Satellite Jamming

Satellite Signal Jamming Reaches New Lows Starlink and other LEO constellations face a new set of security risks By LUCAS LAURSEN

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 put Ukrainian communications in a literal jam: Just before the invasion, Russian hackers knocked out Viasat satellite ground receivers across Europe. Then entrepreneur Elon Musk swept in to offer access to Starlink, SpaceX’s growing network of low Earth orbit (LEO) communications satellites. Musk soon reported that Starlink was suffering from jamming attacks and software countermeasures.

In March, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) concluded that Russia was still trying to jam Starlink, according to documents leaked by U.S. National Guard airman Ryan Teixeira and seen by the Washington Post. Ukrainian troops have likewise blamed problems with Starlink on Russian jamming, the website Defense One reports. If Russia is jamming a LEO constellation, it would be a new layer in the silent war in space-ground communications.

“There is really not a lot of information out there on this,” says Brian Weeden, the director of program planning for the Secure World Foundation, a nongovernmental organization that studies space governance. But, Weeden adds, “my sense is that it’s much harder to jam or interfere with Starlink [than with GPS satellites].”

LEO Satellites Face New Security Risks

Regardless of their altitude or size, communications satellites transmit more power and therefore require more power to jam than navigational satellites. However, compared with large geostationary satellites, LEO satellites—which orbit Earth at an altitude of 2,000 kilometers or lower—have frequent handovers that “introduce delays and opens up more surface for interference,” says Mark Manulis, a professor of privacy and applied cryptography at the University of the Federal Armed Forces’ Cyber Defense Research Institute (CODE) in Munich, Germany.

A graphic of the Earth with three rings around it. Each ring represents a different orbit for satellites. The ring closest to the Earth is low earth orbit.Low Earth orbit satellites are numerous and move fast, traits that open them up to new kinds of security risks.IEEE SPECTRUM

Security and communications researchers are working on defenses and countermeasures, mostly behind closed doors, but it is possible to infer from a few publications and open-source research how unprepared many LEO satellites are for direct attacks and some of the defenses that future LEO satellites may need.

For years, both private companies and government agencies have been planning LEO constellations, each numbering thousands of satellites. The DOD, for example, has been designing its own LEO satellite network to supplement its more traditional geostationary constellations for more than a decade and has already begun issuing contracts for the constellation’s construction. University research groups are also launching tiny, standardized cube satellites (CubeSats) into LEO for research and demonstration purposes. This proliferation of satellite constellations coincides with the emergence of off-the-shelf components and software-defined radio—both of which make the satellites more affordable, but perhaps less secure.

Russia’s defense agencies commissioned a system called Tobol that’s designed to counter jammers that might interfere with their own satellites, reported journalist and author Bart Hendrickx. That implies that Russia either can transmit jamming signals up to satellites, or suspects that adversaries can. ... ' 

Rand Talks AI

 Had long ago connections with Rand, they have good background in the spece, here they talk the current positive and negatives.

AI, ChatGPT, and Language as Technology: Q&A         with William Marcellino  Rand.org

Q&A

ChatGPT user interface is seen on a smartphone screen over a keyboard, photo by Nikos Pekiaridis/NurPhoto via Reuters

Photo by Nikos Pekiaridis/NurPhoto via Reuters, May 12, 2023

Artificial intelligence–powered chatbots like ChatGPT hold the potential to transform everything from social media scrolling to entire industries—and faster than William Marcellino would have imagined even just a few months ago.

Marcellino, a senior behavioral and social scientist at RAND and professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School, began his career as a corpus linguist, working with large datasets, and as a sociolinguist, “the old-fashioned, qualitative type,” as he put it, “who goes to live among people to learn their language.”

Now, he finds himself at the intersection of these two disciplines, studying generative artificial intelligence applications that talk like humans—and, in some cases, even look like humans—but are actually powered by trillions of data points collected from the internet.

We talked with Marcellino about the rapidly expanding reach of AI, the challenges it could pose for both society and policymakers, and how the research community is poised to help.

What exactly is generative AI?

WILLIAM MARCELLINO Generative AI refers to a class of models that, because they have seen what has already been done, they can do a good job guessing at what might be done. An example would be large language models, or LLMs, which are the framework behind applications like ChatGPT.

At a very basic level, ChatGPT has been trained on—we think—trillions of tokens of natural language collected from the internet, plus “third-party data” for GPT-4, which no one knows exactly what that means. The same is true for, say, a text-to-image video generator. In that case, it can take what has already been shown. And from that, what could be shown?

These applications essentially turn words, images, sound data—any of these things—into very long numbers called embeddings. These long numbers, in addition to representing whatever the image or word is, also contain contextual information, like how that image or word is typically used or what it's usually associated with. That's how text-to-image models like DALL-E or Midjourney work. Text from a user is projected into a latent embeddings space that corresponds to images, which can then be “drawn,” or actually, uncovered from noise.

Even more exciting—but also concerning—is that LLMs have exhibited agentic behavior. LLMs can take in user input, come up with courses of action, take those actions, evaluate the outcomes, then repeat and refine until they accomplish their goal.

There are plenty of opportunities and challenges that come along with AI. Let's start with the former: What about this technology excites you?

You know, my whole life I've been waiting for the Star Trek computer that can talk to you in natural language. And you know that RAND helped come up with that idea, right?

You wrote about that in the Los Angeles Times a few years ago.

The idea that we could replace these computer interfaces that are clunky and hard to use and just talk to them is incredible.

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I did! You know, the idea that we could replace these computer interfaces that are clunky and hard to use and just talk to them is incredible. As a linguist 13 years ago, I had a few pieces of clunky software that would let me do some work. Then later on, coding became easier. And now, when I want to code something, I just describe conceptually what I want to analyze to an LLM, and it helps me code.

We also now have the ability to do really cool, useful stuff. The coolest project I've ever been involved with is something I'm working on right now at RAND with Peter Schirmer, RAND's director for emerging policy research and methods, and Zev Winkeklman, a senior information scientist. We are building a smaller-purpose, ChatGPT-like tool for the U.S. Army. We're teaching it how to talk like a soldier, how to understand Army knowledge of doctrine and culture, as a resource for enlisted service members. I used to be a junior enlisted Marine before I became an officer, and I was a bit mischievous. So, we're imagining: How do you make this thing useful and good, but maybe not vulnerable to someone who just wants to be kind of devilish?

And what are some of the trade-offs and potentially dangerous scenarios associated with advancements in AI?

I think one of the national security dimensions that we need to confront now is that human beings are used to verifying the world with their physical senses. Seeing is believing. But starting just a few months ago, there is no longer any guarantee that what you see on the internet is real.

Actors in China have already stated that they plan to use this technology to create what they call “public opinion guidance” online, to censor AI and “help people think correct thoughts.” We should expect to see that type of disinformation and what we call “astroturfing,” which is propaganda designed to look like a grassroots campaign—giving the sense that lots of people believe a sentiment, when that's not actually true or real.

How might existing research help prepare the public for what's to come in this rapidly developing field?

That is one of the challenges of AI—scientific community–published research is literally years behind the technology. So, in addition to my work at RAND, I keep up with nontraditional sources like arXiv, an open-access research archive, and even language technology Reddit.

RAND has a lot of experience using machine learning to do all kinds of things—for example, trying to predict whether Army contracts are going to fully spend their money. The idea that we can use machines to model things at scale is not new to us.

I think RAND's strength in this area is that we have experts from diverse disciplines and policy analysts working together on this. Our data scientists aren't simply siloed somewhere in the organization. We have data scientists sprinkled throughout, and then we have people like me who aren't data scientists but who understand these concepts enough to be able to do something with them in the areas we do understand. That, I think, will continue to be really powerful.    —Maria Gardner 

How the U.S. Can Rewire the Pentagon for a New Era

I worked at the Pentagon, so interesting.   During an earlier 'rewiring'.   Crucial. 

How the U.S. Can Rewire the Pentagon for a New Era, by Porter Smith and David Ulevitch

We are in the early stages of a generational defense cycle that requires unconventional thinking and tools. The invasion of Ukraine highlights this evolution: comparatively low-cost weapons, from drones to precision artillery, are leveraging cutting-edge networks, like SpaceX’s Starlink, to redefine battlefields. Meanwhile, a new variable — attritable tech — is emerging. The implications are upending how militaries fight.

Defense innovation has always sparked a helix of action and reaction, where faster evolution means greater success. In World War II, Turing’s codebreakers at Bletchley Park reacted to Nazi cryptographic improvements in a running duel that spanned years. The naval Enigma wasn’t broken once, but dozens of times. 

We are in a similar moment today, although the rate and scale of change is accelerated. Consider the lightning speed at which today’s most advanced general computing projects evolve. OpenAI’s GPT-4, which was released a little more than two years after its predecessor, can now ace bar exams and convert sketches to functioning websites — all in a compressed upgrade window that overtook competitors seemingly overnight. As general computing platforms become applicable to a host of defense applications, from programming autonomous behavior to conducting live targeting analysis, sweeping advances in software and other technologies not originally designed for defense have unintentionally compounded computing’s impact on war.

Responding to the paradigm shift requires reengineering the Pentagon’s DNA for a new era. Given that the winner of the next big war will more closely resemble a distributed computer operating at scale — programmatically collecting, sharing, and acting upon data from relatively inexpensive and configurable endpoints, like drones — computing design and organizational principles honed in the tech industry can help provide guidance to meet the challenge. 

Here are some ideas for how to do it.

1. Commoditizing hardware

As the Central Intelligence Agency’s Chief Technology Officer Nand Mulchandani pointed out in his essay “Software-Defined Warfare,” cloud computing (and modern application design, overall) ushered in an era where hardware components like servers, storage devices, and networking equipment have become interchangeable and standardized. The transition to treating servers as “cattle” instead of “pets” presaged a reduction in operational complexity, driving lower costs through commoditization. Businesses utilizing cloud resources don’t need to endure long hardware provisioning cycles just to test out new applications or features, or over-purchase hardware for peak workloads that might come just once a year. Businesses adopting cloud native design principles care relatively little about hardware at all — their workloads are packaged as application containers that can run on any virtual machine running Linux.

Modern militaries face a similar competitive landscape, but the consequences are defeat instead of bankruptcy.

For a glimpse of what’s to come, look no further than the Donbas. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) premonition of “Mosaic Warfare” — saturating an adversary with cheap complexity — has come to life. Modded quadcopters are pairing with artillery to serve as ubiquitous reconnaissance and attack assets at the lowest tactical levels. Sometimes, even drones themselves are the munition, as seen in individual tank strikes and the mass naval attack that heavily damaged the Admiral Makarov, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet. Drones, air defense systems, and missiles are democratizing lethality in much the same way offshoring, competition, and government subsidies relentlessly commoditized computing hardware and chips. This rapid shift in defense tech has economic implications; cheaper hardware can be deployed en masse.

Why, then, have hardware costs risen so dramatically at the Pentagon? The Air Force’s next-generation bomber, the B-21 Raider, is estimated to cost $700 million per aircraft — a 140x increase in today’s dollars over B-24 Liberators from World War II. Part of the problem is that the Department of Defense (DoD) doesn’t view most platforms as uniform endpoints in a larger network. For a substantial portion of the force, they should.

The future is modular  ... ' 

Metal Detecting from the Air

Recall a DOD project looking a a related problem.   Hope this does not become an issue in greater Europe.

Metal-Detecting Drone Could Autonomously Find Land Mines A drone with 5 degrees of freedom can safely detect buried objects from the air.  By Evan Ackerman 

Several stitched-together photographs of gray three-propellered drones with metal detectors hovering just above grass

This composite photo shows how a tricopter drone with a lidar and metal detector can fly around an obstacle close to the ground.

Metal detecting can be a fun hobby, or it can be a task to be completed in deadly earnest—if the buried treasure you’re searching for includes land mines and explosive remnants of war. This is an enormous, dangerous problem: Something like 12,000 square kilometers worldwide are essentially useless and uninhabitable because of the threat of buried explosives, and thousands and thousands of people are injured or killed every year.

While there are many different ways of detecting mines and explosives, none of them are particularly quick or easy. For obvious reasons, sending a human out into a minefield with a metal detector is not the safest way of doing things. So, instead, people send anything else that they possibly can, from machines that can smash through minefields with brute force to well-trained rats that take a more passive approach by sniffing out explosive chemicals.

Because the majority of mines are triggered by pressure or direct proximity, it may seem that a drone would be the ideal way to detect them nonexplosively. However, unless you’re only detecting over a perfectly flat surface (and perhaps not even then) your detector won’t be positioned ideally most of the time, and you might miss something, which is not a viable option for mine detection.

But now a novel combination of a metal detector and a drone with 5 degrees of freedom is under development at the Autonomous Systems Lab at ETH Zurich. It may provide a viable solution to remote land-mine detection, by using careful sensing and localization along with some twisting motors to keep the detector reliably close to the ground.  ...' 

An AI Controlled Jet fighter

The future.  Automated AI defense and combat.  

ACM TECHNEWS

U.S. Air Force Successfully Tests AI-Controlled Jet Fighter,    By Ars Technica, February 16, 2023

The X-62A Variable Stability In-Flight Simulator Test Aircraft, or VISTA.

The Air Force describes the X-62A as "a flight test accelerator." During its flights, a human pilot is on board to take over if needed.

Credit: Kyle Brasier/U.S. Air Force

The U.S. Air Force said the X-62A VISTA (Variable Stability In-Flight Simulator Test Aircraft) autonomous jet fighter has undergone 17 hours of flight testing.

VISTA completed 12 different flight tests of the Air Force Research Lab's Autonomous Air Combat Operations and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Air Combat Evolution (ACE) artificial intelligence agents.

This included advanced fighter maneuvers and beyond-visual-range engagements, with an on-board human pilot to take over as necessary.

Air Force Lt. Col. Ryan Hefron of ACE said, "We didn't run into any major issues but did encounter some differences compared to simulation-based results, which is to be expected when transitioning from virtual to live. This highlights the importance of not only flight testing advanced autonomous capabilities but doing so on testbeds like VISTA, which allowed us to rapidly learn lessons and iterate at a much faster rate than with other air vehicles."

From Ars Technica

View Full Article  

Small, Convenient Mosquito Repellent Device

 A former school of mine does interesting work

Small, convenient mosquito repellent device passes test to protect military personnel  by Karen Dooley, University of Florida

A device developed at the University of Florida for the U.S. military provides protection from mosquitos for an extended period and requires no heat, electricity or skin contact.

The controlled-release passive device was designed by Nagarajan Rajagopal, a Ph.D. candidate and Dr. Christopher Batich in UF's Department of Materials Science and Engineering in the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering. It recently was tested successfully in a four-week semi-field study at the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Gainesville in a collaboration with Dr. Daniel Kline, Dr. Jerry Hogsette and Adam Bowman from the USDA's Center for Medical, Agricultural and Veterinary Entomology.

Results showed the controlled release of the repellent transfluthrin was effective in preventing multiple species of mosquitos from entering the testing site. Transfluthrin is an organic insecticide considered to be safe for humans and animals.

"Our device eliminates the need for applying topical repellents and for insecticides that are sprayed across an open area, which can contaminate surrounding plants or bodies of water and have a negative impact on beneficial pollinators like bees and butterflies," Rajagopal said. "This is versatile, portable, easily deployed and doesn't require electricity or heat to activate the solution."

Mosquitos are more than an annoying distraction for military personnel, as they can spread serious diseases and viruses like malaria, dengue virus, Zika and West Nile virus. The DOD continually looks for ways to protect soldiers in the field from mosquito bites.

The controlled release passive device is made up of a tube-shaped polypropylene plastic that is 2.5 centimeters long and holds two smaller tubes and a cotton containing the repellent.The team attached 70 of the devices to the opening of a large military tent using fishing line and nothing to a similar control tent. Caged mosquitos were released at various points along the exterior of the tent, and almost all were killed or repelled within 24 hours, Rajagopal said.

He explained that while the field test showed the team's prototype created a protective space from mosquitos for four weeks, the final product, which will be built through a 3-D-printing process, could extend that period up to three months.

"We call our device passive because you don't need to do anything to activate it," he said. "It provides a sustained release of the insecticide over an extended period rather than just a spike at the beginning."

Rajagopal said they are filing for a patent on the device, and the government is interested in further study, so that it can eventually be commercialized for the civilian market. USDA scientists believe there are more opportunities for its use by people who enjoy outdoor activities.

"While initially developed for tent-entrance protection, the personal protection device in various sizes and configurations has potential for other applications, including for hiking and fishing," said Kline, a research entomologist with the USDA.  ... ' 

Defense Industry Challenges

The business of defending,

This is the first in a series of articles about the inflation challenge within the defense industry.

Inflation continues to run above historical averages. The general public is feeling the pinch, with the consumer price index up 8.3 percent over the past year.1 Within the aerospace and defense sector, leaders are trying to adjust to an inflation level that many have never encountered in their careers.

The producer price index (PPI), which measures the prices received by domestic US businesses for their output, has increased 12.2 percent for goods and 6.8 percent for services over the past year.2 Input costs for common defense products and services have risen even higher, with increases of 10.0 percent for industrial chemicals, 17.8 percent for transportation and warehousing, and 25.9 percent for energy.

Rising costs may ultimately cut into the US Department of Defense’s (DOD’s) buying power. In an earlier analysis, we estimated that the agency could lose more than $100 billion in purchasing power within five years if the economy reenters a period of high inflation and the defense budget is limited to nominal top-line increases, similar to what happened in the 1970s.3 In that scenario, the DOD would have limited funds to invest in modernizing military equipment, especially since the department would still have to increase military pay to meet mandatory requirements. Defense companies would then face lower demand on top of increased input costs.

Today’s soaring prices come after many years of relatively low inflation and have prompted the US Federal Reserve to raise interest rates more rapidly than any time in the past two decades.4 While many businesses are also revisiting their strategies in response to inflation and rising interest rates, the path ahead for defense companies may be particularly complicated. Most of their contracts specify that the DOD will pay a fixed price for goods and services over a relatively long period, so they cannot compensate for higher costs by increasing prices. As defense companies begin to formulate a response to inflation, they will benefit from a strong understanding of their contract portfolio, including how common terms may impose constraints when developing a strategy to deal with rising prices. This understanding will help them work with the DOD to maximize the nation’s defense systems. ... '  

An AI Can Invent in the US?

 Related to some of the work I did with the DOD on intellectual property definition and rights. How will this influence  use?   How will the invention be assigned?   Will follow up on the ruling.

U.S. court will soon rule if AI can legally be an ‘inventor’

Can artificial intelligence (AI) be legally listed as an inventor? After all, if AI can legally invent products, the number of patents on drug-discovery tools will shoot up fast. The issue is currently before a United States court.

The U.S. Court of Appeals heard arguments on that question again last week, and the ruling could affect the pace of AI technology development, particularly within the pharmaceutical and life science industrie

AI learns by doing

A ruling in favor of AI-as-inventor would impact healthcare companies that use the technology to create tools that find new treatments for existing drugs. This technique of re-using drugs, called repurposing or repositioning, is used to treat emerging and challenging diseases, including COVID-19.  ... ' 

Pentagon Making Cybersecurity Progress

Worked at the Pentagon, but long before this level of analysis was being done, but like to see advances being completed.   It is now essential now that cyber security is fundamentally well done.  Here a brief overview.  

Pentagon making progress on cybersecurity amid challenges, watchdog says    By Colin Demarest

The U.S. Government Accountability Office published on May 19 a review of the Department of Defense's cyber efforts to secure controlled unclassified information, sensitive data either created or possessed by the government. (File/Provided) .... 

WASHINGTON — The Department of Defense is making significant progress locking down sensitive networks amid cyber challenges from foreign adversaries bent on gaining access to intel, a report from a federal watchdog shows.

The department as of January recorded compliance at 70% or higher  in implementing four select protections for controlled unclassified information, which may include data tied to critical technologies or the development and operation of weapons and defense infrastructure, according to the Government Accountability Office.  .... ' 

Beware Allure of Training Tech

 As it says, context matters a great deal when training. Will the VR actually change results? 

Beware the allure of training technology   By Tim Marler in Defense News

The allure of training technology can often overshadow its value. Today, virtual reality, or VR, is a hot topic in the military training community, but training tools must be developed and selected according to their anticipated use. Context matters, and sometimes the best and most cost-effective training tool may just be a book.

While VR offers many benefits, the Department or Defense could seek to ensure that virtual training content derives from operational needs, integrates with existing processes and curricula, and is validated. Furthermore, this process could be assessed and refined continuously because although we cannot predict the future of technology, we can be confident that what we need and what we want will change.

The United States military has always derived great benefit from novel technological advances, and today is no exception. Rapid acquisition and innovation are focal points for the DoD. This focus extends to training as well, where emerging technologies can present many opportunities. But too often the tie from various capabilities to actual training objectives can be tenuous at best.

Within the training arena, there is now considerable focus on virtual reality and augmented reality. VR involves a user being completely immersed in a virtual environment, and AR involves overlaying virtual entities on real items. The Army, for example, is developing the Integrated Visual Augmentation System that will allow soldiers to see what combat vehicles see, have 3D terrain maps projected onto their real field of view and enable other capabilities for increased situational awareness.

In addition, most of the services are developing aspects of live, virtual and constructive, or LVC, capabilities that can, for example, allow pilots in real jets (live) to train with pilots in flight simulators (virtual) in different locations, all interacting with computer-based (constructive) representations of adversary jets ..... ' 

Security Now on Future Open Source

This week a  very good podcast session in TWIT:Security Now:  https://twit.tv/shows/security-now/episodes/869?autostart=false.   Regarding the future of security, especially on Open source efforts in the DOD and beyond.    Sent out to my former DOD colleagues.  

For full text https://www.grc.com/sn/SN-869-Notes.pdf   by Steve Gibson

This week on Security Now! This week we're going to examine the success of the abbreviation overloaded DoD's DIB-VDP pilot program. We’re going to introduce the relatively new OpenSSF - Open Source Security Foundation    -  “We believe open source is a public good and across every industry we have a responsibility to come together to improve and support the security of open source software we all depend on. It is one of the most important things we can do.”    and its Package Analysis Project. We're going to look at some hopeful new privacy legislation recently passed in Connecticut's house which if signed into law would cause it to join four other privacy-progressive states, and we're going to look at Moxie Marlinspike's irreverent rationale for the need for port knocking. Then, after sharing some interesting listener feedback, we're going to look at the background, implementation and future of a very encouraging development in user web browser and Internet privacy.... '

Referring further to: 

DIB-VDP Pilot Overview

The Defense Industrial Base Vulnerability Disclosure Program (DIB-VDP) Pilot is a 12-month voluntary event established collaboratively by DC3’s DoD Defense Industrial Base Collaborative Information Sharing Environment (DCISE), DoD Vulnerability Disclosure Program (DoD VDP), and the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA).  ....' 

Pentagon Hacks Itself

A former employer of mine tests a by now classic approach.  Note aiming at AI efforts here in particular.  

The Pentagon Is Bolstering Its AI Systems—by Hacking Itself

By Wired, July 21, 2021

Intelligence as a way to outfox, outmaneuver, and dominate future adversaries. But the brittle nature of AI means that without due care, the technology could perhaps hand enemies a new way to attack.

The Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, created by the Pentagon to help the US military make use of AI, recently formed a unit to collect, vet, and distribute open source and industry machine learning models to groups across the Department of Defense. Part of that effort points to a key challenge with using AI for military ends. A machine learning "red team," known as the Test and Evaluation Group, will probe pretrained models for weaknesses. Another cybersecurity team examines AI code and data for hidden vulnerabilities.

Machine learning, the technique behind modern AI, represents a fundamentally different, often more powerful, way to write computer code. Instead of writing rules for a machine to follow, machine learning generates its own rules by learning from data. The trouble is, this learning process, along with artifacts or errors in the training data, can cause AI models to behave in strange or unpredictable ways.

"For some applications, machine learning software is just a bajillion times better than traditional software," says Gregory Allen, director of strategy and policy at the JAIC. But, he adds, machine learning "also breaks in different ways than traditional software."

From Wired     View Full Article   

Re the Future of Info Warfare

Increasingly a dangerous direction. Need to  analyzse threats, determine risks and address appropriately. We have the skills, build ahead to emerging threats. 

DOD Isn't Armed to Combat Growing Threat of Info Warfare, Experts Warn  By The Washington Post

National security experts will warn Congress today that the U.S. government isn't doing enough to fight back against the growing national security threat of information warfare aimed at sowing distrust in the U.S. government at home and abroad.

"Cyber-enabled disinformation, whether domestically or foreign generated, is a national security problem, corroding our democracy and governmental institutions, and threatening our public health and, potentially, public safety," former NSA general counsel Glenn Gerstell will testify in front of the House Armed Services subcommittee on cyber, innovative technologies and information systems.

Other witnesses include Nina Jankowicz, a disinformation fellow at the Wilson Center; Herb Lin, senior research scholar at the center for international security and cooperation at Stanford University; as well as Joseph Kirschbaum, director of the defense capabilities and management team at the Government Accountability Office.

The hearing underscores how the United States has struggled to combat the emerging cyberthreat of information warfare.

From The Washington Post

Battlefield History Training and Simulation

 Certainly not a new thing, saw and participated in such wargaming simulations as early as the late 70's with very advanced graphics.  But was clearly not what we would call 'virtual reality' today, but what might be something like keyboard or pen input and then output of simulated results, in non real-times.  Much less than computer gaming speed.   And here aimed at historical data.  Note to the use of 'liquid' interaction models, also an intriguing advance. Still a telling example of advances made since then.

Virtual reality battlefield technology designed to train military leaders  by Purdue University in TechXPlore

A new and modern approach to understanding battlefield history may soon help prepare future military leaders in the U.S.

Purdue University innovators have developed battlefield simulation technology that they used to produce a virtual reality tour of the D-Day beaches in Normandy, France.

"We have worked with military education partners to refine our virtual reality technology to provide a useful tool for future military leaders," said Sorin Adam Matei, a professor of communication and associate dean in Purdue's College of Liberal Arts. "We apply what we know from the field of physics and treat the virtual soldiers almost like liquids that are interacting on the battlefield. Military educators can use this tool to teach future leaders lessons learned from historic battles in a visually exciting way that brings them to life for the students."

Their work is part of the FORCES (4S)—Strategy, Security and Social Systems Initiative in Purdue's College of Liberal Arts. More information is available at purdue.university/forces.

The initiative supports the use of social scientific research in strategy and security activities to shape long-range and global military, political and organizational decision-making for a just, stable and secure world. Other members of the team are Jonathan Poggie, a professor of engineering; Robert Kirchubel, an educator and retired Army lieutenant colonel; and Matthew Konkoly, a research assistant.  ... "

USAF Using Supply Chain Network with Blockchain

Another indication that Blockchain is being further used to secure supply chain transactions.  Here with US Govt DOD applications.

US Air Force Gives Blockchain Firm $1.5M to Build Supply Chain Network by Danny Nelson in Coindesk

SIMBA Chain, a blockchain-as-a-service company with deep ties to the Department of Defense, has two years and $1.5 million to research and develop a blockchain for supply chain logistics for the U.S. Air Force.

The South Bend, Ind., firm said on Monday it has entered Phase II of its Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) USAF project with a renewed mandate to investigate blockchain’s military supply chain value propositions. It has also gained a new partner: Boeing. 

SIMBA CEO Joel Neidig said his firm will “stand up” a node running Hyperledger Fabric at Oklahoma’s Tinker Air Force Base – a hub for Air Force supply chain logistics – with a special focus on risk management: knowing the what, where, who and how of parts that may one day go through the USAF’s $62 billion procurement machine. ... '

Virtualitics for Insight Extraction

A company of interest for advanced data visualization.  We worked with them in the Enterprise.

Virtualitics Selected fof the Air Force Strategic $7 Million Award
March 16, 2020 By Amy Gunzenhauser

Virtualitics is pleased to announce that it has been selected for the Air Force’s first ever Strategic Fund Increase (STRATFI) award through AF Ventures. The $7 million contract will enable Virtualitics to provide our groundbreaking AI data analytics software, Virtualitics Immersive Platform (VIP), to Air Force Global Strike Command to help airmen solve pressing data challenges in the U.S. strategic bomber fleet.

The award was announced by the Secretary of the Air Force, Barbara Barrett, and Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, Dr. Will Roper, at the Air Force’s virtual “Pitch Bowl” event.

Dr. Roper has described the winners of the STRATFI award as companies providing “game-changing” technologies to the Air Force. “The thing that we’re working on now is the big bets, the 30 to 40 big ideas, disruptive ideas that can change our mission and hopefully change the world,” Roper said. “We’re looking for those types of companies.”

Virtualitics is proud to be one of the “big bet” startups the Air Force is counting on to preserve the U.S. military’s technological advantage.

Receiving the STRATFI award at the Pitch Bowl culminates an impressive trend of recent Department of Defense contracts for Virtualitics. Virtualitics is the only commercial startup to win contract awards at the Air Force’s first ever Space Pitch Day and the F-35 Pitch Day, in addition to the STRATFI. Winning the “triple crown” of contract awards at the Air Force’s seminal innovation events is a clear indication of product-market fit for our solution in the DoD.

We are very proud of our work with the DoD. We have found great satisfaction in helping our men and women in uniform unlock actionable insights in their data...." 

Hack the Pentagon was Very Successful

As a former Pentagon DOD employee who worked security issues, this is both surprising and impressive.  Much more at the link on success of the effort. 

Hack the Pentagon bug bounty program on the DOD the Hackerone Platform
Hackerone and DOD will partner to bring Crowdsourced security initiatives to other departments.

"We know that state-sponsored actors and black-hat hackers want to challenge and exploit our networks. We know that. What we didn't fully appreciate before this pilot was how many white-hat hackers there are who want to make a difference, who want to help keep our people and our nation safer."

The US Department of Defense’s Defense Digital Service (DDS) team pioneered the Hack the Pentagon bug bounty pilot program with strong support from Secretary of Defense Ash Carter. The pilot ran from April 18, 2016 until May 12, 2016 and exceeded all expectations.

Hack the Pentagon was the first bug bounty program in the history of the Federal Government. The Department of Defense selected HackerOne as its partner to advise, operate, and execute Hack the Pentagon.

On March 31, 2016, interested participants began registration to compete in the "Hack the Pentagon” pilot challenge.

The pilot program was designed to identify and resolve security vulnerabilities within Defense Department public facing websites through crowdsourced security. ...  "

Military Long Distant Face Recognition

I would imagine will be more precise and at longer distances yet,   I have some very impressive sat images, and precise coordinates could simply be shared.   All this will change the face of war.  Likely very cheaply and fast.

US military face recognition system could work from 1 kilometre away    By David Hambling in NewScientist

The US military is developing a portable face-recognition device capable of identifying individuals from a kilometre away.

The Advanced Tactical Facial Recognition at a Distance Technology project is being carried out for US Special Operations Command (SOCOM). It commenced in 2016, and a working prototype was demonstrated in December 2019, paving the way for a production version. SOCOM says the research is ongoing, but declined to comment further.

Initially designed for hand-held use, the technology could also be used from drones. SOCOM documents …  " 

More,  

New Cybersecurity Standards

New cybersecurity standards are being launched for industry working with the Pentagon.

In National Defense Mag.  Brought to my attention:

Pentagon Rolling Out New Cybersecurity Standards for Industry   By Jon Harper

"... The Defense Department unveiled its plans Jan. 31 for implementing a new set of cybersecurity standards that companies must eventually adhere to if they want to do business with the Pentagon.

Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification version 1.0, or CMMC, is an effort to prod the defense industrial base to better protect its networks and controlled unclassified information against cyberattacks and theft by foreign adversaries such as China.


“Adversaries know that in today's great power competition environment, information and technology are both key cornerstones [of national security], and attacking a sub-tier supplier is far more appealing than a prime,” Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Ellen Lord told reporters at the Pentagon.  ... "

Information Latency Study for DOD

I  suggest that there are important latency conditions in many parts of large networked systems.  For example in supply chains it can greatly change costs, effective responses, contract and goal compliance, risk analysis,  decision design integration, etc.    Information latency is always considered in such systems, but often not carefully enough.  Latency is a key kind of metadata, and should be included in a 'knowledge graph' to represent a problem in both its statement and in any automated approaches being designed.   - Franz

Research Team to Study Information Latency With $7.5M DOD Grant
By Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
 Virginia Tech researchers Walid Saad, Jeffrey Reed, and Thomas Hou

Information latency is a measure of how quickly or slowly networked devices transmit information. When the information being transmitted is for the military, understanding latency may be the deciding factor in the outcome of warfare.

That's one of the reasons the U.S. Department of Defense has now tapped the expertise of an interdisciplinary research team led by Virginia Tech to study latency and information freshness in military Internet of Things systems with a $7.5 million, five-year Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) grant.

The goal is to develop a novel foundational framework for guaranteeing low latency and information freshness in military networked systems, such as the Internet of Things, using a cutting-edge concept known as multimode age of information, which tightly ties in information latency with the dynamic networked military system.

The project will fundamentally define this new concept of information latency and provide a suite of tools to optimize multimode age of information in massive-scale military networked systems.

"Despite much progress being made in the study of military communications, the basic science for tracking, control, and optimization of information latency is yet to be developed," says principal investigator Jeffrey Reed, Willis G. Worcester Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech. "In fact, a fundamental knowledge of information latency is crucial for our military to maintain information superiority on the battlefield."  ..... " 

(see more at link above)