April 4, 2023 | International, Aerospace
OTTAWA, April 4, 2023 – Boeing [NYSE: BA] and CAE [NYSE: CAE; TSX: CAE] signed teaming agreements to expand multi-mission platform collaboration in Canada, Germany and Norway. These agreements utilize the complementary capabilities of each company to provide superior management, technical and cost-effective training solutions for the P-8A Poseidon program.
“These agreements aim to advance mission readiness for defense customers operating Boeing P-8 aircraft,” said Torbjorn Sjogren, Boeing vice president and general manager, Government Services. “Working together, Boeing and CAE can deliver outcome-based pilot and aircrew training, maintenance ground school, in-service support, and instructor training at the point of need.”
As a member of Team Poseidon in Boeing’s Canadian Multi-Mission Aircraft (CMMA) offering, CAE is part of a Canadian P-8 industrial footprint that builds on 81 Canadian partners on the platform.
“Mission success depends on advanced preparation and rapid response,” said Daniel Gelston, CAE Defense & Security president. “As a premier provider in flight training and simulation, we leverage collaboration to create an agile network of proven training, simulation and in-service support solutions to deliver critical readiness for defense forces worldwide.”
This collaboration amplifies a long-standing relationship spanning commercial and defence portfolios across the globe. For more than a decade CAE has delivered operational flight trainers on the Boeing P-8A platform supporting the U.S. Navy, Royal New Zealand Air Force and United Kingdom Royal Air Force.
https://boeing.mediaroom.com/news-releases-statements?item=131238
December 1, 2022 | International, C4ISR, Other Defence
The new office will help the Pentagon leverage private investment to overcome the "valley of death" problem that often derails technology programs.
June 10, 2019 | International, Other Defence
By: Kelsey Reichmann As AI becomes more prominent in the national security community, officials are grappling with where to use it most effectively. During a panel discussion at the C4ISRNET conference June 6, leaders discussed the role of industry building AI that will be used by the military. After studying small and big companies creating AI technology, Col. Stoney Trent, the chief of operations at the Pentagon's Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, said he found commercial groups do not have the same motivations that exist in the government. “Commercial groups are poorly incentivized for rigorous testing. For them that represents a business risk,” Trent said. Because of this, he the government needs to work with the commercial sector to create these technologies. “What the Defense Department has to offer in this space is encouragement, an incentive structure for better testing tools and methods that allows us to understand how a product is going to perform when we are under conditions of national consequence because I can't wait,” Trent said. “Hopefully, the nation will be at peace long enough to not have a high bandwidth of experiences with weapons implementations, but when that happens, we need them to absolutely work. That's a quality of commercial technology development.” For this to take place, the Department of Defense needs to help create the right environment. “All of this is predicated on the Pentagon doing things as well,” said Kara Frederick, associate fellow for the technology and national security program at the Center for a New American Security. “Making an environment conducive to the behaviors that you are seeking to encourage. That environment can be the IT environment, common standards for data processing, common standards for interactions with industry, I think would help.” Panelists said national security leaders also need to weigh the risks of relying more on AI technology, one of which is non-state actors using AI for nefarious purposes. Trent said he sees AI as the new arms race but noted that in this arena, destruction may be easier than creation. “AI is the modern-day armor anti-armor arms race,” Trent said. “The Joint AI Center, one of the important features of it is that it does offer convergence for best practices, data sources, data standards, etc. The flip side is we fully understand there are a variety of ways you can undermine artificial intelligence and most of those are actually easier than developing good resilient AI.” Frederick said part of this problem stems from the structure of the AI community. “I think what's so singular about the AI community, especially the AI research community, is that its so open,” Frederick said. “Even at Facebook, we open source some of these algorithms and we put it our there for people to manipulate. [There is this] idea that non-state actors, especially those without strategic intent or ones that we can't pin strategic intent to, could get a hold of some of these ways to code in certain malicious inputs [and] we need to start being serious about it.” However, before tackling any of these problems, leaders need to first decide when it is appropriate to use AI Rob Monto, lead of the Army's Advanced Concepts and Experimentation office, described this process as an evolution that takes place between AI and its users. “AI is like electricity,” he said. “It can be anywhere and everywhere. You can either get electrocuted by it or you target specific applications for it. You need to know what you want the AI to do, and then you spend months and years building out. If you don't have your data set available, you do that upfront architecture and collection of information. Then you train your algorithms and build that specifically to support that specific use case...AI is for targeted applications to aid decisions, at least in the military space, to aid the user.” Once the decision is made how and where to use AI, there are other technologies that must make advances to meet AI. One the biggest challenges, said Chad Hutchinson, director of engineering at the Crystal Group., is the question of hardware and characteristics such as thermal performance. “AI itself is pushing the boundaries of what the hardware can do,” Hutchinson said. Hardware technology is not the only obstacle in AI's path. These issues could stem from policy or human resource shortfalls. “What we find is the non-technology barriers are far more significant than the technology barriers,” Trent said. https://www.c4isrnet.com/show-reporter/c4isrnet-conference/2019/06/09/how-industry-can-build-better-ai-for-the-military/
December 10, 2018 | International, C4ISR
By: Mark Pomerleau The new head of the Marine Corps' nascent information directorate is focusing on three priorities: network modernization, putting new information-related units to work and gaining asymmetric advantage. The Marine Corps reorganized its leadership in 2017 to create a new three-star position, the deputy commandant for information, that would oversee all aspects of information war to include cyber, electronic warfare, signals intelligence and information operations. Over the summer, Lt. Gen. Lori Reynolds became the second officer to hold this new position. William Williford, executive director of Marine Corps Systems Command, provided an outline of various efforts to modernize the network during the Charleston Defense Contractors Association Defense Summit on Dec. 5. The initiative includes: broader adoption of Windows 10, creating a cloud cross functional team, starting a network cross functional team, fielding Tampa microwave terminals, protecting spectrum used for the F-35 and running a pilot program to help ensure GPS signals aren't jammed. Kenneth Bible, deputy director of the C4 directorate and deputy chief information officer, said during the same conference that the Marines still have IT solutions that date back to the Navy-Marine Corps Intranet days that have to be modernized The Marine Corps needs to divest of some of its legacy systems and modernize them, he said. He added that Marines are finding there are systems needed to get the network “up to snuff to go support that.” Additionally, he said, systems need to be capable of supporting the automation needed in order to make the network more effective. Regarding the second line of effort, the deputy commandant is focused on using the new Marine Expeditionary Force Information Groups, or MIGs. These teams will work on all information related capabilities, providing commanders a clearinghouse of options including cyber, intelligence, electronic warfare and information operations. Bible said Marine Corps leaders are working hard to figure out how the groups can directly help commanders. Third, Bible said the Marines want to gauge whether they can create an asymmetric advantage. “How do we shape the conflict before we end up in a conflict,” Bible said. “A lot of this is going to merge in the information environment.” Some of the efforts related to providing an asymmetric advantage will involve Navy partners, Bible said. He discussed the need to for Marines to fight to get to the fight. “We're probably not going to have enough organic aviation assets to get all the Marines to all the different places that an advanced expeditionary base operations concept [and] very distributed operations” demands," he said. That will require partnering with the Navy in some regards. https://www.c4isrnet.com/it-networks/2018/12/07/3-priorities-for-the-marines-information-directorate