July 19, 2023 | International, Land
GM Defense tackling battlefield power for Marines through DIU effort
GM Defense wants to pave the way for the U.S. Marine Corps to feel comfortable fielding an all-electric vehicle.
July 10, 2020 | International, C4ISR, Security
Pentagon AI center shifts focus to joint war-fighting operations
The Pentagon's artificial intelligence hub is shifting its focus to enabling joint war-fighting operations, developing artificial intelligence tools that will be integrated into the Department of Defense's Joint All-Domain Command and Control efforts.
“As we have matured, we are now devoting special focus on our joint war-fighting operation and its mission initiative, which is focused on the priorities of the National Defense Strategy and its goal of preserving America's military and technological advantages over our strategic competitors,” Nand Mulchandani, acting director of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, told reporters July 8. “The AI capabilities JAIC is developing as part of the joint war-fighting operations mission initiative will use mature AI technology to create a decisive advantage for the American war fighter.”
That marks a significant change from where JAIC stood more than a year ago, when the organization was still being stood up with a focus on using AI for efforts like predictive maintenance. That transformation appears to be driven by the DoD's focus on developing JADC2, a system of systems approach that will connect sensors to shooters in near-real time.
“JADC2 is not a single product. It is a collection of platforms that get stitched together — woven together ― into effectively a platform. And JAIC is spending a lot of time and resources focused on building the AI component on top of JADC2,” said the acting director.
According to Mulchandani, the fiscal 2020 spending on the joint war-fighting operations initiative is greater than JAIC spending on all other mission initiatives combined. In May, the organization awarded Booz Allen Hamilton a five-year, $800 million task order to support the joint war-fighting operations initiative. As Mulchandani acknowledged to reporters, that task order exceeds JAIC's budget for the next few years and it will not be spending all of that money.
One example of the organization's joint war-fighting work is the fire support cognitive system, an effort JAIC was pursuing in partnership with the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab and the U.S. Army's Program Executive Office Command, Control and Communications-Tactical. That system, Mulchandani said, will manage and triage all incoming communications in support of JADC2.
Mulchandani added that JAIC was about to begin testing its new flagship joint war-fighting project, which he did not identify by name.
“We do have a project going on under joint war fighting which we are going to be actually go into testing,” he said. “They are very tactical edge AI is the way I'd describe it. That work is going to be tested. It's actually promising work — we're very excited about it.”
“As I talked about the pivot from predictive maintenance and others to joint war fighting, that is probably the flagship project that we're sort of thinking about and talking about that will go out there,” he added.
While left unnamed, the acting director assured reporters that the project would involve human operators and full human control.
“We believe that the current crop of AI systems today [...] are going to be cognitive assistance,” he said. “Those types of information overload cleanup are the types of products that we're actually going to be investing in.”
“Cognitive assistance, JADC2, command and control—these are all pieces,” he added.
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October 2, 2019 | International, Land
Pencils down: Bids are in to replace the US Army’s Bradley fighting vehicle
By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — The bids are in for a chance to build prototypes for the Army's Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle that will replace its Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle. Among them is a Raytheon and Rheinmetall team putting forward Rheinmetall's Lynx 41 Infantry Fighting Vehicle, and General Dynamics Land Systems, which showcased its Griffin III technology demonstrator equipped with a 50mm cannon a year ago at the Association of the U.S. Army's annual exposition. It is currently unknown if any other teams submitted bids by the service's set deadline of Oct. 1. None have come forward publicly despite rumors of a dark horse or two. Absent from the usual brood of combat vehicle manufacturers is BAE Systems. Defense News broke the news earlier this year that the company wouldn't compete in the OMFV competition. Textron has joined the Raytheon and Rheinmetall team with plans to, if chosen to build the new vehicle, build Lynx here in the United States at its Slidell, Louisiana, manufacturing facility. Raytheon and Rheinmetall announced a joint venture Oct. 1 — calling it Raytheon Rheinmetall Land Systems LLC — to pursue the OMFV competition. “General Dynamics Land Systems submitted our OMFV proposal and bid sample to the US Army on 27 September. GD's bid sample was purpose built to address the desired system lethality, survivability and mobility as substantiation of our response to the Army's request for proposal,” the company said in a statement sent to Defense News. The company did not provide details on the submission. GDLS did note, however, that it is proposing a “purpose built vehicle” using technologies from other platforms and “years of investment in advanced capabilities to include a 50mm cannon,” according to the statement. The Army released its request for proposals in March opening a competition to build prototypes. The service plans to choose from the pool of bidders up to two teams to build 14 prototypes each. The service will choose a winner that will start replacing Bradleys in 2026 that is designed to better operate in future environments that would allow soldiers to maneuver to a position of advantage and “to engage in close combat and deliver decisive lethality during the execution of the combined arms maneuver,” according to an Army statement issued along with the RFP release. Some of the threshold requirements for OMFV are a 30mm cannon and a second-generation, forward-looking infrared system, or FLIR. Objective requirements are a 50mm cannon and a third-generation FLIR. Brig. Gen. Ross Coffman, who is in charge of Next-Generation Combat Vehicle (NGCV) modernization efforts, said at the Defense News Conference in September that he is confident the requirements set for OMFV are right and had no plans to change them. The selected prototypes will go through “rigorous” operational testing and soldier assessments. The Army plans to downselect to one vehicle for low-rate initial production following the assessments and testing. https://www.defensenews.com/land/2019/10/01/pencils-down-bids-are-in-for-armys-bradley-fighting-vehicle-replacement
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August 21, 2019 | International, Land
Pentagon terminates program for redesigned kill vehicle, preps for new competition
By: Jen Judson UPDATE: This story has been updated to include a statement from Raytheon. WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has moved from taking a “strategic pause” on the Redesigned Kill Vehicle program to outright killing it. The Department of Defense decided to terminate the current Boeing contract to develop the RKV — effective Aug. 22 — “due to technical design problems,” according to an Aug. 21 statement by the department. Raytheon is the actual developer of the RKV and serves as a sub-contractor to Boeing. The RKV would have replaced the current Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV) on the Ground-Based Interceptor, which makes up the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system designed to protect the homeland from ballistic missile threats. It would have also been fielded on all future ground-based interceptors — a total of 64 ultimately. The EKV is designed to destroy targets in high-speed collisions after separating from the booster rocket. The EKV required technical changes in the past several years due to issues in tests. The Missile Defense Agency decided to initiate a program to redesign the kill vehicle. In the meantime, MDA has had several successful tests of the GMD system with the EKV following engineering changes. Now that the RKV is dead in the water, the Pentagon plans to move forward with a new, next-generation interceptor competition, the statement said. According to a defense official, no more ground-based interceptors will be built, and all future interceptors that are fielded as part of the GMD system will be the new interceptors. “Ending the program was the responsible thing to do,” Mike Griffin, undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, said in the statement. “Development programs sometimes encounter problems. After exercising due diligence, we decided the path we're going down wouldn't be fruitful, so we're not going down that path anymore. This decision supports our efforts to gain full value from every future taxpayer dollar spent on defense.” With the blessing of the undersecretary of defense, Griffin made the decision on Aug. 14 to terminate the program, one week after he told reporters at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama, to expect a decision on the way forward for RKV soon. MDA and Boeing in December 2018 deferred a critical design review of the RKV “due to the failure of certain critical components to meet technical requirements as specified in the development contract,” the statement noted. After MDA assessed the issues, it issued a stop work order on the contract in May to analyze alternative options. “The department ultimately determined the technical design problems were so significant as to be either insurmountable or cost-prohibitive to correct,” the statement said. The DoD plans to take data garnered from research and testing of the RKV prior to its cancellation to inform the next-generation interceptor program, “which will include a new kill vehicle,” according to the statement. “The U.S. Missile Defense Agency is updating its requirements in the face of an increasingly complex threat environment," Raytheon said in a statement. The company “supports their decision to cease work on the Redesigned Kill Vehicle (RKV) and initiate a competition for the next-generation interceptor to meet these advanced threats. Raytheon will continue to develop and offer a wide range of advanced missile defense technologies available to protect the United States now and in the future.” There are 44 ground-based interceptorss in place at Fort Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, with plans to add 22 additional missile silos at Fort Greely to support 20 more ground-based interceptors. The defense official said the Pentagon is still working through the details of a new, next-generation interceptor competition, including when it will be initiated and the pace at which the technology will be developed and fielded. https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2019/08/21/dod-tanks-redesigned-kill-vehicle-program-for-homeland-defense-interceptor/