March 28, 2023 | International, Naval
Singapore buys six combat vessels that can serve as drone motherships
Several foreign defense contractors are set to benefit from related work.
November 12, 2018 | International, C4ISR
TOP US INTELLIGENCE OFFICIAL SUE GORDON WANTS SILICON VALLEY ON HER SIDE
SUE GORDON, THE principal deputy director of national intelligence, wakes up every day at 3 am, jumps on a Peloton, and reads up on all the ways the world is trying to destroy the United States. By the afternoon, she has usually visited the Oval Office and met with the heads of the 17 intelligence agencies to get threat reports. The self-described “chief operating officer of the intelligence community” has a lot to worry about, but the nearly-30-year veteran is generally optimistic about America's future. Now, she says, she just needs Silicon Valley to realize that tech and government don't have to be opposed.
On a recent trip to Silicon Valley, Gordon sat down with WIRED to talk about how much government needs Silicon Valley to join the fight to keep the US safe. She was in town to speak at conference at Stanford, but also to convince tech industry leaders industry that despite increasing employee concerns, the government and tech have a lot of shared goals.
“I had a meeting with Google where my opening bid was: ‘We're in the same business'. And they're like ‘What?' And I said: ‘Using information for good,'” Gordon says.
That's a hard sell in Silicon Valley, especially in the post-Snowden years. After Snowden's leaks, tech companies and tech workers didn't want to be seen as complicit with a government that spied on its own people—a fact Gordon disputes, saying that any collection of citizen's information was incidental and purged by their systems. This led to a much-publicized disconnect between the two power centers, one that has only grown more entrenched and public in 2018, as Silicon Valley has undergone something of an ethical awakening.
Gordon agrees with and supports a broader awareness that technology can be abused, but came to Silicon Valley to explain why government and tech should solve those problems hand in hand.
Pairing Up
Gordon knows from public-private partnerships. The CIA's venture capital accelerator In-Q-Tel—which for nearly 20 years has invested in everything from malware-detection software to biochemical sensors to micro-batteries—was Gordon's idea. Groundbreaking at its conception, In-Q-Tel directly funds startups that could be of interest to national security, without limits on how that money can be used, and without owning the intellectual property. Among other successful investments, In-Q-Tel backed a company called Keyhole, which Google would go on to acquire and turn into Google Earth.
Full article: https://www.wired.com/story/sue-gordon-us-intelligence-public-private-google-amazon
On the same subject
-
-
July 17, 2018 | International, C4ISR
Is the ‘Google Translate’ of sensor systems coming?
By: Mark Pomerleau A recent flight test has demonstrated how a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency program could help legacy systems communicate with newer ones. The program, called System of Systems Integration Technology and Experimentation, is a collaboration between Lockheed Martin and DARPA. Using live assets and virtually simulated systems, the partnership exhibited interoperability between a ground station, flying test bed, a C−12 and flight test aircraft, transmitting data between them through an unknown partner capability called STITCHES. John Clark, vice president of ISR and UAS at Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, boiled down STITCHES to a simple analogy: it aggregates the data of one sensor type and interprets it for another type much the way Google Translate detects English and delivers Italian. This specific flight test looked at ISR and shortening decisions to strike, explained Clark. “It was all centered around the idea of kill chain timeline reduction and showing how information could be gathered,” he said, speaking to reporters at a media roundtable July 12. The current five-year program is nearing its end, but Clark shared that the objective was not to transition the capability to a service. “The whole premise behind it was to go prove that these types of system of system architectures could be employed much faster and this distributed idea was much nearer than we thought,” he said. The military services are striving to more seamlessly integrate information, systems and operations across the five domains of warfare, however, so any lessons learned could one day prove valuable. https://www.c4isrnet.com/intel-geoint/sensors/2018/07/16/is-the-google-translate-of-sensor-systems-coming/
-
September 7, 2018 | International, Aerospace
France-Parly satisfaite des nouvelles fonctionnalités de l'A400M
PARIS, 6 septembre (Reuters) - La ministre française de la Défense Florence Parly s'est déclarée jeudi satisfaite des nouvelles fonctionnalités en cours de test sur l'avion de transport militaire A400M d'Airbus. “Nous sommes dans une phase extrêmement positive”, a-t-elle observé lors d'une rencontre avec l'Association des journalistes professionnels de l'aéronautique et de l'espace (AJPAE), disant attendre l'intégralité des fonctionnalités en 2021. Les retards successifs du programme A400M ont conduit les pays clients, comme la France, à réceptionner des appareils n'ayant pas toutes les fonctionnalités contractuelles, comme le largage de parachutistes par les portes latérales, des équipements électroniques de défense et le ravitaillement en vol d'hélicoptères. En mars, Reuters avait révélé que l'armée allemande avait dit dans un rapport confidentiel voir un “risque important” que l'A400M n'ait pas toutes les capacités tactiques requises après 2021, au moment du retrait de sa flotte de C-160 Transall. “Chaque étape que nous passons est une étape qui se franchit avec succès et donc ceci aide chacun à être un peu patient”, a ajouté Florence Parly. L'armée française avait annoncé au printemps la réception de son 14e A400M, avec un objectif de 25 unités en 2025 et une cible de 50 à terme. Le président exécutif d'Airbus Tom Enders a fait état fin juillet d'avancées dans les négociations avec les pays clients de l'A400M pour parvenir à un amendement du contrat d'ici la fin 2018. https://fr.reuters.com/article/frEuroRpt/idFRL5N1VS3VA