Contract Awards by US Department of Defense - January 08, 2020

Sur le même sujet

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  21 août 2023 | International, Terrestre

  Australia to buy U.S. Tomahawk missiles to boost long-range strike capability | Reuters

  Australia will spend A$1.3 billion ($833 million) to boost its long-range strike capabilities as it finalised on Monday a deal to buy more than 200 Tomahawk cruise missiles from the United States, part of a wide-ranging defence shake-up.

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  12 mai 2020 | International, Terrestre

  No tanks, but the Corps is still looking for an LAV replacement

  Shawn Snow While the Corps plans to scrap its tank battalions the Marines are still in pursuit of a new armored reconnaissance vehicle to replace the legacy light armored vehicle. It's called the Advanced Reconnaissance Vehicle, and Marine Corps Systems Command noted in a news release that prototypes from two vendors should be ready for evaluations by the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2020. The Corps says it expects a final request for prototype proposal by spring 2021. In 2019, the Corps announced it had selected two vendors, General Dynamics and SAIC, to design and build full-scale prototypes of the new ARV vehicle. Marine Corps Systems Command detailed in the news release that an assessment had “identified shortfalls and gaps in capability” when the legacy LAV was pitted against a peer threat. Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. David Berger has said that current light armored reconnaissance battalions across the Corps are outmoded for the high-end fight against adversaries like Russia and China. “Light Armored Reconnaissance today is built great for another Desert Shield, Desert Storm,” Berger said previously said. “I don't see that likelihood as being very great.” But the top Marine noted that reconnaissance and counter reconnaissance was vital to a fight against near-peer rivals. “No question in my mind” when going up against a capable adversary “that it pays to be spread out and dispersed,” Berger told reporters in April. “What we have to do now is transition to a lighter footprint, more expeditionary, more in support of a littoral environment,” Berger said. The top Marine said a future LAR unit should be able to collect information even potentially offshore. Marine Corps Systems Command said in the news release that it wants a “battle management system, enhanced vision technologies for increased situational awareness, and target tracking and engagement capabilities,” for its new ARV. An industry day for the ARV was slated to run in May 2020 but has been pushed back to fourth quarter of fiscal year 2020, the release said. https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2020/05/11/no-tanks-but-the-corps-is-still-looking-for-an-lav-replacement/

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  12 août 2020 | International, C4ISR

  Lockheed Martin Ventures Scouts Next-Gen AI/ML Tech

  "There's a massive scramble for autonomy engineers, software -- you name it," says Chris Moran, Lockheed Martin executive director. By THERESA HITCHENSon August 11, 2020 at 4:16 PM WASHINGTON: As defense primes scramble to meet DoD's insatiable demand for AI and machine learning (ML) tools, Lockheed Martin is investing in startups like Fiddler with next-generation tech to help operators understand how autonomous systems actually work (and don't work) in the field. “I think what everyone is seeing is that, as you go toward deploying an AI/ML system, people start questioning well, how does this thing work?,” Chris Moran, executive director and general manager of Lockheed Martin Ventures explained in an interview yesterday. “And how do you know, how are you sure, it's making the right decisions? And how can you change those decisions if they're the wrong ones?” “You want to make sure that these things are behaving,” he added. “Fiddler provides some of that insight into how artificial intelligence is working. They're in what's called ‘explainable AI' space, so they can reveal things about how the neural network was created, and how it's made decisions, right, which gives people a level of comfort,” Moran said. Lockheed Martin Ventures, the mega-prime's venture capital arm, announced its investment yesterday in Fiddler, a two-year-old Palo Alto startup. According to the joint press release, the two firms will work together “on the development, testing and scaling of Fiddler's technology in applying explainable AI in the defense and aerospace industries. ... At the heart of Fiddler's Platform lies AI Explainability, which provides continuous insights understandable by humans to help build responsible, transparent, and fair AI systems.” AI/ML and autonomy are two of the key focus areas for Lockheed Martin Ventures, which buys equity shares in infant companies interested in selling to both the defense commercial marketplace, Moran said. Not only is DoD racing to deploy AI/ML capabilities for everything from killer drone swarms to spare parts management, such systems are being integrated into almost every civil market sector from aerospace to agriculture — meaning an almost guaranteed return on investment, Moran explained. That return is then re-channeled into future investments. “AI is such a hot topic right now that every company, not just the Lockheeds and the Boeings and the Northrops, but every single Fortune 500 company, maybe even every Fortune 1000 company, has realized ‘wow, I can simplify my tasks and move some of these mundane things into autonomous system, and thereby have people work on more complicated things that maybe are not suited for autonomy'. So, everybody is trying to do this. Everybody!” Moran enthused. “There's a massive scramble for autonomy engineers, software, you name it.” Another next-generation autonomous technology development that has caught Moran's eye for possible future investment is the advent of what he called “autonomy factories;” that is, the ability to automate the process of building neural networks that can then build autonomous systems, autonomously. “What's happened is that companies are starting to figure out how to automate autonomy — how do you autonomously create neural networks and machine learning systems?” he said with a chuckle of amazement. “You know, necessity is the mother of invention.” Moran and his team of some six scouts have a $200 million fund to bet on newbie entrepreneurs and their technology. Currently, he said, Lockheed Martin Ventures has an investment in 40-odd companies, across 18 focus areas ranging from AI to rockets and propulsion systems to quantum science. The focus areas are determined by a conclave, usually held in March, with Lockheed Martin's business units, as well as via the Ventures team's own knowledge of the startup ecosystem, he explained. In addition, Lockheed Martin Ventures haunts the increasing number of DoD, and especially Air Force, “pitch days” in hopes of finding matches for the aerospace prime contractor's interests. As Breaking D readers know, “pitch days” are one of the new methods being championed by acquisition czar Will Roper as a way for the service to harness commercial innovation. And the Air Force is one of Lockheed Martin's biggest customers, if not the biggest if you count space acquisitions. The Ventures team invested in 10 startups last yea,r including one discovered at an Air Force pitch day, and is on a path to adding another 10 to its portfolio this year, Moran said. Finding those winners is an intensive process that involves scouting 700 to 1,000 startups per year, he explained. Once a startup is chosen, Lockheed Martin Ventures gives it an opportunity to pitch ideas/products/services across all interested Lockheed Martin business areas. “We have an internal, if you will, we call it ‘demo day,' that we're holding this week, and right now I think there are well over 100 Lockheed Martin engineers and technologists set up to listen to 12 or 13 of the portfolio companies that we've invested in the last year,” he said. “That's part of what we do as a service inside the company. And hopefully out of those discussions and presentations, there are further collaborations.” Moran explained that those collaborations can include software licenses or contracts for services — and even, once a startup has established a larger market presence, traditional subcontractor ties. And while investment allows Lockheed Martin Ventures to get in early on the startup's expertise and tech concepts, the prime contractor is not seeking to tie the hands of the entrepreneurs regarding clientele. Instead, he said, the objective is to grow the startup into the overall defense and aerospace industrial base. “We're creating, eventually, a market for them,” Moran said. “And it's kind of a weird dynamic, but we give them money, and then my group goes off and works for them inside the company — so we're paying them for us to work. It's weird, but ... that money goes to supporting the small companies grow and scale so that they'll be around for when a Lockheed Martin or any large company wants to use their tools and services. So we look at it as a win-win.” https://breakingdefense.com/2020/08/lockheed-martin-ventures-scouts-next-gen-ai-ml-tech