Japan could become partner nation on UK-led future fighter effort, says program director

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  October 1, 2020 | International, Land, C4ISR, Security

  Secretive, never profitable Palantir makes its market debut

  Frank Bajak, The Associated Press BOSTON — Seventeen years after it was born with the help of CIA seed money, the data-mining outfit Palantir Technologies is finally going public in the biggest Wall Street tech offering since last year's debut of Slack and Uber. Never profitable and dogged by ethical objections for assisting in the Trump administration's deportation crackdown, Palantir has forged ahead with a direct listing of its stock, which is set to begin trading Wednesday. In its stock offering, the company isn't selling newly minted shares to raise money; it's simply listing existing shares for public trading. The low-key strategy may not generate the enthusiasm many technology offerings do. But it's in character for a secretive company long reliant on spies, cops and the military as customers — and whose founders are holding onto voting control of the company. The big question for both investors and company management: Can Palantir successfully transition from a business built on the costly handholding of government customers to serving corporate customers at scale? The company is a hybrid provider of software and consulting services that often embeds its own engineers with clients. Analysts say its future depends on selling multinationals on its tools for gathering disparate data from an ever-expanding data universe and using artificial-intelligence technology to find previously undetectable patterns. Those can theoretically guide strategic decisions and identify new markets much as they have aided in tracking terrorists and sorting military intelligence. The company sets itself apart from most U.S. technology providers, and just moved its headquarters to Denver from Silicon Valley. Palantir colors itself patriotic and belittles other tech firms that won't unquestionably support U.S. dominance in war fighting and intelligence. “Our software is used to target terrorists and to keep soldiers safe,” CEO Alex Karp wrote in a letter accompanying Palantir's offering prospectus. While Karp acknowledged the ethical challenge of building software that “enables more effective surveillance by the state,” Palantir's prospectus touts its work helping U.S. soldiers counter roadside bombings and fight the Islamic State group. The iconoclastic entrepreneur and PayPal co-founder endorsed President Donald Trump in 2016, worked on his transition team and holds the largest chunk of Palantir stock. Thiel already exerts tremendous power from the board of Facebook, which dominates global media and seeks to create a digital currency. In its IPO prospectus, Palantir paints a dark picture of faltering government agencies and institutions in danger of collapse and ripe for rescue by a “central operating system” forged under Thiel's auspices. As the offering is structured, Thiel will be the dominant voice among the Palantir co-founders who will retain voting control. “Is that someone who you want deciding how a component of the (national) security apparatus is designed?” asked New York University business professor Scott Galloway. “If you believe that power corrupts and checks and balances are a good idea, this is just from the get-go a really bad idea.” Earlier in September, BuzzFeed reported that Thiel hosted a known white nationalist, Kevin DeAnna, at a 2016 dinner party, citing emails it obtained and published whose authors refused to talk to the online news outlet. Thiel declined through a spokesman to discuss the report with The Associated Press. Critics say he shares the blame for Facebook's incomplete removal of toxic disinformation disseminated by the pro-Trump far-right fringe. Then there are Palantir's fundamentals, which Galloway considers lousy. The company has just 125 customers in 150 countries, including Airbus, Merck, Credit Suisse and the Danish National Police. Slightly less than half its 2019 revenues were from government agencies, and three clients — which Palantir did not name — accounted for almost a third of revenues. “They're massively unprofitable and they've never been able to figure it out,” Galloway said, noting that it took Google three years to earn a profit, and Amazon seven. Over a much longer span, Palantir has accumulated $3.8 billion in losses, raised about $3 billion and listed $200 million in outstanding debt as of July 31. Palantir, named for the mystical all-seeing stones from Tolkien's “Lord of The Rings,” has recently been deepening its relationship with Uncle Sam, including winning a modest contract early in the COVID-19 pandemic for helping the White House gather data on the virus' impact. Senior emerging technology analyst Brendan Burke of Pitchbook says he isn't worried that Thiel's association with Trump will hurt the company if Trump loses the election. “The political connections don't appear to be the main driver of their recent substantial contract wins,” he said, although he noted that government contracts can be more volatile than corporate ones, where Palantir's foothold is less firm. Palantir offers two software platforms. Foundry is designed to link disparate and largely incompatible data sources into a central operating system. It's the company's primary hope for broadening its business. An earlier product, Gotham, has been used by defense and intelligence analysts and police departments to identify patterns deep within datasets. But the value of “predictive policing” tools developed with the platform have been questioned for their potential to unfairly target people of color. The New Orleans and New York City police departments, once customers, have used it. A 2017 research paper by University of Texas sociologist Sarah Brayne, who studied the Los Angeles Police Department's use of Gotham, found the software could lead to a proliferation of unregulated personal data collected by police from commercial and law enforcement databases. On Monday, Amnesty International issued a briefing that says Palantir is failing to conduct human rights due diligence around its contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, calling it “deeply ironic” that the company crows about its determination not to work with regimes like China that abuse human rights. Palantir's ICE contracts involve the maintenance and improvement of two products used in deportation raids. One of them, its web-based Falcon tool, has enhanced data accessible to investigators “involving the illegal movement of people into, within, and out of the United States,” according to documents obtained by The Associated Press, including court records, and by the nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center in a freedom-of-information request. Palantir has acknowledged in its SEC filing that “unfavorable coverage in the media” and from social activists could hurt its business. It also says its contractual obligations might prevent it from being able to defend its actions publicly, although it recently named a former Wall Street Journal reporter to its board. Negative publicity over ICE contracts may also have hurt company recruitment on college campuses. https://www.defensenews.com/industry/2020/09/30/secretive-never-profitable-palantir-makes-its-market-debut/

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  September 11, 2019 | International, Land

  DSEI: Unleash the hornets: Combat vehicles and robots get new kit to increase standoff

  By: Jen Judson LONDON — A FLIR System that deploys tiny unmanned aerial vehicles from a ruggedized container affixed to the front of a vehicle is helping to shape how advanced teaming can be used on the tactical edge against near peer threats. At DSEI — a major defense exposition in London — the system that deploys Black Hornet UAVs, which is the system chosen by the U.S. Army for the Soldier Borne Sensor program, made its appearance in several variations around the showroom floor. Rheinmetall had it built onto the front of its Mission Master Unmanned Ground System representing a surveillance variant. At Kongsberg, the system is integrated with a remote weapon station. The idea is that the package of tiny UAVs can be forward deployed from a combat vehicle while soldiers stay inside and maintain standoff from enemy forces. The UAVs can perform reconnaissance and possible targeting assistance so the vehicle knows where it can shoot. The data from the UAVs tiny camera can feed right back into the vehicle's weapon station providing intel to the gunner, for instance. The concept was first unveiled in a prototype at the Association of the U.S. Army's annual conference in Washington in 2018, but it is now a full-up system ready for the market, according to Ole Aguirre, FLIR senior director of UIS Strategic Initiatives and Partnerships in the company's unmanned systems and integrated solutions division. The system accommodates four Black Hornets in four individual compartments, which close up to protect the little drones. Two UAVs can be deployed at once while the other two charge using power from the vehicle, Aguirre said. The entire box that can be attached to the front of the vehicle is ruggedized to the level it can withstand the environment of a tank, he added. The system can be controlled from inside the vehicle using the remote weapon station or a tablet or the traditional controls that go with the U.S. Army's Soldier Borne Sensor. It has been built using NATO standards so it can be integrated into command and control systems. Placing the box of UAVs outside of the vehicle is important so that a soldier wouldn't have to open up the hatch on a vehicle to throw one out and space is highly limited inside most tanks and combat vehicles. The Black Hornet's range is roughly a 2,000 meter radius, but FLIR is looking at how to extend the range of the UAV to meet a requirement defined by a pacing threat of 3,000 meters, Aguirre said. Because the system is versatile, it can be used on small UGVs all the way up to tanks and so FLIR sees opportunity across the U.S. Army's many vehicle modernization programs and also with current systems. The company is investing heavily in evaluating utility for the U.S. Army, Aguirre added, but there is also strong international interest in Europe and the Middle East particularly. The system is a step forward in conceiving feasible integration concepts for advanced teaming between UAVs and manned and unmanned ground vehicles. Two years ago at DSEI, there was a striking lack of integration of unmanned aircraft systems into vehicle concepts. For example, Finnish defense company Patria was the only one to display a concept integrating a drone with a vehicle — mounting the hand-launched Black Hornet atop a little stick on the roof of the back end of its armored modular vehicle. Eurosatory in 2018, held in Paris, showed a little more evolution in advanced teaming between aerial systems and vehicles. The U.S. Army's plans to evaluate a wide variety of advanced teaming concepts as part of a major modernization effort through its brand new Army Futures Command could be driving much of the proliferation of ideas now popping up at defense trade shows. https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/dsei/2019/09/11/unleash-the-hornets-combat-vehicles-and-robots-get-new-kit-to-increase-standoff

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  January 29, 2024 | International, Naval

  HII is awarded advanced planning contract fot USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) RCOH

   The contract, which has the total potential value of $913 million, includes engineering, design, material procurement and fabrication, documentation, resource forecasting and pre-overhaul inspections.