14 janvier 2022 | International, Aérospatial

Thailand approves $414 mln budget for fighter jets upgrade

Thailand's cabinet has backed a plan to buy four fighter jets starting in the next fiscal year, an air force spokesman said on Wednesday, with a budget of 13.8 billion baht ($413.67 million) set aside for the procurement.

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/thailand-approves-414-mln-budget-fighter-jets-upgrade-2022-01-12

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  • Artificial intelligence systems need ‘checks and balances’ throughout development

    22 juin 2020 | International, C4ISR

    Artificial intelligence systems need ‘checks and balances’ throughout development

    Andrew Eversden The Pentagon's primary artificial intelligence hub is already studying how to aim a laser at the correct spot on an enemy vehicle, pinpointing which area to target to inflict the most damage, and identifying the most important messages headed to commanders, officials said June 16. But as part of that work, the Department of Defense needs to carefully implement checks and balances into the development process, experts urged June 16. “Fundamentally I would say there's a requirement ... that there's going to be a mixture of measures taken to ensure the governability of the system from the first stage of the design of the system all the way up through the operations of the system in a combat scenario,” said Greg Allen, the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center's chief of strategy and communications at the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, at the Defense One Tech Summit June 16. The JAIC is working on several lethality projects through its new joint warfighting initiative, boosted by a new contract award to Booz Allen potentially worth $800 million. “With this new contract vehicle, we have the potential to do even more this next year than we did in the past,” Allen said. Meanwhile, the Army's Artificial Intelligence Task Force is working on an advanced threat recognition project. DARPA is exploring complementing AI systems that would identify available combat support assets and quickly plan their route to the area. Throughout all of the development work, experts from the military and from academia stressed that human involvement and experimentation was critical to ensuring that artificial intelligence assets are trustworthy. The department has released a document of five artificial intelligence ethical principles, but the challenge remains implementing those principles into projects across a department with disparate services working on separate artificial intelligence projects. “We want safe, reliable and robust systems deployed to our warfighters,” said Heather Roff, senior research analyst at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab. “We want to be able to trust those systems. We want to have some sort of measure of predictability even if those systems act unpredictably.” Brig. Gen. Matt Easley, director of the artificial intelligence task force at Army Futures Command, said the service is grappling with those exact challenges, trying to understand how the service can insert “checks and balances” as it trains systems and soldiers. Easley added that the unmanned systems under development by the Army will have to be adaptable to different environments, such as an urban or desert scenarios. In order to ensure that the systems and soldiers are ready for those scenarios, the Army has to complete a series of tests, just like the autonomous vehicle industry. “We don't think these systems are going to be 100 percent capable right out of the box,” Easley said on the webinar. “If you look at a lot of the evolution of the self-driving cars throughout our society today, they're doing a lot of experimentation. They're doing lots of testing, lots of learning every day. We in the Army have to learn how to go from doing one to two to three vehicle experiments to have many experiments going on every day across all our camp posts and stations.” Increasingly autonomous systems also mean that there needs to a cultural shift in among all levels of military personnel who will need to better understand how artificial intelligence is used. Roff said that operators, commanders and judge advocate generals will need to better understand how systems are supposed “to ensure that the human responsibility and governability is there.” “We need to make sure that we have training, tactics, procedures, as well as policies, ensuring where we know the human decision maker is,” Roff said. https://www.c4isrnet.com/it-networks/2020/06/18/artificial-intelligence-systems-need-checks-and-balances-throughout-development/

  • The Marines want to get rid of their tanks. Here’s why.

    9 avril 2020 | International, Naval, Terrestre

    The Marines want to get rid of their tanks. Here’s why.

    Shawn Snow A series of wargames conducted between 2018 and 2019 helped inform the Corps' decision to divest of tanks and outmoded units and equipment that will have trouble surviving in fight with peer adversaries like China, according to a Marine Corps force redesign report. From those wargames the Corps learned that the unit that shoots first has a “decisive advantage” on the battlefield and forces that can operate inside the range of enemy long-range precision fires “are more operationally relevant than forces which must rapidly maneuver to positions outside the ”weapons engagement zone, the report reads. The Corps' decision to divest of tanks, cut ground cannon artillery and light attack air platforms has stoked some criticism. Tanks historically have had success in high-end and urban warfare for decades boasting devastating firepower highly lethal to ground forces. But tanks and armored vehicles have had trouble surviving against the threat of precision strike and the plethora of drone and reconnaissance systems flooding conflict zones across the Middle East. For recent evidence, a Turkish launched operation targeting Syrian regime army troops in late February decimated more than a hundred tanks and armored vehicles, dozens of artillery pieces and hundreds of Syrian forces, according to the Turkish National Ministry of Defense. Turkey posted videos highlighting a mixed role of drones, Paladin artillery systems and aircraft pounding Syrian armor from the skies over the course of several days. The Syrian army appeared helpless to defend from the onslaught of long range systems. Even tanks camouflaged by buildings and bushes were no match for sensors and thermal imaging watching from the skies. The problem is exacerbated by the number of sophisticated anti-tank systems flooding counterinsurgency conflicts across the globe and access to long range drones once only in control by state actors are now being operated by militia groups. In Libya, the Libyan National Army has the upper hand in its drone war with the UN-backed Tripoli government. It's equipped with an alleged UAE-supplied Chinese drone known as the Wing Long II that boasts a 2,000 km range through a satellite link and is reportedly armed with Chinese manufactured Blue Arrow 7 precision strike air-to-surface missiles. “Mobility inside the WEZ [ weapons engagement zone] is a competitive advantage and an operational imperative,” the Marine Corps report reads. The Corps instead is looking for mobile systems and units that can survive within the reach of precision fires to “attrit adversary forces," create dilemmas for the enemy and “consume adversary ISR resources,” according to the report. “The hider-versus finder competition is real. Losing this competition has enormous and potentially catastrophic consequences,” the report reads. Reconnaissance and counter-reconnaissance capabilities will be key on the modern battlefield. “We have sufficient evidence to conclude that this capability [tanks], despite its long and honorable history in the wars of the past, is operationally unsuitable for our highest-priority challenges in the future,” the report said about the divestment of Marine tanks. But tanks aren't disappearing from the fight. The Corps says heavy ground armor will still be provided by the Army. The Corps says it plans to develop heavily into unmanned ground and air systems and rocket artillery and long range fires. According to the report, the Corps is increasing its rocket artillery batteries by 14 to 21 over a 10-year period. Wargaming that inferred the Corps' force redesign efforts were carried out by the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, among others. https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/flashpoints/2020/03/26/the-marines-want-to-get-rid-of-their-tanks-heres-why

  • NATO Meets a World of New Threats - Policy Magazine

    10 juillet 2023 | International, Autre défense

    NATO Meets a World of New Threats - Policy Magazine

    The NATO leaders meeting in Vilnius, Lithuania next Tuesday and Wednesday (July 11-12) is a test of Alliance support for Ukraine in its ongoing war with

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