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Department of the Air Force Leaders Emphasize Adapting AI for Warfighting Success

Wednesday, December 6th, 2023

ARLINGTON, Va. (AFNS) —

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall made it clear that the Air Force and Space Force are fully committed — and pushing hard — to develop and deploy artificial intelligence as a key element in meeting security challenges posed by China and other adversaries Dec. 2.

Kendall’s remarks were not new, but by voicing them during a session at the influential Reagan National Defense Forum, he added additional weight to the Department of the Air Force’s efforts to use AI as part of a larger push to modernize.

“I care a lot about civil society and the law of armed conflict,” Kendall said. “Our policies are written around those laws. You don’t enforce laws against machines, you enforce them against people. Our challenge is not to limit what we can do with AI but to find how to hold people accountable for what the AI does. The way we should approach is to figure out how to apply the laws of armed conflict to the applications of AI. Who do we hold responsible for the performance of that AI and what do we require institutions to do before we field these kinds of capabilities and use them operationally.”

Kendall pointed out that China and other adversaries are aggressively using AI, and while the U.S. maintains an edge, it is shrinking. Kendall’s comments dovetailed with those from Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin, who said at a separate session during the conference that the Air Force must modernize to properly meet the security threats of today.

Part of that effort, Allvin said, is diligently working to integrate AI and machine learning into new capabilities that mesh seamlessly with mission needs and proven technologies, while understanding performance tradeoffs.

“I do believe the future is going to be about human-machine teaming,” Allvin said. “Optimizing the performance and being able to operate at speed. That investment in our collaborative combat aircraft program is what is going to get us there.”

Speed and automation of AI systems have vastly shortened decision timelines. That’s why the DoD’s National Defense Strategy focuses on accelerating decision making and the way information is analyzed and shared.

“We are leveraging algorithms and starting with data fusion and being able to gain insights,” Allvin said. “The changing character of war is speed. If we are going to be privileging speed and have massive amounts of data, the ability to have algorithms and the tools that support and let the analysts do what only humans can do which is make that human decision.”

“Our job on the government side more than anything else is to thoroughly understand this technology, have the expertise we need to really get into the details of it and appreciate how it really works,” Kendall said. “To be creative about helping industry find new applications for that technology and developing ways to evaluate it get the confidence we’re going to need to ensure that it can be used ethically and reliably when it is in the hands of our warfighters.”

Replacing obsolete, legacy systems by harnessing emerging information, communications, and AI technologies to provide operational targeting and decision support with the speed, adaptability and resilience needed to fight in a highly contested environment is a priority for DAF and falls under Kendall’s Operation Imperatives.

“The critical parameter on the battlefield is time,” Kendall said. “The AI will be able to do much more complicated things much more accurately and much faster than human beings can. If the human is in the loop, you will lose. You can have human supervision and watch over what the AI is doing, but if you try to intervene you are going to lose. The difference in how long it takes a person to do something and how long it takes the AI to do something is the key difference.”

Rapid AI development requires DAF to be agile and adaptable in its approach, focusing on rapid testing, experimentation and deployment. The Department of Defense continues to maintain a robust regulatory and ethical framework to ensure the responsible use of AI in defense.

Both men stressed the importance of innovation. Allvin said that innovation is a critical element of modernization and is necessary for maintaining readiness.

“War is a human thing and the ability to leverage technology with human innovation is something we can never walk away from as we’re continuing to develop and more sophisticated systems,” Allvin said.

The Reagan National Defense Forum, celebrating “10 Years of Promoting Peace Through Strength,” brings together leaders from across the political spectrum and key stakeholders in the defense community, including members of Congress, current and former presidential administration officials, senior military leadership, industry executives, technology innovators and thought leaders. Their mission is to review and assess policies that strengthen America’s national defense in the context of the global threat environment.

Secretary of the Air Force Public Affairs

Posted in AI / ML, Air Force, Guest Post | 2 Comments »

Launch of SensorFusionAI

Monday, October 23rd, 2023

• DroneShield launches SensorFusionAI (SFAI), a sensor-agnostic, 3D data fusion engine for complex environments

• Currently deployed as a module in DroneSentry-C2, DroneShield’s Command-and-Control (C2) system

• This launch enables SFAI as a standalone module which can integrate into third party C2 systems on SaaS basis, providing smart fusion capability from diverse sensor arrays

DroneShield (“DroneShield” or the “Company”) is pleased to launch SensorFusionAI (SFAI), a sensor-agnostic, 3D data fusion engine for complex environments.

Angus Bean, DroneShield’s CTO, commented “Detection of drones or Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) is moving towards multi-sensor approach for fixed site (and in certain situations, vehicle and ship systems) where the space and budget allows for such approach, due to ability to provide better detection results with multiple sensor modalities, such as radiofrequency, radar, acoustic and camera systems, either deployed in a single or across multiple nodes.”

“However the multi-sensor approach only generates better results, with an intelligent software engine to fuse together the sensor outputs and give an intelligent set of outputs – otherwise adding more sensors is counterproductive as it creates more data without a clear way to manage it.”

DroneShield has developed a true AI-based sensorfusion engine, initially for its own DroneSentry-C2 command-and-control system, including all common drone detection modalities (RF, radar, acoustics, camera).

This separation enables third party C2 manufacturers (including primes) to add SFAI to their C2 systems, on a subscription basis (SaaS), thus improving the performance.

Oleg Vornik, DroneShield’s CEO, added “DroneShield seeks to be both the complete supplier of C-UAS solutions where possible, or a subcontractor where it makes sense. There will be numerous situations globally where the customer has an existing preference for another C2 supplier, based on their existing relationships or other requirements. Providing SFAI to such third party suppliers, maximises our market share and further monetises the IP that we have developed.”

Key feature of SFAI include:

• Behaviour Analysis – Track an object to determine classification and predict trajectory.

• Threat Assessment – Intelligently determine threat level based on a wide range of data types.

• Confidence Levels – Designed for complex, high noise environments, with inconsistent data inputs.

• After-Action Reporting – Sophisticated analytics presented in easy to interpret graphical dashboards.

• Edge Processing – Utilises an edge processing device (SmartHub) for reduced network load and high scalability.

• Versatile Adaptable Inputs – New sensors use existing software adaptors to improve integration time.

• Output to Any Platform – Visualisation on DroneSentry-C2 or third-party C2 platforms, data analysis, alert systems or security management software.

SFAI has significant advantages over traditional multi-sensor C2 engines, whereby system sensors are utilised for their strengths with their weaknesses offset by the strengths of sensor types:

• System intelligently builds a model informed by all inputs over time.

• Confidence values allow for soft sensitivity selection, reducing false positives or false negatives.

• Prediction model can interpolate paths for consistent tracking even with sparse data.

• Any incomplete or contradictory data mediated by comprehensive object model.

• All sensor data fused into one consistent intelligence packet.

Posted in AI / ML, Press Release, UAS | Comments Off on Launch of SensorFusionAI

AI Security Center to open at National Security Agency

Wednesday, October 4th, 2023

WASHINGTON — National Security Agency Director Army Gen. Paul M. Nakasone today announced the creation of a new entity to oversee the development and integration of artificial intelligence capabilities within U.S. national security systems.

The AI Security Center will become the focal point for developing best practices, evaluation methodology and risk frameworks with the aim of promoting the secure adoption of new AI capabilities across the national security enterprise and the defense industrial base.

The new entity will consolidate the agency’s various artificial intelligence, security-related activities.

“The AI Security Center will work closely with U.S. Industry, national labs, academia across the [intelligence community] and Department of Defense and select foreign partners,” Nakasone said during a discussion hosted by the National Press Club in Washington.

He added that the unique talent and expertise at the NSA make the agency well suited to support the government’s effort to ensure the U.S. maintains its competitive edge in AI.

U.S. officials have emphasized the increasing role AI is having in shaping the national security landscape and have taken steps to shape the future of the emerging technology.

Nakasone noted the most recent strategies guiding U.S. national security, defense and intelligence emphasize the increasingly consequential role of AI.

In January, the Defense Department updated its 2012 directive that governs the responsible development of autonomous weapon systems to the standards aligned with the advances in artificial intelligence. In 2020, the department also published its Responsible AI Strategy and Implementation Pathway, which serves as a key example of U.S. leadership in promoting responsible stewardship of the rapidly emerging technology.

The U.S. has also introduced a political declaration on the responsible military use of artificial intelligence, which further seeks to codify norms for the responsible use of the technology.

Nakasone, who also commands U.S. Cyber Command and serves as the chief of the Central Security Service, warned that it is critical the U.S. maintain its leadership in AI as the technology matures.

“AI will be increasingly consequential for national security in diplomatic, technological and economic matters for our country and our allies and partners,” Nakasone said

“Today, the U.S. leads in this critical area, but this lead should not be taken for granted,” he said. “Our adversaries, who have for decades used theft and exploitation of our intellectual property to advance their interests will seek to co-opt our advances in AI and corrupt our application of it,” he said.

He said it is imperative that the NSA sets a clear path forward to address “both the opportunities and challenges of AI as industry rockets forward with innovation.”

“AI security is about protecting AI systems from learning, doing and revealing the wrong thing,” he said.

“We must build a robust understanding of AI vulnerabilities foreign intelligence threats to these AI systems and ways to encounter the threat in order to have AI security,” he said. “We must also ensure that malicious foreign actors can’t steal America’s innovative AI capabilities to do so.”

By Joseph Clark, DOD News

Posted in AI / ML, Army, Guest Post | 2 Comments »

DoD to Establish AI Battle Labs in EUCOM, INDOPACOM

Saturday, September 30th, 2023

WASHINGTON (AFNS) —

Two BRAVO AI Battle Labs will be established at U.S. European Command and the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, in collaboration with the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office’s Algorithmic Warfare Directorate and the Defense Innovation Unit, to expedite learning from Department of Defense data. Over the next year, the labs will organize multiple U.S. federal government-wide BRAVO Hackathons, including some with coalition partners.

“BRAVO Hackathons represent an opportunity for DoD to practice and proliferate the fundamentals of user-centered design and agile software development,” said Joe Larson, Defense Department deputy chief digital and AI officer for algorithmic warfare. “By providing the seed funding to establish the AI Battle Labs in EUCOM and INDOPACOM, we will be designing and testing data analytic and AI capabilities with warfighters, not for them, informing and strengthening our ability to deliver exactly what they need to win.”

These multi-classification labs will collect operational theater data — ranging from logistics to cyber — and share it with the DoD enterprise, providing central hubs for digital integration among federal entities, industry, coalition partners and American citizenry. The BRAVO Hackathon series will continue organizing one-week events to integrate data at any classification within a software development environment that permits untrusted licensed open-source and commercial software and data otherwise not approved for production systems.

“On behalf of the DoD, we will deploy BRAVO’s awesome development experience to combatant commands to host timeboxed hackathons and continuously develop and integrate capabilities developed from operational theater data,” said Dr. Stuart Wagner, Air Force Chief Digital Transformation officer and BRAVO AI Battle Labs executive agent. “Given that a free society’s largest competitive advantage is innovation and collaboration, the labs will provide a physical and digital space for serendipitous social collisions as DoD, industry, and coalition partners prototype solutions to challenges from peer competitors. Any U.S. citizen remains eligible to apply to participate in public BRAVO hackathons.”

Federal government employees and federal contractors are encouraged to share use cases, data, infrastructure, or potential collaborations with these labs by email (saf.cn.bravo@us.af.mil). U.S. citizens and U.S. industry seeking to collaborate with these labs are encouraged to contact the Defense Innovation Unit (onramp-hack-bravo@diu.mil).

“We look forward to working with the BRAVO labs to ensure that developers and companies who want to work with DoD data can rapidly access the environments they need to demonstrate operational relevance,” said Doug Beck, Defense Innovation Unit director.

The labs will continue the series’ bottom-up approach to problem solving, where military members, civilians and federal contractors propose projects and form self-organizing teams that develop prototypes inside combatant commands.

“The use of emerging AI tools to quickly analyze and leverage data for decision advantage is critical in today’s increasingly complex threat environment,” said U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Peter Andrysiak, USEUCOM chief of staff. “Establishing one of the BRAVO AI Battle labs within in the USEUCOM region is an important investment for this command. The lab will enable greater innovation at the edge, with our allies and partners, against a range of challenges at a pivotal time for the command.”

The labs seek to interconnect combatant command, enterprise DoD and coalition partner capabilities from data ingestion and system integration to approved employment. The Air Force’s system-of-systems technology integration toolchain for heterogeneous electronic systems, or STITCHES, will integrate various Combatant Command and service level systems directly to the labs.

Across three BRAVO hackathons at six separate sites, 81 operational prototypes have been produced at three classifications from operational DoD data at approximately 2% the cost of existing DoD minimum viable product innovation pipelines such as Small Business Innovation Research Program Phase II grants.

Since the BRAVO 10 hackathon in March 2023 at Hurlburt Field, Florida, 33% of those projects have been utilized in production or received follow-on funding commitments that totals over 75 times the cost of the hackathon itself. Dozens of prototypes from prior events have been further resourced and impacted major defense programs in areas including large language models, space launch, flight telemetry and biometrics, radar resiliency, unmanned systems, personnel recovery, sensing and targeting, user experience, intelligence analysis, situational report automated analysis, battle damage assessment, critical communication system reliability and legal and administrative operations among others.

“Despite the speed and impacts from BRAVO hackathons, we are still finding the time from development of capabilities, calibrations, or tactics with operational data to employment in theater to be on the order of months or years,” Wagner said. “We are deploying these labs to drop this timeline by a factor of 100 — from months or years to days and eventually hours — by increasingly automating bureaucratic processes such as data classification determinations and authority to operate applications. If successful, we will adapt our capabilities and tactics to our strategic competitors faster than they can adapt to us.”

Named from Billy Mitchell’s controversial 1920s Project B battleship bombing trials that creatively disproved the top funding priority of the Secretary of War by demonstrating bombers sink battleships, BRAVO seeks to empower government, academia, industry, citizens and foreign partners to rapidly develop capabilities from existent IT systems while encouraging psychological safety and rank-agnostic innovation.

DoD News

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USSOCOM Awards Accrete Contract for AI Agent Argus to Detect Disinformation Threats from Social Media

Tuesday, September 5th, 2023

Anomaly detection AI software, Argus, analyzes social media data to predict emergent narratives and generate intelligence reports at a speed and scale that empowers military forces to neutralize viral disinformation threats.

New York, NY, August 29, 2023 – Accrete AI, a leading dual-use enterprise AI company, deployed its AI software for open-source threat detection, Argus, with the U.S. Department of Defense in 2022. Today, Accrete is excited to announce that it has been awarded a new contract by the U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) to deploy Argus to enable intelligence analysts and special operators in USSOCOM to predict real time disinformation threats from social media.

“Synthetic media, including AI-generated viral narratives, deep fakes, and other harmful social media-based applications of AI, pose a serious threat to U.S national security and civil society,” said Prashant Bhuyan, Founder and CEO of Accrete. “Social media is widely recognized as an unregulated environment where adversaries routinely exploit reasoning vulnerabilities and manipulate behavior through the intentional spread of disinformation. USSOCOM is at the tip of the spear in recognizing the critical need to identify and analytically predict social media narratives at an embryonic stage before those narratives evolve and gain traction. Accrete is proud to support USSOCOM’s mission.”

Argus Social, An Interactive AI Agent for Disinformation Threat Detection

Accrete will also launch an enterprise version of Argus Social for disinformation threat detection later this year called Nebula Social. Nebula Social will address urgent customer pain points pertaining to AI-generated synthetic media, including heightened risk from viral disinformation and deep fakes. Managing AI-generated synthetic media risk requires an AI agent capable of autonomously learning what is most important to an enterprise and predicting the most relevant emergent social media narratives across modalities, including language, image, video, and audio, before they influence behavior.

Nebula Social not only aims to help enterprise customers manage synthetic media risk, such as AI-generated smear campaigns from competitors, but also to autonomously generate timely and relevant content that matches the most influential emergent narratives with authentically engaged audiences to drive more efficient product innovation and go-to-market strategies. Nebula Social has the potential to significantly expand the traditional social listening market by satiating latent enterprise demand for more intelligent and predictive social media tools for a variety of use cases, including crisis management, product innovation, recruiting, marketing, and political strategy.

According to Bhuyan, “Government agencies and enterprises alike have an urgent need to manage a plethora of risks and opportunities posed by AI-generated synthetic media.” Bhuyan goes on to say, “Companies are already experiencing significant economic damage caused by the spread of AI-generated viral disinformation and deep fakes manufactured by competitors, disgruntled employees, and other types of adversaries. We believe that the market for AI that can predict and neutralize malign AI-generated synthetic media is about to explode.”

?Contact Accrete to learn more about our latest social media AI solutions.

Posted in AI / ML, Contracts, Cyber, Information Warfare, Press Release, SOF | 4 Comments »

Seeing into the Future: AF Looks to AI for Data Analysis

Saturday, June 10th, 2023

ARLINGTON, Va. (AFNS) —

In an effort to digest and rapidly analyze the process of decision making, Headquarters Air Force Digital Operations Directorate (A3X) developed an artificial intelligence-based software that can be applied to all Air Force specialty codes to better examine and predict operational outcomes.

Tomorrow’s operating environment requires Airmen to have the most accurate and up-to-date intelligence to act quickly in real time, today. Headquarters Air Staff have developed six software programs for career fields using AI to conduct data analysis.

George Forbes, director of HAF Digital Operations Directorate, cited the exponential benefits of being able to make decisions more accurately, more predictably and more precisely.

“We can shift from spending time doing manual tasks – like putting information into computers – and move to more cognitive techniques where we can analyze the data because the computer is doing much of the busy and manual work.”

George Forbes, Director, HAF Digital Operations Directorate

Besides data management, the AI software can calculate predictions based off equations and programming, depending on the type of data available. Whether the predicted outcome is correct or not, the software is capable of learning and adapting to produce even more accurate outcomes for future calculations.

“We might take in different data, like how many people are in the Air Force, what is their behavior based upon their gender and age, or other demographic categories to anticipate [their behaviors] in a particular situation. For instance, we can predict their decision to stay in or leave the Air Force,” Forbes said. “We use the force’s past behavior to train the models to predict their future behavior. Specifically, we use a Recurring Neural Network Methodology, which is a high-end AI method.”

The software is adaptable across all AFSCs to interpret different situations. From tracking flight hours to locating equipment, this new application can replace cumbersome applications and software systems presently used to more user-friendly ones for newcomers. Past applications are portable to other asset management type work but not necessarily in AI.

“When you build an application to manage something like equipment, you want it to be kept alive. This is where standardized application development systems come in,” Forbes said. “You can build them at your current base, and, once you PCS [Permanent Change of Station], you can still use the same process.”

The overarching goal of the new software systems is to provide leaders quicker access to interpret data and make impactful decisions.

Secretary of the Air Force Public Affairs

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Athena AI and Tomahawk Robotics Partnership Strengthens with First US DoD export Sale

Monday, May 8th, 2023

Brisbane, Australia, May 8th, 2023 – Athena AI, the Australian AI enabled soldier decision support company, is pleased to announce its first export sale. The sale, led by Tomahawk Robotics, provides the US DoD with Tomahawk’s common controller for unmanned systems, augmented by Athena AI’s Mission Module.

Athena AI is a featured AI partner in Tomahawk Robotics’ Kinesis command and control software ecosystem. Kinesis gives you the freedom to control the robotic platform you need to get the job done – all from a single interface and while integrating with your TAK/ATAK teammates. Athena AI’s role in the partnership is to leverage networked robotic platforms to extend soldiers’ sensory perception. The Athena AI Mission Module monitors platform video feeds and autonomously detects mission critical information, such as threats or objects of interest. This reduces the cognitive load required for soldiers to take in their surroundings and enables faster, more robust tactical decisions.

This is just one of the ways Athena AI is looking to improve combat capability for Defence Forces. Ultimately, Athena exists to help allied nations drive efficiencies and deliver decision superiority at the tactical level, all whilst mitigating risk to personnel. Athena also has products in development to support accelerated, ethically sound targeting cycles, autonomous geospatial analysis, AI-enabled mission planning, and the synchronisation and autonomous tasking of uncrewed air and ground platform effects.

Athena’s CEO Stephen Bornstein explained “Our MOU with Tomahawk has been ongoing for over 18 months, and we are pleased to now mature this into a fully integrated application available to Kinesis users. We thank both Tomahawk and the US DoD for their consideration in how we can support the RAS enabled warfighter”.

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DAF’s First Data, Analytics, AI Forum Open for Registration

Tuesday, March 21st, 2023

Secretary of the Air Force Public Affairs

ARLINGTON, Va. (AFNS) —

The Department of the Air Force’s Chief Data and Artificial Intelligence Office and the Office of Studies and Analysis are partnering to present the Data, Analytics, and Artificial Intelligence Forum in Herndon, Virginia, April 24-27.

Registration is now open for this four-day gathering of the nation’s top artificial intelligence and data experts to share, demonstrate, and expand collaborations among key government, military, academia and industry stakeholders.

Wayne Schatz, Director of the Office of Studies and Analysis, and Eileen Vidrine, the Department of the Air Force Chief Data and Artificial Intelligence officer, are strategically operationalizing, delivering, and sustaining high-quality, enterprise-level capabilities in data and artificial intelligence that enable decision superiority and supports mission success.

“To be AI ready by 2025 and AI competitive by 2027, the Chief Data and Artificial Intelligence Office and the Office of Studies and Analysis are partnering to accelerate the transformative benefits of integrated data and analytics,” Vidrine said. “Without accurate, reliable data, there cannot be trusted analysis or AI.”

This forum will feature subject matter experts who will share their vast knowledge of data, AI and analytics as a part of an effort to support initiatives like the Department of Defense’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control and the Air Force’s Advanced Battle Management System to respond to a critical need, connecting sensors with shooters across all services in all domains.

Forum registration is open through March 31, 2023. To register, click here.

For questions regarding speaking opportunities or registration, e-mail DAF.data.aiforum@us.af.mil.

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