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How the Army is using AI during Hurricane Helene relief

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The Army’s 18th Airborne Corps is for the first time using a battlefield capability to map road closures, cellular outages, supply needs and other data in real time to help the Federal Emergency Management Agency and U.S. Northern Command help people whose homes and communities were battered by Hurricane Helene late last month.

The Army is using its Maven Smart System to provide responders with the information needed to make quick, on-the-ground decisions, such as where to send medical supplies or how many truckloads of water to take into certain storm-ravaged areas, defense officials told reporters Monday.

Weeks after the deadly hurricane tore a path from Florida’s Gulf Coast into the Appalachian Mountains, some residents in the southeast are still sifting through the wreckage caused by floods and landslides that destroyed entire towns.

More damage is feared as Hurricane Milton bears down on Florida this week as well.

Maven is a data analysis and decision-making tool that takes in reams of data from multiple sources and uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to visualize the information.

The Pentagon originally adopted Maven to use geolocation data and satellite imagery to automatically detect potential targets on the battlefield. Its use in responding to Helene is the first instance Maven has been applied to hurricane response efforts, defense officials said.

“We can get data out of these environments that have little to no communications capabilities back into the FEMA dashboard so they understand where they need to supply things,” said one defense officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “I think being able to bring together this common operating picture gives us better situational awareness, helps us respond faster and facilitates getting support and supplies out quicker.”

The system eliminates the need for responders to read through spreadsheets to gather pertinent information. Instead, Maven pulls out the most important data for leaders to analyze, the official said.

The military used similar technology for disease surveillance during the Covid-19 pandemic and to track individuals during the withdrawal of U.S. forces and their allies from Afghanistan, according to officials. The operators of Maven are hoping to learn from their experience responding to Hurricane Helene, and want to hone the system for use in future natural disasters or national crises.

“That way, in an event like this, we can be part of the noble effort assisting the nation’s citizens in their most urgent time of need,” a defense official said. “We can create a platform that can be an enduring presence, ready to respond.”

Part of Maven’s job for the hurricane response is to track members of the National Guard and active-duty troops who have deployed to the areas hardest hit.

As of Monday, 7,600 troops from 18 different states had deployed to the southeast. They’re providing humanitarian relief, clearing emergency routes, assessing damaged water systems and restoring infrastructure. The Defense Department also provided hundreds of high-water vehicles and dozens of helicopters and rescue boats, Pentagon press secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said in a statement.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has established 12 emergency operations centers across the southeast, including three in North Carolina alone, Ryder said.

About 7,000 federal personnel, including FEMA staff, are deployed to the area. As of Sunday, FEMA had approved $137 million in housing and other types of assistance to more than 81,500 households in North Carolina, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. The agency also provided 15 million meals, 14 million liters of water and 157 generators.

As response efforts were underway, misinformation about FEMA’s work spread online. The high volume of false information sowed confusion among survivors and threatened response and recovery efforts, FEMA said. The agency created a webpage to try to dispel the rumors.

While the cleanup from Helene continues across the southeast, Florida was preparing Tuesday for another hurricane to make landfall this week. Hurricane Milton was expected to hit the west coast of the state on Wednesday as a Category 3, the Associated Press reported.

More than 5,000 Florida National Guard troops were mobilized Tuesday to prepare for Hurricane Milton’s arrival. Army officials moved additional personnel and equipment to Fort Moore in Georgia in anticipation of search and rescue operations.

This story was produced in partnership with Military Veterans in Journalism. Please send tips to MVJ-Tips@militarytimes.com.

Nikki Wentling covers disinformation and extremism for Military Times. She’s reported on veterans and military communities for eight years and has also covered technology, politics, health care and crime. Her work has earned multiple honors from the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, the Arkansas Associated Press Managing Editors and others.

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10/09/2024
Europe launches space mission in defense against city-killer asteroids

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PARIS — Europe launched its first spacecraft to help develop a defense against city-killer asteroids slamming into Earth.

The European Space Agency’s Hera mission, to which defense firms Thales and Leonardo contributed technology through their joint venture Thales Alenia Space, took off from Cape Canaveral on Monday riding on a Space X Falcon 9 rocket. The mission will study the results of a NASA experiment that was humankind’s first attempt at deflecting an asteroid.

About 30,000 asteroids measuring 100 to 300 meters travel the solar system in orbits that bring them relatively close to Earth, with one such space rock hitting the planet every 10,000 years, according to Thales. The impact of such an asteroid would be equivalent to an explosion of around 50 megatons, equal to the Soviet Union’s Tsar Bomba, the most powerful nuclear weapon ever tested.

“We currently know of more than 35 000 asteroids that come close enough to Earth for us to keep an eye on,” ESA wrote in post on X, formerly Twitter. “Hera is part of the international effort to answer the question: Could we do anything if we spotted one on a collision course?”

The Hera mission will investigate the result of NASA’s asteroid redirection test, in which the U.S. agency rammed a spacecraft into the asteroid Dimorphos in 2022 to test planetary defense capabilities. Hera will reach the binary asteroid system that includes Dimorphos in October 2026, and gathering close-up data may help turn NASA’s kinetic impact experiment into a potentially repeatable planetary defense technique, Thales said.

Mid-sized asteroids are the ones to worry about, as their impact would be devastating for a populated area, capable of destroying an entire city or create a tsunami, according to Thales. Binary systems, a term describing pairs of two orbiting each other, account for around 15% of all known asteroids, but none have ever been studied in detail, ESA says.

“Hera will provide valuable data for future asteroid deflection missions and science to help humanity’s understanding of asteroid geophysics as well as solar system formation and evolutionary processes,” SpaceX said in a post on X.

Thales Alenia Space provided the communications subsystem for the Hera mission, allowing ESA to track and control the spacecraft from a distance of up to 500 million kilometers away, Thales said. The joint venture also supplied the power unit.

ESA plans to build on the experience acquired with Hera for its future Ramses mission, which needs to launch in 2028 for a rendezvous with the asteroid Apophis, which will pass within 32,000 kilometers of Earth in April 2029.

“If we did detect an asteroid on a collision course with Earth, a reconnaissance mission like Hera or Ramses would likely be launched as soon as possible to precisely determine the object’s trajectory and rule out a false alarm,” ESA said on X.

Such as mission would also measure the asteroid’s physical properties, which would be essential to determine when and where, and with what power, a deflector mission would need to hit the asteroid to safely divert it away from Earth, according to ESA.

Rudy Ruitenberg is a Europe correspondent for Defense News. He started his career at Bloomberg News and has experience reporting on technology, commodity markets and politics.

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10/08/2024
Pentagon taps commercial vendors for low-cost, throwaway drones

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Pentagon officials want to build America’s arsenal of cheap, disposable drones, staple weapons of the war in Ukraine, pinging commercial vendors for systems with mass-production potential.

The Defense Innovation Unit released a solicitation this week for one-way, uncrewed aerial systems that can fly at ranges of 50 to 300 kilometers in low-bandwidth, GPS-denied environments.

“Recent conflicts have highlighted the asymmetric impact low-cost, one-way unmanned aerial systems have on the modern battlefield,” DIU said in the notice. “The Department of Defense must be able to employ low-cost precision effects at extended ranges.”

DIU plans to hold a live flyoff demonstration as soon as December to evaluate the proposed systems.

Small, one-way attack drones have featured heavily in recent conflicts — from Ukraine to the Middle East. Since last fall, the Iran-backed Houthi militia group has targeted commercial shipping vessels in the Red Sea, using aerial vehicles, uncrewed surface vessels and cruise missiles. Last week, the group launched what the Pentagon termed a “complex attack” on U.S. ships in the region.

On Monday, Secretary Lloyd Austin announced that the Pentagon would focus the next round of its Replicator effort — a process for quickly fielding high-need technology at scale — on countering drone threats like these. But the department also recognizes the impact these systems can have and wants to stock up on its own supply.

“Reliable, affordable, and adaptable long-range UAS platforms that allow for employment at scale will maximize operational flexibility for the joint force,” DIU said.

A DIU spokesperson told Defense News that while the drones the department wants could perform attack missions, it’s also interested in systems that can fly electronic warfare, ISR and communications relay payloads.

According to the solicitation, the vehicles should also be hard to detect and track, have several pathways for two-way communications and be equipped with mission planning software. Critically, the department wants modular systems that can integrate new hardware or software in a matter of hours.

“Proprietary interfaces, message formatting or hardware that require vendor-specific licensing are not permitted,” DIU said.

The notice doesn’t detail how many systems the department might buy and it doesn’t set a cost target. The spokesperson said that omission was intentional because DIU’s selections won’t be based on the cost of a particular drone, but on the cost of the effect the platform achieves.

“The best way to think of what we’re targeting is a cost per effect,” the spokesperson said. “If we launch one $1M platform or ten $100k platforms and generate the same effect, then the cost per effect is the same and that’s what we want to focus on.”

Courtney Albon is C4ISRNET’s space and emerging technology reporter. She has covered the U.S. military since 2012, with a focus on the Air Force and Space Force. She has reported on some of the Defense Department’s most significant acquisition, budget and policy challenges.

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10/02/2024
Defense tech companies can apply for Pentagon loans starting next year

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The Pentagon announced its first direct lending tool Monday, offering loans to U.S. companies that make in-demand defense component technologies.

Nearly $1 billion has been set aside for the Defense Department to award direct loans ranging from $10 million to $150 million.

The Defense Department hopes the effort will help companies fund the construction and equipment needed to scale production across 31 technology categories deemed critical to U.S. national security. That includes areas like space launch, microelectronics fabrication, edge computing and quantum sensing.

“DOD now has proven financial tools to enable millions of dollars of investment in national security priorities at limited cost to the department and the taxpayer,” Defense Department Office of Strategic Capital, or OSC, Director Jason Rathje said in a statement.

The effort is geared toward businesses who need flexible financing options in order to attract additional investment and “unlock growth opportunities,” OSC said in a LinkedIn post Monday.

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For a company to receive an OSC loan, it must meet certain eligibility requirements established by DOD and the Office of Management and Budget to make sure projects are economically viable, low-risk for the government and mature enough to quickly enter the commercial market.

The office will accept initial applications between January 2 and February 3. Following review, OSC will notify firms if their projects were selected to move to the next phase of the application process.

OSC set up shop in December 2022 to help the Pentagon steer private capital toward the technologies and supply chains that are most important to DOD and broader U.S. economic security. The office is distinct from other department initiatives in that it focuses on investments in components rather than capabilities, and on lending funds rather than spending them.

Congress gave OSC lending authority as part of the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, which was signed into law in December. OSC released its inaugural investment strategy in March, creating a framework for the lending program that it expects to refresh on a regular basis as threats change and technology advances. The document outlined 12 initial priority areas, including biotechnology, quantum science, microelectronics, space-enabled services and sensor hardware.

The office’s strategy is to partner with other government agencies to offer cost-effective tools that incentivize private capital firms to invest in the technology DOD needs.

“As used by OSC in collaboration with federal partners, these financial tools will enable capital providers to invest in critical technologies that would otherwise be less attractive because the cost of capital is too high, the timelines for repayment or liquidity are too long, or the technical challenges are too risky for a nascent commercial market alone,” OSC said in its strategy.

Courtney Albon is C4ISRNET’s space and emerging technology reporter. She has covered the U.S. military since 2012, with a focus on the Air Force and Space Force. She has reported on some of the Defense Department’s most significant acquisition, budget and policy challenges.

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10/01/2024