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GNARBOX 2.0 Drone Edition and Edge Compute Platform

Thursday, March 25th, 2021

This week GNARBOX announced two new products, GNARBOX 2.0 Drone Edition and Edge Compute Platform. For those of you unfamiliar, GNARBOX hit the imagery storage and exploitation scene a few years ago with a crowdfunded device which allows both storage and digital manipulation of image files outside of a computing environment like a laptop or handheld device. Rather, the heavy lifting is accomplished on the GNARBOX via wireless control from apps on a handheld.

Although intended for photographers, the tech was quickly picked up by others who work with various forms of imagery data sets.

The company claims the GNARBOX features “Mil-Spec” environmental hardness, so take it with a grain of salt until we verify what that actually means. It does however, include a 1TB NVMe SSD with two USB-C ports, an SD card slot, and a Micro HDMI port. The USB-C ports have a transfer rate of 390 MB/s, while the SD card has a transfer rate of 75 MB/s.

DNG images, H.264, H.265, and ProRes formats are supported by the GNARBOX 2.0 Drone Edition and can be backed up to Dropbox.

Additionally, it uses xxHash64 Checksum with byte-for-byte verification checks for corruption in the field automatically with progress displayed on the GNARBOX screen.

Essentially, Drone Edition is just software. It still resides on the GNARBOX. For the drone operator, it offers automated file organization using tagged geo-location and flight data to find specific image data. It also incorporates Pix4D’s cloud software to make workflows simpler and transfer data seamless.

Data sets may utilize a iOS hotspot to deliver from the GNARBOX to your cloud for additional 2D and 3D processing.

“While developing a complete solution for Photo and Video workflow, we built our stack on a containerized architecture with future markets in mind. The capabilities of a computer like ours are driven by software, and expanding offerings to new applications has been the vision since the beginning. It doesn’t matter if the data being collected is off a photographer’s camera, a powerline inspector’s drone, or an autonomous vehicle at an industrial site — it’s all data in need of storage, processing, and upload from the edge. We believe our proven track record in delivering rugged computing ecosystems will help us bring significant value to these markets.”
-Tim Feess
GNARBOX CEO

Interestingly, access to the software is via annual subscription and GNARBOX is offering a very optimistic 10-year plan.

It gets better (or worse, depending upon your point of view) as they also launched their Edge Compute Platform GNARBOX which allows drone operators to deploy software right in the platform, at the edge, rather than at a central server. This will make it more difficult to conduct some forms of countermeasures against threat systems.

Posted in Digitization, UAS | Comments Off on GNARBOX 2.0 Drone Edition and Edge Compute Platform

Army, Air Force Fund Research to Pursue Quantum Computing

Saturday, March 20th, 2021

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. — Joint Army- and Air Force-funded researchers have taken a step toward building a fault-tolerant quantum computer, which could provide enhanced data processing capabilities.

Quantum computing has the potential to deliver new computing capabilities for how the Army plans to fight and win in what it calls multi-domain operations. It may also advance materials discovery, artificial intelligence, biochemical engineering and many other disciplines needed for the future military; however, because qubits, the fundamental building blocks of quantum computers, are intrinsically fragile, a longstanding barrier to quantum computing has been effective implementation of quantum error correction.

Researchers at University of Massachusetts Amherst, with funding from the Army Research Office and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, identified a way to protect quantum information from a common error source in superconducting systems, one of the leading platforms for the realization of large-scale quantum computers. The research, published in Nature, realized a novel way for quantum errors to be spontaneously corrected.

ARO is an element of the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, known as DEVCOM, Army Research Laboratory. AFOSR supports basic research for the Air Force and Space Force as part of the Air Force Research Laboratory.

“This is a very exciting accomplishment not only because of the fundamental error correction concept the team was able to demonstrate, but also because the results suggest this overall approach may amenable to implementations with high resource efficiency, said Dr. Sara Gamble, quantum information science program manager, ARO. “Efficiency is increasingly important as quantum computation systems grow in size to the scales we’ll need for Army relevant applications.”

Today’s computers are built with transistors representing classical bits, either a 1 or 0. Quantum computing is a new paradigm of computation using quantum bits or qubits, where quantum superposition and entanglement can be exploited for exponential gains in processing power.

Existing demonstrations of quantum error correction are active, meaning that they require periodically checking for errors and immediately fixing them. This demands hardware resources and thus hinders the scaling of quantum computers.

In contrast, the researchers’ experiment achieves passive quantum error correction by tailoring the friction or dissipation experienced by the qubit. Because friction is commonly considered the nemesis of quantum coherence, this result may appear surprising. The trick is that the dissipation has to be designed specifically in a quantum manner.

This general strategy has been known in theory for about two decades, but a practical way to obtain such dissipation and put it in use for quantum error correction has been a challenge.

“Demonstrating such non-traditional approaches will hopefully spur more clever ideas for overcoming some of the most challenging issues for quantum science,” said Dr. Grace Metcalfe, program officer for Quantum Information Science at AFOSR.

Looking forward, researchers said the implication is that there may be more avenues to protect qubits from errors and do so less expensively.

“Although our experiment is still a rather rudimentary demonstration, we have finally fulfilled this counterintuitive theoretical possibility of dissipative QEC,” said Dr. Chen Wang, University of Massachusetts Amherst physicist. “This experiment raises the outlook of potentially building a useful fault-tolerant quantum computer in the mid to long run.”

By U.S. Army DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory Public Affairs

Posted in Air Force, Army, Digitization, Disruptive Tech, Guest Post | Comments Off on Army, Air Force Fund Research to Pursue Quantum Computing

USAF’s Agile Combat Employment Demonstration Leverages Persistent Systems MANET Technology

Friday, March 19th, 2021

Company’s mobile ad hoc network enables capabilities necessary to establish and operate small, rapidly deployable air bases in geographically dispersed areas, during conflict with near-peer power.

NEW YORK, N.Y. – Persistent Systems, LLC (“Persistent”) announced today that its Wave Relay® mobile ad hoc networking (MANET) technology successfully supported the U.S. Air Force’s demonstration of its Agile Combat Employment (ACE) concept.

ACE seeks to counter the threat near-peer powers like China and Russia pose to American force projection by shifting from large, established air bases to smaller, rapidly deployable, temporary airstrips manned by skeleton crews.

“Normally, you would have hundreds of people on a large Air Force base to support a squadron of fighter jets,” said Todd Grant, Persistent’s Director of Business Development for the Air Force and C4ISR. “With ACE, you get the same capability from a smaller, harder-to-target footprint that moves.”

To accomplish this, the U.S. Air Force requires a highly versatile and mobile command-and-control network that can tie together the core elements a combat wing required to plan missions, maintain jets, put them in the air, and defend the airstrip. An additional goal is to minimize the cost by leveraging existing Air Force assets, such as legacy radios, computer servers, and satellite terminals.

“That’s what we have shown with our Wave Relay® MANET during this recent demonstration,” said Adrien Robenhymer, Persistent’s VP for Business Development for Air Force, Intelligence Community, and Department of Energy Programs. “We connected geographically dispersed units at different military bases, providing users with direct communication, situational awareness, full motion video, and audio.”

The demonstration proved that the Air Force has the networking capability to support expeditionary air bases in an A2AD environment while saving hundreds of millions of dollars.

Persistent also demonstrated automated PACE (Primary, Alternate, Contingency, and Emergency) communications via satellite, internet, and 5G cellular, as well as by local area network for conditions when a beyond-line-of-sight capability is not available.

“In a world where technologies increasingly depend upon Cloud Computing availability, Persistent’s Base Defense and Missile Field Solutions can operate completely standalone when the Cloud is not available, enabling operation in a ‘CloudNONE’ scenario,” said Robenhymer.

But the implications of the ACE demonstration are even greater than that.

“The interoperability lessons that were learned here flow into the Advanced Battle Management System, the Air Force’s multi-billion-dollar effort to connect computers, sensors and shooters at machine-speed, in keeping with the U.S. Department of Defense’s vision of Joint All Domain Command and Control,” he said.

The next step, Persistent officials say, is to take the real-life capabilities shown with ACE and merge them with future Advanced Battle Management System work.

Posted in Air Force, Comms, Digitization, Press Release | 1 Comment »

RfPatrol and MPU5 Create Integrated Soldier System

Thursday, March 18th, 2021

DroneShield Ltd (ASX:DRO) (“DroneShield” or the “Company”) is pleased to announce the integration of its body-worn UAS passive detection device RfPatrol with the Persistent Systems MPU5 – the worlds most advanced, scalable, and efficient Mobile Ad Hoc Networking (MANET) soldier radio system. The MPU5 is offered in Australia by CISTECH Solutions, the premier Radio over IP and Network Services integrator.

Together, RfPatrol™ and the MPU5 offer a body-worn passive detection capability, with RfPatrol™ output via its Battle Management System securely relayed in real time to a central command point via the MPU5, for a common operating picture showing location of the dismounted forces carrying the RfPatrol devices, displaying UAS and other threat alerts in real time and locations.

Oleg Vornik, DroneShield’s CEO, commented, “This is world’s first capability of its kind, enabling a common operating picture of C-UAS and other improvised threat detection from dismounted units in the field. We are excited to partner with CISTECH Solutions and Persistent Systems to deliver this solution to our customers.”

Posted in Comms, Digitization, Press Release | Comments Off on RfPatrol and MPU5 Create Integrated Soldier System

Breakthrough Lays Groundwork for Future Quantum Networks

Wednesday, March 17th, 2021

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. — New Army-funded research could help lay the groundwork for future quantum communication networks and large-scale quantum computers.

Researchers sent entangled qubit states through a communication cable linking one quantum network node to a second node.

Scientists at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago, funded and managed by the U.S. Army Combat Capability Development, known as DEVCOM, Army Research Laboratory’s Center for Distributed Quantum Information, also amplified an entangled state via the same cable first by using the cable to entangle two qubits in each of two nodes, then entangling these qubits further with other qubits in the nodes. The peer-reviewed journal, Nature, published the research in its Feb. 24, 2021, issue.

“The entanglement distribution results the team achieved brought together years of their research related to approaches for transferring quantum states and related to advanced fabrication procedures to realize the experiments,” said Dr. Sara Gamble, program manager at the Army Research Office, an element of the Army’s corporate research laboratory, and co-manager of the CDQI, which funded the work. “This is an exciting achievement and one that paves the way for increasingly complex experiments with additional quantum nodes that we’ll need for the large-scale quantum networks and computers of ultimate interest to the Army.”

Qubits, or quantum bits, are the basic units of quantum information. By exploiting their quantum properties, like superposition, and their ability to be entangled together, scientists and engineers are creating next-generation quantum computers that will be able solve previously unsolvable problems.

The research team uses superconducting qubits, tiny cryogenic circuits that can be manipulated electrically.

“Developing methods that allow us to transfer entangled states will be essential to scaling quantum computing,” said Prof. Andrew Cleland, the John A. MacLean senior professor of Molecular Engineering Innovation and Enterprise at University of Chicago, who led the research.

Entanglement is a correlation that can be created between quantum entities such as qubits. When two qubits are entangled and a measurement is made on one, it will affect the outcome of a measurement made on the other, even if that second qubit is physically far away.

To send the entangled states through the communication cable—a one-meter-long superconducting cable—the researchers created an experimental set-up with three superconducting qubits in each of two nodes. They connected one qubit in each node to the cable and then sent quantum states, in the form of microwave photons, through the cable with minimal loss of information. The fragile nature of quantum states makes this process quite challenging.

The researchers developed a system in which the whole transfer process—node to cable to node—takes only a few tens of nanoseconds (a nanosecond is one billionth of a second). That allowed them to send entangled quantum states with very little information loss.

The system also allowed them to amplify the entanglement of qubits. The researchers used one qubit in each node and entangled them together by essentially sending a half-photon through the cable. They then extended this entanglement to the other qubits in each node. When they were finished, all six qubits in two nodes were entangled in a single globally entangled state.

“We want to show that superconducting qubits have a viable role going forward,” Cleland said.

A quantum communication network could potentially take advantage of this advance. The group plans to extend their system to three nodes to build three-way entanglement.

“The team was able to identify a primary limiting factor in this current experiment related to loss in some of the components,” said Dr. Fredrik Fatemi, branch chief for quantum sciences, DEVCOM ARL, and co-manager of CDQI. “They have a clear path forward for increasingly complex experiments which will enable us to explore new regimes in distributed entanglement.”

By U.S. Army DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory Public Affairs

Posted in Army, Digitization, Disruptive Tech, Guest Post | 2 Comments »

Army Expeditionary Warrior Experiments (AEWE) 2022 Calls for White Papers

Tuesday, March 9th, 2021

The Army Expeditionary Warrior Experiment (AEWE) 2022 will assess concepts and capabilities of merit for individual Soldier and small unit modernization within the context of Multi Domain Operations (MDO) and Cross Domain Maneuver (CDM).

The AEWE 2022 learning demands will be examined in terms of SEE, TALK, SENSE, DECIDE, and ACT. The end state is that small units overmatch peer threats in lethality, maintain momentum to pursue threats over extended distances for more than 72 hours of continuous operations. Capabilities of interest enable the small unit to:

SEE: Understand the terrain in three dimensions, the electromagnetic spectrum, the threat, non-combatants and friendly forces through technologies like enhanced small unit mission command systems enabled by artificial intelligence, applications on ATAK and Nett Warrior, and heads up displays.

AEWE 2022 is open for Submissions. White Papers and Quad Charts due NLT COB 01 APRIL 2021. See our website to download and complete all AEWE 2022 documents:

www.benning.army.mil/MCoE/MCDID/MBL/Live-Experimentation

Please send all submissions to:

usarmy.benning.tradoc.mbx.mbl-expeditionary-warrior-experiments@mail.mil

and

Janet Sokolowski

janet.sokolowski.ctr@mail.mil

(706) 544-8107

Posted in Army, Digitization, Disruptive Tech | Comments Off on Army Expeditionary Warrior Experiments (AEWE) 2022 Calls for White Papers

Integrated Technology Takes Night Vision to a New Level

Tuesday, March 9th, 2021

ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md. – We still own the night.

The PVS 14 night vision monocular and PAS 13 thermal rifle optics are technologies of the past as the Enhanced Night Vision Goggle – Binocular (ENVG-B), Nett Warrior, and Family Weapon Sights – Individual (FWS-I) deliver leap-ahead capabilities to ensure overmatch against near-peer threats in all domains.

Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division spent three weeks at Aberdeen Proving Ground learning and testing the new equipment set as a part of the program’s guiding Soldier Centered Design philosophy that ensures end user feedback at every step of the technology’s development.

“The ENVG-B is leaps and bounds beyond what we have now, it’s really impressive technology,” said SPC Timmoy Ellis, 2-506, 101st Airborne Division. “My first time in a unit when I tried out the old NODs [night observation device] last year, I got lost and was all the way on the other side of where I was supposed to be. So this will especially help the new guys that haven’t walked in the field at night, they’ll be able to see exactly where they’re going. I wouldn’t have gotten lost if I had these ENVG-B’s, that’s for sure.”

The ENVG-B’s dual tubes feature high-definition white phosphor and overlaid fused thermal technology. ENVG-B Program of Record prototypes are making marked advancements from legacy PVS-14s and previously fielded Enhanced Night Vision devices.

“The white phosphor fused with the thermal overlay helps a lot as well,” said SGT William Williams, 3BCT, 2-506, 101st Airborne. “The good thing about it is the mode that may work best for me, may not work for one of my Soldiers. It has lots of settings to where they can adjust whether they want more white phosphor or more thermals, so in situations where you’re not getting a lot of ambient light you can crank the thermal up and really see anything that picks up heat or puts off a heat signal.”

This ENVG-B capability set features more mode options with the added ability to interface with Nett Warrior’s AR tools in multiple goggle modes.

“When you integrate those technologies you’re going to increase situational awareness and also lethality at night,” said MAJ Bryan Kelso, PEO Soldier Assistant Product Manager for ENVG-B. “You get added capabilities such as rapid target acquisition, the ability to passively bring the weapon optic into the goggle, and also augmented reality when you bring in any of the icons displayed on the Soldier’s Nett Warrior end user device [EUD]. Those all feed straight into the ENVG-B goggles so the Soldiers don’t have to open up their EUD and they can keep moving and seeing those graphical icons.”

Increased SA capabilities

When the high-resolution ENVG-Bs are paired with a Nett Warrior device, the Android Tactical Assault Kit (ATAK) uses AR applications to overlay map graphics and blue force tracking capabilities for increased situational awareness, communication, and mission planning across day and night operations. Soldiers can also enter enemy icons on the EUD and share with others across their network.

“The Nett Warrior technology gives us a better understanding of what we’re getting ready to go do, and helps us battle plan and track each other,” said Williams. “As a squad leader it’s nice to have the Nett Warrior, even if it is not being pumped into the NODs itself I can take that quick tactical pause, flip my phone down on my kit to check it out and see where all my guys are at and see exactly what’s happening on the battlefield.”

“With Nett Warrior you don’t have to be confused,” added Ellis. “You know there’s a river right here so plot to go around it, you know this team is over here, this squad is over there, you know exactly where everyone’s at so you don’t have to stop the formation to look for guys or see if they got stuck at an obstacle, so we can plan accordingly. It’s pretty cool”.

Nett Warrior not only enables increased situational awareness to the dismounted leader, but to higher command and control (C2) as well. The NW system is equipped with a dual channel multi-band radio that enables communication and data sharing on a much larger scale.

“These systems help make communication to leadership easier because sometimes things get hectic out there and I might stumble up, but now even if I can’t talk at the moment I can hit a button and push everything that I have on my Nett Warrior out to my chain of command so they know exactly what I’ve got going on,” added Williams.

Not only does Nett Warrior deliver increased situational awareness and C2 communication, but it enables more efficient mission planning and execution as well.

“Usually it takes hours or days to plan a mission once it comes down,” said Ellis. “Then we sit down and build a sand table and they say ‘Hey, this is what we’re doing,’ so you don’t really get to see that 3D aspect of it. Now once we know we have to hit this village, we can get it planned out pretty quickly, push the mission package out to the other guys, and knock that mission out.”

Mission planning with Nett Warrior is more efficient, but it is also more comprehensive.

“When you mission plan with the Nett Warrior system you can show that we’re hitting this building here and then you can plan out since we’re hitting this building we can put up support by fire here, the weapons go here, and build from the same operating picture that everyone sees. It’s a really nice concept because everyone can see exactly the lay of the land and exactly what you’re doing in advance before even going in,” said Ellis.

Added range, even from cover and concealment

The FWS-I optic feeds the view of the weapon sight into the ENVG-B goggle display, allowing Soldiers to accurately identify and engage targets at increased ranges without physically being face to face and without the need for a laser.

“The FWS-I is mounted in front of the Soldier’s day optic on their M4, which allows you to passively engage targets in a multitude of ranges out to the max effective range of the weapon,” said Kelso. “You can actually detect targets beyond 600 meters, so past where you could effectively engage with an M4.”

The increased range of the optic will allow targets to be identified at farther distances than ever before, and RTA provides the Soldier a passive solution to engage enemies. Picture in Picture and Full Weapon Sight modes allow the Soldier to accurately engage from behind cover and concealment.

“It’s pretty cool to be able to put my head down and engage targets without actually compromising cover,” said Williams. “I could stay completely behind cover, my eyes and head not even looking in the direction of the target, and utilize my FWS-I pumped into the ENVG-B and effectively engage my targets that way.”

Williams adds, “Another good thing about the FWS-I is that it eliminates us having to use a laser, which is a big thing because if we’re engaging with a near-peer because they will be able to tell where we’re at immediately if we’re using lasers.”

Big picture

The ENVG-B, Nett Warrior, and FWS-I all individually deliver capabilities beyond what is standard in today’s battlespace. The ENVG-B delivers dual tube improved Image Intensification (I2) resolution, fused thermal image, and wireless connection with FWS-I and Nett Warrior. The FWS-I provides enhanced target recognition and passive engagement capabilities, even behind cover and concealment. Nett Warrior provides blue force tracking, improved communication, and mission planning tools.

“It reduces the potential of fratricide issues and can help units link up with each other, especially if you want to remain in radio silence,” said Kelso. “There is also consistent visibility of where those blue forces are on the battlefield and with its dynamic refresh rate feature it refreshes more often based on the Soldier’s movement. When identifying either potential or known enemies that information can also get fed through the unit and immediately populate the common operating picture to inform decision makers at a higher level.”

Together the integrated kit delivers the increased situational awareness, communication, and lethality to save lives and ensure undeniable near peer overmatch.

“It has definitely grown on me,” said Williams. “At first I didn’t like it at all. I was like, just give me the NODS and let’s go on, but it has grown on me and in certain situations I think it can help save lives and win the fight.”

Nearly 5,000 ENVG-Bs have been fielded thus far per an Army Directed Requirement. In parallel, the ENVG-B Program of Record has entered Low Rate Production and continues to prepare for its next major test event involving Soldiers in May at Fort Polk, LA. Nett Warrior will be tested with 2nd Cavalry Regiment in April followed by its fielding to 3rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team 25th Infantry Division in July 2021.

By Courtney Bacon

Posted in Army, Digitization, Guest Post, Optics | 3 Comments »

Army Researchers Acquire Two New Supercomputers

Friday, January 1st, 2021

ADELPHI, Md. — Army researchers are upgrading their computing capabilities with the acquisition of two new supercomputers.

The U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, now known as DEVCOM, Army Research Laboratory is home to the Department of Defense Supercomputing Resource Center, where computer scientists are welcoming the bi-annual technology refresh as part of the DOD High Performance Computing Modernization Program.

The two supercomputers, named Jean and Kay, recognize the remarkable achievements and enduring legacies of Jean Jennings Bartik and Kathleen “Kay” McNulty Mauchly, key contributors and computing pioneers as part of the original team of programmers of the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, or ENIAC, the world’s first general purpose computer.

These systems will join the Betty system in the center’s production high-performance computing infrastructure. The Betty system is named in honor of Frances Elizabeth “Betty” (Snyder) Holberton, another key member of the original ENIAC programmer’s team.

The two systems are both Liqid Computing platforms containing 48 core Intel XEON (Cascade Lake Advanced Performance) processors integrated with the largest solid state file systems the DOD has deployed to date.

The systems are expected to enter production service in the mid-fiscal 2021 timeframe, and will join the center’s Centennial and Hellfire systems towards establishing a cumulative computational capability of 23.3petaflops.

“Jean and Kay will allow ARL to support many of DOD’s most significant modernization challenges to include digital engineering and other emerging workloads,” said ARL DSRC Director Matt Goss. “By adding specialized technology to augment traditional high performance computing with data analytics, these machines will serve as a spring board on which DOD scientists can make game changing discoveries.”

According to ARL computer scientist Bob Sheroke, these systems significantly enhance the program’s ability to support the DOD’s most demanding data-intensive computational challenges, and include emerging technologies and tools for artificial intelligence, data analytics and machine learning.

The systems include embedded capabilities to support persistent services in additional to traditional batch-oriented processing.

“The DOD High Performance Computing Modernization Program, established in 1992, has invested over $1.2 billion at the ARL DSRC, which has maintained the center’s posture as one of the program’s primary HPC centers and one of the top supercomputer sites in the national supercomputing infrastructure,” Sheroke said.

Visit www.arl.hpc.mil to learn more about center’s computational capabilities and support services.

By U.S. Army DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory Public Affairs

Posted in Army, Digitization, Disruptive Tech, Guest Post | 2 Comments »