12 novembre 2023 | International, Aérospatial
Nuclear stealth bomber, the B-21 Raider, takes first test flight
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14 août 2019 | International, Terrestre, C4ISR
Can robots make an Army platoon 10 times as effective?
By: Kelsey D. Atherton
Are humans with robots an order of magnitude better than humans without robots? It's the question the Army's Maneuver Center for Excellence is hoping to solve through trial and experimentation. The National Advanced Mobility Consortium posted a request for white papers Aug. 5 about technologies that might have a place in a robotic, artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomy technology demonstration at Fort Benning in September 2020.
This project is long in the works, with an announcement of intent dating back to March 2019. The premise, as stated in the March announcement, is to “show a path towards an Army capability that will provide a robotically equipped dismounted infantry platoon that is 10 times more effective than the current dismounted infantry platoon.”
In order to do this, the Maneuver Center for Excellence, together with Fort Benning's Maneuver Capabilities Development and Integration Directorate's Robotics Requirements Division, is exploring robotic systems for “ground, air, water,” as well as the virtual space — otherwise known as the four platonic elements of terrestrial war. These robots and systems should be able to improve “mobility, protection, situational awareness, endurance, persistence, and depth” as well as, and this is key, lethality.
Taken together, the robots should lend an advantage to the platoon's OODA loop — its ability to observe, orient, decide and act — with the goal that a robot-enabled platoon completes OODA-loop cycles 10 times faster than it would without robots. That's a tremendous amount of promise to put in remote systems, especially since the present paradigm of controlled robotic battlefield tools involves a lot of human observers and controllers checking on, managing, and directing the robots. (The process by which humans are actively involved in robot control is “in the loop” or, with more passive robot monitoring termed “on the loop.”)
If robots are going to improve soldier situational awareness by an order of magnitude, they will have to be autonomous. And not just autonomous in movement, but autonomous in sensing, data processing, and in providing that information back to the platoon.
Part of this vision involves robots themselves producing intelligence products that are both immediate and ephemeral, useful in the tactical moment and then gone before they can become out of date. Another piece is machines autonomously moving through and responding to the environment on their own, as exercises undertaken by DARPA and the Marine Corps have already explored. If that same autonomy will extend to robot lethality, or if weapons will stay in the hands of humans, remains to be determined.
In preparation for the September 2020 exercise, Georgia Tech Research Institute is designated to serve as the technology integrator for the assessment and demonstration parts of the task. As the industry proposals are vetted to meet Army needs, some will receive a Request for Prototype Proposal, and will also be evaluated in a simulation exercise to see if they will be part of the 2020 exercise.
Interested parties should look to the National Advanced Mobility Consortium's posted request, and to the earlier proposal announcement, for more specific guidance. Interested observers, meanwhile, should keep an eye on September 2020 in Georgia, where the Army will see if the future of war is really 10 times as promising as expected.
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Google Drops Out of Pentagon's $10 Billion Cloud Competition
By Naomi Nix Alphabet Inc.'s Google has decided not to compete for the Pentagon's cloud-computing contract valued at as much as $10 billion, saying the project may conflict with its corporate values. The project, known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud, or JEDI, involves transitioning massive amounts of Defense Department data to a commercially operated cloud system. Companies are due to submit bids for the contract, which could last as long as 10 years, on Oct. 12th. Google's announcement on Monday came just months after the company decided not to renew its contract with a Pentagon artificial intelligence program, after extensive protests from employees of the internet giant about working with the military. The company then released a set of principles designed to evaluate what kind of artificial intelligence projects it would pursue. “We are not bidding on the JEDI contract because first, we couldn't be assured that it would align with our AI Principles," a Google spokesman said in a statement. "And second, we determined that there were portions of the contract that were out of scope with our current government certifications.” The spokesman added that Google is “working to support the U.S. government with our cloud in many ways.” The Tech Workers Coalition, which advocates for giving employees a say in technology company decisions, said in a statement that Google's decision to withdraw from the cloud competition stemmed from “sustained” pressure from tech workers who “have significant power, and are increasingly willing to use it.” Read more: Google Won't Renew Pentagon AI Drone Deal After Staff Backlash Google is behind other technology companies such as Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. in obtaining government cloud-security authorizations that depend on the sensitivity of data a service is hosting. The JEDI contract attracted widespread interest from technology companies struggling to catch up with Amazon in the burgeoning federal government market for cloud services. Final requirements for the project were released in July after a months-long lobbying campaign in Washington by tech companies including Microsoft, International Business Machines Corp. and Oracle Corp. that opposed the Pentagon's plans to choose just one winner for the project instead of splitting the contract among a number of providers. “Had the JEDI contract been open to multiple vendors, we would have submitted a compelling solution for portions of it,” the Google spokesman said. “Google Cloud believes that a multi-cloud approach is in the best interest of government agencies, because it allows them to choose the right cloud for the right workload.” In a report to Congress, the Defense Department said making multiple awards under current acquisition law would be a slow process that “could prevent DoD from rapidly delivering new capabilities and improved effectiveness to the warfighter that enterprise-level cloud computing can enable.” The department also said it expects “to maintain contracts with numerous cloud providers to access specialized capabilities not available under the JEDI Cloud contract.” — With assistance by Ben Brody, and Josh Eidelson https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-08/google-drops-out-of-pentagon-s-10-billion-cloud-competition