03 June 21. Strategic AI Platform. Prioritizing Initiative to Increase Aircraft Availability and Drive Transformation Across the Air Force. C3 AI, a leading enterprise AI software provider, today announced the expansion of its agreement with the United States Air Force (USAF) Rapid Sustainment Office (RSO). The agreement expands the deployment of the C3 AI® Suite and C3 AI Readiness to support predictive analytics and aircraft maintenance across the Air Force, as well as enhance RSO’s overall AI and machine learning capabilities.
C3 AI is now a platform of choice for the USAF to increase aircraft availability and drive digital transformation across the enterprise through the advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities within the C3 AI Suite.
“We’re proud to continue our support of the U.S. military and the USAF’s goal of expanding technological innovation,” said Ed Abbo‚ president and CTO of C3 AI. “This solution contributes to the increase in mission capability for the aircraft fleet and overall improvements in readiness for the USAF. We look forward to our ongoing partnership to build products that help protect the U.S. and its allies on a global scale through improvements in aircraft readiness.”
Under the extended agreement, RSO will expand the use of C3 AI’s technology to an additional 20+ USAF aircraft platforms over the next nine months. C3 AI and RSO began on-boarding aircraft platforms in May 2021, ahead of full deployment in January 2022.
“C3 AI has delivered on their commitments to RSO in the first year of our partnership. Their robust and proven platform enables the rapid deployment and operation of enterprise AI, tailored to the RSO mission,” said Mr. Nathan Parker, Deputy Program Executive Officer, United States Air Force RSO. “The C3 AI Suite makes it possible for us to effectively expand the use of AI and ML solutions to quickly impact change for the logistics community. Expanding our partnership helps the RSO drive an enterprise digital transformation across the United States Air Force.”
C3 AI will provide a tailored workflow for RSO to analyze, review, and field component remaining life thresholds, as well as offer a structured process to review and field forecasts. USAF field users at operating bases can supplement current tools and processes to target aircraft for scheduled maintenance and components for predictive removal.
As part of the initial agreement announced in September 2020, RSO’s Condition-Based Maintenance Plus (CBM+) Program Office has used the C3 AI Suite and C3 AI Readiness to deploy an AI-based predictive maintenance application for the USAF to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of maintenance processes. C3 AI and the RSO CBM+ Program Office enable applications to forecast remaining life and proactively remove high-risk components before failure, reducing the impact of unscheduled maintenance events resulting from a failure and increasing aircraft availability.
In addition to RSO, C3 AI has been working with the Department of Defense (DoD) since 2017 to deploy a variety of enterprise AI-enabled solutions. To date, the USAF has supported four prototype implementations of the C3 AI Readiness application on hundreds of aircraft, including the E-3 Sentry, C-5 Galaxy, F-16 Fighting Falcon, and F-35 Lightning II. This latest announcement represents the next stage in scaling C3 AI’s predictive maintenance solution across the defense enterprise and solidifies C3 AI as the strategic AI platform of choice for the USAF.
For more information on C3 AI and Enterprise AI solutions, visit https://c3.ai/what-is-enterprise-ai/
About C3.ai, Inc.
C3.ai, Inc. (NYSE: AI) is a leading provider of enterprise AI software for accelerating digital transformation. C3 AI delivers a family of fully integrated products: C3 AI® Suite, an end-to-end platform for developing, deploying, and operating large-scale AI applications; C3 AI Applications, a portfolio of industry-specific SaaS AI applications; C3 AI CRM, a suite of industry-specific CRM applications designed for AI and machine learning; and C3 AI Ex Machina, a no-code AI solution to apply data science to everyday business problems. The core of the C3 AI offering is an open, model-driven AI architecture that dramatically simplifies data science and application development. Learn more at: www.c3.ai.
About the Air Force Rapid Sustainment Office
Established by the Secretary of the Air Force in 2018, the RSO increases mission readiness by rapidly identifying, applying, and scaling technology essential to the operation and sustainment of the United States Air Force. http://www.afrso.com/ (Source: BUSINESS WIRE)
01 June 21. Navantia Australia, Rheinmetall Defence Australia join forces for LAND 8710 push. The firms have announced they will compete against Austal for the Commonwealth government’s next-generation amphibious vehicle project. Navantia Australia and Rheinmetall Defence Australia have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU), collaborating to bid for the Australian Army’s LAND 8710 (Phase 1) program — an $800m project to develop a new amphibious vehicle (AV) to replace the Army’s Lighter, Amphibious Resupply, Cargo – 5 tonne vehicle (LARC-V), and Independent Landing Craft (ILC) to replace the current Landing Craft Mechanised (LCM-8) vessels.
As part of the MOU, signed at the Land Forces Conference 2021 in Brisbane, Navantia Australia and Rheinmetall aim to combine their resources to develop a “fast, formidable and future-proof” amphibious vehicle design.
“We are excited to collaborate with Rheinmetall on the LAND 8710 Phase 1 CE2 program,” Alfonso García-Valdés, managing director of Navantia Australia, said.
“Rheinmetall’s successful track record in manufacturing specialist military vehicles for the Australian Defence Force and globally made the partnership a natural one for Navantia Australia. When we were considering partners for the LAND 8710 program, Rheinmetall was the obvious choice.
“Their land-based expertise married with our in-depth maritime experience, will bring the best of Australia’s engineers together to develop this new capability for Australia.”
Gary Stewart, managing director of Rheinmetall Defence Australia, added, “We look forward to working alongside Navantia Australia to develop an amphibious logistics capability that will meet the requirements of the Australian Defence Force and has export potential.
“Rheinmetall MAN Military Vehicles Australia has delivered more than 2,500 high mobility logistics vehicles to the ADF through LAND 1213B/5B and this ensures we have a world-leading vehicle to meet and exceed the requirements of LAND 8710 Phase 1 CE2.”
The firms will be competing against Austal, which also launched its bid for the program at the Land Forces exhibition. (Source: Defence Connect)
28 May 21. MADG delivers 500th container system to Netherlands Armed Forces. MADG is producing and supplying container systems as part of the Dutch DVOW programme.
Marshall Aerospace and Defence Group (MADG) has achieved an on-schedule delivery milestone with the shipment of its 500th container system to the Netherlands Armed Forces.
The company is producing a total of 1,600 container systems to fulfil its Dutch Defensiebrede Vervanging Operationele Wielvoertuigen (DVOW) contract with the Dutch Defence Materiel Organisation (DMO).
The DVOW programme aims to modernise the Netherlands Armed Forces with new vehicles, containers and support equipment.
MADG won the contract in late 2018. Its Land Systems business unit is supporting the programme.
The delivery programme will replace more than 2,800 vehicle and container systems in the Dutch military inventory.
According to the company, the 500th container was a ‘sub-variant’ of a workshop maintenance system.
The system is designed to be integrated with Scania Gryphus vehicles and deployed operationally.
The new Scania ‘Gryphus’ vehicles are replacing the DAF trucks under the DVOW programme.
MADG will also provide in-country support for the systems via a maintenance control in their Netherlands office. This support will be provided until the mid-2030s.
DVOW senior project manager Ian Ray said: “We are so proud to deliver these systems for our Dutch customer. It’s been a massive team effort and our focus on keeping up deliveries through such a testing period has pulled us all together.
“All the way from our engineering team, supply chain and supply chain partners, operations, training, finance and commercial to our final quality checks we continue to perform and overcome significant challenges.”
Late last month, MADG integrated the Dutch Armed Forces’ new Scania ‘Gryphus’ vehicles with the first B1-W1-X1 Workshop container system.
(Source: army-technology.com)