Leonardo, Airbus in talks to strengthen collaborations, paper says

On the same subject

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  July 22, 2020 | International, Land

  DARPA issues solicitation for moving-target recognition project

  Andrew Eversden WASHINGTON — The U.S. Defense Department's advanced research arm issued a broad agency announcement July 15 for technology that would use algorithms to identify moving military ground vehicles. The Moving Target Recognition program from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Strategic Technology Office is a “vital part” of DARPA's “Mosaic Warfare” vision, in which each weapon system is one “tile” in a large force package that overwhelms the adversary. For the program, DARPA is interested in algorithms and collection techniques that allow synthetic aperture radar, or SAR, sensors to “detect, geolocate, and image moving ground targets,” the announcement read. If the goals of the project are met, the MTR program will then work to develop automatic target recognition algorithms for the moving target images. “Emphasis is on military vehicle targets, including slow moving vehicles whose SAR signatures are superimposed on clutter,” the announcement noted. Test for moving target recognition will include airborne data collection experiments to test and evaluate the effectiveness of algorithms. Under the contract, performers will be required to provide the airborne radar sensors and flight services, while the government team will design experiments with moving ground vehicles. DARPA anticipates handing out multiple awards. The MTR program has two phases. Phase one will focus on SAR moving target detection, geolocation and imaging, according to the announcement. It has a performance period of two years and a six-month option. Phase two, which is solicited through the July 15 notice, will center on automatic target recognition. Second phase instructions will be provided to the phase one performers before the end of the phase one base period. No award amount was provided. The U.S. Army is also working through the challenges associated with advanced target recognition capabilities, such as ensuring that algorithms receive adequate and sufficient data to mature and learn. “If you're training an algorithm to recognize cats, you can get on the internet and pull up hundreds of thousands of pictures of cats,” Gen. Mike Murray, commander of Army Futures Command, said in June. “You can't do that for a T-72 [Russian tank]. You can get a bunch of pictures, but are they at the right angles, lighting conditions, vehicle sitting camouflaged to vehicle sitting open desert?” DARPA's mosaic warfare effort includes several other projects under the Strategic Technology Office, including one that would automate aerial dogfighting. The office is also developing two complementary systems that would identify combat systems in an area available for support missions and quickly plan their route to an area. https://www.c4isrnet.com/home/2020/07/21/darpa-issues-solicitation-for-moving-target-recognition-project/

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  March 21, 2024 | International, Land

  Lithuania pledges to spend at least 3% of GDP on defence

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  December 31, 2018 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  Budget Busters: What to Look For in 2019 and Beyond

  By PAUL MCLEARY The release of the 2020 defense budget is still over a month away, and it's already been a wild ride. A look at what has happened, and what might happen next. WASHINGTON: If there's one complaint that has sounded a consistent across the Joint Chiefs and Pentagon leadership in recent years, it has been the lack of predictability in year-to-year funding. If there's one thing we have learned about President Trump, it's that nothing is certain until the very end. And even when there's a decision, it can be flipped, rehashed, tinkered with or forgotten about in the time it take to knock out a Tweet on phone. After two years of budget certainty in 2018-19, the 2020 submission was humming along at $733 billion — until it wasn't. In late October, the number plummeted (relatively speaking) to $700 billion, until the president was convinced by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis — not yet on his way out at the time — to rocket it up to $750 billion. But even that number isn't certain. Most analysts see the 2020 submission settling around the $733 billion level. Visiting US troops at the Al Asad air base on Dec. 26, the president gave the latest vague update. “I mean, I want to see costs come down, too. But not when it comes to our military. You have to have the finest equipment anywhere in the world, and you have that — $716 billion. And this year, again, we're going to be — don't tell anybody because nobody else knows — even a little bit higher.” Whatever the number is, it appears likely that incoming acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan will be the one to deliver and defend it on Capitol Hill in February, as Mattis has been told to leave by Jan. 1. It's unclear what effect the firing of Mattis will have on the process, or if there will be any significant strategic shifts for the department given the change in leadership. As budget guru Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and International Studies told me this week — specifically in reference to the Space Force, but it really applies across the entire budget — “the thing to keep in mind is that this is, so far, just the Pentagon's proposal to the White House. It's not clear if the White House is going to agree to this. The president has a way of sticking to his ideas even if his own administration recommends otherwise.” Here are a few of the stories we've done over the past months breaking down what is happening, and what might — might — happen next. Full article: https://breakingdefense.com/2018/12/budget-busters-what-to-look-for-in-2019-and-beyond