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February 3, 2021 | International, C4ISR

With Deepwave Digital, Northrop Grumman is pushing processing to the edge

WASHINGTON — Northrop Grumman says a new investment into small startup Deepwave Digital will allow it to push data processing much closer to the point of collection, decreasing the amount of data that needs to be transported and getting products to war fighters faster.

Northrop Grumman will install Deepwave Digital's artificial intelligence solution on airborne and on orbit payloads, said Chris Daughters, the company's vice president of research, technology and engineering for aeronautics systems. With the AI incorporated into the payload, the satellite or aircraft will no longer need to send data back to the ground to be processed. Instead, the payload will process the data itself.

The innovation, said Daughters, is in incorporating the AI software with the hardware used in various Northrop Grumman payloads.

“Deepwave Digital really has an innovative architecture that blends artificial intelligence with some advanced hardware in the RF [radio frequency] domain, whereas a lot of artificial intelligence in the past has always been focused on, I'll just say, mining and scrubbing really big data or maybe doing customized things with video or audio,” said Daughters.

In other words, the AI is able to process data at the edge, at the point of collection, instead of sending it down to Earth to be processed independently.

“We have a lot of RF payload systems that collect information or collect intelligence for the war fighters and the government as a whole, and by embedding this innovative hardware and AI software, we are able to essentially filter and optimize and scrub and prioritize the data much nearer to the point of collection for that information,” said Daughters.

AI has been key to the military's efforts to manage the torrent of data collected by government and commercial satellites, which is simply too much for human analysts to sort through on their own. While progress has been made in using AI to process satellite imagery, military officials are now tackling a related problem: the sheer amount of raw data being pushed out over the networks for processing at remote locations. To reduce the bandwidth needed for satellite imagery, U.S. Army officials say the military needs to shift to edge processing, meaning applying AI to the data and then sending the finished product out over the network instead of all of the raw data.

“Edge processing is something that we're very interested in for a number of reasons. And what I mean by that is having smart sensors that can not only detect the enemy, [but] identify, characterize and locate, and do all those tasks at the sensor processing,” said John Strycula, director of the Army's task force focused on intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, at an October AUSA event.

“If I only have to send back a simple message from the sensor that says the target is here ― here's the location and here's what I saw and here's my percent confidence ― versus sending back the whole image across the network, it reduces those bandwidth requirements,” he added.

Daughters said Northrop Grumman is working to incorporate Deepwave Digital's AI solution into products in development or in limited production in the “very near term.”

“The capability exists now. We just need to integrate it in with the systems,” said Daughters. “Our research and technology organization is already looking at how we could be injecting this hardware and AI capability in some of the systems that exist right now or very near term.”

While the company is applying the AI to both space and airborne systems, the technology can be more easily integrated with airborne systems, where payloads can be more easily accessed or swapped out.

https://www.c4isrnet.com/intel-geoint/2021/02/02/with-deepwave-digital-northrop-grumman-is-pushing-processing-to-the-edge/

On the same subject

  • Pentagon AI team sets sights on information warfare

    July 24, 2020 | International, C4ISR, Security

    Pentagon AI team sets sights on information warfare

    Mark Pomerleau About two years after it was created, the Pentagon's artificial intelligence center is setting its sights on new projects, including one on joint information warfare. This initiative seeks to deliver an information advantage to the Department of Defense in two ways. The first is improving the DoD's ability to integrate commercial and government AI solutions. The second is improving the standardization of foundational DoD data needed to field high-performing AI-enabled capabilities to support operations in the information environment, said Lt. Cmdr. Arlo Abrahamson, a spokesman for the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center. Nand Mulchandani, the JAIC's acting director, told reporters in early July that this initiative also includes cyber operations — both broad defensive and offensive measures for use by U.S. Cyber Command. The DoD is discovering that it needs ways to process, analyze and act upon the vast amounts of data it receives. “As we look at the ability to influence and shape in this environment, we're going to have to have artificial intelligence and machine-learning tools, specifically for information ops that hit a very broad portfolio,” Gen. Richard Clarke, commander of Special Operations Command, said at the Special Operations Forces Industry Conference in May. “We're going to have to understand how the adversary is thinking, how the population is thinking, and work in these spaces in time of relevance. If you're not at speed, you won't be relevant. “To make sure the U.S. message and our allies' and partner message is being heard and it's resonating. What we need is adapting data tech that will actually work in this space and we can use it for our organization.” A program in support of network incident detection, called MADHAT — or Multidimensional Anomaly Detection fusing HPC, Analytics, and Tensors — is helping the JAIC develop an information warfare capability. The program allows for the exploration of network data as a way of enabling more effective detection of nuanced adversarial threats, Abrahamson said. MADHAT has already been deployed, he added, and analysts working on the High Performance Computing Modernization Program are being trained on the tool for operational use. This program accelerates technology development and transitions it into defense capabilities through the application of high-performance computing. Mulchandani also told reporters that other information warfare-related efforts include using natural language processing, which involve processing and analyzing text. “NLP and speech-to-text is actually a fairly mature AI technology that can be deployed in production. And that actually is going to be used in reducing information overload,” he said. “So being able to scan vast quantities of open-source information and bring the sort of nuggets and important stuff on the NLPs.” https://www.c4isrnet.com/smr/information-warfare/2020/07/22/pentagon-ai-team-sets-sights-on-information-warfare/

  • Singapore unveils new cyber-focused military service

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  • British MoD shortlists four vendor teams for its multibillion-dollar Skynet satellite program

    June 17, 2020 | International, C4ISR

    British MoD shortlists four vendor teams for its multibillion-dollar Skynet satellite program

    By: Andrew Chuter LONDON – Four international consortia have been shortlisted by Britain's Ministry of Defence to enter the final stage of bidding to operate ground control facilities for its Skynet satellite communications network. Teams led by Airbus Defence & Space, Babcock Integrated Technology, BT and Serco, have been down-selected for the Skynet 6 Service Delivery Wrap program following the MoD's Defence Digital organization release of an invitation to tender document to the remaining contenders June 12. The make-up of one of the teams vying for the ground station operations contract is already known, while others have yet to announce who their partners are. Serco has declared its team will involve satellite operator Inmarsat, IT specialist CGI UK and the U.K. arm of defense giant Lockheed Martin. British communications company BT, Babcock and Airbus are all keeping their teaming arrangements under wraps for the time being. Airbus, Britain's biggest satellite builder, did though coincide the MoD Skynet 6 down-select with a separate space partnering announcement of its own. The company said June 16 it had teamed with KBR, Leidos UK, Northrop Grumman and QinetiQ to launch a new space initiative known as Open Innovation-Space aimed at increasing British involvement in future satellite communications efforts. No mention was made by Airbus of the Skynet 6 program. All the companies are working under strict Skynet 6 non-disclosure agreements with the MoD which forbid communication with the media and others. The ground station program is the second part of the MoD's wider Skynet 6 project to equip the military and government with a new generation of beyond-line-of-sight communications capabilities starting around 2028. The Skynet 6 program has already seen Airbus start work on a new satellite, called Skynet 6A, to act as a capability gap filler between 2025 and the introduction of the follow-on, new-generation capacity. A deal for preliminary design work and long-lead time manufacture was signed by Airbus and the MoD in March and the contract to build the Skynet 6A spacecraft is in the final stages of government approval and expected to be announced within weeks. The other two key parts of a program presently expected to cost in total around £6 billion ($7.6 billion) are the Enduring Capability project, to provide next generation communications capabilities, and the Secure Telemetry, Tracking and Command (STTC) project for providing assured sovereign control and management of satellites. The MoD has settled its STTC requirements for SkyNet 6A but its options for the longer term remain open. Work on defining what the Enduring Capability requirement might look like has been underway for a while and industry executives here expect the effort to be ramped up in the coming months with the first tranche of recommendations due to be presented to the MoD early next year, said people with knowledge of the program. The next-generation communications requirement is planned to get underway next year with the release by MoD of a pre-qualification questionnaire. One industry executive, who asked not to be named, said securing the Service Delivery Wrap deal was an important stepping stone towards satellite builders securing the big prize – the Enduring Capability requirement. “It will help the winning consortium secure local skills in the sector, help in understanding the customers communications requirements and assist in filling in the revenue gaps between what is often sporadic investment in satellites and payloads,” the executive said. Space is an industrial and military priority for the British, and while it remains unclear how the worsening economic picture here might impact defense spending it is hoped the sector ,and programs like SkyNet 6 and the Galileo global navigation satellite system replacement project, might escape the worst of the expected cuts. One cost cutting option the British are reckoned to have been looking at is to use future SkyNet 6 spacecraft to double up its use by carrying a GNSS capability as well. Skynet ground facilities are currently operated by Airbus as part of a wider private finance initiative (PFI) deal signed in 2003 to build, own and operate a constellation of communication satellites and associated capabilities on behalf of the British military. That deal expires Aug 2022. The winning Service Delivery Wrap contender is slated to take over ground operations from that point after a transition phase. In a contract note issued June 16 the MoD said the return date of the invitation to tender is set for June next year. The Service Delivery Wrap arrangement runs for five years, not including any transition phase, with two single-year extension options also expected to be included in the deal. The terms of the existing PFI arrangement entail the MoD paying a nominal fee of a Pound in exchange for which it will take ownership of hundreds of millions of Pounds worth of assets in the shape of ground infrastructure and the Skynet 4 and 5 satellite fleets currently operated by Airbus. This time around the MoD wants to retain overall ownership of the capability in order to help grow its space skills and management experience by way of owning the ground station assets with the winning consortium working under a straightforward service provision deal. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2020/06/16/british-mod-shortlists-four-vendor-teams-for-its-multibillion-dollar-skynet-satellite-program/

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