US projected to spend $117B on nuke command and control in next decade

On the same subject

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  October 10, 2018 | International, Land

  The Army’s future tank may not be a tank

  By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — The Army's future tank may not be a tank, Brig. Gen. Ross Coffman, who is in charge of combat vehicle modernization, told Defense News in an interview at the Association of the U.S. Army's annual show. While the M1 Abrams tank still has life in it yet, the Army is starting to begin the thinking and planning process for a future tank, “which is really exciting because it might not be a tank,” Coffman said. “It is decisive lethality and what that decisive lethality is will be determined by academia, our science and technology community within the Army and industry.” The Army will choose a path in 2023 on how it plans to replace the Abrams and some of the ideas cropping up in discussions have been “everything from a ray gun to a Star Wars-like four-legged creature that shoots lasers,” Coffman said, “but the reality is that everything is on the table. “We have to get away from these paradigms that we created that decisive lethality must come from a tank,” Coffman said. “It may be a tank in the end and that would be great, but we need choices for our soldiers, so we can really move into a position of lethal advantage over the enemy.” Coffman is spearheading that effort along with some more near-term plans to replace the Bradley Fighting Vehicle with an Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle and bring online the Army's Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle (AMPV) and a light tank called the Mobile Protected Firepower (MPF) system. The one-star is in charge of the Next-Generation Combat Vehicle Cross-Functional Team housed under the Army Futures Command tasked to modernize the force. Full article: https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/ausa/2018/10/09/the-armys-future-tank-may-not-be-a-tank

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  August 28, 2020 | International, Naval

  Navy Turns To AI To Save Billions In Fight Against Rust

  By KELSEY ATHERTON ALBUQUERQUE: The Navy is using Google Cloud to speed up a basic but time consuming task: finding and identifying rust. This approach has already been applied to inspect wind turbines and find potholes in roads, and promises advantages both in speed of inspection and in future predictive maintenance. “The AI technology behind this enabled the US Navy to quickly and seamlessly examine tens of thousands of images to prioritize the needs to be repaired immediately and or later on,” Mike Daniels, vice president of Global Public Sector, Google Cloud, told me in an interview. While Google was unwilling to disclose the exact value of the contract, the promise is that speedy, AI-enabled inspections will lower labor and material costs of inspection and repair enough to more than justify the expenditure on inspection AI. “The tools we're providing can not only save the Navy billions each year, but significantly improve readiness and speed deployment,” said Daniels. “And this is a physical job right now. We're improving results for the inspectors.” If AI-facilitated rust inspection can reduce the amount of time a ship needs to stay in harbor for repairs, it can narrow the window in which catastrophic disasters, like the fire which tore apart the Bonhomme Richard, can happen. This work is being done through Simple Technology Solutions (STS), who was awarded the work as a Phase 1 Small Business Innovation Research project. To train the AI, STS flew a drone on inspections to get images of rust. Next, STS combined these drone-filmed images with public domain images of ships, and uploaded both sets to a Google Cloud server. Specifically, the inspections will look for broad area rust and corrosion, as well as subtler damage that human eyes might skip over, like pitting or focused damage. Using native machine learning built into the Google Cloud, STS could then train the algorithm to process, understand and identify rust in the images. This is an iterative process, one where every uploaded inspection improves the accuracy of the next inspection. “There's no classified data that's going to be handled as part of this project,” said Daniels, noting that Google offers a high level of protection for images stored in its cloud by default. As we have seen in the past, aggregated unclassified data can sometimes be enough to reveal classified information, but the immediate utility of cloud-powered inspections should offset any distant concern of weakness revealed through corrosion maintenance. Most importantly, the inspection tool promises savings in time. A widely-cited 2014 report from the US Navy attributed the cost of fighting rust and corrosion at $3 billion. Some of that cost is hard to shake: the paint used to cover rust-scrapped areas can cost as much as $250 a gallon. Catching corrosion quickly and early shortens the amount of time humans need to work to fix a vessel, and should reduce the area that needs repair for each inspection. https://breakingdefense.com/2020/08/navy-turns-to-ai-to-save-billions-in-fight-against-rust/

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  September 29, 2024 | International, Land

  U.S. Charges Three Iranian Nationals for Election Interference and Cybercrimes

  DOJ charges three Iranian nationals linked to IRGC for hacking U.S. campaigns, targeting officials, and election interference.