4 février 2019 | International, C4ISR

DARPA: Building Trusted Human-Machine Partnerships

A key ingredient in effective teams – whether athletic, business, or military – is trust, which is based in part on mutual understanding of team members' competence to fulfill assigned roles. When it comes to forming effective teams of humans and autonomous systems, humans need timely and accurate insights about their machine partners' skills, experience, and reliability to trust them in dynamic environments. At present, autonomous systems cannot provide real-time feedback when changing conditions such as weather or lighting cause their competency to fluctuate. The machines' lack of awareness of their own competence and their inability to communicate it to their human partners reduces trust and undermines team effectiveness.

To help transform machines from simple tools to trusted partners, DARPA today announced the Competency-Aware Machine Learning (CAML) program. CAML aims to develop machine learning systems that continuously assess their own performance in time-critical, dynamic situations and communicate that information to human team-members in an easily understood format.

“If the machine can say, ‘I do well in these conditions, but I don't have a lot of experience in those conditions,' that will allow a better human-machine teaming,” said Jiangying Zhou, a program manager in DARPA's Defense Sciences Office. “The partner then can make a more informed choice.”

That dynamic would support a force-multiplying effect, since the human would know the capabilities of his or her machine partners at all times and could employ them efficiently and effectively.

In contrast, Zhou noted the challenge with state-of-the-art autonomous systems, which cannot assess or communicate their competence in rapidly changing situations.

“Under what conditions do you let the machine do its job? Under what conditions should you put supervision on it? Which assets, or combination of assets, are best for your task? These are the kinds of questions CAML systems would be able to answer,” she said.

Using a simplified example involving autonomous car technology, Zhou described how valuable CAML technology could be to a rider trying to decide which of two self-driving vehicles would be better suited for driving at night in the rain. The first vehicle might communicate that at night in the rain it knows if it is seeing a person or an inanimate object with 90 percent accuracy, and that it has completed the task more than 1,000 times. The second vehicle might communicate that it can distinguish between a person and an inanimate object at night in the rain with 99 percent accuracy, but has performed the task less than 100 times. Equipped with this information, the rider could make an informed decision about which vehicle to use.

DARPA has scheduled a pre-recorded webcast CAML Proposers Day for potential proposers on February 20, 2019. Details are available at: https://go.usa.gov/xE9aQ.

The CAML program seeks expertise in machine learning, artificial intelligence, pattern recognition, knowledge representation and reasoning, autonomous system modeling, human-machine interface, and cognitive computing. To maximize the pool of innovative proposal concepts, DARPA strongly encourages participation by non-traditional proposers, including small businesses, academic and research institutions, and first-time Government contractors.

DARPA anticipates posting a CAML Broad Agency Announcement solicitation to the Federal Business Opportunities website in mid-February 2019.

https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2019-01-31

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1 mars 2019 | International, Aérospatial

What does Australia think of the F-35? One Air Force commander details his experience
By: Nigel Pittaway MELBOURNE, Australia — The commander of the Royal Australian Air Force's Air Combat Group has provided insight into his experience with the Lockheed Martin F-35A Joint Strike Fighter, during the 2019 Avalon Airshow this week. Australia has 72 F-35As on order to replace the F/A-18A/B “Classic” Hornet fleet, as it's known Down Under; the country has received 10 aircraft to date. Two aircraft were delivered to RAAF Base Williamtown, north of Sydney, in December 2018, and a further eight are based in the United States at Luke Air Force Base, Arizona, in support of international F-35 pilot training with the U.S. Air Force's 61st Fighter Squadron. Air Commodore Mike Kitcher said two more aircraft will be delivered to Australia in early April and eight will have arrived by the end of 2019. “Those two jets at Williamtown are flying five to six sorties a week, largely for aircrew training at the moment. We'll add another two aircraft to that fleet in early April, and we'll have another four by the end of this year and eight aircraft in Australia by the end of the year,” he said. Kitcher also described a sortie he flew in the Red Flag 19-1 exercise held in Nevada in February, in which RAAF Hornets flew with U.S. Air Force F-35As as part of an international strike package. “One of the key strike missions I did that day was to watch an eight-ship [formation] of F-35s kick open a door, which was a fairly hard door to open. Some F-22s came in after that to hold the door open, and the F-35s went back and picked up a strike train that consisted of [RAAF] Hornets, Super Hornets from the U.S. Navy, Typhoons from the [British] Royal Air Force and U.S. Air Force F-16s, supported by U.S. Navy [EA-18G] Growlers and U.S. Air Force F-16s,” Kitcher said. “That was the first time I've been in a high-end exercise, involving a significant air threat, a significant surface-to-air threat and even a cyberthreat. You could see the way the F-35 was working with Classic Hornets, Super Hornets, Typhoons and Growlers to solve a very difficult problem. I'm confident that we'll be doing that in Australia with our F-35s and our Super Hornets and Growlers within the next couple of years.” Two RAAF F-35As from No. 3 Squadron were present at Avalon, and one of them participated in the daily flying display. https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/avalon/2019/02/28/what-does-australia-think-of-the-f-35-one-air-force-commander-details-his-experience/
25 mai 2021 | International, Aérospatial

La Direction de la maintenance aéronautique (DMAé) dresse un bilan positif de ses débuts
Créée par le décret du 18 avril 2018 à l'occasion de la réforme du maintien en condition opérationnelle (MCO) aéronautique, la DMAé est responsable du soutien en service des matériels aéronautiques afin de garantir la disponibilité des matériels à coût maîtrisé. La stratégie de la DMAé vise à globaliser et verticaliser les contrats en responsabilisant les industriels, en leur assignant des objectifs et en les rémunérant en conséquence tout en leur donnant de la visibilité sur la durée des contrats. A ce stade, onze contrats « verticalisés » ont déjà été notifiés dont le Rafale, le Tigre et l'A400M. Une quinzaine de contrats supplémentaires est prévue en 2021 et 2022. Un plan d'actions vise aussi à améliorer la mise en œuvre de la navigabilité étatique. Par ailleurs, la DMAé met en œuvre la transformation numérique et digitale du domaine avec le projet Brasidas, futur système d'information du MCO aéronautique. Son premier incrément devrait être déployé mi-2022 sur les flottes Caracal et le Système de drones tactiques (SDT) Patroller. Aerobuzz, 24 mai
30 janvier 2024 | International, Terrestre

ANALYSIS | As Europe's armies brace for war, allies call on Canada and others to catch up | CBC News
Across Europe, military leaders are warning that the security climate on the continent has changed radically — and a wider land war is now a possibility. Are European leaders listening? What about Canada?

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