Military-themed Email Scam Spreads Malware to Infect Pakistani Users

Sur le même sujet

• 

  11 août 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  Support to pursue Hawaii-based missile defense radar continues after DoD drops funding

  By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — Support is growing both in Congress and in the Pentagon to pursue a Hawaii-based ballistic missile defense radar that the Missile Defense Agency did not include in its fiscal 2021 funding request. Previous MDA budget requests in FY19 and FY20 asked for funding for the discriminating radar as well as another somewhere else in the Pacific. The plan in FY19 was to field the Homeland Defense Radar-Hawaii, or HDR-H, by FY23, which meant military construction would have taken place beginning in FY21. Then in FY20, MDA requested $247.7 million for the radar. Lockheed Martin received an award to develop the radar in December 2018. But in FY21, funding for both the Hawaiian radar and the Pacific radar was missing in the request. MDA Director Vice Adm. Jon Hill said in February, when the request was released, that the agency decided to hit the brakes on its plans to set up the radars in the Pacific, instead planning to take a new look at the sensor architecture in the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command region to figure out what is necessary to handle emerging threats. Hill noted that the area is covered by a forward-deployed AN/TPY-2 radar in Hawaii as well as the deployable Sea-Based X-Band radar. Additionally, Aegis ships with their radars are mobile and can be repositioned as needed to address threats in the near term, he added. Yet, over the summer, the Hawaiian radar gained traction in Congress via funding support in the House Appropriations Committee's defense subcommittee's version of the FY21 defense spending bill and the Senate Armed Services Committee's version of the defense policy bill. The House subcommittee injected $133 million to pursue the homeland defense radar in Hawaii, and the SASC added in $162 million to continue HDR-H development. The SASC also included language that essentially reminded the Pentagon that HDR-H was a response to a mandate in the FY18 National Defense Authorization Act to improve coverage for the threat of ballistic missiles in Hawaii. The HDR-H was also listed as an unfunded requirement for FY21 by Indo-Pacific Command. The SASC also directed the MDA to provide an updated plan that accounts for delays related to finding a site in Hawaii, noting it expects the Pentagon to fund the program in subsequent budget requests. During a presentation at the virtually held Space and Missile Defense Symposium on Aug. 4, Hill showed a slide listing focus areas for the agency in FY21. The presentation included the currently unfunded radar, third from the top of the list. “The potential for getting a radar onto Hawaii as part of another major sensor allows us to have that launch-all-the-way-to-intercept view out in a very large ocean area in the Pacific,” Hill said. The HDR-H is categorized as a focus area for the MDA “because if the [Defense] Department decides to move forward with HDR-H, then the HDR-H will be deployed as part of the U.S. homeland defense architecture against long-range threats,” Mark Wright, MDA spokesman, told Defense News in an Aug. 6 statement. The missile defense architecture “must evolve with advancements of the threat,” he added. “Space sensors do not replace but complement ground-based radars by providing track custody during radar coverage gaps. Having both terrestrial radar and space sensors provides dual phenomenology to accurately track and discriminate the threat as it continues to become more complex.” https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/smd/2020/08/07/support-to-pursue-hawaii-based-missile-defense-radar-continues-after-dod-drops-funding/

• 

  29 mars 2019 | International, C4ISR, Autre défense

  DARPA: Using AI to Build Better Human-Machine Teams

  The inability of artificial intelligence (AI) to represent and model human partners is the single biggest challenge preventing effective human-machine teaming today. Current AI agents are able to respond to commands and follow through on instructions that are within their training, but are unable to understand intentions, expectations, emotions, and other aspects of social intelligence that are inherent to their human counterparts. This lack of understanding stymies efforts to create safe, efficient, and productive human-machine collaboration. “As humans, we are able to infer unobservable states, such as situational beliefs and goals, and use those to predict the subsequent actions, reactions, or needs of another individual,” said Dr. Joshua Elliott, a program manager in DARPA's Information Innovation Office (I2O). “Machines need to be able to do the same if we expect them to collaborate with us in a useful and effective way or serve as trusted members of a team.” Teaching machines social intelligence however is no small feat. Humans intuitively build mental models of the world around them that include approximations of the mental models of other humans – a skill called Theory of Mind (ToM). Humans use their ToM skill to infer the mental states of their teammates from observed actions and context, and are able to predict future actions based on those inferences. These models are built on each individual's existing sets of experiences, observations, and beliefs. Within a team setting, humans build shared mental models by aligning around key aspects of their environment, team, and strategies. ToM and shared mental models are key elements of human social intelligence that work together to enable effective human collaboration. DARPA's Artificial Social Intelligence for Successful Teams (ASIST) program seeks to develop foundational AI theory and systems that demonstrate the basic machine social skills necessary to facilitate effective machine-human collaboration. ASIST aims to create AI agents that demonstrate a Machine ToM, as well as the ability to participate effectively in a team by observing and understanding their environment and human partners, developing useful context-aware actions, and executing those actions at appropriate times. The agents developed under ASIST will need to operate across a number of scenarios, environments, and other variable circumstances, making the ability for them to evolve and adapt as needed critical. As such, ASIST will work to develop agents that can operate in increasingly complex environments, adapt to sudden change, and use observations to develop complex inferences and predictions. During the first phase of the program, ASIST plans to conduct experiments with single human-machine interactions to see how well the agents can infer human goals and situational awareness, using those insights to then predict their teammate's actions and provide useful recommended actions. As the program progresses, the complexity will increase with teams of up to 10 members interacting with the AI agents. During these experiments, ASIST will test the agents' ability to understand the cognitive model of the team – not just that of a single human – and use that understanding to develop appropriate situationally relevant actions. Full details on the program can be found in the Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) solicitation, which has been posted to the Federal Business Opportunities website, https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=9d4acf0aba98916288a541bd07810004&tab=core&_cview=1 https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2019-03-21b

• 

  8 avril 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

  U.S. Small Businesses May Get More COVID-19 Emergency Funding

  Sean Broderick WASHINGTON—The Trump Administration has asked Congress for an additional $250 billion in small-business payroll loan funding, providing more cash to the coronavirus pandemic emergency funding program that many small aerospace suppliers are expected to tap. U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin tweeted the news April 7, confirming that, “at the direction of President Trump,” he has asked Democrat and Republican leaders in both the House of Representatives and Senate for more Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) funding “to make sure small businesses get the money they need!” The PPP, part of the March 27 Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, was set up to quickly get funds to eligible businesses to cover eight weeks of payroll costs as well as most rent, utility and mortgage-interest expenses. Companies can apply for a one-time PPP loan of up to 2.5 times their average monthly 2019 payroll, up to a maximum $10 million. So long as 75% of the funds are used for payroll costs, the loans do not have to be repaid, making them de facto grants. The CARES Act allocates $349 billion to the program, but early popularly suggests that more funding may be needed to meet demand. The Small Business Administration (SBA) processed more than $70 billion in loans in PPP's first three days after the program opened April 3, though it did not say how much of that has been funded. Some 250,000 small businesses, out of an estimated 30 million, have applied for PPP funds. Mnuchin said he has spoken with Congressional leaders and is confident that he has bipartisan buy-in. “We look forward to the Senate passing that on [April 9], and the House passing that on [April 10]” Mnuchin told reporters during an April 7 media briefing. Additional funding could be approved quickly. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) said in a statement that he would work with Mnuchin and fellow Senate leaders to approve further funding within days. House Democrats are already working on a larger bill, which leader Nancy Pelosi calls CARES 2, that includes more PPP funding. PPP loan applications, submitted through the SBA Small Business Administration (SBA) and funded by participating lenders, began rushing in as soon as the program opened April 3. SBA Mnuchin said April 7 that more than 3,000 lenders are onboard, with additional institutions expected to participate. The program experienced some early hiccups, due in part to its scale and how quickly it has come together. CARES became law on March 27, and interim rules on how PPP would work were issued late April 2, just hours before applications were set to start. The PPP's broad applicability, lack of requirements for guarantees or other collateral, and de facto grant properties—the loans become forgivable if guidance is followed—have made it a catch-all for many small businesses. The general SBA limit for a small business is 500 employees, but it is based on staff or revenue limits set in the North American Industry Classification System. Many aviation businesses, aircraft and engine parts makers and maintenance providers, have limits above 500 employees. The PPP's potential reach and theoretically streamlined application and fulfillment times mean industry trade associations that represent smaller businesses are urging their members to examine PPP loans. https://aviationweek.com/air-transport/aircraft-propulsion/us-small-businesses-may-get-more-covid-19-emergency-funding