DARPA wants commanding robots to work like a video game

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  November 9, 2020 | International, Naval

  US Navy awards $43M contract for autonomous supply chain management

  Andrew Eversden WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy awarded a $42.6 million contract for autonomous supply chain management to One Network Enterprises, the company announced Nov. 4. Under the award, One Network Enterprises will work on modernizing the Navy's Naval Operational Supply System, an end-to-end supply chain management solution that supports maritime, aviation, expeditionary and shore support units. Through the NOSS solution, the Navy is modernizing legacy systems and applications to develop an integrated system that tracks all the commodities in its supply chain, including munitions; parts and repairables; medical supplies; petroleum, oils and lubricants; food and food preparation; and hazardous material. Under current capabilities, individual commodities are managed by multiple systems, according to the company news release. One Network will manage and support all commodities through a single, global federated system, the release said. “The confidence that the Navy has entrusted to One Network is another proof point regarding the capabilities of our multi-party network platform,” said David Stephens, executive vice president and general manager of government programs at One Network Enterprises. “The Navy will benefit from a modernized global platform that will never go legacy, supporting both ashore and afloat capabilities. “In addition, One Network's federated platform-to-platform integration enables the Navy with a Delayed/Disconnected, Intermittently Connected, Low Bandwidth Environment (typically referred to as D-DIL), which is ideal for deployed operations afloat. We look forward to providing a truly global and mobile One Network solution operating on all Navy ships and submarines with access from every shore-based location while working in both unclassified and classified environments.” The contract was awarded through the other transaction authority process. The company also recently won a $62 million contract with the Air Force to help configure its Master Data Management business processes to support the service's logistics portfolio. https://www.c4isrnet.com/it-networks/2020/11/06/us-navy-awards-43m-contract-for-autonomous-supply-chain-management

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  September 20, 2018 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  Obscure Pentagon Fund Nets $2B, Sets Pork Senses Tingling

  John M. Donnelly The Pentagon will soon have received about $2.3 billion in the last nine years — money the military never requested — for a special fund intended to help replace earmarks after Congress banned them, our analysis shows. Buried deep inside the $674.4 billion Defense spending measure for fiscal 2019 that the Senate is expected to vote on this week is a chart with one line showing a $250 million appropriation for the Defense Rapid Innovation Fund, the latest installment of sizable funding for a largely unknown program that quietly disburses scores of contracts every year. To supporters, the fund is a way to bankroll innovative systems that the military may not yet know it needs. To critics, the fund is just earmarking by another name. The kinds of systems that net contracts from the innovation fund run the gamut. In fiscal 2016, they included programs to demonstrate artificial intelligence systems for aerial drones, anti-lock brakes for Humvees and underwater communications systems for undersea drones. The systems may be technologies for which the military services have not yet established a requirement because they may not know what is technically possible. It is not clear how many of the systems actually become operational. The defense fund's eclipsing of the $2 billion mark comes as debate heats up in Washington over whether to revive earmarks. And the special account highlights key elements of that debate. Talk of earmarks 2.0 Earmarks have generally been defined as parochial spending, directed by lawmakers and received by people who have not competed for it. In 2011, after earmarks were tied to several scandals and spending projects seen as excess, Congress barred them — or at least a narrow definition of them, critics contend, noting that, among other loopholes, committees could still add money for parochial projects without spelling out who supports them. President Donald Trump suggested earlier this year that a return of earmarks, which were often used in horsetrading for votes, might be beneficial. Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, has suggested he would aim to bring back earmarks if his party takes control of the House next year. The senior Democrat on Senate Appropriations, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, has also supported a comeback for the practice. Republican leaders are less vocal right now, but many of them also support a return to earmarks. “I don't doubt that the next organizing conference for the next Congress will probably wrestle with this issue,” outgoing House Speaker Paul D. Ryan told reporters earlier this month. Account quietly amasses funds The Defense Rapid Innovation Fund was launched in 2010 (first as the Rapid Innovation Program) in the fiscal 2011 defense authorization law. It was a way to capture what proponents called the innovative spirit of programs called earmarks that were clearly about to be banned. Unlike earmarks, the defense fund's money would be competitively awarded by the Pentagon, not directed by Congress, supporters of the idea pointed out. Democrat Norm Dicks, then a senior Defense appropriator, and other advocates of the program described it at the time as a way to capture the innovation among smaller companies, including many who had received earmarks. “We have not always had an adequate way of bringing these smaller firms and their innovation into the defense pipeline,” Dicks said in 2010. Each year since its creation, the fund has received another installment of funds, never less than $175 million or more than $439 million. The program has awarded several hundred contracts, averaging about $2 million each, mostly for small businesses with technologies that were relatively mature and that could address some military need, according to a fiscal 2017 Pentagon summary of the program's results. Full article: http://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/obscure-pentagon-fund-nets-2-billion

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  May 16, 2018 | International, Aerospace

  The US Air Force Is Adding Algorithms to Predict When Planes Will Break

  The airlines already use predictive maintenance technology. Now the service's materiel chief says it's a “must-do for us.” The U.S. Air Force has started to use algorithms to predict when its aircraft will break, part of an effort to minimize the time and money they consume in the repair shop. The use of predictive analytics has been blazed by airlines, which monitor their fleets' parts in an effort to replace broken components just before — and crucially, not after — they break. “I believe it is a must-do for us,” said Gen. Ellen Pawlikowski, the head of Air Force Materiel Command, the arm of the Air Force that oversees the maintenance of its planes. She spoke Tuesday at a Defense Writers Group breakfast in Washington. “We see this as a huge benefit.” If the Air Force could reduce the risk of unexpected breakage — and the attendant need to fly replacement parts and repair crews around the globe — it could reduce costs and boost mission effectiveness. It could also increase the usefulness of the current fleet by reducing the number of aircraft that need to be be held in reserve as backups. It starts with gathering data, such as the temperature of engine parts or the stresses on the airframe. “We are trying to leverage what we already get off of airplanes, as opposed to trying to go in and put instruments in places,” Pawlikowski said. “It turns out there's quite a bit that's there, but it may not be a direct measurement. In order to measure the temperature in this one particular spot, I'm getting information somewhere else.” Artificial intelligence and machine learning can then determine patterns. The general said the Air Force has been learning a lot from Delta, the world's second-largest commercial airline. “Delta has demonstrated the effectiveness of predictive maintenance in dramatically reducing the number of delays to flights due to maintenance,” she said. Over the past three years, Air Mobility Command — the arm of the Air Force that oversees all of its large cargo planes and aerial refueling tankers — has been organizing the data it collects on some of its planes. It has started using the predictive maintenance technology on its massive C-5 airlifters. The Air Force is also using the technology on the B-1 bomber. “The B-1 is an airplane that we actually bought with a whole bunch of data that we weren't using,” Pawlikowski said. “We started to take that data in and start to analyze it....We're very excited about this because we see huge potential to improve aircraft availability and drive down the cost.” She said she “was impressed when I saw some of the data that they were showing me.” The Air Force Lifecycle Management Center, which reports to Pawlikowski, has been funding these trials “by finding the loose change in the seat cushions,” she said. “As we have now shown some things ... we're seeing more and more interest in it and we're looking at increasing the investment in that to bring it further,” Pawlikowski said of the predictive maintenance. Last September, Gen. Carlton “Dewey” Everhart, head of Air Mobility Command, stressed his desire to use predictive maintenance, but warned it would cost money to get the datafrom the companies that make the planes. “In some cases, we'll be working this collaboratively with our industry partners,” Pawlikowski said Tuesday. “In other cases, we'll be doing it completely organically.” Air Mobility Command is also using predictive maintenance technology on the C-130J airlifter. The latest version of the venerable Lockheed Martin cargo plane — the J model — collects reams of data as it flies. In April, the Lockheed announced it was teaming with analytics firm SAS to crunch that data. “Everything we've been doing up to a certain point has been looking in the rear-view mirror with the data,” said Lockheed's Duane Szalwinski, a senior manager with his company's sustainment organization who specializes in analytics. “We're going to be able to look forward.” Lockheed is working on a six-month demonstration for Air Mobility Command; officials hope to be able to predict when certain parts will break before a flight. “If we're able to do that, it kind of changes the game in how you maintain and operate a fleet,” Szalwinski said. The data will give military planners a wealth of information about their aircraft that could help determine the best aircraft to deploy. “All those things you now know you have insights as to what you will need at the next flight, so you act accordingly,” he said. “Once we prove that we understand the probability of failure of these parts ... all things then become possible,” Szalwinski said. “Now it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. And if you know when, you can start acting accordingly. It would be a gamechanger in the way you manage a fleet.” Lockheed also wants to use the predictive maintenance tech on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. “The beauty of this is that the toolsets that we're developing, the models, how we clean the data, how we build the models, how we build the algorithms, all of that is not unique to a platform,” Szalwinski said. Still, instituting predictive maintenance practices fleet-wide is not going to happen overnight, particularly as since it will take time to understand the data, Pawlikowski said. Using this technology will require a cultural shift among maintenance crews because they'll be replacing parts before they actually fail, Pawlikowski said. “One of the big benefits is the reduction in the amount of time the airmen on the flightline spends troubleshooting a broken part” because “we will take them off before they break,” she said. https://www.defenseone.com/business/2018/05/us-air-force-adding-algorithms-predict-when-planes-will-break/148234/