DARPA seeks deep-learning AI to cope with flood of information

Published 16 April 2009

The growing use of UAVs to loiter over enemy territory and send images and streaming videos back to HQ has created a glut of information; DARPA seeks a better, deeper, and more layered artificial intelligence to help the intelligence community cope with the avalanche of information coming in

For an intelligence officer, the only thing worse than having too little information is having too much of it. What with the increasing capabilities for collecting raw information — just think of the sheer quantity of images and video streams sent back by satellites and UAVs loitering the skies — there is a need to find a way to sift through this growing information hay stack in order to find the needles. DARPA — who else? —has a new plan to create powerful artificial intelligences. Lewis Page writes that the Deep Learning machines will be used to sift through petabytes of video from UAVs (we note the appeal of the animal kingdom for explanatory purposes: teachers in Junior High, explaining the facts of life to their students, talk about the birds and the bees; DARPA, explaining the differences between shallow and deep learning, talk about horses, cows, sheep, and goats).

According to DARPA, explaining the purpose behind the Deep Learning technology, the U.S. military and intelligence communities are drowning in surveillance and intelligence data. Hence the need for artificial intelligence to help them cope with the information flood:

A rapidly increasing volume of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) information is available to the Department of Defense (DOD) as a result of the increasing numbers, sophistication, and resolution of ISR resources and capabilities. The amount of video data produced annually by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) alone is in the petabyte range, and growing rapidly. Full exploitation of this information is a major challenge. Human observation and analysis of ISR assets is essential, but the training of humans is both expensive and time-consuming. Human performance also varies due to individuals’ capabilities and training, fatigue, boredom, and human attentional capacity.

One response to this situation is to employ machines …

There are already basic “shallow learning” AIs in use, including “Support Vector Machines (SVMs), two-layer Neural Networks (NNs), and Hidden Markov Models (HMMs).” These, however, are not much better than a human with poor “attentional capacity.” The trouble with the shallow learners is that they can learn only at a shallow level:

Shallow methods may be effective in creating simple internal representations … A classification task such as recognizing a horse in an image will use these simple representations in many different configurations to recognize horses in various poses, orientations and sizes. Such a task requires large amounts of labeled images of horses and non-horses. This means that if the task were to change to recognizing cows, one would have to start nearly from scratch with a new, large set of labeled data.

Page correctly points out that a specialized horse-spotter machine unable to recognize a cow is not much use for sorting the sheep from the goats. This is why DARPA wants “deeply layered” learning machines, able to identify horses, cows, sheep, and goats.

Deeply layered methods should create richer representations that may include furry, four-legged mammals at higher levels, resulting in a head start for learning cows and thereby requiring much less labeled data when compared to a shallow method. A Deep Learning system exposed to unlabeled natural images will automatically create high-level concepts of four-legged mammals on its own, even without labels.

U..S faces critical shortage of computer scientists

Published 13 January 2010

DARPA says the United States is facing a critical shortage of computer scientists; “While computers and internet connectivity become daily fixtures in the lives of Americans, we are steadily losing the engineering talent to [develop and maintain] these systems”

DARPA, the Pentagon’s research arm, issued a stark message the other day. According to the agency, the United States faces a crippling shortage of computer scientists in the near future, and only drastic action in the U.S. educational system can rectify this.

According to a DARPA solicitation:

The downward trend in college graduates with STEM [science, technology, engineering and maths] majors is particularly pronounced in Computer Science (CS). While computers and internet connectivity become daily fixtures in the lives of Americans, we are steadily losing the engineering talent to project these systems.

Lewis Page writes that far from gloomy employment prospects, DARPA reckons that IT types — especially computer scientists, particularly ones suited to military/DARPA style projects — are going to be increasingly in demand.

Our systems are becoming more complex, requiring more people with the software engineering talent to manage and maintain them. Finding the right people with increasingly specialized talent is becoming more difficult and will continue to add risk to a wide range of [military] systems that include software development.

Recent studies conducted by DARPA revealed that public perception is a critical issue. Study participants believed that the “dot-com bust” and “international outsourcing” have led to fewer computer science jobs. In fact, the opposite is true: the US Department of Labor lists “Computer & Software Engineers, Applications” as the fourth fastest growing occupation in the country in November 2007. Verbal reports from industry partners, as well as the presence of constant job openings, indicate industry is having difficulty finding software engineering talent to develop and maintain their software systems.

DARPA is in the habit of considering innovative, even radical new technology. A shortage of top-end, radical scientists, especially computing ones, is detrimental for the agency. Page notes that DARPA is not taking this lying down.

DARPA is interested in proposals with innovative new ideas to encourage students to major in CS-STEM and pursue careers as engineers and scientists. Increasing the number of graduates in Computer Science is a key goal, but the project will also be considered a success if the number of graduates in the broader STEM community is increased.

DARPA envisages this being done by reaching out to American kids as early as middle school and getting them interested in technology in the hope that they would finish college with a qualification useful for DARPA’s purposes. “In order to compel students to graduate with a CS-STEM related degree, it is important to maintain a positive, long term presence in a student’s education,” notes the agency.

BAE Systems completes first flight test of persistent surveillance

Published 10 February 2010

The ARGUS-IS offer a new real-time persistent surveillance capability for U.S. combat forces to detect, locate, track, and monitor events on battlefields and in urban areas -- providing significantly greater video coverage over current airborne capabilities

BAE Systems has completed the initial flight test of a new real-time persistent surveillance capability for U.S. combat forces to detect, locate, track, and monitor events on battlefields and in urban areas — providing significantly greater video coverage over current airborne capabilities.

The first flight tests of the Autonomous Real-Time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance Imaging System, or ARGUS-IS, occurred aboard a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter. The tests demonstrated the system’s multiple video windows for persistent area surveillance and tracking capabilities for vehicles and dismounted soldiers.

The airborne processing system can simultaneously and continuously detect and track the presence and motion of thousands of small or large targets over an area covering tens of square miles. BAE Systems designed and produced the system’s sensor and processor.

“ARGUS-IS will significantly advance the Army’s capability to protect its troops through improved search and surveillance capabilities,” said Dr. John Antoniades, ARGUS program manager and director of remote sensing technology for BAE Systems.

BAE Systems equipment aboard ARGUS-IS consists of a high-resolution, extreme wide-area, real-time video sensor; an on-board processing system; and ground processing for interactive multi-target designation, tracking, and exploitation. “The ARGUS-IS system overcomes the fundamental limitations of current airborne surveillance systems,” said Dr. Steven Wein, director of optical sensor systems at BAE Systems. “Very high-resolution imaging systems required for vehicle and dismount tracking typically have a ‘soda-straw’ view that is too small for persistent coverage. Existing wide-area systems have either inadequate resolution or require multiple passes or revisits to get updates.”

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA )and the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory awarded BAE Systems an initial $18.5 million contract to lead the ARGUS-IS effort in late 2007. The system is targeted for use in Department of Defense unmanned and manned surveillance platforms.

BAE Systems has approximately 105,000 employees worldwide, and its sales exceeded $34.4 billion in 2008.

LGS on Lockheed Martin team for $31 million DARPA cyber assurance contract

Published 18 February 2010

LGS selected by Lockheed Martin as a subcontractor for a 31 milllion dollar DARPA-funded contract to develop cyber procedures which will provide military untis with dynamic bandwidth allocation

LGS Innovations, a subsidiary of Alcatel-Lucent, announced that it was named a subcontractor on the Lockheed Martin team that was recently awarded a contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The $31 million Military Network Protocol contract calls for Lockheed Martin to develop new cyber assurance procedures that will improve security, and provide dynamic bandwidth allocation and policy-based priorities at the individual and unit levels.

The LGS Internet Research Department will work as a part of the Lockheed Martin’s Infrastructure team whose goal is to define, design, develop, and test the common elements used in the DARPA solution.

“Our country’s increasing dependence on information technology has made cyber security one of the most critical challenges facing the U.S. military today,” said Dom Imbesi, director of the Internet Research Department at LGS. “LGS is pleased to be a part of Lockheed Martin’s strong team working to address and solve these challenges.”

In developing this new protocol for military networks, Lockheed Martin’s team will develop router technologies that will include strong authentication and self-configuration capabilities to improve security, reduce the need for trained network personnel and lower overall life cycle costs for network management.

The Internet Research Department is the R&D division of LGS dedicated to the fields of Computer Network Operations (CNO) and Information Assurance (IA). The department has a history of achievement as formerly being a part of the renowned Bell Labs and can utilize the technical expertise and resources of Bell Labs to provide cutting-edge ideas and technology to solve today’s toughest cyber security problems. The LGS capabilities run the full spectrum of CNO activities: Network Reconnaissance, Host Fingerprinting, Attack Planning, Payload Delivery, and Battle Damage Assessment. The department also performs leading-edge Information Assurance research and development with a specific focus on mission assurance, external exposure assessment and predictive analysis.

DARPA looking for military iPhone and Android apps

Published 3 March 2010

Pentagon's research arm is looking for apps to be written for the iPhone or for handsets running Google's Android OS -- "with potential relevance to the military specifically and the national security community more generally"

DARPA has announced that it would like some apps written for the iPhone or for handsets running Google’s Android OS — “with potential relevance to the military specifically and the national security community more generally.”

The Pentagon researchers note that:

In today’s military, handheld systems are characterized by a tight integration of specialized hardware with a narrowly focused software suite. Most of the handheld devices are heavily optimized for a particular task and are ill-suited for general-purpose use. A soldier’s radio, for example, has very limited data capability and essentially no multimedia capability. Current language translation devices support neither messaging nor collaboration of any form …

A transformation in technical approaches and business processes is called for.

Lewis Page writes that it will not be a transformation powered by Windows Mobile. DARPA specifies that “initial interest will focus on apps developed on the iPhone or Android platforms.” The idea is to find apps which will be helpful “especially among the end-users at lower levels in the military echelon.”

There are already apps for the iPhone which can make ballistic calculations for a sniper. Other existing software which would help a soldier could include various kinds of navigation kit, user interfaces for remote drones — several of which are already on offer - and so on.

Page notes that some military hardware, too, has already taken on many of the aspects of a smartphone — for instance, the Land Warrior wearable comm/puter rig. DARPA’s preferences notwithstanding, at least one maker has produced a covert version of military belt-computer software to run on a Windows smartphone.

DARPA, unusually, would seem to be very much with — or even a bit behind — the times on this one. The agency normally prefers to be well into the future.

Full instructions for developers to submit whitepapers to DARPA can be found here.

The last frontier: DARPA wants to make the Earth's crust transparent

Published 10 March 2010

Seeing through the Earth's would allow the development of tools to protect civilian populations from the ravages of natural disasters; these same tools could be used for military purposes against enemies -- detecting, targeting, and destroying hard and buried underground facility (UGF) targets

DARPA, that intellectually restless agency where, according to Lewis Page, they “believe it is better to invent a head-mounted multispectral imaging device than curse the darkness,” is pushing the envelope again. The agency has been interested in mastering — some would say lording over — the nature for years now. The agency talked about planet hacking and influencing enemy climate (aka “weather war”), and the agency still wants to harness the power of lightning.

Katie Drummond writes that this year the agency has an agenda which is no less ambitious. As part of its budget for the upcoming fiscal year, DARPA is launching the Transparent Earth project. The agency will invest $4 million into the creation of real-time, 3-D maps that display “the physical, chemical and dynamic properties of the earth down to 5 kilometer depth.”

Drummond notes that at first, the idea does not sound all that impressive. The earth is more than 3,500 miles deep, from crust to core, so DARPA’s plan would not do much more than scratch at the surface. Geologists and geophysicists, however, still know very little about the day-to-day goings-on underground, even at a depth as shallow as 5 km. The deepest drilling of the planet was a Soviet hole on the Kola Peninsula, which took nineteen years and made it around 7.5 miles into the crust, and even NASA still uses land-based GPS signals to predict volcanic eruptions.

Now, rather than a massive drilling project, DARPA wants to harness innovations in sensor technology to develop a constantly updating model of planetary activity. The project will use sensors to detect “natural indicators of subsurface activity,” and then take advantage of mathematical algorithms designed to estimate various natural earthly phenomena, including geophysical turbulence and shifting tectonic plates.

Drummond writes that algorithms are already used in planetary mapping and predictive science, but adding high-tech sensors would provide a constant stream of new data. “This kind of accuracy could have serious planetary implications: Changes in the earth’s crust can explain and predict volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and even the formation of mountain ranges,” she writes.

After they successfully combine sensors and mathematics, DARPA’s ultimate goal would put even NASA’s satellite footage to shame: A global three-dimensional picture of the earth’s subsurface with variable spatial, temporal, and information resolution, allowing changes at local scales to propagate through both physical models and proximity rules to update the global picture.

So maybe DARPA wants to protect civilian populations from the ravages of natural disasters, Drummond writes. These same tools, however, could be used for military purposes against enemies, Drummond quotes one unnamed geoscientist to say. “All of my ’science is good!’ tree-hugging comments aside, what this program is probably really about is detecting, targeting, and destroying hard and buried underground facility (UGF) targets,” the geoscientist said.

The last frontier: DARPA wants to make the Earth's crust transparent

Published 10 March 2010

“Whatever DARPA’s intention, they want their transparent earth sooner rather than later: The agency anticipates that the new 3-D models will be available to the Army, Air Force, special operations and intelligence agencies by 2015,’ Drummond concludes.

New UAV-mounted radar sees around corners

Published 6 April 2010

DARPA is developing a radar that can see around corners; traditional radars rely on direct line of site; this makes it difficult to follow, say, an enemy vehicle in an urban area, where the car disappears behind buildings every few seconds; the new radar will use buildings as mirrors, identifying a target vehicle from radar reflections

Tomorrow’s James Bond will not jump in a cab, telling the driver: “follow that car!” Rather, he will rely on an airborne drone to do the job for him. The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is developing a radar system which sees around corners and down into “urban canyons.” DARPA hopes to be able to track vehicles across an entire city using just a few unmanned aircraft.

David Hambling writes in New Scientist that traditional radar relies on direct line of sight, so it is difficult, at times impossible, to track a vehicle that keeps disappearing behind buildings. DARPA believes that by using buildings as mirrors, it will be possible to identify a target vehicle from radar reflections. The experimental system is called Multipath Exploitation Radar (MER).

The agency has been exploring how MER might work by driving vehicles around a simulated urban area and collecting returns from an overhead radar. Its researchers are aiming to combine the radar data with a three-dimensional map of the test environment to calculate how the radar reflects off and between vehicles and buildings. This process should highlight which signals in the returning radar data can be used to plot the target vehicle’s path.

A DARPA spokesman told New Scientist that MER is expected to be compatible with the radar systems currently used to track vehicles. The team anticipates that using reflected radar will cover more ground than a line-of-sight system, making it possible to monitor a city of about 1,000 square kilometers, such as Baghdad, with just three airborne radars. The three-dimensional model of a city needed to make sense of the reflection pattern could be created using LIDAR, the optical surveying technology which is routinely carried on aircraft.

MER makes use of Ku-band radar — frequencies of between 12 and 18 gigahertz. It is sensitive enough to produce distinct signatures for apparently similar vehicles, by detecting slight differences, such as the angle of an aerial or a wing mirror. DARPA is also looking to develop an algorithm which would enable the system to track multiple vehicles.

Hambling quotes Ain Sume of the Swedish Defense Research Agency to say that the “sound, well-known physical principles” behind MER make it feasible. His team built a radar system that detects people around a corner by using reflections from the opposite wall.

Sume reckons, though, that it will take some time to turn DARPA’s plans into a viable system. Key challenges include maintaining a radar lock as the view shifts from line-of-sight to reflection and back, and establishing a unique radar “fingerprint” for each vehicle.

DARPA looking to portable nuclear reactors powered by human waste

Published 6 April 2010

DARPA solicits proposals for an initiative which would solve two problems at once: supplying abundant power to troops in remoter places, and dealing with the massive quantities of human waste that inevitably accumulate around troop outposts; the idea: portable nuclear reactors operating on carbon captures from concentrations of human waste

Here is a new idea for generating renewable power at overseas military bases — it is an eco-friendly initiative inspired by one of nature’s most irrefutable truths: everyone poops. You guessed right: DARPA is behind this one. The agency is requesting information on approaches to developing portable nuclear reactors that could generate electricity and fuel for land and water-based operations:

Recent advances in high temperature materials science suggest that an investigation of compact, deployable nuclear reactor technologies may be timely. The goal would be to create a fieldable design that could be deployed to maritime and/or ground based forward operations to provide on-site power and fuel production capability in regions not connected to a robust grid and/or not easily accessible for fuel resupply. Preferred reactor designs would allow for several years of operation without refueling.

The agency wants the systems to be sustainable for “several years” in off-the-grid locales. This means “indigenous feedstocks” are the preferred fuel source. What could be more indigenous, DARPA asks, than human waste?

Katie Drummond writes that the U.S. military is already working on using seawater to create fuel, but this is more of an option for maritime operations. Without an endless supply of seawater, they would need an alternative carbon source. This is where the massive quantities of sludge that inevitably accumulate around troop outposts come in. It has been a problem for decades, according to environmental management expert Dr. James Lee. In an article for the Army’s Engineer School, he writes that the military spent upwards of $65,000 in annual fuel costs just to burn off human refuse at base camp in the Balkans.

Drummond notes that DARPA’s proposal would offer two major benefits: Less waste to treat and dispose of at bases, and fewer financial and tactical burdens around sourcing adequate fuel — whether to power jets and facilities or burn off heaps of odorous fecal matter. With a single trooper stationed in Afghanistan using 22 gallons of fuel a day, this would add up to major savings.

Proposals reactors should offer a method of yielding 15,000 gallons of road fuel a day from an easy-to-deploy device. There is also a requirement to keep the radioactive fudge to a minimum. The agency expects proposal writers to come up with generators that “do not produce waste products which would contribute to proliferation problems.”

Camgian awarded DARPA UAV-UGS fusion contract

Published 7 April 2010

Today's soldiers rely on advanced ground and airborne sensors to identify, track, and monitor critical targets; as stand-along platforms, UAVs and unattended ground sensors (UGS) have operational limitations such as endurance, coverage, and target resolution; Camgian is teaming up with BAE Systems to exploit the fusion of these assets in an automated network architecture to provide powerful ISR capability

Starkville, Mississippi-based Camgian Microsystems Corporation, a specialist in advanced microelectronic systems and semiconductor technologies, has been awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase 1 project by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO).

In this program, Camgian, teamed with BAE Systems Advanced Information Technologies, will aim to develop a multi-tiered Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) network architecture comprising both small UAVs and long-endurance Unattended Ground Sensors (UGS) that will provide persistent detection, classification, and tracking of ground targets over very large operational areas of interest.

“In today’s asymmetric warfare, the warfighter relies significantly on advanced ground and airborne sensor assets to identify, track and monitor critical targets,” said Dr. Gary Butler, Camgian Microsystems president and CEO. “As stand-along platforms, UAVs and UGS have operational limitations such as endurance, coverage and target resolution. The focus of this effort is to fully exploit the fusion of these assets in an automated network architecture that supports cross cueing and data fusion to provide the warfighter with a revolutionary ISR capability.”

The program will use Camgian’s expertise in developing advanced, ultra-low power electronic sensor systems with BAE’s innovative image fusion and mining technologies.

“In an ongoing government funded program, Camgian and BAE Systems are developing a multi sensor testbed that combines Camgian’s UGS expertise with BAE’s innovative image fusion and mining technologies,” said Ryan Jorgenson, Camgian’s Vice President of Advanced Systems. “Results from this testbed will be used as the baseline to enable a unique fingerprint of the target to be developed that a UAV can use to reacquire and discriminate potential targets.”

DARPA unveils details of Transformer TX flying car

Published 14 April 2010

DARPA is inviting proposals for flying car and accompanying technologies; in addition to being a capable ground vehicle, the TX should be able to lift off and land "without forward motion" and thereafter climb at least one unit upward for every six moved forward at sea level, or a minimum of 1:10 at higher altitudes; it should cruise in forward flight mode at speeds "representative of a light single-engine aircraft" and be able to achieve altitudes of 10,000 feet

Important news on the flying-car front: DARPA has unveiled the details of its plan to produce what can only described as a flying Humvee or sky-jeep type vehicle — and have a prototype flying by 2015.

Plans for the Transformer TX were revealed in Pentagon budget documents last year (see “The First True Flying Car: DARPA’s Transformer TX,” 27 May 2009 HSNW), but details were sketchy. Now a full announcement (pdf) has been made, inviting proposals both from companies or organizations capable of designing the entire vehicle and others who would develop enabling technologies.

Lewis Page writes that it appears that DARPA has decided to try for a real, no-nonsense flying car: and probably not just an ordinary car, but an off-road one to boot. DARPA does not want a light plane that you can drive on a road, like the Terrafugia Transition (see “Flying Car’s Proof-of-Concept Testing Now Complete,” 6 June 2009 HSNW). They do not want a paramotor, either. According to the Transformer TX announcement issued yesterday:

The Government’s envisioned concept consists of a robust ground vehicle that is capable of configuring into a VTOL [Vertical Take Off and Landing] air vehicle with a maximum payload capability of approximately 1,000 lbs.

The sky-jeep should be able to carry four fully equipped troops, or alternatively one stretcher and one medic. It should be no bigger than 30 feet long by 8.5’ wide and 9’ high in ground configuration — on the order of two Hummers nose-to-tail — and should have wheels and suspension giving “road performance similar to an SUV” and “capable of handling light off-road travel.”

In addition to being a capable ground vehicle, the TX should be able to lift off and land “without forward motion” and thereafter climb at least one unit upward for every six moved forward at sea level, or a minimum of 1:10 at higher altitudes. It should cruise in forward flight mode at speeds “representative of a light single-engine aircraft” and be able to achieve altitudes of 10,000 feet.

What branch of the U.S. military should be interested in the TX?

The TX should be able to cover 250 miles on a single tank of fuel, using a combination of flight and ground movement: DARPA has specified several desired mission plans. One, for instance, would see a TX lifting off from a forward base in Afghanistan and flying sixty miles to leapfrog over the belts of mines, booby-traps, and roadside bombs which typically encircle such bases. It would then carry out a 100-mile patrol on the ground, enabling its occupants to stop and talk to people, set up checkpoints, etc., before hopping back across the minefields to its base.

Other mission plans would see TXs flying themselves ashore from ships at sea, carrying out medical evacuations, or stealthily re-supplying covert special-operations teams by landing and driving the last part of the route. DARPA specifies that the TX should be “at least as quiet as a conventional automobile” when driven on the ground and as quiet as “a single engine helicopter in flight mode.”

DARPA unveils details of Transformer TX flying car

Published 14 April 2010

Page writes that DARPA projects need to be at least nominally aimed at fulfilling a military task for one of the U.S. armed forces, and in this case the need for which TX is said to be an answer is the U.S. Marines’ recent concept of Enhanced Company Operations, or ECO. The Marines are typically more open-minded about innovative hover aircraft concepts than the other U.S. services — they have been a major force in the development of jump jets like the Harrier and the F-35B, and are the primary users of the V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor — so they are probably a good fit for this, Page notes.

The idea of ECO is to let rifle companies (see below) operate more independently by giving them more of the tools normally found attached to larger formations like battalions and above. This can make sense in modern wars in which a company commander and his people may find themselves far from their battalion/battle-group HQ and its specialist supporting units, yet responsible for a big area.

Page notes that previous ECO initiatives have given U.S. Marine company commanders their own intelligence cells, and let units as small as squads have over-the-horizon communications, close air support, and other things which would normally be found only at bigger headquarters.

ECO proponents would also like a Marine company to be able to have its own air mobility, in particular for logistics and casualty handling and for such purposes as moving from ships to shore. “So far this sort of thing has always been done using helicopters and Ospreys, but by their nature these machines can’t really be company-level equipment: they are huge and manpower-intensive, such that a detachment of a few choppers would often be accompanied by more personnel than a rifle company has altogether and would be commanded by an officer at least equal in rank to the company commander,” Page writes. Every Marine aircraft at the moment is piloted by a wings-on-chest officer.

The TX would be different, though. DARPA specifies that it should be capable of completely unmanned flight operations, much like the robotic supply choppers also being examined by the Marines right now. While the TX would generally fly with personnel aboard, they would not be highly trained officer-class pilots: any lance-corporal with the right tick in his personnel file would be able to pilot one, just as he might drive a Humvee.

In most cases, making a flight would call for nothing more demanding than selecting a destination from a preprogrammed menu or keying in some coordinates, though DARPA says that a “range of operation from fully autonomous to being able to have the operator make flight steering commands in real time” is “desirable.”

How is all this to be achieved? DARPA has some suggestions:

Technologies of interest may include: hybrid electric drive, advanced batteries, adaptive wing structures, ducted fan propulsion systems, advanced lightweight heavy fuel engines, lightweight materials, advanced sensors, and flight controls for stable transition from vertical to horizontal flight.

It is also specified that “contained propulsion (no exposed rotors) is highly recommended” and that “disk loading should be minimized to maximize VTOL operational capability.”

DARPA unveils details of Transformer TX flying car

Published 14 April 2010

This would seem to point to large, low-disc-loaded ducted fans as the VTOL propulsion, perhaps swiveling tilt-rotor-style to provide thrust for forward flight or using Venetian-blind slats as in the Israeli AirMule vehicle (see Flying Ambulance: UAV Will Extract Wounded Soldiers from the Battlefield,” 12 March 2010 HSNW; and “Israeli Ducted-fan Sky-jeep in Flight Trials,” 13 January 2010 HSNW).

A flying Humvee — or a flying Prius?

Page notes that DARPA also seems to be looking at a Toyota Prius-esque electrical hybrid transmission between the prime mover — gas turbine or trendy low-maintenance heavy fuel engine — and the actual whirlers and wheels. This could help with making the machine quiet, and the supplementary “advanced batteries” might deliver the peak power needed for VTOL or hover, topping themselves up at times of lower demand such as forward flight or ground driving.

Alternatively a “jump takeoff” system such as that on the Carter Copter might use inertial energy stored in spinning fans rather than electricity held in batteries to make a vertical liftoff — or both, or something else altogether might be employed.

Transformer TX is an ambitious project, but DARPA wants it realized quickly — and they do not expect to spend much money either (relative, that is, to other U.S. military flight-related projects). A prototype intended to show the feasibility of a later production model should be in ground and flight tests no later than 2015, and cost no more than $43 million plus some smaller, $1 million sums paid to develop necessary subsystem technologies.

Page notes that costs are to be reduced by the fact that test flights needn’t be carried out with people aboard:

To mitigate the costs associated with flight certification within this program, the prototype will not be required to be flown with human occupants. Instead, automated flight within a military controlled airspace where executable scripts and/or remote control is permitted will be the recommended approach to demonstrate flight performance. It is expected that VTOL, transition between vertical and forward flight, cruise flight, ground travel, and vehicle reconfiguration will be demonstrated … Full mission cycle demonstration is not expected, but representative critical transition elements of operation (e.g., VTOL, cruise, ground travel) will be expected with an extrapolation of fuel/energy consumption to show the ability to meet the four representative mission cycles.

It may well be the case that like DARPA’s most famous past success (the Internet), the Transformer TX would be even more significant in the civilian world than in the military, Page writes. Unlike existing personal aircraft such as light planes, Terrafugia Transitions, motorized parachutes, etc., it would be pretty much a Jetsons or Blade Runner flying car.

DARPA looks to revive WWII German globe-trotting bomber plan

Published 12 May 2010

DARPA's ArcLight program envisions a boost glide re-entry vehicle (BGRV) with a smallish naval launch tube type rocket firing a pocket, unmanned "Silbervogel" (this is the WWII German original) into space followed by hypersonic re-entry no more than 2,000 miles away

n the 1940s developed detailed plans for a so-called Silbervogel (Silver Bird) rocket bomber which would have soared high into space and then travelled many thousands of miles by skipping like a flung stone on water around the top of the atmosphere. It was thought by its designers that the machine might be able to circumnavigate the globe like this, dropping off a bomb en route as it sailed above America; or at any rate make a landing in Japanese-held territory after such a raid. These abilities led to it being dubbed the “antipodal bomber” in some circles.

Lewis Page writes that the Silbervogel plan was considered part of Nazi aspirations to mount strikes against the United States, but it never actually flew. Still, the plans caused a good deal of activity by the rival superpowers after the war, most famously the X-20 Dyna-Soar project in the United States, which would have used a Silbervogel-like flight profile for global strike or surveillance missions. The X-20 would have launched vertically atop a conventional throwaway rocket (its German predecessor was to be fired into the air by a powerful rocket catapult/sled affair running on rails)

Page notes that, in the event, the X-20 did not get off the ground either, but a less well-known Boost/Glide platform eventually did — the unmanned Boost Glide Re-entry Vehicle (BGRV) test of 1968. The BGRV lifted into space from Vandenberg Airforce Base in California atop an Atlas F missile rocket and re-entered over the Pacific, eventually splashing down in the vicinity of Wake Island some 3,000 miles away.

Our readers will not be surprised to learn that DARPA – correctly defined by Page as “the U.S. military asylum for mad scientists, who see further into the future of warfare by standing on the shoulders of giants — if necessary, immense robot colossi or genetically engineered titanoid abominations of [DARPA scientists’] own manufacture” – is interested in reviving a version of the 1940s idea.

The mission of global strategic strike is already well covered by more conventional ICBMs, and global surveillance is by spy satellites. A nuclear-armed ICBM is not a subtle tool. As we wrote last week, the George W. Bush administration’s idea of using conventionally tipped ICBMs to strike terrorists targets had two major flaws: First, launched ICBMs, even ones fitted with a smaller conventional warheads, would cause global panic, and risk igniting a Third World War, because there would be no way for Russian and Chinese tracking systems to tell whether the ICBMs carried nuclear or conventional warheads, and because until well into their flight pattern it would not be possible to tell after which targets the ICBMS were going. Second, striking a terrorist target with an ICBM would be rather expensive. The idea was finally rejected, only to be given a second look by the Obama administration.

Trying to hit remote targets which become available for a short period of time and then disappear – an important terrorist emerging from a cave, a group of terrorists suddenly discovered to be making its way toward an unprotected target – by using submarine- or warship-launched cruise missiles or jets loaded with smart bombs is no good either. These systems can take hours to arrive at the relevant spot, by which time the elusive terrorist, stolen WMD, or another high-value target may have melted away again.

DARPA looks to revive WWII German globe-trotting bomber plan

Published 12 May 2010

Page writes that what DARPA wants is something which would fit into a U.S. naval Mark 41 vertical launch tube of the sort used to pop off existing Tomahawk cruise missiles. It would have to carry a much smaller and more surgical 100-lb warhead, which would travel much faster — a minimum of 9,200 miles per hour, the equivalent of Mach 12 if measured at sea level.

Page notes that Mach 12 is well into the hypersonics range, faster than even the most exotic hydrogen-fuelled scramjets have yet flown. Such a missile could never be put into a Mark 41 launcher even if it could one day be built. DARPA’s previous plan for a Mach 6 airplane running on normal fuel was cancelled because nobody thought it was possible, and the ongoing X-51 WaveRider scramjet test vehicles — now delayed into this year – are not expected to go faster.

With the newly announced ArcLight program, though, DARPA is not talking about flight in the atmosphere at all. Instead, a less ambitious BGRV type of effort is requested, with a smallish naval launch tube type rocket firing the pocket, unmanned Silbervogel/X-20 into space followed by hypersonic re-entry no more than 2,000 miles away. The U.S. Navy’s 8,500 Mark 41 tubes, distributed around the world aboard its cruisers, destroyers, and submarines, should thus more or less blanket the planet with ArcLight coverage able to deliver an unstoppable 100-lb hypersonic warhead in less than half an hour from go.

“On the face of it the idea seems fairly likely to be possible,” Page writes. Mark 41 tubes are used to launch SM-3 ballistic missile interceptors, which are well-known to be capable of sending small kill vehicles into space at hypersonic-equivalent velocities. Presumably it would be feasible to replace the kill vehicle on an SM-3 with a BGRV style hypersonic mini-smart bomb, “finally — in a small way — bringing to fruition the German dream of the 1940s.”

Details on a planned industry day for the ArcLight project are available here for those interested.

DARPA looking for automated insider threat spotter

Published 19 May 2010

The U.S. National Counterintelligence Strategy asserts that "Trusted insiders -- are targeting the US information infrastructure for exploitation, disruption, and potential destruction"; DARPA, the Pentagon research arm, is soliciting idea for technology which will automatically spot -- and eliminate -- insider threat to U.S. information infrastructure

DARPA, the U.S. military research arm, announced earlier this week that it was pursuing yet another intriguing, push-the-envelope scheme. The agency is now soliciting ideas for some kind of automated technology able to spot “increasingly sophisticated malicious insider behavior.”

Lewis Page writes that the U.S. National Counterintelligence Strategy asserts that “Trusted insiders … are targeting the US information infrastructure for exploitation, disruption, and potential destruction.” DARPA wants to tackle the problem with a new project called Suspected Malicious Insider Threat Elimination (SMITE). The agency states: “We define insider threat as malevolent (or possibly inadvertent) actions by an already trusted person with access to sensitive information and information systems and sources.”

Unspecified technology is to be developed to spot and root out those who pose a threat to U.S. information infrastructure from within. The DARPA IT directors do not offer any details on how this is to be done, but they offer some general ideas:

Security is often difficult because the defenses must be perfect, while the attacker needs to find only one flaw. An emphasis on forensics could reverse the burden by requiring the attacker and his tools to be perfect, while the defender needs only a few clues to recognize an intrusion is underway.

Topics of interest include … suggestions about what evidence might mean and [ways to] forecast context-dependent behaviors both malicious and non-malicious.

Also of interest are on-line and off-line algorithms for feature extraction and detection in enormous graphs (as in billions of nodes) as well as hybrid engines where deduction and feature detection mutually inform one another.

Page notes the DARPA’s futuristic research projects, because of their futuristic nature, do not always yield results, or if they do, they may mutate into something different from what its creators intended.

Request for Information (RFI)

DARPA-SN-10-46

Suspected Malicious Insider Threat Elimination (SMITE)

“Trusted insiders … are targeting the US information infrastructure for exploitation, disruption,

and potential destruction.”

- National Counterintelligence Strategy of the United States of America (2008)

Information systems security personnel are drowning in ever expanding oceans of observational

data from heterogeneous sources and sensors from which they must extract indicators of

increasingly sophisticated malicious insider behavior. The Defense Advanced Research Projects

Agency (DARPA) Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) is requesting information

on areas of research related to the development of methods, tools, and techniques to reduce these

enormous volumes of data to actionable information. Such technology must be flexible, scalable

and highly interactive in order to cope with the dynamic nature of the insider threat. For the

purposes of this RFI, we define insider threat as malevolent (or possibly inadvertent) actions by

an already trusted person with access to sensitive information and information systems and

sources.

The fundamental challenge is one of finding a poorly understood, subtle, or hidden signal

(indicators of malicious behavior) buried in enormous amounts of noise (observational data of no

immediate relevance) under the constraint that the measures of significance are themselves

moving targets (based on dynamic context) that must be continually monitored and updated. The

first step in meeting this challenge is to create a scalable, distributed infrastructure to securely

collect, store, access, process, and correlate relevant data from heterogeneous sources over

extended periods of time. The next step is to determine whether an individual or group of

individuals is exhibiting anomalous behavior that is also malicious. However, this analysis is

very heavily dependent on the context of the individual, groups of individuals and any data

involved. Furthermore, context (e.g., location, time, roles and relations) is dynamic and so must

be continually inferred, managed and applied automatically. Part of the challenge is detecting

deceptive behavior. Deceptive behavior is characteristic of malicious intent which leads to the

problem of assigning intent to observed behaviors.

Looking for clues that suggest an insider attack 1) can be anticipated, 2) is underway or 3) has

already taken place could potentially be easier than recognizing explicit attacks. On the other

hand, in both the real and virtual world, it is very difficult to do anything without leaving some

evidence behind. Attempts to conceal or remove evidence generally create new evidence that, if

detected, could be a strong indication of the perpetrator’s intent. Security is often difficult

because the defenses must be perfect, while the attacker needs to find only one flaw. An

emphasis on forensics could reverse the burden by requiring the attacker and his tools to be

perfect, while the defender needs only a few clues to recognize an intrusion is underway.

Forensic-like techniques can be used to find clues, gather and evaluate evidence and combine

them deductively. Many attacks are combinations of directly observable and inferred events.

Topics of interest to this RFI include, but are not limited to, techniques to (a) derive information

about the relationship between deductions, the likely intent of inferred actions, and suggestions

about what evidence might mean and (b) dynamically forecast context-dependent behaviors –

both malicious and non-malicious. Also of interest are on-line and off-line algorithms for feature

extraction and detection in enormous graphs (as in billions of nodes) as well as hybrid engines

where deduction and feature detection mutually inform one another.

DARPA is requesting white papers in the following three broad areas relating to malicious

insider threat detection:

1. Data and Evaluation.

a. Creation of data sets for development purposes.

b. Planning, design, construction, execution and evaluation of verification and

validation testing (evaluation methods and metrics) of developed technologies

under realistic conditions of load and scale

2. Sensors and Algorithms that address the scale and complexity of current and projected

insider threats

3. Novel Approaches and Methodologies, e.g.

a. Social Behavioral Science (as opposed to signature based) methods

b. Denial and Deception

c. Red teaming including methods such as social engineering to more effectively

understand and model the threat

DARPA encourages respondents to this RFI to submit ideas in one, two or all three of these areas

and welcomes participation from teams composed of members from one or more, but not limited

to, the following communities: (1) traditional insider threat, (2) deception detection, (3) pattern

recognition, (4) automated reasoning, (5) analysis and algorithms for massive graphs and (6)

computational psychology and sociology.

WORKSHOP

SUBMISSION FORMAT

SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS

DISCLAIMER

No classified information shall be included in the RFI response. White paper submissions

containing proprietary data should have the cover page and each page containing proprietary data

clearly marked as containing “proprietary” data. It is the respondent’s responsibility to clearly

define to the Government what is considered proprietary data.

Submissions may be reviewed by: the Government (DARPA and partners); Federally Funded

R&D Centers (such as MIT Lincoln Laboratory); and Scientific Engineering and Technical

Assistance (SETA) contractors (such as Schafer Corporation, Science and Technology

Associates, CACI International, and System Analysis, Inc, etc.).

POINT OF CONTACT