In first, Australian tanker refuels Japanese jet midair

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  November 5, 2020 | International, C4ISR, Security

  Pentagon research office wants innovative tools to spot influence campaigns

  Andrew Eversden WASHINGTON — A new broad agency announcement shows that the Pentagon's top research arm wants to work with industry to develop technology that can track adversarial influence operations across social media platforms. The announcement from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for a project called INfluence Campaign Awareness and Sensemaking (INCAS) will use an automated detection tool to unveil influence operations online. “INCAS tools will directly and automatically detect implicit and explicit indicators of geopolitical influence in multilingual online messaging to include author's agenda, concerns, and emotion,” the BAA reads. The BAA comes as the federal government seeks solutions to defend against foreign influence campaigns, particularly surrounding political campaigns, that aim to sow discord among Americans with inflammatory messages. “The US is engaged with its adversaries in an asymmetric, continual, war of weaponized influence narratives. Adversaries exploit misinformation and true information delivered via influence messaging: blogs, tweets, and other online multimedia content. Analysts require effective tools for continual sensemaking of the vast, noisy, adaptive information environment to identify adversary influence campaigns,” the BAA reads. Through the project, DARPA seeks to improve upon current social media tools to track influence operations. The current tools, the solicitation reads, requires a major manual effort in which analysts have to sift through “high volumes” of messages and decide which ones are relevant and gaining traction, using tools for digital marketing. “These tools lack explanatory and predictive power for deeper issues of geopolitical influence,” the solicitation reads. “Audience analysis is often done using static, demographic segmentation based on online and survey data. This lacks the flexibility, resolution, and timeliness needed for dynamic geopolitical influence campaign detection and sensemaking.” The program has five technical areas. Technical area one focuses on using automated influence detection to enable analysts to analyze influence campaigns. The second area will “dynamically segment" the population that is responding to influence campaigns, and identify “psychographic attributes relevant to geopolitical influence,” such as “worldviews, morals and sacred values.” The INCAS tool's third technical area will assist analysts in linking influence indicators and population response over time across several platforms, in order to capture influence campaigns as they evolve over time. The fourth area will create infrastructure to provide data feeds from online sources to the other three technical areas, and the final technical area will conduct technology evaluations and will not be competed as part the the BAA. DARPA expects multiple awards for technical areas one and two, and single awards for technical areas three and four. Abstracts are due Nov. 17, 2020, with proposals due Jan. 8, 2021. Awards will be made around July 2012 using standard procurement contracts or Other Transaction Agreements. https://www.c4isrnet.com/artificial-intelligence/2020/11/03/pentagon-research-office-wants-innovative-tools-to-spot-influence-campaigns/

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  May 20, 2022 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  La Commission européenne propose une exonération de TVA sur les investissements groupés dans le domaine de la Défense

  DÉFENSE La Commission européenne propose une exonération de TVA sur les investissements groupés dans le domaine de la Défense En 2021, les Etats européens consacraient 220 Md€ à leur Défense et promettent encore d'en augmenter les investissements. La Commission a remis en garde mercredi 18 mai contre des investissements sans coordination européenne, qui pourraient aboutir à un immense gaspillage. Quand tous les Etats respecteront la règle de l'OTAN des 2% du PIB investis dans la Défense, 67 Md€ supplémentaires seront investis chaque année par les Etats européens. Josep Borrell, le haut représentant aux affaires étrangères et à la sécurité, a souligné hier « Si les 27 augmentaient de façon homothétique leurs dépenses sur une base nationale, on aboutirait à un énorme gaspillage d'argent, sans aucun gain de sécurité, puisqu'on aurait toujours une structure militaire déformée comme aujourd'hui ». Le gaspillage serait d'autant plus grand que les membres de l'Union achètent à plus de 60% leur matériel militaire à l'étranger. « Le plus important, c'est comment investir », a déclaré la présidente de la Commission européenne, Ursula von der Leyen. La Commission propose une task force et un premier fonds d'urgence de 500 M€ pour inciter les Etats membres à de l'acquisition conjointe. Et cet automne, pour inciter les Etats membres à coordonner leurs investissements, elle proposera aux chefs d'Etat « une exonération totale de TVA pour les achats groupés de matériel militaire européen » a annoncé Ursula von der Leyen. Ces propositions avaient été demandées par les chefs d'Etat européens lors du sommet de Versailles de mars. Elles seront discutées fin mai, lors du Conseil européen. Le Figaro et Les Echos du 19 mai

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  December 17, 2020 | International, Land

  European Union awards grant to forge unmanned ground vehicle standard

  By: Sebastian Sprenger COLOGNE, Germany — The European Commission has awarded Estonia and the country's robotics company Milrem a grant to lead the way on a standard architecture for military unmanned ground vehicles, the company announced. The deal, worth close to $40 million and signed Dec. 11, formally kicks off a pan-European development for a new generation of battlefield ground robots. Named Integrated Modular Unmanned Ground System, or iMUGS, the project uses Milrem's THeMIS vehicle as a reference platform for creating a “standardized European-wide ecosystem for aerial and ground platforms,” according to the company. Also covered by the project is relevant technology in the fields of command and control, communications, sensors, payloads, and algorithms. The connection to the European Union's coffers comes through the bloc's European Defence Industrial Development Programme. Besides Estonia as the lead, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Latvia and Spain also are part of the iMUGS group, adding a combined €2 million (U.S. $2.4 million) to the effort. The countries each bring their relevant national companies to the table, including Safran Electronics & Defense, Nexter Systems, Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, Diehl Defence, and Bittium Wireless. “Estonia has the honor and a great responsibility taking the lead in this project as nothing on a similar scale has been conducted before,” said Martin Jõesaar, chief of the project office in the Estonian Centre for Defence Investment. “Our goal is not only making iMUGS a one-time effort, but to build it into a base project for future developments. Our long-term goal is that each of the modular systems built will pave a way for further innovation in its field.” While the sums involved in iMUGS are relatively small in the world of defense programs, the effort has the potential to shape the European market for military robotic vehicles. The initiative is a prime example of defense companies like Milrem, some of them years ago, sensing a chance to position their own offerings firmly in the thicket of European defense priorities. But the THeMIS robot is not the only game in town. Rheinmetall is equally trying to position its unmanned portfolio in the European market, even without EU backing. In the case of its Mission Master vehicle, the intellectual property belongs to the company's Canadian division, which makes support through EU channels tricky. Still, the vehicle is being tried by the land forces of several countries on the European continent. According to Milrem, European countries are expected to need thousands of ground robots during the next 10-15 years, creating a market valued in the billions of euros. “With seven participating nations and key industrial players, the unmanned ground system developed during iMUGS is expected to become the preferred European solution for integrating into armed units,” the company claims. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2020/12/16/european-union-awards-grant-to-forge-unmanned-ground-vehicle-standard/