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October 1, 2023 | International, Naval

UK gives BAE 4 billion pound contract for AUKUS submarine programme | Reuters

Britain has awarded BAE Systems a 4 billion pound ($4.9 billion) contract as part of the AUKUS programme with Australia and the United States to build attack submarines, defence minister Grant Shapps and the company said on Sunday.

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-announces-4-billion-pound-deal-build-attack-submarines-2023-10-01/

On the same subject

  • The Air Force’s 5 principles to advance artificial intelligence

    June 27, 2019 | International, Aerospace, Other Defence

    The Air Force’s 5 principles to advance artificial intelligence

    By: Kelsey Reichmann The Air Force has been on an almost three-year journey to integrate artificial intelligence into operations and that effort will soon be more apparent as the service plans to declassify its artificial intelligence strategy, Capt. Michael Kanaan, the service's co-chair for artificial intelligence, said June 26 at the AI World Government Conference in Washington, D.C. “We had to find a way to get us to a place where we could talk about AI in a pragmatic, principled, meaningful way,” said Kanaan. During his speech, Kanaan laid out five principles that have guided the Air Force with artificial intelligence in the meantime. They are: 1. Technological barriers will be a significant hurdle. Kanaan said the service has made it a point to limit technological obstacles. However, one problem contractors may face is higher priced products geared toward security-driven government programs versus the same, less expensive commercial programs. A new attitude toward commercial off-the-shelf technology within the service can help, he said. “Too often working with our agencies, they have to take risks in the framework of time, people and bespoke unique solutions to deploy on your systems,” Kanaan said. However, this does not have to be the case. “Accept commercial standards because unclassified does not mean un-secured." 2. Data needs to be treated like a strategic asset. “We used to ask the question, if a tree falls in the forest does it make a sound. Well, in the 21st century the real question to ask is was something there to measure it,” he said. He explained this involves looking at when and how to digitize workflows. 3. The Air Force must be able to democratize access to AI. “This is an opportunity now to say, machine learning as our end state, if done right, should be readable to everyone else,” Kanaan said. This will involve balancing support and operations and taking into consider the reality that the demographics of the traditional workforce are going to shift, Kanaan explained. “Not looking at the top one percent, but focusing on the 99 percent of our workforce,” he said. “The Air Force, of those 450,000 people, 88 percent are millennials [adults under 40]." Looking to digital natives in the integration process will be valuable because this younger slice of the workforce already has insights into how this technology works. 4. Computer skills must be viewed as strategic assets. Just as the Defense Department has treated foreign language skills as an asset, Kanaan said, the Air Force must view computer skills the same way. In the United States, 50,000 graduates qualified for 500,000 technology-based jobs each year, and the Air Force must promote emerging technology skills the way it did traditional electrical engineering, astronautics and aeronautics during the space race, Kanaan said. “I believe that it is time for another national defense education act," Kanaan said. 5. Communication, transparency and cooperation are imperative. As innovations are made, communication, transparency and cooperation are necessary for discussions with international governments, industry and academic partners, Kanaan said. “As Americans we should be communicating about the ethics of artificial intelligence and how we view society every single day. These are important topics and they do provide that signal to the rest of the world that we view our society in different ways than maybe some others and our values and norms are important because AI at its end state bolsters our biases.” Most importantly, these issues must be addressed sooner rather than later, Kanaan said. https://www.c4isrnet.com/artificial-intelligence/2019/06/26/the-air-forces-5-principles-to-advance-artificial-intelligence/

  • CENTCOM looks to industry for data-centric network

    September 21, 2020 | International, C4ISR

    CENTCOM looks to industry for data-centric network

    Andrew Eversden WASHINGTON — U.S. Central Command needs industry's help in designing a network infrastructure that provides improved secure information sharing with allies and partners, its top IT official said Sept. 17. Brig. Gen. Jeth Rey, director of command and control, communications, and computer systems at CENTCOM, said his team is working to establish a data-centric architecture that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to limit access to data based only on what a user needs. “What I have the team looking at is working in that transport agnostic, looking at a data-centric connection, and then how can we then use attributes to then release information to that person who is trying to access the data. And so that's where data centricity is at the end of the day trying to use machine learning and AI,” Rey said at the 2020 Intelligence and National Security Summit. “That's where we need help from industry.” Rey compared CENTCOM's need to the service provided by banks, where a person logs in with credentials, and then the bank reaches into its massive database, pulling out only the information specific to that person. CENTCOM, the largest combatant command, also has data and information sharing requirements with more than 50 nations, adding another degree of difficulty in developing a secure architecture where users can only access the necessary data. “We here at CENTCOM are going to work with partners, and we need to share our information with them,” Rey said. “We need that help in order to display from a single document with multiple security measures ... but release only that information on that document to that person by their credential.” The need Rey described is similar to an architecture developed by the U.S. intelligence community for its data access needs. That platform, known as IC GovCloud, enabled users to store data in one place and the community to implement security measures to limit personnel access to what they “need to know,” said Greg Smithberger, chief information officer at the National Security Agency and director of the agency's Capabilities Directorate. “We built the GovCloud from the ground up with this thought in mind so that with the data comes knowledge of where it came from and what the rules are in terms of how it needs to be handled and who has the need to know. And the systems are enforcing that need to know, so that if the humans make a mistake, there's a safety net there,” he said during the same webinar. https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/it-networks/2020/09/18/centcom-looks-to-industry-for-data-centric-network/

  • Contracts for September 9, 2021

    September 10, 2021 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

    Contracts for September 9, 2021

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