US Army taps RTX for $117 million infrared sensor deal

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  April 23, 2020 | International, Aerospace

  Lockheed looks to sell additional F-16s to customers in Africa, Asia and South America

  By: Valerie Insinna WASHINGTON — Lockheed Martin anticipates another wave of international F-16 sales, with countries from Africa, South America and Southeast Asia among those interested in purchasing the jet, the company's chief financial officer said Tuesday. “I think this is a good fourth-generation aircraft for those customers that can't afford the F-35 or, frankly, can't at this time buy the F-35,” Lockheed CFO Kenneth Possenriede told investors during an April 21 earnings call. “It might be a good intermediary step for customers to go from the F-16 to F-35. So we see it frankly as complementary and not competing against themselves.” Unlike the F-35 program, which is seeing disruption within its supply chain that could delay future deliveries, the F-16 production line has experienced little impact as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, Possenriede said. The company moved production of the F-16 production line from Fort Worth, Texas, to Greenville, South Carolina, in 2019 to accommodate production of 16 Block 70 aircraft for Bahrain. Since Bahrain's order in 2018, Lockheed has garnered contracts for eight F-16s for Bulgaria, 14 aircraft for Slovakia, and is working with the U.S. government on a sale of 66 jets for Taiwan. “We also have a couple of orders for F-16 that we're working to try to shape,” Possenriede said. “There is an African country that is interested in F-16, so we're hopeful that will happen. [There is also a] South American country, and then there are some Southeast Asian countries that are interested in F-16 as well.” Possenriede didn't detail which nations were considering purchases of the F-16, as defense companies typically wait until international militaries publicly declare their interest in a sale before talking about specific customers. Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace analyst with the Teal Group, said there's a “pretty good chance” that some of those orders materialize. “Lockheed was doing a disservice by forgetting the F-16 program for so many years. They had this idea that the future was F-35 and nothing but F-35, ignoring the part of the market that is not prepared to buy the F-35 price tag,” he said. “It's actually a really good franchise with a really solid core market. It seems ill-advised to neglect it.” If a new customer in Africa is looking to buy F-16s, it could be Botswana, which has indicated an interest in buying fighter jets, Aboulafia said. Lockheed has already sold F-16s to Morocco and Egypt, and the U.S. State Department in 2019 cleared Morocco for new F-16s and upgrades. In South America, Lockheed has been trying to sell F-16s to Argentina for years, but Aboulafia believes a second order for Chile is a more likely prospect. In Southeast Asia, a sale to Indonesia “would seem to be one of the most likely possibilities,” he added. https://www.defensenews.com/global/mideast-africa/2020/04/22/lockheed-looking-to-sell-additional-f-16s-to-customers-in-africa-south-america/

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  December 3, 2019 | International, C4ISR

  France’s armed forces minister: How AI figures into operational superiority

  By: Florence Parly Robot vs. human: This is the new battle in vogue. Ask Col. Gene Lee, a former fighter pilot and U.S. Air Force pilot trainer, defeated in 2016 by artificial intelligence in an air combat simulation. This specific AI program, even deprived of certain controls, is able to react 250 times faster than a human being. It is one story among many others of how AI technologies play and will play a leading role in operational superiority over the next decades. I personally choose not to oppose the human to the robot. There is no discussion of replacing human intelligence by artificial intelligence, but it will be essential in increasing our capabilities manyfold. AI is not a goal, per se; it must contribute to better-informed and faster decision-making for the benefit of our soldiers. AI means unprecedented intelligence capabilities. Crossing thousands of satellite images with data provided by the dark web in order to extract interesting links: This is what big-data analysis will make possible. AI also means better protection for our troops. To evacuate wounded personnel from the battlefield, to clear an itinerary or a mined terrain — as many perilous tasks that we will soon be able to delegate to robots. Lastly, AI means a stronger cyber defense. Cyber soldiers will be capable of countering at very high speed the increasingly stealthy, numerous and automated attacks that are threatening our systems and our economies. We have everything to win in embracing the opportunities offered by artificial intelligence. This is why the French Ministry of Armed Forces has decided to invest massively in this area. However, we are not naïve, and we do not ignore the risks associated with the development of emerging technologies such as AI. Hence, we chose to develop defense artificial intelligence according to three major principles: abiding by international law, maintaining sufficient human control and ensuring the permanent responsibility of the chain of command. To ensure daily compliance with these principles over the long term and to feed our ethical thought, as new uses of AI appear every day, I decided to create a ministerial ethics committee focused on defense issues. This committee will take office at the very end of this year and will come as an aid to decision-making and anticipation. Its main role will be to address questions raised by emerging technologies and their potential use in the defense field. At the heart of these questions stands an issue that is of interest but also of concern, both within the AI community and within civil society. It comes down to the lethal autonomous weapon systems that some call “killer robots” — weapon systems that would be able to operate without any form of human supervision, that would be able to alter the framework of the mission they are allocated or even assign new missions to themselves. It is important to know that such systems do not exist yet in today's theaters of operation. However, debating about them is legitimate. In fact, France did introduce this issue in 2013 to the United Nations in the framework of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. We do wish these discussions to continue in this multilateral framework, the only one that can eventually bring about a regulation of military autonomous systems, as it is the only one that is altogether universal, credible and efficient. We cannot rule out the risk of such weapons being developed one day by irresponsible states, or falling into the hands of nonstate actors. The need to federate with all other nations in the world is even more imperative. France defends its values, respects its international commitments and remains faithful to them. Our position is unambiguous and has been expressed in the clearest terms by President Emmanuel Macron: France refuses to entrust the decision of life or death to a machine that would act fully autonomously and escape any form of human control. Such systems are fundamentally contrary to all our principles. They have no operational interest for a state whose armed forces abide by international law, and we will not deploy any. Terminator will never march down the Champs-Elysées on Bastille Day. Florence Parly is the armed forces minister in France. https://www.defensenews.com/outlook/2019/12/02/frances-armed-forces-minister-how-ai-figures-into-operational-superiority/

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  August 13, 2020 | International, C4ISR, Security

  Deloitte wins $106 million contract with the Pentagon’s AI hub

  Andrew Eversden WASHINGTON — The Defense Information Systems Agency awarded a $106 million contract to Deloitte Consulting to build the Pentagon's artificial intelligence hub's AI development platform, the U.S. Department of Defense announced Aug. 12. The company will “design and build” the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center's Joint Common Foundation, a capability that DoD AI leadership has stated will be integral in developing, testing and fielding AI capabilities. The contract has a one-year base period worth $31 million with three option years through August 2024. Work is scheduled to start Aug. 17, according to Lt. Cmdr. Arlo Abrahamson, spokesperson for the JAIC. “The Joint Common Foundation will provide an AI development environment to test, validate and field AI capabilities at scale across the Department of Defense,” Abrahamson said. “The impact of the JCF will come from enterprise‐wide access to AI tools and data for AI developers across the Department and its partners that will help synchronize AI projects, reduce development redundancy and enable the broad deployment of AI-enabled solutions to the tactical edge where front line operators can benefit from these capabilities.” Deloitte will serve as the lead system integrator for all contractor solutions for the JCF, he said. It will “provide, operate, maintain, secure and enhance the JCF with platforms and tools that can be shared and distributed to end-users across the Department of Defense enterprise,” according to the press release. The Joint Artificial Intelligence Center is the DoD's lead organization on accelerating AI adoption across the department. The center has undertaken several projects since being stood up in 2018, including predictive maintenance and disaster relief work. Its portfolio continues to expand, this year taking on its first lethality project—known as the joint warfighting initiative—and entering the information warfare fight as well. The JAIC also awarded a five-year contract potentially worth up to $800 million to Booz Allen Hamilton in May for work related to the joint war fighting initiative. The award of the JCF contract is an important step as the JAIC continues to mature. For the center, “the end state is an AI development environment that will accelerate the testing, validation and fielding of AI capabilities across the U.S. military,” Abrahamson said. https://www.c4isrnet.com/artificial-intelligence/2020/08/12/deloitte-wins-106-million-contract-with-the-pentagons-ai-hub