13 décembre 2023 | International, Aérospatial
Rheinmetall wins major contract: Austria orders state-of-the-art air defence system for €532 million
The contract encompasses a project period of 48 months starting in February 2024.
19 mars 2020 | International, C4ISR
L3Harris is building an AI tool to help process imagery
By: Nathan Strout
L3Harris is building a new platform that will help analysts in the military use artificial intelligence to identify objects in large imagery data sets.
“In general, there's a big challenge with the amount of remote sensing data that's coming down, whether that's from space or airborne assets,” explained Will Rorrer, principal of business development for geospatial at L3Harris Technologies.
“So there's lots of imagery and other data types coming down from above, so much so that it really can't be looked at in its entirety — certainly not exploited in its entirety — by traditional means (with) purely human analysts. And so things like counting objects in imagery, monitoring different places, that's where there's a natural adoption of machine learning type of techniques,” he continued.
L3Harris officials declined to share who the end customer for their product will be or the exact value of their multimillion dollar contract, which was issued by the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center.
It's no secret that the Department of Defense and the intelligence community are eager to use artificial intelligence tools to sift through the vast torrent of data created by an ever increasing number of sensors and pick out the most important information for human analysts. For its platform, L3Harris is focusing on creating the training data and workflows that will enable a machine learning tool to process data for the Department of Defense and provide deliverable intelligence.
Machine learning platforms are essentially made of three parts: the training data the neural network will learn from, the machine learning algorithm itself, and then how the platform integrates into other Department of Defense systems.
L3Harris will be working on what Rorrer calls the front end and the back end of the AI platform.
“A lot of AI/ML technologies can be ported into that middle category,” he said. “Neural network applications that have been developed in commercial space can be brought in if we can address the front end and the back end of that in DoD space.”
For nearly 30 years, L3Harris has been incorporated advanced modeling and simulation capabilities to test out new payloads and optical systems, using computers to plot out how the atmosphere and other factors will impact their technologies. Now the company plans to use those modeling and simulation tools to develop the training data that will teach a machine learning algorithm how to solve complex DoD problems, such as identifying a threatening object within satellite imagery.
“All of that summed up—we make very good fake imagery,” said Rorrer. “ We've taken that technology that was essentially developed for another reason and pivoted (to using it) as a source of synthetic training data for these neural net applications.”
Synthetic training data can be especially important for developing DoD or intelligence community AI applications, since there's often not enough real world imagery of the threats they're focused on, said Rorrer. L3Harris believes that they can create fake imagery that looks enough like the real thing that when real imagery is fed into the algorithm it can find the objects it's supposed to.
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18 mai 2023 | International, Autre défense
NATO's Stoltenberg expects new 2% defence investment pledge at Vilnius summit
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Thursday said he expected members to agree on a new investment pledge to spend 2% of their gross domestic product on defence at the alliance's summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, in July.
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6 juillet 2018 | International, C4ISR
5 technology trends driving an intelligent military
By: Antti Kolehmainen The rise of non-traditional actors, cyberattacks and state-sponsored subversion is challenging democratic governance and creating an increasingly volatile operational and security environment for defense agencies. To address these threats, military organizations must be able to operate seamlessly and intelligently across a network of multinational partners. This year's Accenture Technology Vision identified five trends that are essential components of any intelligent defense organization: Citizen AI, extended reality, data veracity, frictionless business and Internet of Thinking. Private AI: training AI as an effective troop member Harnessing AI's potential is no longer just about training it to perform a specific task: AI will increasingly function alongside people as a full-fledged member of a team. In the high-stakes world of defense, it's especially important that AI systems act as trustworthy, responsible and efficient colleagues. AI could have a major impact for military organizations, including defense logistics and cybersecurity. An adversary equipped with advanced AI capabilities will not wait for its enemies to catch up technologically before launching an offensive. AI's ability to process and analyze vast amounts of data has significant implications across the Observe, Orient, Decide, Act (OODA) loop. From augmenting our ability to detect new threats to analyzing countless variables, AI could transform surveillance and situational awareness. Extended Reality: The end of distance Extended reality (XR), which includes virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), is the first technology to relocate people in both time and place—effectively eliminating distance. For the defense sector, the ability to simulate and share a common view of an operational theatre is immensely powerful. Recently, Accenture created a mixed reality proof of concept using Microsoft HoloLens and gaming engine Unity that provides military personnel with an interactive map showing real-time location and status data for troops and resources on the ground. With a simple command, a user can order reinforcements or supplies, or create and test different scenarios through a mixed reality interface. XR technology can also enhance operational command capabilities in the field. For example, AR goggles could provide dashboards and data visualizations where and when they are needed – such as at an operating base. XR also will have major implications for training, allowing soldiers and pilots to engage in highly realistic combat simulations. Data veracity: the importance of trust As defense organizations become increasingly data-driven, inaccurate and manipulated information is a persistent and serious threat. Agencies can address this vulnerability by building confidence in three key data-focused tenets: provenance, or verifying data from its origin throughout its life cycle; context, or considering the circumstances around its use; and integrity, or securing and maintaining data. The ability to trust and verify the data that flows between multinational partners is critically important. Organizations must be capable of delivering the right data to the right recipient, at the right time – which can only be accomplished by radically reorienting how data is shared across today's armed forces. Today's vertical approach involves passing information up and down the command stack of a nation's military. In contrast, multinational military operations demand that information is also shared horizontally across the forces of different nations and partners. This shift requires a profound change in technology, mindset and culture within agencies. Frictionless defense: built to partner at scale Our recent survey found that 36 percent of public service leaders report working with twice as many strategic partners than two years ago. And when partnerships between industry, academia and military organizations are horizontally integrated and technology-based, they can expand faster and further than ever before. But legacy systems weren't built to support this kind of expansion, and soon, outdated systems will be major hindrances to collaboration. With this in mind, defense organizations must develop new IT architectures to reduce complexity. Agile IT systems will allow innovation to flourish, unimpeded by internal politics and employee resistance. A modern IT architecture will push organizations to clearly define the services they offer and turn each service into a potential enabler of collaboration. The Internet of Thinking: intelligent distributed defense capabilities Today's technology infrastructures are designed around a few basic assumptions: enough bandwidth to support remote applications, an abundance of computing power in a remote cloud and nearly infinite storage. But the demand for immediate response times defies this approach. Recent projections suggest that by 2020, smart sensors and other Internet of Things devices will generate at least 507.5 zettabytes of data. Trying to manage the computational “heavy-lifting” offsite will become limiting. The need for real-time systems puts hardware back in focus: special-purpose and customizable hardware is making devices at the edge of networks more powerful and energy efficient than ever before. Public service organizations are taking note: our survey indicates 79 percent of leaders believe it will be very critical over the next two years to leverage custom hardware and accelerators to meet new computing demands. The next generation of military strategies ride on pushing intelligence into the physical world. Defense organizations have to embrace new operating models to enable high-speed data flows, harness the potential of distributed intelligence and successfully neutralize threats. The defense sector is challenged to respond to new types of threat, political volatility and even new combat arenas, and acquiring new technology capabilities is a strategic imperative. Delivering greater situational awareness and the ability to respond rapidly to unpredictable adversaries requires investments in AI, edge computing and other emerging technologies. Likewise, today's information architectures will need to be redesigned to collaborate quickly, effectively and securely. Antti Kolehmainen is managing director, defense business service global lead at Accenture. https://www.c4isrnet.com/opinion/2018/07/05/5-technology-trends-driving-an-intelligent-military