Sponsored by Spectra Group
https://tacs.at/Spectra
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07 Dec 18. Thales wins innovation award for La Ruche cyber defence project. Cyber defence is a strategic priority and an issue of critical importance for national sovereignty. The Ministry for the Armed Forces and the French defence industry are therefore engaged in a concerted effort to protect and defend information systems from cyber threats. To help its customers achieve their objectives in cyber defence and security, Thales has launched a co-development laboratory known as La Ruche (“the hive”) to promote innovative software development practices. The lab is working in DevSecOps mode alongside the French defence procurement agency’s electronic systems research directorate (DGA Maîtrise de l’Information) and the French Air Force technical directorate. In a DevSecOps environment, security decisions and actions are taken at the same scale and speed as development and operations decisions and actions. As a result, each actor is permanently involved throughout the development process in co-creating innovative technology building blocks that will protect and defend French airspace from cyber threats in the future. La Ruche is a powerhouse of talent and technology with about 30 cyber experts and engineers applying a methodology that is complementary to traditional approaches to cybersecurity and involves analysing huge volumes of data to detect potentially abnormal patterns of system, technical, human or operational behaviour. Software components co-developed in this way will be incorporated into future airspace surveillance, control and security systems to enable France to assert its national soveriegnty. La Ruche was launched by Thales’s air operations business in June 2017. Located in Rennes, Brittany, it draws on the vibrant ecosystem of innovation partners structured around the Cyber Excellence Cluster (Pôle d’Excellence Cyber), which is also based in Brittany. It intends to play an active role in this ecosystem by establishing strong ties with local start-ups and SMEs and with Brittany’s academic and research community. This co-development methodology enables all stakeholders to adopt a more concerted approach and apply more efficient, more agile working practices. La Ruche is continuing to expand and will move into new premises in a few months. A total of 60 engineers and experts are expected to be working there by the end of 2019.
06 Dec 18. Why the US Air Force is investing $100m in AI. The Air Force plans to invest $100m over three years to research automated cyber and signals intelligence processing, according to the service. Automatically sorting through emails, phone conversations and other types of collected signals will help the Air Force because “time is critical” and the intelligence “analysts’ workload is high,” said the Dec. 4 initial announcement.
“Automated signal processing is a key component for net-centric warfare,” the Air Force Research Lab wrote, adding they were interested in areas of research that included commercial signal processing capabilities and improving systems already in the field. Information from the gathering and processing “provides the continuous decision-quality information necessary to successfully employ air, space and cyber operations.”
The research is divided into three categories.
First, the Air Force Research Lab is investing in information extraction, or identifying and cataloging information on a mass scale. Second, the research will look into signals processing, which catalogues the information. Finally, the Air Force Research Lab is looking into automation enhancements, or the ability to quickly recall information once stored.
The announcement was also an effort to research new methods that can bring the Doppler effect, or the ability to manipulate radio frequency.
“The goals for this component are to develop methods for the detection, identification, characterization and geolocation of emerging communications and low-radiated power level signals,” the agency said.
The announcement comes as the U.S. government has embraced artificial intelligence for cybersecurity and signals collection.
In September, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency announced that it would invest more than $2 bn in artificial intelligence programs, which included creating better algorithms, reasoning and enhancing security. Currently, there are more than 60 programs at DARPA that have an element of AI, according to the agency. That is in addition to the agency’s Artificial Intelligence Exploration program, announced in July, which provides rapid funding opportunities.
The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity’s Mercury Program also researcheshow to automatically analyze foreign signals in order to predict military and political events.
When asked what investments Cyber Command is making now that they hope to pay off in the future, Capt. Ed Devinney responded “anything with AI and machine learning” during Fifth Domain’s CyberCon 2018, which was held in November.
“There aren’t that many people who do AI that well,” Devinney said. “There is a growing understanding and consensus that we need to operate at machine speed, especially talking about active defense of the network.” (Source: C4ISR & Networks)
05 Dec 18. Arktis Radiation Detectors has deepened its relationship with BrightSpec NV/SA, signing an exclusive license agreement to distribute the BrightSpec Compact Digital Multi-Channel Analyzer (‘bMCA’) in the US Homeland Security market, via its subsidiary Arktis Detection Systems of Crystal City, VA. Arktis detection products include fixed and relocatable radiation portal monitors, lightweight and covert vehicle mounted systems, and a scalable ultra-light detector for unmanned aerial vehicles. The products already benefit from low-cost, He3-free neutron detection and from a unique open system architecture which allows customers to select from a variety of software and hardware subsystems.
Arktis has previously deployed BrightSpec bMCA technology for gamma detection, on its deployed fleet of vehicle radiation portal monitors and in US government test programs. The new agreement strengthens that collaboration, enabling Arktis to offer BrightSpec products as competitive, off-the-shelf components of its plug-and-play solution.
Vicente Osorio, Managing Director at BrightSpec, stated: “We at BrightSpec are honored to have been in partnership with Arktis Radiation Detectors for some years now, helping contribute to their innovative and unique solutions. BrightSpec’s digital-based, compact MCA (“bMCA” product line) has proven to be an advanced and key component in any nuclear radiation detection device or system. These bMCA devices have been deployed in various fields of nuclear technology and applications. We are grateful to have Arktis as exclusive distributor of our digital MCA for demanding and innovative markets, such as Nuclear Security and Homeland Security. We look forward to this further collaboration, which would lead to an even greater and stronger relationship between our two companies.”
Rico Chandra, co-founder of Arktis, added: “The radiation detection market is fragmented and features a significant amount of innovation derived from basic scientific research. Albeit, it is dominated by a few large players with limited incentive to allow more effective and lower cost technologies into their inherently closed architectures. I am delighted to sign this collaborative deal with BrightSpec, adding their top-rated technology to our portfolio and multiplying the number of detector components we can offer, with a scalable and easy-to-maintain open system architecture based on ethernet connectivity, standardized communication protocols, and modular software components.”
04 Dec 18. Leading IP communications enabler Softil today releases its Outlook 2019 for the Mission Critical Communications industry. For Softil, enabling Mission Critical Communications (MCC or MCX)) will be its fundamental mission for the year ahead accelerating the transition to 21st century technologies for people whose jobs help and save the lives of others.
“Softil sees 2019 as the year when MCC solutions and services finally get into the hands of First Responders be they the armed forces, police, ambulance or other emergency service groups, as well as professional radio users in the fields of transportation and mining among others,” says Sagi Subocki, Softil’s Vice President, Products and Marketing. “The year will see First Responders and professional radio users becoming better supported in their tasks through the applied use of technology.”
First MCPTT deployments by First Responders
The year 2019 will see First Responders begin supplementing the humble radio so trusted by multiple generations of firefighters, police officers and emergency workers over the years with smartphones. At first, these might also be dual-mode devices, combining LMR and LTE capabilities. Once smartphones become commonplace in MCC, all will be able to work faster and better.
Immediate future belongs to dual-mode LMR/MCPTT devices
It is nice to envision how new generation of the technology replaces the old generation in a blink of an eye – just like you see in the movies. This is not how it happens in real life – the old and new must peacefully coexist for a while. Moreover, they do not just coexist, but rather interwork. The emergency worker’s device is not an interworking appliance, but instead, it can simply allow users to be connected to both worlds – simultaneously. We should see LMR devices being extended with MCPTT capabilities first before full-blown MCX devices completely replacing them. Softil predicts that quite a few dual-mode radios will appear on the market during 2019.
Mission Critical Communications for Trains will continue to advance
Mission Critical Communications for trains, commonly referred to as LTE-R, are already deployed, but on a limited scale. Today, South Korea is leading the railway world with new MCC LTE-R terminals deployed on its high speed rail networks. However, as the standards for MCC for Railroads are in the final stages with 3GPP Release 15 providing the base, and Release 16 defining the necessary changes in architecture, Softil expects many more LTE-R trials and deployments over the next 2-3 years – especially as GSM-R (old communication technology for trains) will sunset in 2025.
Managing MCC through Dispatch Consoles
The Dispatch Console is a critical element of emergency communications – someone has to have a “10,000 foot view” of everything happening with First Responders in real time to coordinate all activities. This is where the dispatch console operator comes into play. As MCC over LTE trickles onto the front line in 2019, dispatch consoles will manage video streams, video communication, chats and more. The console will become the critical element in the interconnection of the LMR and MCX worlds and be in service before the end of 2019.
First MCC Recording solutions
It is essential to keep track of what is happening on the front line – we need to create records of all the activities of emergency workers at all times. In the past, voice and some unassociated videos were recorded, but in the new MCX world, there is a mass of data that needs to be recorded and archived.
This spans audio, video, chat, location and much more from a vast array of supplementary data from “Life-saving things”, commonly known as IoT devices. The industry will see the first recording solutions appearing in 2019 as they are critical for the overall MCS umbrella.
Private LTE becomes key to advancements in the MCC for Mining
In the mining industry, communication is a key element of the ecosystem and on a par with all the sophisticated machinery and tools in use. MCC over LTE new communication capabilities, such as video, chat and file exchange, offer great advantages to miners over the traditional radio. However, common LTE towers cannot provide reliable connectivity inside mines and such deployments will require private LTE. Softil expects pilot Private LTE with MCS (Mission Critical Services) setups to go into trials in 2019, with full-scale deployments in 2020/2021.
The impact of 5G on MCC will become noticeable
5G developments are advancing quickly, driven by the insatiable appetite for speed, bandwidth and full QoS/QoE spectrum of humans and machines alike. Core 5G trials are already under way around the world, but that doesn’t affect MCX at the moment. However, Softil expects to see some alignment of MCX technologies with 5G networks and architectures in the next 3GPP Release 16 (due December, 2019) and further enhancements in Release 17. The year 2021 will most likely will be the year when MCX will commercially start running on top of 5G, offering greater speeds and capabilities.
First chipsets implementing ProSe will appear, first trials of D2D
ProSe is the 3GPP standard for direct, or so-called Device-to-Device communications. This is essential for MCC as it is always possible that in the course of emergency operations, the macro network will become unreachable. In this event, First Responders must still be able to communicate with each other, so this is a critical need to make daily use of MCX over LTE possible. The year 2019 might be the year when ProSe begins its journey. However, thanks to dual-mode devices, LMR will still be there for device-to-device communications.
Voice Controls for First Responder devices will make their debut
Voice controls are not new – Siri and Alexa have been helping with everyday tasks for several years now, but as First Responder smartphones appear, Softil expects that voice controls will be elevated to the next level of importance in 2019 with commands such as “alert all my group members,” “show me the map,” “start recording my video,” and “switch my primary camera” becoming commonplace – all while wearing gloves.
Virtual Reality UI should appear
Climbing mountains or even stairs is done one step at a time. MCC over LTE devices will get into the hands of users adding the ability to use special goggles with embedded screen and eye control. This is already available in many virtual reality (VR) games and will become a natural extension. Softil does not expect VR UI to become mainstream in 2019, but some early market trials should see the light.
First implementations of AR, enabling capabilities of the “Black Mirror” style
Emulating the Black Mirror anthology TV series that explores how humanity’s greatest innovations and darkest instincts collide, Softil expects that adding Augmented Reality capabilities to VR UI goggles will emerge in 2020/2021. Looking at a person’s face, a car’s license plate or a store’s name, these smart goggles will quickly produce and visualize all the information available on any person or object.
“Internet of Life Saving Things” (IoLST) will challenge our imagination over the next 3-4 years
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a vast space of tiny sensors, devices, modules and systems – all communicating with each other and producing petabytes of data aided by AI capabilities to make sense of it all in real time.
When it comes to the world of public safety and emergency communications, IoLST holds tremendous promise, offering capabilities such as detection of “shots fired,” “officer down,” the ability for a firefighter in a building to take control over sprinkler systems and emergency valves from his/her MCX handset, and to connect and communicate with any car or infrastructure on the road (collectively known as V2X) and much more. Nothing is immediate with IoLST, but expect some interesting trials to begin in 2019, and practical solutions coming to market in 2022-2025.
MCC might try to utilize blockchain technology over the next 4-6 years
Blockchain technology allows the establishment of strong, secure and unbreakable trust relationships amongst a large enclave of “things”. Every industry has jumped on the blockchain bandwagon looking for practical use and applications for such a promising technology. Without any regards to the blockchain, MCC is currently living its own revolution in moving from the traditional radio to broadband technology. Once broadband MCX becomes mainstream, the public safety and emergency communications industries will look into blockchain technology as a possible solution to streamline and simplify day-to-day operations. It is unlikely that blockchain powering First Responder communication solutions happens before 2023, if at all.
About Softil
Softil’s is today’s de-facto IP communications leader and enabler for more than 800 corporations across the globe. Its technological achievements include the pioneering of Voice and Video over IP with a wide range of embedded technologies and testing solutions, combining our unique expertise in standards-based signalling, multimedia and IMS. Softil’s award-winning suite of Protocol Stacks, including IMS, Diameter, SIP and H.323, as well as its state-of-the-art BEEHD client framework, provide the core technology behind the rich media applications and products of today’s Enterprise, IMS/VoLTE, and Mission Critical communications industry, greatly simplifies their development, and ensures earliest time-to-market.
04 Dec 18. GD and iRF partner to resell SignalEye product. General Dynamics (GD) Mission Systems has collaborated with Intelligent RF Solutions (iRF) to resell SignalEye product, which is designed to deliver spectrum situational awareness. SignalEye is a software-only solution that uses machine learning technology to automate the classification of signals for situational awareness across the radio frequency (RF) spectrum. iRF supports global defence and intelligence missions with solutions for SIGINT and electronic warfare (EW) missions.
GD noted that the product can be implemented in a tactical context as an add-on for iRF’s SMR-7522 LiteRailminiaturised portable wideband microwave receiver. Housed in a rugged chassis for remote operations in harsh environments, LiteRail receives and digitises advanced narrowband and wideband signal targets. It is suitable for low size, weight and power (SWaP) platforms or manpack applications.
Intelligent RF Solutions vice-president and general manager John Neubert said: “General Dynamics Mission Systems is a world leader in defence-grade security and products, and we’re looking forward to enhancing our current EW solution set with SignalEye.
“This reseller agreement provides us with the opportunity to help customers meet evolving mission demands in this highly contested environment.”
According to GD, SignalEye provides an accurate view of threats in the RF spectrum for tactical troops, security personnel, RF system developers and spectrum managers.
It also assists strategic analysts to detect trends in the behaviour of an enemy or threat.
General Dynamics Mission Systems ground systems vice-president and general manager Bill Patterson said: “Our partnership with iRF provides a solid foundation for customers to build mission-focused applications for electronic warfare, and security and surveillance contexts.
“Working together, our solution will allow users to achieve spectrum-wide situational awareness faster as we’ve eliminated lengthy manual classification and increased accuracy of multiple signal types.” (Source: army-technology.com)
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Spectra Group Plc
Spectra has a proven record of accomplishment – with over 15 years of experience in delivering secure communications and cybersecurity solutions for governments around the globe; elite militaries; and private enterprises of all sizes.
As a dynamic, agile, security accredited organisation, Spectra can leverage this experience to deliver Cyber Advisory and secure Hosted and Managed Solutions on time, to spec and on budget, ensuring compliance with industry standards and best practices.
Spectra’s SlingShot® is a unique low SWaP system that enables in-service U/VHF tactical radios to utilise Inmarsat’s commercial satellite network for BLOS COTM. Including omnidirectional antenna for the man, vehicle, maritime and aviation platforms, the tactical net can broadcast over 1000s miles between forward units and a rear HQ, no matter how or where the deployment. Unlike many BLOS options, SlingShot maintains full COTM (Communications On The Move) capability and low size and weight
On 23 November 2017, Spectra Group (UK) Ltd announced that it had recently been listed as a Top 100 Government SME Supplier for 2015-2016 by the UK Crown Commercial Services
Spectra’s CEO, Simon Davies, was awarded 2017 BATTLESPACE Businessman of the Year by BATTLESPACE magazine and is a finalist in the inaugural British Ex-Forces In Business Awards in the Innovator Of The Year category.
Founded in 2002, the Company is based in Hereford, UK and holds ISO 9001:2015, ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials Plus accreditation.
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