20 septembre 2019 | International, Aérospatial, Sécurité
By CINDY CHANG
Drones became a permanent part of the Los Angeles Police Department's crime-fighting arsenal Tuesday, despite opposition from privacy advocates who fear the remote-controlled aircraft will be used to spy on people.
In a yearlong trial, the LAPD's SWAT team deployed drones four times, mostly when suspects were barricaded and the device provided a bird's eye view of the property's nooks and crannies.
On Tuesday, the five-member civilian Police Commission unanimously approved new regulations that enshrine the drones' use in specific situations, including active shooters, barricaded suspects and search warrants.
The drones will not be equipped with weapons or facial recognition software, according to the regulations, which are similar to those governing the trial program.
In July, at Chief Michel Moore's recommendation, the use of drones was expanded beyond SWAT to include the bomb squad in neutralizing explosives and sweeping large public events for radioactive devices.
Drones “provide invaluable information to decision makers while decreasing the risk to human life,” Moore wrote in a July 3 report, noting that everyone is safer when the devices check out a dangerous situation instead of officers going in blind.
The LAPD joins about 600 other law enforcement agencies around the country that use drones, according to a 2018 report by Bard College's Center For the Study of the Drone.
The new regulations will ensure that the drones are not “being used in a flippant manner,” Asst. Chief Horace Frank, who runs the department's counter-terrorism and special operations bureau, told the Police Commission on Tuesday.
The LAPD's drone regulations are more restrictive than those of many other agencies, Frank said. Each drone deployment must be approved by a commander and a deputy chief, and the Police Commission will receive an annual report.
Asked by Commissioner Eileen Decker whether drones can help de-escalate volatile situations, Frank cited a June 15 incident when a drone flew near a man who had barricaded himself in a trucking yard.
“The minute we deployed the device at the entrance to the trailer and he saw it, he gave up,” Frank said.
Activists said the LAPD and Police Commission have disregarded citizens who expressed reservations about the drones in community meetings and online surveys.
One activist, Michael Novick, predicted that the LAPD would expand drone usage and infringe on civil liberties.
“We're witnessing the exact definition of mission creep,” Novick said. “Now you're upgrading. You approved a temporary pilot project. You're going to normalize it with this step. ... The next step will be they'll come back and say, ‘We actually need the ability to have facial recognition.'”
The LAPD's drone fleet will remain at four strong, Frank said. But the DJI Spark devices used in the pilot program will be replaced by DJI Mavics, which have better indoor flying capabilities, extended flight time and lights for navigating in the dark. The models are similar to those used by hobbyists.
The Police Commission accepted a $6,645 donation from the Los Angeles Police Foundation to purchase the Mavics, as well as a donation of drone flight tracking software from Measure Aerial Intelligence.
As the commission approved the drone regulations and donations, the audience broke into chants of “Shame! Shame!”
Moore said he is mindful of “concerns of Big Brother and invasion of privacy and civil liberties.”
“We're committed to striking the right balance that ... protects all of our community — their rights of privacy but also their public safety and their right to exist without threats of dangers that this tool can be used in some instances to mitigate,” he told reporters after the meeting.
2 janvier 2019 | International, Aérospatial, C4ISR
Boeing [BA] has chosen FLIR Systems [FLIR] to provide the electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) surveillance sensor for the U.S. Air Force UH-1N replacement helicopters it is building in concert with Leonardo.The Air Force in September chose the Boeing-Leonardo team's... http://www.defensedaily.com/flir-will-provide-infrared-sensors-air-force-huey-replacement
11 avril 2024 | International, Naval, C4ISR
19 août 2020 | International, C4ISR
Andrew Eversden Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled the name of Sara Gamble, a program manager in quantum information science at the Army Research Office. WASHINGTON — A research project funded by the U.S. Army has developed a new approach to manufacturing quantum computer chips, representing a significant step forward toward making quantum processors at the scale needed to deliver rapid processing capabilities to the battlefield. The new approach could impact how the service builds quantum networks and distributed sensing capabilities. Quantum processors use a qubit to store information. The researchers were looking to increase the amount of qubits placed onto a photonic chip. Prior to the experiment, researchers were only able to get two or three qubits into one photonic chip, said Sara Gamble, a program manager in quantum information science at the Army Research Office, an element of the Army Research Laboratory at Combat Capabilities Development Command. “Currently we can exert control and successfully manipulate handfuls of qubits, like very countable numbers of them. But when it comes to the millions or billions of qubits that we need for applications of actual interest, how to get to those millions or billions of qubits is a major research challenge,” Gamble said in an interview with C4ISRNET. In this study, researchers succeeded in integrating 128 qubits onto a photonic chip by making small quantum “chiplets” and placing them onto a larger circuit. The chiplets were able to carry quantum information through artificial atoms created by scientists by exploiting defects in diamonds. The increase to 128 is a large jump, but well short of the thousands, millions or billions of qubits needed to successfully complete the applications the service sees as useful in the future. For example, qubits could be used for distributed sensing through networks of quantum systems on the battlefield to allow for greater situational awareness, though Gamble noted that quantum information science research is still in the early stage. “We know that a lot of these qubit types are also excellent sensors. So for things like electric and magnetic fields, these quantum sensors can sense those fields ... with a higher sensitivity than you can get out of classical sensor,” Gamble said. “And then if you network those quantum sensor systems together, that increase you can get in your signal goes up even more. “So we need those isolated qubit sensors. But then we also need a way for those qubit sensors to talk to each other over a quantum network.” Being able to process data at quantum speeds would benefit the military as it seeks to make decisions based on large sets of data coming in from the battlefield in near-real time, and as it moves toward multidomain operations. “It's a fundamentally different way to gather, process and share information,” Gamble said. The research was completed by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Sandia National Laboratories. The new technology still needs to undergo tests to ensure the qubits in the chip can be controlled in a way that would help the Army. Gamble said the research team is also considering how to automate parts of the production process. “Thinking about how we can automate these processes to make them even more repeatable is going to be exciting,” Gamble said, “and something that's going to be necessary if you really want to do this for, you know, millions to billions of qubits instead of 128.” https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/it-networks/2020/08/17/us-army-funded-research-project-makes-inroads-on-scaling-quantum-processors/