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03 Aug 16. AI technology leveraged for C-UAV system. Black Sage Technologies is employing artificial intelligence (AI) as part of a counter-unmanned aerial vehicle (C-UAV) system.
The company’s UAVX is designed to detect, identify and track UAVs through the use of a number of different technologies, including a Doppler radar, and daylight and infrared cameras. The AI aspect comes through an Artificial Neural Network, which is deployed for automatic target classification.
Dave Romero – founder of Black Sage Technologies – told IHS Jane’s that the company has secured a number of military customers, but declined to provide further details. However, he said the company hosts demos of the system for potential buyers every month, “and the grand majority of these customers are either military or they are private companies who are already working with military or government agencies that care about this problem.
“When we look at this, we consider where can we be most effective, and that comes down to who’s experiencing the most pain. Right now it’s military, and in certain parts of the world, [UAVs] are already being used as weapons. It’s not just espionage, it’s not just the risk of recreational pilots flying in the wrong places, and it’s not just fear. It’s that they are being used as flying IEDs [improvised explosive devices].”
The individual components of UAVX are already being used in theatre by various militaries, Romero said, with the radars and camera systems in service with the US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The use of AI is intended to defeat a “boy who cried wolf problem with false alarms”, Romero said. This stems from the use of what Romero termed “deterministic systems” that work on a binary level. For example, a simple motion detector is binary, and does not account for the nature of the motion – whether it is a bird, a UAV, or tumbleweed. (Source: IHS Jane’s)
01 Aug 16. Russia Developing New Naval Sonar Network. A state-of-the-art sonar system to protect Russia’s territorial waters in the Arctic is already under development, the newspaper Izvestia quoted a Russian Defense Ministry source familiar with the situation as saying.
The system will be equipped with sophisticated sonar buoys and underwater sensors that will track the acoustic signals of underwater and surface objects and transmit the information to a ground control center via satellites.
The source said that “the project is due to be finalized in 2017 and after it is approved by the Russian Defense Ministry, the new sonar system will enter service.” According to the source, the fully deployed system can cover an area spanning hundreds of square kilometers.
The Russian air defense manufacturer Almaz Antey was tasked with developing the project. The company cooperates with a whole array of enterprises within the Russian military-industrial complex.
Historian Dmitry Boltenkov told Izvestia that the new sonar system will most likely be deployed in the Arctic. He referred to the Cold War era, when American and British nuclear submarines were repeatedly tracked in the Arctic Ocean. In particular, they were detected in the seas bordering Russia’s northern coast, he said.
“But currently, they are actively trying to track the ships and submarines of the Russian Northern Fleet, especially now that the Russian navy has the most advanced Yasen- and Borei-class nuclear powered submarines,” he said.
Boltenkov also drew attention to the fact that US submarines can carry Tomahawks: long-range, all-weather, subsonic cruise missiles capable of hitting targets at a distance of more than 1,500 kilometers.
In August 2014, a high-ranking source within the Russian Navy’s headquarters said that a US Virginia-class submarine was detected and “forced out” by Russian anti-sub forces after it violated the country’s boundary