innovation fund themed competition webinar - session 1

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Defence and Security Accelerator

Defence and Security AcceleratorDefence and Security Accelerator

Innovation fund themed competitionRevolutionise the human information relationship for Defence

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• Introductions• Joint Force Warfare context• Challenge 1• Challenge 2• Challenge 3• Joint Forces Warfare summary• The Accelerator challenge• Signposting

Agenda

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Defence and Security Accelerator

Defence and Security AcceleratorDefence and Security Accelerator

Working with the AcceleratorJim Pennycook, Innovation Partner

Joint Warfare DirectorateJoint Warfare Directorate

Defence and Security Accelerator competition

The Joint Context

Lt Col Shaun Lamb MBE

Joint Warfare Directorate

The challenge The distinction between war and peace and ‘home’ and ‘away’ are

increasingly blurred A whole of government ‘cooperative approach’ to protect the UK and

her interests

Joint Warfare Directorate

The environment Explosion of - data, processing power and connectivity Rapid development of – range, precision, lethality, choice of

effects, stealth…… Proliferation of – unmanned systems, autonomous systems

and robotics Exploitation of – military and commercial space

Joint Warfare DirectorateJoint Warfare Directorate

JFC Strategy – the guiding purpose

Joint Warfare DirectorateJoint Warfare Directorate

The Challenge

Joint Warfare DirectorateJoint Warfare Directorate

Our conceptual thinking

Joint Warfare DirectorateJoint Warfare Directorate

• not just technology• the competition team• road to exploitation

The difference

Joint Warfare Directorate

Defence and Security Accelerator

Defence and Security AcceleratorDefence and Security Accelerator

Challenge 1 - Military contextLt Col Shaun Lamb MBE

Royal Navy Information Warfare Division OFFICIAL

Challenge 1: Allow for the rapid and automated integration

of new sensors

Continuous Carrier

Capability(CCC)

Continuous Amphibious Readiness

(CAR)

Continuous at Sea

Deterrent(CASD)

The Royal Navy today

Royal Navy Information Warfare Division OFFICIAL

MTTA

• open architecture and standards• shared computing • shared networking • enabling fused ISR, sensors, information• enabling AI (Project NELSON)

Royal Navy Information Warfare Division OFFICIAL

• a socio-technical response - it’s not just the kit• a service-based approach• an extraordinary pace of change - buy, use,

discard/upgrade• innovation is not just a mindset - it needs resourcing,

organising for (actual people), policy (accreditation, procurement) and tolerance (fast to fail)

• once empowered, our people need to be left alone

The RN approach to innovation

Royal Navy Information Warfare Division OFFICIAL

Royal Navy Information Warfare Division OFFICIAL

Open sensors and systems - next?• a truly open environment for all platforms• plug and play everything - radar, sonar, video,…• even if different formats• any drone, any radar, any camera, any sensor…• buy, use, discard/upgrade• MarWorks, CDIF, NELSON, 700X

• generic command & control systems?• auto-scanning techniques?• unmanned systems collision avoidance?• autonomous decision making?• networks in GPS-denied environments?• sensing across the littoral (ship-shore)?• mesh networking and swarming?

P r o j e c t N E L S O N

Defence and Security Accelerator

Defence and Security AcceleratorDefence and Security Accelerator

Challenge 1 – technical detail Paul Thomas

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2 May 2023UK OFFICIAL

The military sense-making process

1,2,3

1,2,3

2,3

1,2,3

2,3

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Available sensors are quickly adopted for employment in military situations • rapidly integrated into military collection systems without prior

knowledge of format standards• their outputs processed and fused automatically

The aspiration

Sensing is everywhere

• each sensor provides data in its own format, standards, update rate• on-sensor processing is mostly proprietary and uncharacterised

(hidden to user)• any sophisticated multi-sensor processing (for example fusion or

sensor management) requires deep, prior knowledge of the sensor and processing

The problem

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Sensing chain

analogue electronics signal pre-processing/ metadata

ADC

sensor analogue/digital converter

human interpretable data

content assessment

computer readable

data

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Integration of ‘raw data’ sensorsLarge variety of data rates, pre-processing algorithms, compression schemes, data formats or standards

To integrate a variety of sensors (including those we haven’t seen before), we could –

• develop a common pre-processing /metadata function

• develop a common post-processing function

Common input/output data format

orProcessing, fusion and sensor management architecture

Open architecture

algorithm repository

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Integration of ‘intelligent’ information sources

SAPIENT concept (Sensing for Asset Protection with Integrated Electronic Network Technology) www.gov.uk/sapient

Autonomous Sensor Modules (ASM)

ASM 3

ASM 1 Low bandwidth

*IP* based comms channel

Fusion and sensor management architecture

High-Level Decision Making Module (HLDMM)

Dynamic multi-sensor decision fusion algorithms

Dynamic sensor management algorithms

Human/machineinterface

Open architecture

algorithm repository

Autonomous Sensor Module

Key challenges• learning sensor system and algorithm performance parameters • updating the system’s ontology on the fly

Processing, fusion and sensor management architecture

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Processing

Search Mission

Track

Challenges • characteristics of the sensor system are not known prior to the operation• some situations require dynamic re-optimisation and tasking as new

sensors are added

Anomaly detect

Open architecture

algorithm repository

Alg 1 Alg 2 Alg 3 Alg 4

Processing pipeline

Data Human/machineinterface

Autonomous algorithm selection

Topographic_map_example - Public Domain wikimedia_curid=641544

Topographic-Relief-perspective-sample - By Kbh3rd, CC BY-SA 3.0, wikimedia_curid=12915572

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UK OFFICIAL

Fusion and sensor management

Challenges• data sources that are

not fully characterised: uncertainty bias provenance and

trust• management functions

where the task implementation is not fully characterised

Mission assessment

Situation assessment

Object assessment

Data processing

Signal processing

Environment

Application

Data source

Mission management

Objective management

Task management

Data management

Sensor management

Strategy

Understanding

Knowledge

Data

Signals

Resource management

What we want - summary

Accessibility that can• overcome the problems limiting seamless access and exploitation of new sensors• address issues throughout sensor-data-exploitation chain• support key issue of scalability• ensure real (or near-real) time performance• offer solutions that show strong linkages to challenges 2 and 3

Not interested in• non-cooperative access to collection assets

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