DoD making push to catch up on artificial intelligence.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew

The Defense Department in late April kicked off a campaign to integrate machine learning and other cutting edge computer technologies across U.S. military weapon and intelligence systems.

Project Maven, also known as the algorithmic warfare crossfunctional team, is the brainchild of Deputy Defense Secretary Robert O. Work, who tapped Air Force Lt. Gen. John N.T. "Jack" Shanahan, director for defense intelligence, warfighter support in the office of the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, to lead the effort.

The project wants to hasten the employment of big data analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer vision and convolutional neural networks--algorithms based on biological visual cortexes--into programs of record, Shanahan said at the GEOINT Symposium in San Antonio, Texas.

These buzzwords are "no longer arcane and esoteric terms but instead are concepts instrumental in increasing the effectiveness of the analytic workforce of the next decade, while simultaneously sustaining and gaining our competitive advantage," he said.

Shanahan said the era of incremental change to U.S. military weapon systems and intelligence-gathering regimes will soon be "in the rearview mirror."

The department is far behind Silicon Valley when developing these kinds of technologies, and is failing to tap into their expertise, he said.

Meanwhile, near-peer competitors are quickly closing the technical superiority gap the United States has enjoyed, he said. The aforementioned fields will be a means to leap ahead of them.

"The slope of the technology change curve is becoming so steep...that we will find it hard to keep up over the next decade. But we must do so or risk ceding valuable ground to our potential adversaries," he said.

"It is hubris to suggest that our potential adversaries are not as capable or even more capable of far-reaching and deeply embedded innovation in their respective organizations," he added.

The team will create a pathfinder project to demonstrate the capabilities of such technologies by the end of the calendar year. Shanahan said Project Maven will work with the intelligence community first. The pathfinder will focus on automating and augmenting the full-motion video data collected by small tactical unmanned aerial vehicles such as the ScanEagle.

Using automation and augmentation, machine learning and computer vision to help analysts sort through the millions of data points collected by sensors is an acute need throughout the...