May 20, 2020 | International, C4ISR, Security
By THERESA HITCHENSon May 19, 2020 at 5:05 PM
WASHINGTON: DoD's Research and Engineering (R&E) office has launched a new initiative to develop best practices for the many programs to design and build artificial intelligence (AI) applications, says Mark Lewis, director of modernization.
AI is one of DoD's top research and development priorities, charged to the Director of R&E Mike Griffin.
The standards initiative is the brain child of newly appointed AI technical director Jill Chrisman, Lewis told the virtual “Critical Issues in C4I Conference 2020,” sponsored by AFCEA and George Mason University.
“When Jill first joined us just a couple of weeks ago, I asked her to give me a site view of all the efforts underway in AI across the department, and kind of give me an evaluation of where we stood,” Lewis explained today. However, he said, because DoD has “so many hundreds of programs that we really couldn't do a fair evaluation of each individual activity.”
So, instead R&E has decided “to establish a series of standards, if you will, principles and practices that we consider to be good practices for artificial intelligence engineering,” he said. “I liken it to systems engineering.”
A key goal of the new effort is to break down stovepipes in order to allow the various DoD AI efforts to share databases and applications.
In addition, Lewis said, R&E is aiming to “figure out what are the artificial intelligence applications that will have the biggest impact on the warfighter.” This could involve moving out prototypes rapidly so that warfighters have an opportunity to “play with them, experiment with them, and figure out what makes their job more effective,” he added. At the same time, it would enable warfighters to quickly reject things that are not useful or overly complicated.
Lewis said that developing autonomous systems is another top priority. That portfolio of effort is handled by assistant director Wayne Nickols, and is focused on development autonomous systems that can team seamlessly with humans.
“We want autonomy systems that will operate in ways that put human life at lower risk,” he explained. “If we can if we can have a robotic system as a target, instead of a human being as a target, that's that's our preferred approach.”
In his wide-ranging discussion, Lewis also expounded on DoD's research goals for quantum science — a focus area that he said is somewhat less well developed than others on DoD's high priority list.
“There is a lot of hype associated with quantum science,” he said bluntly. “People are talking about quantum computers that will, in a few years, replace our fastest supercomputers, quantum communication technology, quantum key encryption techniques. And frankly, a lot of it is promising — but it's also very very far term.”
That said, Lewis noted that there are two near-term opportunities for DoD in the field: enabling back-up positioning, navigation and timing capability in case GPS satellites are degraded in anyway; and future “exquisite sensors for a variety of applications.”
https://breakingdefense.com/2020/05/dod-creating-standards-for-service-ai-programs/
June 14, 2023 | International, Aerospace
Germany plans to use a system made by Saab as it aims to enable Eurofighter jets for a role in electronic warfare, according to a document seen by Reuters on Wednesday.
July 16, 2019 | International, Aerospace
By CHRISTOPHER DENNIS RAF LAKENHEATH, England — A $205 million construction project to prepare RAF Lakenheath for the arrival of two squadrons of U.S. Air Force F-35A Lightning II fighter jets in 2021 officially got underway Monday. The commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe - U.S. Air Forces Africa, Gen. Jeffrey Harrigian, and other dignitaries plunged shovels into dirt at what will become the first permanent site for U.S. F-35s in Europe. U.K. firms Kier and VolkerFitzpatrick will build a flight simulator facility, maintenance unit, hangars and storage units at the site, in time for the arrival of 48 F-35s in November 2021. The Royal Air Force currently has nine F-35s at RAF Marham, about 25 miles north of Lakenheath. “This will be a great opportunity to reinforce together how we will train, execute and operate on a daily basis, and allow us to deepen what is a critically important relationship,” Harrigian said at the groundbreaking. The project is the first in a broad program to support Air Force operations in the U.K. A further $1 billion is expected to be invested in the program over the next seven to 10 years, said the Defense Infrastructure Organization, which last year awarded the contract for the F-35 campus. “The project team is in good shape — we are on schedule for completion in 2021,” Kier's managing director of aviation and defense James Hindes was quoted as saying by The Construction Index, an industry website. The completed campus will host around 1,200 U.S. airmen. Currently, more than 9,100 U.S. servicemembers are based in the U.K, according to Pentagon data. Recent problems with engine delivery of the F-35A are not expected to delay the arrival of America's newest fighter jet at Lakenheath, a 48th Fighter Wing spokeswoman said Monday. Of the 81 engines that were delivered in 2018, 86% were late, according to a Government Accountability Office report in April. That was up from 48% that were not delivered on time the previous year, when fewer engines were delivered. The delays were due in part to an increase in the “average number of quality issues per engine”— 941 in 2018 against 777 a year earlier, the GAO report said. United Technologies' Pratt and Whitney unit, the only company to make the engines, is under a corrective action request from the Defense Contract Management Agency for “poor delivery performance,” according to a July report by Bloomberg News. https://www.stripes.com/news/construction-of-first-permanent-us-f-35-campus-in-europe-begins-at-lakenheath-1.590422
August 14, 2019 | International, Aerospace
Michael Bruno United Technologies (UTC) and Raytheon are working hard to convince shareholders to approve their mega-merger. L3 Harris Technologies is riding high after its heritage companies consolidated recently. Industry insiders are making bets on who is next. But Honeywell International has been conspicuously absent in all the major merger and acquisition (M&A) moves in recent years. Why? Honeywell Aerospace chief executive Tim Mahoney recently explained how his company still plans to take advantage of the wave of consolidation hitting aerospace and defense. “We've looked,” Mahoney told an Aug. 7 investor conference. “We've never thought—and we continue to not think—that scale is a major discriminator and a differentiator within our marketplace. Having said that, you need to be large enough to be relevant, and we have been at that point. But scale is not something that is attractive or makes you more attractive from an OEM perspective or from an aftermarket perspective. We've continued to differentiate ourselves relative to value-added offerings.” Mahoney spoke during a live interview with analyst Sheila Kahyaoglu at the Jefferies Global Industrials Conference. While Honeywell has remained active with bolt-on acquisitions—including the July 24 announcement it will buy autopilot specialist TruTrak Flight Systems for an undisclosed amount—the company has not consummated a prime- or OEM-level deal and even walked away from talks with UTC in 2016. That same year, Honeywell did buy warehouse automation specialist Intelligrated for $1.5 billion. And Honeywell leaders have long assured Wall Street that they keep their eyes open in A&D, as Mahoney reaffirmed. But they have complained that valuations were too rich to be conducive to dealmaking. Mahoney also indicated that Honeywell could take advantage of the consolidation trend in another way. “We've actually gone back and looked at when there has been very significant consolidations, or two companies coming together,” he explained. “That has actually helped us from a market share perspective, because typically when there's a large-scale integration of two companies, those two companies become inwardly focused, which is understandable. “As a result, we've been opportunistic relative to that,” he continued. “If you look at our cockpit systems business or some of those areas where we've competed with some of the companies that have consolidated, our auxiliary power unit business, you would see that we've actually grown disproportionately larger during those time periods.” One area Honeywell is now focusing on growing is its new big-data analytics software Forge, which the company recently rolled out for airlines and other industrial companies (Aviation DAILY, June 6). While the software expectedly looks to provide aircraft operators with predictive maintenance, fuel optimization and other flight operation benefits, Honeywell is looking to add ground operations through an expanding experiment with Swissport, one of the world's largest airport ground service providers. Last December, Honeywell and Swissport signed a five-year agreement initially to apply Honeywell's GoDirect Ground Handling product used across Swissport's global operation base. Ben Driggs, president of Honeywell Connected Aircraft, told the investor conference that the goal is to achieve faster airplane turnarounds in the 20-40% of the time the aircraft is on the ground. He said the partnership is first being implemented in Kansai International Airport (KIX) for Osaka, Japan, with Miami, Basel, Switzerland and “numerous” other Swissport airports planned. https://aviationweek.com/defense/big-ad-firms-seem-be-merging-or-acquiring-where-s-honeywell