7 juin 2019 | International, Naval, C4ISR
QinetiQ has confirmed it has secured a new contract to provide the Royal Navy with advanced anti-submarine warfare (ASW) training services using the latest target simulation technology from Saab. The new contract will extend QinetiQ's long-term partnership role at the MOD's British Underwater Test and Evaluation Centre (BUTEC) at the Kyle of Lochalsh into the training environment.
Significantly, the new training service supports the Royal Navy's forthcoming introduction of Queen Elizabeth Class aircraft carriers and will increase ASW training opportunities while also maximising operational deployment of the submarine fleet. It will also provide unprecedented training analytics to optimise exercise outcomes and deliver world-leading training capabilities.
With QinetiQ as the lead partner, the new contract is the result of a progressive and close collaboration between QinetiQ, Saab and Serco. The new programme will capitalise on Saab's state of the art AUV62-AT autonomous underwater vehicle system to provide full and effective simulation of an operational submarine in a wide range of training scenarios. Highly experienced QinetiQ personnel will coordinate, manage and control all deployment of the simulated target, with Serco providing the vessels for launch and recovery. De-risking trials were completed by the QinetiQ team at BUTEC, and two successful training serial events have already been completed off the south west coast of England.
According to the Royal Navy's Lt Cdr Ben Costley-White, Staff Warfare Officer (Under Water) to Flag Officer Sea Training, the new contract led by QinetiQ will transform the Navy's ASW training capabilities. “This move will enable us to harness the expertise of QinetiQ and the very latest simulation technologies to deliver comprehensive and first class ASW training exercises without the limitations posed by the practicalities and cost of redeploying submarine assets for training purposes. This represents a major step change in our training options and our ability to harness analytical data for effective evaluation of all ASW training.”
“We're delighted to be extending our test and evaluation capabilities into the training environment for the Royal Navy,” says QinetiQ's Stu Hider, Programme Director (Maritime). “Combining our expertise and experience in programme planning and delivery with the world's most advanced target simulation technology will help to ensure the Royal Navy benefits from the most versatile, cost-effective and sophisticated ASW training solution.”
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By: Kelsey Atherton A platypus, several Australians and a thundering panda walk into an electromagnetic spectrum, then leave with $150,000. The result is, potentially, a technique and a tool that will allow soldiers to discover what signals in a war zone are relevant to their mission and what are merely noise. The Army Rapid Capabilities Office announced Aug. 27 the winners of the Army Signal Classification Challenge, a competition for artificial intelligence and machine learning with the goal of creating a thinking machine that can accurately classify signals on the fly. Platypus Aerospace, a team from the federally funded Aerospace Corporation, won the event, taking home $100,000. A group of data scientists from Australia competing as TeamAU won $30,000, and a team from Motorola Solutions named THUNDERING PANDA placed third, winning $20,000. These winners beat out a pool of over 150 teams from universities, industry, laboratories and government. The challenge ran from April 30 through Aug. 13. Participants had a 90-day period to develop a model and train on data sets provided by the Rapid Capabilities Office. After that, the models were tested against two data sets ranging in complexity. For the challenge, the Army office said that “the classic signal detection process is no longer efficient in understanding the vast amount of information presented to electronic warfare officers on the battlefield” thanks to the multiplicity of satellite signals, radar signals, phones and other devices transmitting across the electromagnetic spectrum. The understated goal is that the winners' creation is needed not just for a hypothetical future battlefield, or even any of the long-running active theaters where soldiers see combat today. Instead, as noted in the release, “this was the office's first competitive challenge, which grew from the fielding of electronic warfare prototypes to address operational needs in Europe earlier this year.” That “operational need in Europe” may refer to the electronic warfare taking place in Ukraine, which has become something of an open laboratory for both Russia and the United States. Or it might be a broader acknowledgement of the potential threat picture in the region generally. In June, the Army conducted an electronic attack within Latvia as part of a NATO training exercise. The Rapid Capability Office already outfitted the Army with several new electronic warfare tools for countering Russian electronic warfare in Europe, and in July announced that it was bringing those capabilities home to field with a unit stateside. Research into a versatile, flexible artificial intelligence that can find electronic warfare specialists the interesting signals amidst the irrelevant noise is likely to continue. The Rapid Capabilities Office will announce a Phase 2 for the program later this year. https://www.c4isrnet.com/electronic-warfare/2018/08/27/army-announces-winners-of-ai-for-electronic-warfare-challenge