Lockheed Martin and Rheinmetall expand strategic collaboration

Sur le même sujet

• 

  24 septembre 2018 | International, C4ISR

  New head of Strategic Capabilities Office wants to focus on AI

  By: Aaron Mehta WASHINGTON — The Strategic Capabilities Office is under new management, and its new director intends to doubledown on the agency's emphasis on artificial intelligence. In his first interview since taking over the office, Chris Shank, the new SCO director, made it clear he sees artificial intelligence as a sweet spot for his office. Roughly one third of SCO projects deal with autonomous systems, machine learning or AI in some way, Shank said, including long-range fires programs, cyber programs and some assorted with special forces. Shank is the the group's second leader, following Will Roper, the office's founder who is now the Air Force's top civilian acquisitions official. But don't expect major changes in how the office works. “My job is to keep momentum going,” Shank explained. “It's a very high ops tempo group that [Roper was] able to recruit and attract into the office, in terms of working synergistic teams around that. What I am trying to do is take it from a startup organization to a long-term sustainable one.” Although they share some DNA, the SCO's mission is different from that of the Pentagon's technology office, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Where the latter is focused on finding and prototyping the game-changing technologies for future battles, the SCO is trying to understand existing needs and address them in new ways. Getting those projects from tests to prototype to a tool used by the services remains a central challenge, Shank acknowledged, but he said that is one of the office's core function. “Where SCO lives is the valley of death,” Shank said, referencing a term for when technologies infamously tend to fail. The SCO had been reporting directly to the Secretary of Defense, but under the Pentagon's recent reorganization, it now reports to Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Mike Griffin. Shank acknowledged the importance of coordination within that office, particularly with AI, which now has a number of different centers of gravity within the Pentagon – a $2 billion push by DARPA, an AI center under Chief Technical Officer Dana Deasy, a directorate under the R&E enterprise, as well as various service-level initiatives. The R&E enterprise has weekly meetings to deconflict investments in AI, Shank said, emphasizing the different business models and goals between the groups. Shank described two programs — each named after pieces of the Iron Man movie mythos — as examples of how SCO can use AI to assist the services in the near-term. Paladium is a broader Navy logistics effort, which involves “smart sustainment” in support of fourth-generation fighter aircraft. A sub project for that is JARVIS, which involves putting a robotics suite out into the field with maintainers that can scan existing parts and quickly re-manufacture them. Shank said the office identified two parts that would require around 2,000 man hours to build out; JARVIS should be able to quickly recreate those, saving both time and the potential errors that come from human-machined pieces. Perhaps those projects aren't as shiny as some of SCO's other programs, such as the Perdix drone-swam, but finding areas where AI can be injected onto existing system and where “the human brain doesn't have to work” as hard will have benefits across the Pentagon, Shank said. The office is primarily focused on the Indo-PACOM and European Command theaters, Shank said. However, he expects to soon provide an update on the Sea Mob/Ghost Fleet initiative, which involves converting existing naval vessels into unmanned systems. He also indicated that there would be unmanned projects in air and land that are unveiled in 2019. One looming cloud for the office: an attempt earlier this year by members of the House Armed Services Committee to kill the SCO by 2020. However, when asked if he was concerned about that proposal, Shank flatly said “no.” He traveled to the Hill shortly after taking office to address that specific issue. In describing the conversation with lawmakers, Shank said, “'I know this wasn't your intent, but this impacted both morale and my ability to recruit talent into the organization,'” he said, “and they [said] ‘that wasn't our intent.'” The SCO is working on a report for Congress on the future of the organization. https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2018/09/21/new-head-of-strategic-capabilities-office-wants-to-focus-on-ai

• 

  1 août 2024 | International, C4ISR, Sécurité

  New Android Banking Trojan BingoMod Steals Money, Wipes Devices

  Cybersecurity researchers uncover BingoMod, a new Android banking trojan that steals money, wipes devices, and evades detection. Learn how to protect

• 

  13 mai 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  A bankrupt OneWeb and other troubled space startups could get some help from the Defense Department

  By: Valerie Insinna WASHINGTON — As the U.S. Space Force looks to expand the military's communications capabilities in the far north, it is facing a problem. The global pandemic has hit space startups exponentially hard, and OneWeb, one of the companies aiming to provide internet to Arctic locations, filed for bankruptcy in March. The Defense Department is considering taking action to help fortify OneWeb and other vulnerable space startups, said Lt. Gen. David Thompson, vice commander of Headquarters Space Force. “I will say with respect to OneWeb specifically and others, we continue to work,” he said during a May 12 event held by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. “We work with the White House and we'll be working with Congress, not just focused on OneWeb but all of the commercial space companies that face bankruptcy and face those concerns.” Thompson did not lay out options under consideration by the Pentagon to aid OneWeb, but he did say the department's Space Acquisition Council devised a list of proposed investments for space companies that need rapid, aggressive action. That capital is needed to ensure emerging space technologies remain available to the U.S. military but also so “that potential adversaries don't have the opportunity to acquire those capabilities,” he said. OneWeb is pursuing a sale of the business as part of bankruptcy proceedings, saying that “while the company was close to obtaining financing” through its own negotiations with investors, “the process did not progress because of the financial impact and market turbulence related to the spread of COVID-19.” So far, the company has launched 74 satellites, secured global spectrum and has half of its 44 ground terminals in development or complete — making it attractive to potential bidders such as Amazon or European satellite company Eutelsat. However, two unnamed Chinese firms have also submitted proposals, according to The Telegraph. That could raise major concerns among Defense Department officials, who have warned that adversary nations — particularly China — could use the financial instability caused by the coronavirus pandemic as an opportunity to increase investments in technology companies with national security applications. “The [defense-industrial base] is vulnerable to adversarial capital, so we need to ensure that companies can stay in business without losing their technology,” Ellen Lord, the Pentagon's top acquisition official, said in March. If OneWeb is sold to a Chinese owner, the Defense Department could lose access to one of the few suppliers of commercial broadband internet servicing the Arctic. While the Space Force operates two Enhanced Polar System satellites to provide secure, jam-resistant military communications, few commercial satellite providers extend their coverage to the far north. As a result, troops have limited communication options in the Arctic, and the Pentagon has long been concerned about a lack of resiliency. Companies like OneWeb and SpaceX, which intend to create a network of hundreds of small satellites in low-Earth orbit, could change that paradigm by providing low-cost commercial internet services that span the globe. In September, OneWeb announced it would begin to provide low-latency broadband service to the Arctic by the end of 2020, with full, 24-hour coverage expected in 2021. For its part, SpaceX stated that its Starlink constellation would begin providing broadband service this year. The military has expressed interest in working with both companies. U.S. Northern Command sought $130 million to explore OneWeb's and SpaceX's capabilities in order to provide reliable and potentially cost-effective internet in the Arctic, listing the effort on top of the unfunded priority list sent to Congress this spring. Nathan Strout in Washington contributed to this story. https://www.defensenews.com/smr/2020/05/12/a-bankrupt-oneweb-could-get-some-help-from-the-defense-department/