25 octobre 2018 | International, C4ISR
Jim Bronskill / The Canadian Press
OTTAWA — Satellites vital to Canadian military operations are vulnerable to cyberattack or even a direct missile strike — just one example of why the country's defence policy must extend fully into the burgeoning space frontier, an internal Defence Department note warns.
The Canadian military already heavily depends on space-based assets for basic tasks such as navigation, positioning, intelligence-gathering, surveillance and communications. Canada is also working on the next generation of satellites to assist with search-and-rescue and round-the-clock surveillance of maritime approaches to the country, including the Arctic.
But those important roles could be endangered as technological advances and lower costs allow more countries, including adversaries, to cause trouble in orbit. Powers such as China and Russia are developing the ability to wage technological attacks in space, the note points out.
"Easier access could also open the door to non-state actors or to failed states with nothing to lose from disrupting space."
Canada's new defence policy underscores the importance of space, creating a need for "innovative investment" to ensure National Defence has the tools and know-how to fend off threats, the internal document adds.
A copy of the note, Space Technology Trends: Threats and Opportunities, was recently obtained by The Canadian Press through the Access to Information Act. Several sensitive passages were stripped from the note, prepared last November for the deputy minister of National Defence.
In a statement, the department called the intention to protect and defend military space technology a "very important change" in the new policy.
"What 'defending and protecting' these assets means in practice will evolve, as technology and international discussions mature."
Despite public perception, the militarization of space actually happened decades ago, said Dave Perry, vice-president and senior analyst at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute.
"Militaries the world over depend on an extraordinary amount of infrastructure that's space-based, even if there are no physical weapons in space," he said in an interview. "Space is well-emerged, but we keep calling it emerging."
Even so, the internal note points out space is becoming ever more congested due to the advent of commercial space companies and the dawn of space tourism. "In addition, more and more nations are becoming space-capable and will expect their share of access to space."
The most direct threat to Canada's space capabilities comes from adversaries with the ability to attack satellites, the note bluntly states. China, for example, has demonstrated the ability to destroy one of its aging low-orbit weather satellites with a ballistic missile, creating plenty of space debris.
Other possible tactics include a directed energy attack, electronic jamming or a cyberattack, which can temporarily or permanently disable a satellite, the note adds.
It says Canada is working with the U.S. and other allies on the idea of being able to quickly dispatch replacements for critical space assets that are damaged or destroyed.
As artificial intelligence becomes more prevalent in operating space technology, such as a robotic arm, it will be easier for a hostile player to sabotage it, Perry said.
"If you can figure out a way to affect the software, then that's a potential vulnerability. Whereas before you would have (needed to fly) someone there, and actually put them on the piece of equipment, to be able to do something."
High-resolution images of the Earth captured by space satellites, once exclusive to the military, have become increasingly available to other government agencies, companies, the public and hostile players — essentially "whomever is willing to pay," the note says.
The accessibility of this data and the ability to link it with other sources, such as social media, "will present immense challenges" to privacy and public safety.
As space-based sensing and communication technologies rapidly improve, they become capable of scooping up more information, creating another headache for the military, the note says.
"The challenge of collecting, handling, storing, processing and accessing this data will become more and more severe as the data volume, velocity and variety continues to increase."
— Follow @JimBronskill on Twitter
6 avril 2021 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
May affect politics of Canada's stimulus plan and what's considered appropriate timeline for investment in low-carbon transition
14 juillet 2020 | International, Aérospatial
The U.S. Air Force is to add a dozen weapons systems to its Enhanced Reliability Centered Maintenance (ERCM) model that employs artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) for predictive maintenance. Those systems are the Boeing [BA] F-15 fighter, B-52 bomber, RC-135 reconnaissance plane, C-17 transport, and A-10 Thunderbolt II close air support aircraft, the Lockheed Martin [LMT] AC/MC-130 gunships, F-16 fighter, and HH-60 helicopter, the Bell [TXT] and Boeing CV-22 tiltrotor, the Northrop Grumman [NOC] RQ-4 Global Hawk and the General Atomics‘ MQ-9 Reaper. “We have a couple of different initiatives under what we would call the umbrella of predictive maintenance,” Air Force Lt. Gen. Warren Berry, the service's deputy chief of staff for logistics, engineering and force protection, said during a July 9 Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies' Aerospace Nation virtual discussion. “One is Condition Based Maintenance Plus [CBM+]. We have three weapons systems in there right now: the C-5, the KC-135, and the B-1. They've been doing it for about 18 to 24 months now, and we're starting to get some real return on what it is that the CBM+ is offering us. The other element is called Enhanced Reliability Centered Maintenance [ERCM], which is really laying that artificial intelligence and machine learning on top of the maintenance information system data that we have today and understanding failure rates and understanding mission characteristics of the aircraft and how they fail, and then laying that into the algorithms that then tell us when parts are likely to fail based on failure rates and the algorithms we plug in.” “We're in the process of adding another 12 weapons systems under the ERCM umbrella this calendar year,” Berry said. Defense Daily has asked Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC) for the names of the 12 systems. AI/ML is to assume a significant role in predictive maintenance for the 11 combatant commands (COCOMs). In April last year, the Pentagon said that the new Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) had delivered its first product, a predictive Engine Health Model (EHM) maintenance tool for Sikorsky [LMT] Black Hawk helicopters, to U.S. Special Operations Command's 160th Special Operations Regiment (SOAR) for use with SOAR's MH-60 helicopters. JAIC said that its Joint Logistics Mission Initiative (MI), one of six JAIC AI projects, is working “to develop a repeatable, end-to-end AI ecosystem” to bring EHM to scale across the Black Hawk fleet. EHM, developed in partnership with Carnegie Mellon University, “predicts the probability of an engine hot start so decision-makers can consider next steps,” including replacing the engine or holding it back for training missions instead of deployments in high-risk missions, Army Col. Kenneth Kliethermes, JAIC's Joint Logistics MI lead, said in a recent JAIC blog post. Another JAIC mission initiative, the Joint Warfighting MI, “is working with several COCOMs to build, test, and expand its Smart Sensor, a video processing AI prototype that rides on unmanned aerial vehicles and is trained to identify threats and immediately transmit the video of those threats back to manned computer stations for real-time analysis,” according to the JAIC blog post. Army Col. Bradley Boyd, the lead for the Joint Warfighting MI, said that the Smart Sensor could lead to “a dramatic reduction in the amount of data that has to be pushed back for a human to cull through.” “Instead of staring at one video feed and hours and hours of trees and rocks and nothing happening, that person can instead be monitoring 10 video feeds because they are only seeing the stuff that really matters,” Boyd said in the JAIC blog post. https://www.defensedaily.com/air-force-add-12-weapons-systems-ai-ml-informed-predictive-maintenance-year/army/
10 mai 2019 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité, Autre défense
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