Japan awards Mitsubishi Heavy $2.8 bln missile contracts

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  11 octobre 2019 | International, Aérospatial

  Leonardo: contract valued at over 150 million euros with Guardia di Finanza for the supply of three ATR 72MPs and logistic support services

  Rome, October 9, 2019 - Leonardo has signed a contract with Guardia di Finanza valued at over 150 million euros for the supply of three ATR 72MPs and related technical-logistic support services. This contract completes the acquisition of four aircraft, the first order was placed in July 2018, awarded under a European tender. The first aircraft will be delivered by the end of 2019, with the remaining three units expected to be supplied by 2022. Alessandro Profumo, CEO of Leonardo, said: "We are proud that Guardia di Finanza has chosen to rely once again on our ATR 72MP, an aircraft which fully represents Leonardo's technological capabilities in terms of design and integration of platforms and systems at the highest levels.” Lucio Valerio Cioffi, Aircraft Division MD at Leonardo, said: “The ATR 72MP combines reliability, low operating costs, all the advantages of the ATR 72-600 regional passenger transport aircraft together with a state-of-the-art mission system.” The ATR 72MP will be integrated into the aeronautical capabilities of Guardia di Finanza, in the context of the multiple roles assigned to the Corps by the current regulatory framework. The Guardia di Finanza is the only law enforcement agency with general jurisdiction capable of exercising incisive and constant supervisory activities along the entire national coastal development and in international waters, carried out also due to the advanced technological equipment installed on its own aircraft. Specific latest generation capabilities embedded for the first time into the ATR 72MP will be useful to support dedicated surveillance activities entrusted to the Guardia di Finanza. The ATR 72MP will operate in air-sea patrol and research missions, using on-board sensors to identify, even discreetly, sensitive objects, monitor their behavior, acquire evidence, and lead the intervention of naval units and land patrols. The ATR 72MP - already in service with the Italian Armed Forces in a military version called P-72A - is equipped with the modular Leonardo ATOS (Airborne Tactical Observation and Surveillance) mission system. The ATOS manages the wide range of sensors of the aircraft, combining the information received in an overall tactical situation and presenting the results to the operators of the mission system in the most suitable format, providing an excellent and constantly updated scenario. Thanks to its commercial derivation, the ATR 72MP delivers its crew levels of ergonomics that increase its efficiency and effectiveness during maritime patrol, search and identification missions, SAR (search and rescue) missions, counter drug trafficking, piracy, smuggling and preventing any illegal action across the territorial waters, which can typically last more than 8 hours. View source version on Leonardo: https://www.leonardocompany.com/en/press-release-detail/-/detail/09-10-2019-contract-valued-at-over-150-million-euros-with-guardia-di-finanza-for-the-supply-of-three-atr-72mps-and-logistic-support-services

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  22 juin 2020 | International, C4ISR

  Artificial intelligence systems need ‘checks and balances’ throughout development

  Andrew Eversden The Pentagon's primary artificial intelligence hub is already studying how to aim a laser at the correct spot on an enemy vehicle, pinpointing which area to target to inflict the most damage, and identifying the most important messages headed to commanders, officials said June 16. But as part of that work, the Department of Defense needs to carefully implement checks and balances into the development process, experts urged June 16. “Fundamentally I would say there's a requirement ... that there's going to be a mixture of measures taken to ensure the governability of the system from the first stage of the design of the system all the way up through the operations of the system in a combat scenario,” said Greg Allen, the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center's chief of strategy and communications at the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, at the Defense One Tech Summit June 16. The JAIC is working on several lethality projects through its new joint warfighting initiative, boosted by a new contract award to Booz Allen potentially worth $800 million. “With this new contract vehicle, we have the potential to do even more this next year than we did in the past,” Allen said. Meanwhile, the Army's Artificial Intelligence Task Force is working on an advanced threat recognition project. DARPA is exploring complementing AI systems that would identify available combat support assets and quickly plan their route to the area. Throughout all of the development work, experts from the military and from academia stressed that human involvement and experimentation was critical to ensuring that artificial intelligence assets are trustworthy. The department has released a document of five artificial intelligence ethical principles, but the challenge remains implementing those principles into projects across a department with disparate services working on separate artificial intelligence projects. “We want safe, reliable and robust systems deployed to our warfighters,” said Heather Roff, senior research analyst at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab. “We want to be able to trust those systems. We want to have some sort of measure of predictability even if those systems act unpredictably.” Brig. Gen. Matt Easley, director of the artificial intelligence task force at Army Futures Command, said the service is grappling with those exact challenges, trying to understand how the service can insert “checks and balances” as it trains systems and soldiers. Easley added that the unmanned systems under development by the Army will have to be adaptable to different environments, such as an urban or desert scenarios. In order to ensure that the systems and soldiers are ready for those scenarios, the Army has to complete a series of tests, just like the autonomous vehicle industry. “We don't think these systems are going to be 100 percent capable right out of the box,” Easley said on the webinar. “If you look at a lot of the evolution of the self-driving cars throughout our society today, they're doing a lot of experimentation. They're doing lots of testing, lots of learning every day. We in the Army have to learn how to go from doing one to two to three vehicle experiments to have many experiments going on every day across all our camp posts and stations.” Increasingly autonomous systems also mean that there needs to a cultural shift in among all levels of military personnel who will need to better understand how artificial intelligence is used. Roff said that operators, commanders and judge advocate generals will need to better understand how systems are supposed “to ensure that the human responsibility and governability is there.” “We need to make sure that we have training, tactics, procedures, as well as policies, ensuring where we know the human decision maker is,” Roff said. https://www.c4isrnet.com/it-networks/2020/06/18/artificial-intelligence-systems-need-checks-and-balances-throughout-development/

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  29 janvier 2024 | International, Terrestre

  Go to today's edition of the newsletter Spanish Armed Forces modernisation brings defence spending to 1.30% GDP

  Spain has ramped up its procurement list this past year and the Minister of Defence has announced her decision to increase spending in line with plans.