Sponsored by Bertin Exensor
www.exensor.com
————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
28 Aug 24. Brown, Southcom Commander Call for Harnessing AI, Developing Space Domain to Meet Future Challenges. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. CQ Brown, Jr., and Army Gen. Laura J. Richardson, commander of U.S. Southern Command, today emphasized the need for allied and partner nations and their militaries to harness artificial intelligence and further develop the space domain to meet complex security challenges of the future.
The two leaders addressed those topics while delivering remarks at the opening ceremony of the South American Defense Conference, or Southdec 2024, in Santiago, Chile.
The theme of this year’s conference is “How We Can Leverage New Technologies for the Defense of Hemispheric Sovereignty.”
“As we look back on the strong foundations we’ve built through collaboration and trust, it’s clear our ability to address security challenges has also relied on our ability to evolve and adapt to the ever-changing world landscape,” Brown told those in attendance, as he then began discussing the future of AI.
“Every organization is looking at ways to improve their capability with this new technology,” Brown said. ” it’s not enough to just sprinkle ‘AI dust’ on everything and expect transformation.”
Brown then listed what he labels as the seven challenges to take AI from a mere promising idea into a tangible capability that can address the national security needs of allied and partner nations. The seven challenges are: infrastructure, architecture, data, focus, resourcing, talent and culture.
“These seven challenges … are challenges we all face,” Brown said. “But by working together, we can share knowledge, experience and solutions us to unlock the full potential of this new technology within our network of allies and partners.”
During her remarks, Richardson, the Southcom commander, discussed the concepts of Enhanced Domain Awareness and the adoption of a Common Space Operating Picture — the former being an initiative Southcom has undertaken that, in part, includes setting the conditions for responsible AI and machine learning to improve synchronization of whole-of-government operations; the latter being an initiative that uses EDA to gain a more profound and holistic insight into the space operational environment.
“As allies and partners, we will continue our efforts to enable our collective space domain awareness; and improve our readiness, resiliency and capability to overcome threats,” Richardson told conference attendees.
While giving the space-focused portion of his remarks, Brown pointed out that “when new domains emerge, power can tilt towards those who master them.”
Brown said that, although advancements in space have brought economic advancement and development around the globe, space — like any other new domain — has the ability to shift the dynamics of global power.
“We must work together to develop norms of behaviors that respect all nations’ rights,” Brown said, “creating a space network where everyone can benefit from its unique capabilities — all for the common good.”
Both Brown and Richardson wound down their remarks with an optimistic tone, each expressing confidence in allied and partner nations to be able to unite in working across all boundaries and domains to ensure a positive future for the Western Hemisphere.
“This is the work of ‘Team Democracy,’ and we stand shoulder-to-shoulder with those who seek to bolster economic resilience, democratic stability and citizen security throughout the region and world,” Richardson exclaimed.
“Let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work.”
“Our strength lies in our unity, our shared commitment to democracy and our ability to work together for a better future for all,” Brown said, “because we are stronger together.”
As in the 15 years previous, this year’s event is held by U.S. Southern Command. Southdec 2024 hosts 10 South American nations, representatives from North America, Europe and the Inter-American Defense Board, as well as partner programs operating in South America, Central America, and the Caribbean. (Source: U.S. DoD)
27 Aug 24. “We cannot [just] rely on … bring out the laser and it’ll fix it all,” said the 101st Airborne Division’s Commanding General Maj. Gen. Brett Sylvia.
Following a 500-mile air assault from Ft. Campbell, Ky., down to a heavily wooded training site in Louisiana, soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division spent a chunk of August testing out new tech and formations against an opposing force dubbed Geronimo.
The early verdict: More equipment is needed to prepare for a drone-riddled battlefield, while the division needs to relook its logistics footprint for an island-hopping campaign in the Indo-Pacific.
“We just do not have the density or the quality of our counter-UAS [unmanned aerial systems] that we would really need … for the future fight,” 101st Commanding General Maj. Gen. Brett Sylvia, told reporters Aug 22.
“I believe that we’re moving in the right direction, that the limited capabilities that we’ve gotten are better than they’ve been, but we just don’t have the density … we would want,” he later added.
Likewise, Sylvia said he is walking away from the event knowing that as his division prepares for a long-range air assault in an area like the Indo-Pacific region, it needs to be prepared to better spread out its forward arming and refueling points — more of a training and manning task.
Sylvia’s two initial homework takeaways came nine days into a rotation at the Joint Readiness Training Center, or JRTC. His division’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team is part of the Army’s new “transformation in contact” initiative designed to get soldiers’ feedback on new equipment faster, figure out how formations could use it and help guide leadership decisions. One of those key deciders is Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George who hosted nearly a dozen reporters last week on a quick trip down to visit the division towards the tail end of the training event.
“We have to provide the best Army that we [can] with the people we have, with the budget that we have,” George told reporters. “Those will require tough decisions to say what we’re not gonna [do].”
“Our soldiers that are out there employing this are gonna tell us what … [are] not the best systems,” the four-star general added.
While it will take time to collect observations from the JRTC rotations and decide how to proceed, Army officers and soldiers there provided a peek of the new tech and use cases being explored.
On the C-UAS front for example, soldiers with the 101st used tested handheld options including Dronebuster and DroneDefender to attack UAS out to about 750 meters.
“These are … very new capabilities for us that we’re still integrating and learning from and determining how we reorganize ourselves,” Sylvia said.
And while there remains a dearth of options ready for fielding, Col. Matthew Hardman, the commander for the JRTC operations group, noted that takeaways extend beyond new capabilities and towards concealing soldiers’ locations through dispersion, camouflage, noise and light discipline, and electromagnetic signature discipline.
“There is no silver bullet for counter-UAS,” Sylvia said, adding “We cannot [just] rely on … bring out the laser and it’ll fix it all.”
While the burgeoning UAS threat is a hot topic for the Army, it is also eyeing the electronic warfare threat, and how to make it work to its advantage, sometimes with drones.
Part of that equation revolves around testing out smaller command posts designed to be set up in 15 minutes and torn down in the same amount of time. To minimize or completely eliminate the post’s electromagnet signature, the Army is placing “antenna farms” up to two kilometers away and then tying them together via a fiber cable. If the opposition detects emittance, the idea is that it will strike the antenna farm instead of the soldiers inside the camouflaged command post.
As service leaders like George eye today’s conflicts and future ones, they are rushing to test out offensive and defensive EW capabilities. One cheaper one that showed promise during the recent training is the “raspberry pi” — small single-board computers — that was used as both a decoy to draw the opposing force out of hiding and for offensive operations.
Sylvia explained that after acquiring the commercially available circuit boards, the soldiers formed “a couple dozen” clusters designed to act as command post decoys.
Then when Geronimo, the opposing force, volleyed a large amount of fire at those raspberry pi decoys, it “unmasked” the opposition force’s location in the woods, enabling soldiers from the 101st to target their weapons in that direction.
Soldiers shuffling through the trees and swamp lands also used the raspberry pis for offensive operations. After programming the circuit boards and pairing it with a standard power bank and a 3D-printed carrying case, they attached the case to the bottom of a UAS.
“Then they [flew] over positions in order to be able to identify the electromagnetic signature,” the two-star general said.
“Once you start getting a cluster of those [service set identifier] SSIDs, you would make a good assumption about whether or not you’ve been able to identify a command post or not, and then be able to generate a fire mission,” he added.
Other UAS techniques were also tested out, including a new “artificial intelligence” capability designed to identify enemy vehicles, generate a fire mission and text it back to soldiers who then decide how to proceed. If it’s a go, the UAS can continue observing the target and, if needed, make adjustments to the mission.
While the new weapons and tech were easier for the Army to show off, a centerpiece of this month’s training event revolved around testing out improvements to the network — aptly dubbed C2 Fix — to help shape improvements and tweaks. The service is hoping changes under this initiative will be enough to ensure that soldiers can communicate and fight on today’s battlefield, while it launches forward with a new network under the C2 Next prototyping umbrella.
In addition to ensuring soldiers can communicate, the service is hoping to provide maneuver commanders with what they need, in part, via a common operating picture. And a big part of that is finding ways to integrate new, smaller C-UASs into the C2 architecture, according to Alex Miller, a chief technology officer.
“We’ve been working across what does counter UAS mean as part of integrated air and missile defense?” Miller told reporters last week.
“We’ve had bad C2 for 30 years. What comes after that to make sure that we can integrate all of our sensors, all of our effectors, so we have that combined offense, defense for fires,” he added. (Source: Breaking Defense.com)
27 Aug 24. Chief Details Shifting Special Ops Emphasis; Progress on Preventing Civilian Casualties. U.S. special operators are shifting their focus to support the National Defense Strategy to “fill the gaps” of conventional forces as the world faces new challenges and threats, said Christopher Maier, assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low intensity conflict.
But the old threats have not gone away, and special operators still need the expertise they displayed in the counterinsurgency fight, Maier told the Defense Writers’ Group last week.
“If you compare where I think we’re going versus where we have been in the past in the counterterrorism fights, were generally in the lead and a lot of the rest of the conventional military was supporting SOF,” he said. “That’s very much reversed now.”
China is the pacing challenge to the U.S. military and the Indo-Pacific is the prime theater. “As we think of the Indo-Pacific, we are focused on finding areas where the comparative advantage that the SOF enterprise brings can help enhance what the conventional forces are doing,” he said.
He called it the “Swiss Army Knife approach” to defense. Special operations forces are interspersed around the Indo-Pacific working with allies and partners across the vast region, he said. These teams help train allies and partners and also have the cultural knowledge to sense the environment. If the country or region were to have a crisis or conflict, special operators would be invaluable to senior leaders on the operational challenges they could face, Maier said.
In many cases, special operators will be able to capitalize on the fact that they have generational military relationships in those nations. “Many of our senior and even mid-level have worked for years with allies and partners in a very integrated way,” he said.
Special operators are “just going to have a better understanding of that kind of human environment,” Maier said. “That is already highlighted in some of the places where we are investing in capabilities, be those decision advantage or the ability to push more remote advise-and-assist capabilities farther forward.”
But even this will change, he said. “We’re fundamentally going to be still working with allies and partners, but we may not be as proximate. It may not be that classic hand on the shoulder that we’ve had in places like Syria and Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia.”
“What does is not principally focused on, in all cases, conducting combat operations,” he said. “We’re trying to shape the environment. Our biggest value is … kind of ‘left of boom.’ If we’re going to go to large scale combat operations, ‘may the odds be in your favor, right?’ And those odds are going to be set in days, weeks, months, years ahead of time.”
Special operations forces’ persistent engagement is key to setting those odds. Special operators work with allies and partners to improve their military capabilities and familiarize them with U.S. tactical and operational thinking, Maier said. “Improving their warfighting capabilities is incredibly important because I don’t think anybody who is thinking about this seriously, thinks the United States is going to go to war just by ourselves: We’re going to go with our allies and partners. We need to make sure that we’ve conveyed as much of our expertise to them, and they’ve done the same back to us.”
Maier also discussed the progress made on DOD’s comprehensive action plan to reduce instances of civilian casualties. DOD has long taken civilian harm mitigation as a key tenant of how the United States conducts war. Reducing civilian casualties is morally right, the assistant secretary said. The imperative to do this is built into U.S. professional military education as part of all military exercises and it is important to the strategic environment.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III ordered these changes in the policies and Maier has responsibility for “operationalizing” them. “In conjunction with our national defense strategy, we realized we needed to look at this problem set more holistically and probably more diligently,” he said.
This is necessary because the tactics in any conflict will probably change. In counterterrorism operations, special operators were able “to look at individual targets for long periods of time and make decisions at a different tempo than today,” Maier said. Large-scale combat operations will not allow that luxury of time. There may be thousands of kinetic actions in an hour, where in the past, conducting six operations a day seemed like a lot.
At the same time, U.S. experts are also looking at the lessons to be learned from Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine. “We were watching, before our very eyes, what happens when you have what we often call the Russian way of war, which is to be as brutal as one thinks it is,” Maier said.
The Russians, in effect, target civilian populations and civilian infrastructure, he said.
DOD looked holistically across the department on what needed to be done. “First off, is often an additional duty for combatant commanders’ staffs,” he said. “We are building up to give commanders more capability to think about in a strategic context, the environment they’re operating in, and looking not only at whether they should or shouldn’t conduct a particular strike or particular operational action but looking at in the strategic environment.”
“What we’ve done across the department is provide not only additional instructions and additional tradecraft, to looking at the civilian environment and then mitigating the harm associated with any military actions but also put people after this,” Maier said. “We’ve put almost 170 people that have been resourced across the combatant commands, across the intelligence enterprise and across elements of the joint staff and the office of secretary of defense.”
These are people who are “experts in this space” but can also relate to the commanders and the missions they are told to execute. These civilian harm mitigation response officers — called CHMROs — are experts in security cooperation and will also help commanders to work with partners.
The CHMROs understand the longer-term implications of a proposed action. “It may look like a target is valid and very important at the time, but if you don’t have somebody helping to think through the longer-term strategic implications, you may do things that have short-term benefits but result in longer-term challenges,” Maier said. “We also have folks that are working in targeting cells, and this has been a key piece of what the secretary of defense has asked us to do, which is not put restrictions. This isn’t about constraining our military. It’s about building in more expertise to understand the operating environment.” (Source: U.S. DoD)
26 Aug 24. Special operators hope AI can reduce civilian deaths in combat. Automation could eventually turn “trigger-pullers into the experts that can do this,” one official said.
While much has been said about the danger of allowing AI into military operations in a way that would allow AI to kill people, there has been far less discussion about using AI to make war safer for civilians. But that’s what U.S. special operations are starting to look at now, Christopher Maier, the assistant defense secretary for special operations and low-intensity conflict, told reporters Friday.
Part of the reason for this, Maier said, is that preventing civilian harm in a large-scale conflict—such as a potential war with China—would be far more difficult than in the counter-terrorism missions that special forces are engaged in around the globe.
“As we’ve started to exercise this and build the emphasis on [reducing] civilian harm into large-scale exercises, it becomes particularly daunting when you think of the, if you will, the scale of that type of conflict, where…we’ve talked openly about thousands of strikes in an hour. This boggles the mind,” he told the Defense Writers Group.
U.S. special operations forces are “going to need the automation and aspects of artificial intelligence and machine learning and all those things that we talk about all the time on the targeting side and the operational side…built in and baked into that with a focus on civilian harm.”
The Defense Department is already doing a lot of work to reduce the number of civilian deaths, particularly in special operations mission sets, he said. One example is the new center of excellence dedicated to civilian protection in combat.
“It also means things that are critically important but not particularly glamorous, like having actually a data enterprise that can ingest a lot of different information and make it available to others so that they can look at the lessons learned of the past,” he said.
So how achievable is it to use AI to reduce civilian harm in conflict?
A 2021 International Red Cross report looked at some of the areas where AI, particularly tied to more precise targeting and better battlefield data analysis, could make conflict safer for civilians and non-combatants. Such systems “may enable better decisions by humans in conducting hostilities in compliance with international humanitarian law and minimizing risks for civilians by facilitating quicker and more widespread collection and analysis of available information,” it says.
But the report also reveals a variety of features AI will bring to the battlefield that commanders could find attractive—but that could also undermine efforts to protect civilians and possibly “facilitate worse decisions or violations of international humanitarian law and exacerbate risks for civilians, especially given the current limitations of the technology, such as unpredictability, lack of explainability and bias.”
AI could also lead to what the Red Cross called the “increasing personalization of warfare,” with digital systems bringing together personally identifiable information from multiple sources—including sensors, communications, databases, social media, and biometric data—to form an algorithmically generated determination about a person, their status and their targetability, or to predict their future actions.”
That may have already come to pass. In April, the Israeli-based magazine +972, citing a number of sources within the Israeli military, detailed the existence of an AI tool called “Lavender,” designed to designate suspected Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters. According to the magazine “During the early stages of the war, the army gave sweeping approval for officers to adopt Lavender’s kill lists, with no requirement to thoroughly check why the machine made those choices or to examine the raw intelligence data on which they were based.”
Bottom line: The use of AI in warfare to prevent civilian harm is only as good as the human-specified parameters guiding it. And those parameters will reflect the intentions and priorities of the government using the system.
Still, when well-applied, AI can have positive effects on civilian harm reduction, according to a 2022 paper from CNA.
For instance: “Detecting a change from [the] collateral damage estimate by finding differences
between imagery used to determine the collateral damage estimate and more recent
imagery taken in support of an engagement,” and “alerting the presence of transient civilians by using object identification to automatically monitor for additional individuals around the target area and send an alert if they are detected.”
In other words, AI could play a crucial role in reducing uncertainty about targets, which could help commanders to better identify which targets to shoot—and which not to.
Of course, the CNA paper reminds, there are reasonable limits, since AI runs on data and not all data is perfect at the moment it’s acted upon.
“Even a perfect world—one with few or no uncertainties, with clear demarcations between ‘hostile’ and ‘nonhostile,’ and in which targeting areas (and concomitant weapon blast zones) that preclude any reasonable likelihood of collateral damage are all easily identifiable—will have a non-zero risk to civilians.”
Giving special operations forces better tools to prevent civilian casualties is part of a broader series of transformations Maier says are essential to better compete against China on the global stage, transformations special operations forces will have to make even as they face budgetary constraints and even cuts.
For instance, the Army is looking to cut as many as 3,000 special operators. Army officials speaking on background to Defense One in September emphasized the cuts would affect non-tactical roles, or so-called enablers such as headquarters staff, logistics, and psychological operations.
However, Maier said those types of enabler roles are precisely what U.S. Special Operations Forces must invest in to compete with China.
“If you’ve got a operation detachment alpha, the kind of core, 12 man-Green Beret team, they’re going to have to go out and understand how to do cyber and get in a beam for a potential adversary satellite, and understand how to operate in the environment of ubiquitous technical surveillance, just as much as they’re going to have to be able to—10 times out of 10—hit the target they intend to hit if they’re going kinetic,” he said. “My fundamental view is the areas we need to invest the most are going to be in those critical enablers. In some cases, that’s turning trigger pullers into the experts that can do this.” (Source: Defense One)
26 Aug 24. Statement by Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller)/Chief Financial Officer Michael McCord on Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution Reform. The Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) process has been one of the Department’s foundational decision support systems since the 1960s. PPBE underpins how we support the National Defense Strategy, deliver capabilities at the speed of relevance, and apply the tools and technology needed to address emerging threats. This process has served the Department well for over 60 years, but continual improvements are essential to ensure we remain agile in achieving our mission and ensuring the success of our warfighters.
I look forward to leading the Department’s PPBE reform agenda. We have already made tremendous strides and improvements as we continue to modernize. We remain committed to evaluating and evolving our capabilities and technologies so we can stay agile and prepared for the future fight.
Our PPBE reform agenda has multiple parts. DoD’s most senior leaders are focused on refining our internal processes. Our annual budget development process has evolved to focus on matching our resources to our strategy from a joint perspective while highlighting critical issues for resolution. We also incorporated PPBE reform throughout the Strategic Management Plan, which, led by the Department’s Performance Improvement Officer, is the Department’s key framework for managing strategic priorities and goals in support of the National Defense Strategy.
Importantly, this year, the Commission on PPBE Reform released 28 overarching recommendations in its final report, which detailed a total of 35 distinct initiatives, and incorporated their 13 initial interim recommendations from 2023. I echo Deputy Secretary Hicks’ statement that, “the Commissioners have put forward thoughtful and timely analysis and recommendations on a range of matters relating to effective defense resource management. I am grateful to them for their efforts to bring insight and attention to this important topic.”
As part of the Department’s PPBE reform agenda, Deputy Hicks endorsed 26 of the 35 distinct initiatives for full or partial implementation across DoD. These reforms require careful coordination with Congress, the Office of Management and Budget, and other key stakeholders. Although we are committed to advancing these reforms expeditiously, the timeline for their implementation will depend on the outcomes of cross-matrixed discussions and, where necessary, legislative actions. As the implementation plans mature, we reaffirm our commitment to collaborating with Congress and all stakeholders. We recognize that the success of these reforms depends on sustained cooperation and transparency, and we are dedicated to ensuring that our efforts lead to meaningful and lasting improvements in defense resource management.
Additionally, our resourcing process must evolve in concert with the Congress. Their partnership is essential to vesting the Department with the authorities it needs to continue delivering results in a dynamic global environment that can change overnight. We value and respect this collaboration and look forward to working together to find solutions that enable DoD
to remain competitive against our adversaries while preserving congressional oversight. We ask Congress to enact additional flexibilities now to prepare us for the future fight and urge them to undertake the single most important defense resourcing reform for our generation: a return to predictable and timely resourcing to ensure the federal government can meet our national security needs.
Lastly, I want to extend a sincere thank you to the many civilian and military members across the DoD who are leading the PPBE reform initiatives and contributing to mission success.
You can find more on the Department’s PPBE reform initiatives on the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller)/Chief Financial Officer’s website: https://comptroller.defense.gov/ (Source: U.S. DoD)
26 Aug 24. DOD Convened Climate and Defense Summit of the Americas, Strengthening Regional Security Collaboration. Pentagon Spokesman Lt. Col Devin T. Robinson provided the following readout: The U.S. Department of Defense hosted the Climate and Defense Summit of the Americas at the U.S. Naval Academy on August 22-23, 2024, with senior leaders from across the Western Hemisphere to address the defense and security challenges that climate change poses and to enhance regional collaboration.
Climate change is an existential threat to national security. Underscoring the Department of Defense’s determination to supporting whole of government and allies’ and partners’ strategies, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks said that “none of us can tackle the climate challenge alone. We have a better chance of tackling the threat when we find ways to confront it together.”
The summit capped off a series of regional events held in partnership with defense and security agencies convening military leaders, civilian officials, scientists, emergency response experts, and representatives from non-governmental organizations that emphasized how climate change is increasingly impacting military readiness, operational capabilities, and infrastructure resilience — requiring immediate coordinated action across the region.
“Climate change is reshaping our strategic landscape, requiring dynamic responses and strengthened partnerships to ensure our forces are prepared for the challenges while fostering a resolute commitment to partnership across the Americas to strengthen readiness and regional response mechanisms,” said Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Hemispheric Affairs, Rebecca Zimmerman. Adding that our “commitment to enhancing climate adaptation and resilience extends by, with, and through international collaboration.”
With a focus on integrating resilience into defense planning, resource allocation, operations, and security cooperation to ensure sustained readiness, discussions included strategies for building climate-resilient military forces, operations, and infrastructure, utilizing advanced data analytics for decision-making, and strengthening the critical role of defense forces in disaster preparedness and response.
These discussions will continue during the Climate and Environmental Challenges from a Defense Perspective Working Committee at the upcoming Conference of Defense Ministers of the Americas ministerial, which Argentina is hosting in October 2024. (Source: U.S. DoD)
————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————–
Founded in 1987, Exensor Technology is a world leading supplier of Networked Unattended Ground Sensor (UGS) Systems providing tailored sensor solutions to customers all over the world. From our Headquarters in Lund Sweden, our centre of expertise in Network Communications at Communications Research Lab in Kalmar Sweden and our Production site outside of Basingstoke UK, we design, develop and produce latest state of the art rugged UGS solutions at the highest quality to meet the most stringent demands of our customers. Our systems are in operation and used in a wide number of Military as well as Homeland Security applications worldwide. The modular nature of the system ensures any external sensor can be integrated, providing the user with a fully meshed “silent” network capable of self-healing. Exensor Technology will continue to lead the field in UGS technology, provide our customers with excellent customer service and a bespoke package able to meet every need.
A CNIM Group Company
———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————