US Space Force launches ‘Victus Nox’ responsive space mission

Sur le même sujet

• 

  5 novembre 2020 | International, C4ISR, Sécurité

  Pentagon research office wants innovative tools to spot influence campaigns

  Andrew Eversden WASHINGTON — A new broad agency announcement shows that the Pentagon's top research arm wants to work with industry to develop technology that can track adversarial influence operations across social media platforms. The announcement from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for a project called INfluence Campaign Awareness and Sensemaking (INCAS) will use an automated detection tool to unveil influence operations online. “INCAS tools will directly and automatically detect implicit and explicit indicators of geopolitical influence in multilingual online messaging to include author's agenda, concerns, and emotion,” the BAA reads. The BAA comes as the federal government seeks solutions to defend against foreign influence campaigns, particularly surrounding political campaigns, that aim to sow discord among Americans with inflammatory messages. “The US is engaged with its adversaries in an asymmetric, continual, war of weaponized influence narratives. Adversaries exploit misinformation and true information delivered via influence messaging: blogs, tweets, and other online multimedia content. Analysts require effective tools for continual sensemaking of the vast, noisy, adaptive information environment to identify adversary influence campaigns,” the BAA reads. Through the project, DARPA seeks to improve upon current social media tools to track influence operations. The current tools, the solicitation reads, requires a major manual effort in which analysts have to sift through “high volumes” of messages and decide which ones are relevant and gaining traction, using tools for digital marketing. “These tools lack explanatory and predictive power for deeper issues of geopolitical influence,” the solicitation reads. “Audience analysis is often done using static, demographic segmentation based on online and survey data. This lacks the flexibility, resolution, and timeliness needed for dynamic geopolitical influence campaign detection and sensemaking.” The program has five technical areas. Technical area one focuses on using automated influence detection to enable analysts to analyze influence campaigns. The second area will “dynamically segment" the population that is responding to influence campaigns, and identify “psychographic attributes relevant to geopolitical influence,” such as “worldviews, morals and sacred values.” The INCAS tool's third technical area will assist analysts in linking influence indicators and population response over time across several platforms, in order to capture influence campaigns as they evolve over time. The fourth area will create infrastructure to provide data feeds from online sources to the other three technical areas, and the final technical area will conduct technology evaluations and will not be competed as part the the BAA. DARPA expects multiple awards for technical areas one and two, and single awards for technical areas three and four. Abstracts are due Nov. 17, 2020, with proposals due Jan. 8, 2021. Awards will be made around July 2012 using standard procurement contracts or Other Transaction Agreements. https://www.c4isrnet.com/artificial-intelligence/2020/11/03/pentagon-research-office-wants-innovative-tools-to-spot-influence-campaigns/

• 

  15 octobre 2020 | International, Naval

  Defense spending up in San Diego, counteracting pandemic, report find

  The report found increases in spending and jobs in the defense sector has helped stabilize the local economy ANDREW DYER Defense spending across San Diego County bolstered the local economy during the pandemic this year and now accounts for a quarter of the county's gross regional product, according to a new report released Tuesday. According to the annual Military Economic Impact Report, more than $33 billion in direct payments — via payroll, defense contracts, and retirement and veterans benefits — went to people and companies in the county during the 2020 fiscal year. That spending, along with spillover that researchers call a multiplier effect, equates to a total economic impact of more than $52 billion — 25 percent of San Diego's gross regional product. The numbers show an increase of 5.7 percent in direct spending and a 7.7 percent increase in jobs that pencils out to 342,486 jobs. Numbers in this year's report differ from last year's in part because Rady School of Management at UC San Diego compiled and analyzed the data, using modeling that was more conservative than prior calculations, said Mark Balmert, CEO of the San Diego Military Advisory Council, which commissions the annual report. Almost 60,000 active duty sailors and 50,000 active duty Marines make up the largest factions of employment, the report says, with more than 30,000 local civilians also employed by the Defense Department. Indirect employment linked to defense contracts adds roughly 190,000 jobs — about 15,000 more than fiscal year 2019. The presence of the military and defense industries has softened the economic blow of the pandemic, Balmert said. “The Rady School team did a great job of independently confirming what many of us already know, that the Defense budget provides an incredible stabilizing force during economic downturns such as we are experiencing during COVID19,” Balmert, a retired rear admiral, wrote in an email. The report singled-out the impacts of three Nimitz-class aircraft carriers that call San Diego home — the USS Carl Vinson, the USS Theodore Roosevelt, and the USS Abraham Lincoln. Each ship, the report notes, brings more than 3,000 sailors, making the three together a top-10 employer in San Diego. Each carrier contributes about $767 million to the region, the report says. https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/military/story/2020-10-13/defense-spending-up-in-san-diego-counteracting-pandemic-report-finds

• 

  3 avril 2023 | International, Terrestre

  US Army awards Lockheed up to $4.5 bln missiles contract

  Lockheed Martin Corp said on Monday the U.S. Army has awarded a multi-year production contract for Joint-Air-to-Ground Missiles (JAGM) and HELLFIRE missiles, in a deal that could go up to $4.5 billion including follow-on awards.