of the simulant releases and generated zero false alarms over the course of testing. Department of Defense simulant testing at Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, October 2018 “We're looking at how we might make this network more robust and more mature,” Fischer said. “For example, we implemented a network at Dugway Proving Ground as part of a DoD test for simulant releases, and have shown that the network can respond to a number of chemical simulant threats different than those used in Indianapolis, as well as built-in capabilities for mobile releases. Over the past few months, the team has used these data sets to further refine the algorithms, and plans to integrate and test them with the ChemSIGMA system in test events scheduled later this year.” The successful pilot and simulant test of the ChemSIGMA system at the Indy500 and Dugway Proving Ground provided valuable, relevant, and realistic data sets for validation and verification of the source localization and plume propagation algorithms. DARPA is currently extending the capabilities for networked chemical detection by advancing additional sensor modalities, including short-range point sensors based on techniques, such as mass spectrometry, and long-range spectroscopic systems. As these systems are further developed and matured, they will be integrated into the SIGMA+ continuous, real-time, and scalable network architecture to increase the system's capabilities for city-scale monitoring of chemical and explosive threats and threat precursors. https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2019-04-30