Romania opens F-16 pilot training hub for NATO allies, Ukraine | Reuters

Sur le même sujet

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  9 décembre 2019 | International, Aérospatial, C4ISR

  Wanted: Virtual reality headsets that aren’t made in China

  By: Valerie Insinna ORLANDO, Fla. — The U.S. Air Force wants to tap into the augmented and virtual reality technologies that are proliferating in the commercial market, but the service has run into a problem: Many have parts from China, limiting their ability to be used by the U.S. military in operational environments. “Can we not have an AR [augmented reality] solution that's made in China? I don't think that's good for us,” Col. Gerard Ryan, chief of the Air Force's operational training infrastructure division, said during a panel discussion Tuesday at the Interservice/Industry, Training, Simulation and Education Conference. “I don't think the security policy is going to pass. And I say that sarcastically, but it's true. If we're going to use a gaming engine, let's make sure it's not made by a foreign country that we don't like,” he added. The Air Force is dipping its toes into using virtual reality through its Pilot Training Next program, which seeks to get airmen through basic pilot training more quickly and cheaply. While the PTN program is currently considered an experiment, with only a handful of airmen participating at any given time, the Air Force has already shown it may be able to shave months off the existing training timeline by supplementing live flights spent in the T-6 trainer with virtual ones using Vive virtual reality headsets and flight simulation software. An unclassified environment like basic pilot training is a perfect place for the Air Force to use the augmented and virtual reality devices currently on the market. But for such products to ever see use by fighter and bomber pilots — or any operator that deals with secure information — the service must be sure that no part of the device is made by China, or any other foreign entity that could insert technology that allows for data collection. The Air Force has begun talking to companies about its concerns, Ryan said. The hope is those firms can examine their supply chains and shift away from buying Chinese components. “I've talked to some people in industry. A smaller company has said they've found a set of goggles that's American-made. I'm like: ‘Great, you're the first person to tell me that. The only one so far, too,' ” Ryan said. Another challenge is connecting commercial devices in a classified environment, where Bluetooth and Wi-Fi use may be restricted. “I've talked to one company that has figured [it] out. They have a system where it's a backpack laptop. So it's a direct connect to the goggles,” Ryan said. “Unfortunately it's more expensive, probably, to do that. It's probably more challenging to find the parts.” When augmented or virtual reality systems can be brought into classified environments, they may not be flexible enough for quick reconfiguration to complement different training scenarios, said Col. David Nyikos, Air Combat Command's deputy director of operations. “AR/VR is super cool,” he said during the panel. “But now you need it to evolve, you need it to reprogram to adapt to whatever mission rehearsal you're coming up with. Maybe tonight you're going to go out with guys from AFSOC [Air Force Special Operations Command] working with some Norwegian SOF [special operations forces], working with some Afghans. You've got to be able to train together to rehearse that. We don't have that right now.” https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/itsec/2019/12/06/wanted-virtual-reality-headsets-that-arent-made-in-china

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  9 février 2018 | International, Aérospatial, C4ISR

  Safran contributeur majeur du projet « OCEAN2020 » retenu par la Commission Européenne pour l’Action Préparatoire de Recherche de Défense

  Boulogne-Billancourt, le 7 février 2018 Safran est l'un des principaux membres du consortium OCEAN2020 qui a remporté l'appel d'offres majeur associé à l'Action Préparatoire de Recherche de Défense (PADR) de la Commission Européenne pour 2017. Doté d'un montant de 35 millions d'euros, le projet de la Commission Européenne porte sur un démonstrateur technologique attestant de la valeur opérationnelle de systèmes de drones de tous milieux (drones aériens, de surface et sous-marins) dans un environnement maritime. Le consortium OCEAN2020, mené par Leonardo, a remporté cet appel d'offres en fédérant des industriels de toutes tailles, des partenaires académiques et des représentants étatiques de 15 pays de l'Union Européenne. L'équipe gagnante réalisera deux démonstrations de mise en oeuvre de nouveaux moyens de surveillance et de systèmes intégrés de traitement de l'information dans le cadre d'exercices navals européens, en Méditerranée en 2019 puis en mer Baltique en 2020. Au cours de ces opérations navales, Safran déploiera son drone Patroller dans une configuration de surveillance maritime. Seul drone à voilure fixe de longue endurance engagé dans ces démonstrations, le Patroller sera équipé d'une nouvelle chaîne de mission comprenant un radar de surveillance maritime, un système d'identification automatique des navires (AIS) et la boule optronique EuroflirTM 410 de Safran déjà présente sur sa version terrestre. Les informations recueillies par cet ensemble multi capteurs seront transmises aux systèmes de combat de plusieurs navires et aux centres d'opérations. Safran contribuera aux innovations du projet OCEAN2020 en développant une fonction d'autonomie de mission pour drones navals. Des traitements embarqués permettront au Patroller de détecter et de suivre automatiquement un navire suspect dans sa zone de recherche et de réunir de l'information (vitesse, trajectoire, taille, immatriculation, images-preuves...) afin de faciliter le travail des opérateurs de mission. Ces nouvelles capacités fonctionnelles sont déterminantes pour mener à bien les opérations de surveillance des Marines et agences européennes réalisées avec des drones. Thierry Dupoux, directeur de l'innovation chez Safran Electronics & Defense, a déclaré : « Nous sommes fiers de poursuivre notre feuille de route sur les chaînes de mission drone pour les applications de surveillance maritime. C'est une chance de déployer nos compétences pour contribuer à construire un projet européen d'envergure dans la R&D de défense. » L'Action Préparatoire de Recherche de Défense est un programme de recherche de 3 ans de la Commission Européenne visant à tester, à travers plusieurs projets, les mécanismes de financement de la R&T de Défense par le budget de l'Union Européenne. Elle préfigure le lancement d'un programme-cadre de soutien de la recherche de défense à partir de 2021. https://www.safran-electronics-defense.com/fr/media/safran-contributeur-majeur-du-projet-ocean2020-retenu-par-la-commission-europeenne-pour-laction-preparatoire-de-recherche-de-defense-20180207

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  2 avril 2019 | International, Aérospatial

  U.S. Air Force to Develop AI-Powered Combat UAV

  Author: Mike Rees The U.S. Air Force has announced that its Office of Strategic Development Planning and Experimentation at the Air Force Research Laboratory is working on fielding a prototype Autonomous Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle as an Early Operational Capability as early as 2023. The program, known as Skyborg, and the SDPE office have issued a request for information to industry to conduct market research and concept of operations analysis to learn what is commercially available now as high technology readiness level capabilities which can meet the requirements and timeline of the Skyborg program. Skyborg officially stood up as a fiscal year 2019 funded pathfinder program through SDPE in October 2018, according to Ben Tran, Skyborg program manager. “There was a lot of analysis that determined what was put into the CRFI,” Tran said. “We've been given the overall objective to have an early operational capability prototype fielded by the end of calendar year 2023, so this is our first step in determining what the current state of the art is from a technology perspective and from a systems engineering perspective to provide that EOC capability in 2023.” Low cost, attritable, unmanned air vehicles are one way to bring mass to the fight when it comes to addressing potential near-peer engagements in the future, according to Tran. “We also know there is heavy investment by our near-peer adversaries in artificial intelligence and autonomy in general. We know that when you couple autonomy and AI with systems like low-cost attritables, that can increase capability significantly and be a force multiplier for our Air Force and so the 2023 goal line is our attempt at bringing something to bear in a relatively quick time frame to show that we can bring that kind of capability to the fight.” Matt Duquette, an AFRL Aerospace Systems Directorate engineer, brings a background in UAV control, autonomy, and modeling and simulation of UAVs, especially teams of UAVs to the effort while assisting the Skyborg program with formulating its approach to the autonomy system and some of the behaviors that the UAVs will have. “Skyborg is a vessel for AI technologies that could range from rather simple algorithms to fly the aircraft and control them in airspace to the introduction of more complicated levels of AI to accomplish certain tasks or subtasks of the mission,” Duquette said. This builds on much of the AFRL foundational work with AI shown with programs such as Have Raider and the Auto Ground and Air Collision Avoidance systems, which prove that levels of autonomy in high performance aircraft are not only possible, but also practical. “Part of our autonomy development is building assurance into the system. You can either build assurance by using formal methods or approaches where at design time, as you develop these autonomous capabilities, you guarantee certain behaviors, or a more practical approach is to assess the capabilities of these behaviors at run time, meaning while they're running on the aircraft. So, those are the capabilities that we're interested in looking at from the experimentation level to see what type of assurance you need in the system so you can mix high and low criticality.” “We're looking at a range of vehicle performance parameters – mission analysis will help us determine what the final outcome is and the responses from the CRFI will help us understand what the performance is of currently available systems and whether those will meet the needs or not. Everything from keeping up with combat platforms to slower platforms for sensing. There will be a range of possibilities there,” said Patrick Berry, from AFRL's Sensors Directorate, who is supporting the Skyborg program by conducting modeling, simulation and analysis. Although Skyborg is not scheduled for any particular type of aircraft platform at this time, Tran said the CRFI emphasizes the importance of an open systems architecture, having modularity in the system, not only from a sensing capabilities standpoint, but overall mission systems, as well as the autonomy associated with the mission capability for the platform. “We've partnered with the 412th Test Wing at Edwards Air Force Base, California, and specifically an organization called the Emerging Technologies Combined Test Force and we're working with them beginning with small, fast-moving UAVs to test the current state of the art in AI and autonomy in those airplanes and the ability for them to autonomously team and collaborate in flight,” Tran said. Machine learning has progressed greatly over the last few years and we're very inspired by those results and excited by things that are going on in the gaming industry for instance,” said Maj. Ryan Carr, from AFRL's Aerospace Systems Directorate. “We expect that technology will continue to mature fairly rapidly. What we really need to understand is, ‘How do you take that and do something like bring it to the real world and fly with it for example?' The thing we're trying to get at early on is how to do that safely. We're talking about run-time assurance, working hand-in-hand with the flight test community who have a very long record of safe flight testing. That's really what we want to focus our attention on in this early period,” Carr said. “We want to do this in a way that builds trust in the system as you go along so that when you get to that EOC, you will have established a baseline of trust so that operational youth will believe what the system will do or believe it's safe. It's not just that end-state capability, it's the trust as you go along,” he added. Before operational AI innovation can occur, the Air Force must field an autonomous system that meets an immediate operational need and can serve as an iterative platform to facilitate complex AI development, prototyping, experimentation and fielding, and that system is Skyborg, the CRFI says. https://www.unmannedsystemstechnology.com/2019/03/u-s-air-force-to-develop-ai-powered-combat-uav/