April 22, 2021
Introducing the Emerging Technologies Institute
April 2, 2020 | International, Big data and Artifical Intelligence, Advanced manufacturing 4.0
Aaron Mehta
A congressionally mandated panel of technology experts has issued its first set of recommendations for the government, including doubling the amount of money spent on artificial intelligence outside the defense department and elevating a key Pentagon office to report directly to the Secretary of Defense.
Created by the National Defense Authorization Act in 2018, the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence is tasked with reviewing “advances in artificial intelligence, related machine learning developments, and associated technologies,” for the express purpose of addressing “the national and economic security needs of the United States, including economic risk, and any other associated issues.”
The commission issued an initial report in November, at the time pledging to slowly roll out its actual policy recommendations over the course of the next year. Today's report represents the first of those conclusions — 43 of them in fact, tied to legislative language that can easily be inserted by Congress during the fiscal year 2021 budget process.
Bob Work, the former deputy secretary of defense who is the vice-chairman of the commission, said the report is tied into a broader effort to move DoD away from a focus on large platforms.
“What you're seeing is a transformation to a digital enterprise, where everyone is intent on making the DoD more like a software company. Because in the future, algorithmic warfare, relying on AI and AI enabled autonomy, is the thing that will provide us with the greatest military competitive advantage,” he said during a Wednesday call with reporters.
Among the key recommendations:
One issue identified early by the commission is the question of ethical AI. The commission recommends mandatory training on the limits of artificial intelligence in the AI workforce, which should include discussions around ethical issues. The group also calls for the Secretary of Homeland Security and the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to “share their ethical and responsible AI training programs with state, local, tribal, and territorial law enforcement officials,” and track which jurisdictions take advantage of those programs over a five year period.
Missing from the report: any mention of the Pentagon's Directive 3000.09, a 2012 order laying out the rules about how AI can be used on the battlefield. Last year C4ISRNet revealed that there was an ongoing debate among AI leaders, including Work, on whether that directive was still relevant.
While not reflected in the recommendations, Eric Schmidt, the former Google executive who chairs the commission, noted that his team is starting to look at how AI can help with the ongoing COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak, saying "“We're in an extraordinary time... we're all looking forward to working hard to help anyway that we can.”
The full report can be read here.
May 1, 2020
Jen DiMascio The Pentagon is employing new ways to track and funnel dollars to small- and medium-sized aviation suppliers hit hard by a drop-off in their commercial business since the novel coronavirus took hold. One way has been to accelerate up-front progress payments to prime contractors. Ellen Lord, the Pentagon's acquisition chief, announced April 30 that in this week alone, the Defense Department processed more than $1.2 billion out of $3 billion to defense contractors in accelerated payments. The acceleration was enabled by a March 20 memo which lifted the amount that large contractors could receive before delivering a contracted item from 80%-90% and for small contractors from 90%-95%. Lord singled out Lockheed Martin for praise for committing to speed $450 million to its supply chain. As those payments are being released, the U.S. Air Force is studying the needs of small suppliers and charting the flow of those progress payments through the industrial base, service officials said during an April 29 Aviation Week MRO webinar. After the first COVID-19 stimulus package was released, Col. Kevin Nalette, vice director, 448th Supply Chain Management Wing, Air Force Sustainment Center, said his office was asked to find out how much money small companies would need to maintain a constant flow of work to continue to support the defense sector. They had two days to ask contractors–the third- and fourth-tier “mom-and-pop shops” whose work becomes an end item purchased somewhere up the stream. The majority of defense vendors do more work–55% or more–for commercial aviation businesses. “As soon as the commercial sector shut down, we had an amazing ability. We now had their full attention,” Nalette said. “When you come to their attention with basically free cash, it's amazing what you can get done.” Tony Baumann, director of contracting for the Air Force Support Center, is capturing data about where the money and progress payments are going. And he is tracking some 2,700 contracts to find out the COVID-related constraints they are operating under. “My guys talked to all of them,” Baumann said, and they stay in contact so that the Air Force knows when a supplier needs to shut down to clean a business. Then Nalette's group is looking at whether that closure might impact deliveries of critical supplies or inventory. That has caused the Air Force to rewrite service contracts using new authorities granted by the CARES Act COVID-relief bill passed by Congress to keep multiple teams of service personnel on contract so that one group can work and another can be ready to backfill so that no group would experience a 14-day interruption, Baumann said. All of those changes are being tracked and coded based on COVID-19, he added. https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/budget-policy-operations/how-pentagon-reaching-small-suppliers
March 3, 2021
The B-21 Training Systems Innovation Challenge Deadline: WEDNESDAY 3 March 2021 The U.S. Air Force Global Strike Command and Rapid Capabilities Office have launched an innovation challenge on Vulcan focused on the B-21 Raider Training Systems. The results of the challenge will inform USAF decisions on the adoption of innovative solutions that enhance training systems for pilots and maintainers. The challenge is the continuation of a user-centered innovation effort spurred by a multidisciplinary USAF team (incl. end users) and—depending on merit and viability —provides the opportunity to: Engage with a state-of-the-art program and receive direct operator feedback. Be selected for a funded prototype demonstration Be considered for other potential development and/or integration activities beyond initial demonstration. Don't delay your engagement with this challenge. You can continue editing your submission all the way until the deadline next Wednesday 3 March 2021. Submit your innovations in Vulcan U.S. Army Cyber PAI Tools, Analytics, and Visualization Assessment Event (AE) Deadline: TUESDAY 2 March 2021 The U.S. Army Cyber Command (ARCYBER) Technical Warfare Center (TWC), is in search of industry expertise, software integration, analytic development, and data visualization capabilities to allow real-time, near real-time, and historical analysis of publicly available information (PAI). This call is interested in technologies that provide some or all of the following capabilities: Data Acquisition and Storage Data Structuring, Preparation, and Integration Data Analytics Data Visualization Submit your relevant capabilities to ARCYBER Cyber Fusion Innovation Center (CFIC) HERE by next Tuesday 2 March 2021. Review the instructions and be proactive in your submission process in order to increase the effectiveness of your engagement. IT TAKES A NETWORK!