ISR
Above: An example of the effectiveness of AI systems would be a camera or sensor zooming in on particular targets without the need for controller input.
Opening page: Technologies like SAPIENT seek to bring the base of operations and the battlefield closer together.
of sensors. Ensuring devices work quickly and efficiently, alerting soldiers to any incoming threat, is vital. Yet, older platforms are often inappropriate, putting undue burdens on personnel, even as the systems themselves struggle with the rigours of contemporary warfare. Now, however, Thomas and his colleagues are working to drag this technology into the 21st century. Known as SAPIENT (Sensing for Asset Protection with Integrated Electronic Networked Technology), they’ve developed a new architecture aimed at making situational awareness robust enough to deal with any situation. Exploiting the latest developments in modularity and AI, it removes the cognitive stress from soldiers themselves, instead giving them personalised information for whatever fire they’re fighting. Nor is SAPIENT merely being employed in the service of His Majesty. On the contrary, the system has already proved useful in Nato exercises, while the developers are already planning on honing it yet further.
$28bn
The value of the global military situational awareness industry in 2020.
Allied Market Research 22
Sensing a problem It’s hard to overstate the power of situational awareness over today’s militaries. Encompassing a field globally worth around $28bn – a figure set to more than double by 2030 – it’s fundamental to how modern militaries go about their business. This instinctively makes sense: understand where and how the enemy is moving, and you stand a much better chance of keeping your own troops secure. This importance is equally obvious, moreover, if you consider the many practical dangers armies now face. In Ukraine, for instance, both sides have had to deal with drone attacks, with a swarm of 30 unmanned aircraft recently attacking Zelensky’s forces near Kyiv. And if humans alone could never hope to catch such threats – let alone do anything to stop them – sensors can often prove more successful. Ukraine itself has instituted just such a
network, deploying a suite of counter-unmanned aerial systems (C-UASs) to defeat Russian drones. Yet, as Thomas explains, traditional situational awareness platforms suffer from a number of problems. That begins, he suggests, with a lack of bandwidth. Scarce enough on the battlefield as it is, the situation is made even worse by the fact that sensors have traditionally collected information locally, before sending it to be processed and understood in some central office elsewhere. The result, says Thomas, is “bandwidth-breaking data streams” being moved over “creaking” communications systems – hardly ideal when lives and materiel are at stake. In a similar vein, older platforms have largely relied on individuals to process the raw information sensors gather. But as Thomas warns, the “cognitive burden” involved can often be intolerable, especially when we know that attention spans invariably slump over time. Combined with the fierce sophistication of modern operations – tanks, infantry and logistics all need to be protected together – and it’s unsurprising that existing networks can be expensive to run for long periods of time. Certainly, this seems clear from the numbers. According to recent work by the Molfar NGO, for instance, the period from 13 September to 17 October 2022 saw Ukraine spend $28m to defeat Russian drones. It goes without saying, meanwhile, that beyond the financial impact, there are inherent risks for armies without sufficient situational awareness. According to GCHQ, Russia has reportedly lost a number of fighter jets because pilots flew over enemy territory by mistake. They aren’t the only ones to suffer in this way either. In 2014, for example, a US air crew in Afghanistan launched two laser-guided bombs against friendly troops on the ground, killing six. “The key members executing the close air support mission collectively failed to effectively execute the fundamentals,” noted the subsequent report into the accident, “which resulted in poor situational awareness and improper target identification”.
Unmanned, unbound With all this in mind, it should come as no surprise that, in 2013, Dstl announced it was working to improve situational awareness functionality. Jointly funded by the MoD and Innovate UK, from the beginning, SAPIENT has sought to use technology to upgrade both military and civilian operations. Whatever the target audience, at any rate, it’s clear that Thomas is extremely excited about what the new set-up can provide. Born out of a desire to exploit the “dual revolutions of AI and autonomy”, he argues SAPIENT, in its latest iteration, has “a wide variety of applications”. How, then, does SAPIENT work in practice? Crucial is the way it abandons the centralisation
Defence & Security Systems International /
www.defence-and-security.com
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