Increased defense spending is a boon for Germany's ailing industrial sector. Numerous companies, even those with no previous military experience, are now hoping to get in on the act. Visiting the works of Ilsenburger Grobblech GmbH is like taking a trip back in time. Way back in the 16th century, copper used to be produced at this site in the northern Harz Mountains, not far from eastern Germany' tallest peak, the Brocken. Today, slabs of steel up to 35 centimeters thick are piled up in front of the factory halls, delivered from the blast furnaces and converters of parent company Salzgitter, less than an hour's drive away. What is happening behind the factory walls, though, is part of a new hype that has gripped Germany's crisis-ridden industrial sector. A hype which many are hoping will be enough to revive it.

Activists in Japan earlier this year accused one of the country's largest robotics manufacturers of profiting off the war in Gaza, accusing it of violating its own company policies in aiding the Israeli defense industry. At a protest outside the headquarters of FANUC Corporation earlier this summer, the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) protesters demanded the Japanese conglomerate cut off ties with Israel and all the defense companies that contribute to Israel's military. "We also call on FANUC not to be further complicit in genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity," Taizo Imano, one of the protest organizers, said in June. Specifically, Imano and the rest of the BDS activists believe Japan is breaching its own export controls. If true, it would significantly alter how Israel acquires high-end machinery for its defense sector.

The United States will fund the refurbishment of T-72 tanks and HAWK surface-to-air missiles as part of a roughly $400 million security assistance package for Ukraine, the Pentagon announced Friday. Air defense and armor capabilities are both high on the list of assistance desired by Ukraine, but the T-72s fall short of more modern tanks such as the German Leopard or US Abrams that have been sought by Kyiv. The "tanks are coming from the Czech Republic defense industry, and the United States is paying for 45 of those to be refurbished, and the government of the Netherlands is matching our commitment" for a total of 90 T-72s, Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told journalists. The T-72s -- a Soviet-era tank -- will be equipped with "advanced optics, communications and armor packages," with some ready by the end of December and others to be delivered in 2023, she said. Asked why more modern tanks were not being provided, Singh cited factors including ease of use and cost. "These are tanks that the Ukrainians know how to use on the battlefield," she said, adding that "introducing a new main battle tank is extremely costly, is time sensitive, and it would be a huge undertaking for the Ukrainian forces."

Are you excited at the prospect of unlocking the secrets held by a data set? Are you fascinated by the possibilities presented by the IoT, machine learning, and artificial intelligence advances? In an increasingly connected world, massive amounts of structured and unstructured data open up new opportunities. As a data scientist, you can turn these complex data sets into useful information to solve global challenges. Across private and public sectors -- from fraud detection, to cancer research, to national intelligence -- you know the answers are in the data.

According to a list published recently by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, which audits federal agencies and programs, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is currently involved with more than 685 artificial intelligence (AI) projects. Some of these projects include major weapon systems such as the MQ-9 Unmanned Aerial Vehicle and the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle. For purposes of combat, the DoD is focused on AI abilities that assist in target recognition, battlefield analysis and autonomy on unmanned systems. One example of AI for autonomous systems is the U.S. Navy's Undersea Warfare Decision Support System, which is designed to help plan and execute undersea missions. Generally, AI will help machines perform tasks such as drawing conclusions and making predictions in place of human thinking.

A year ago French president Emmanuel Macron announced plans to provide a framework for his nation's industrial and research forces to make the country a key player in the development of quantum technology. The "Quantum Plan" included an investment of €1.8 billion ($2 billion) over five years--a significant increase that placed France third after the United States and China. That included nearly €800 million for computers alone. The sector has already experienced significant growth, with patent filings doubling between 2018 and 2020, according to data and analytics company GlobalData. It is believed that the technology could potentially revolutionize areas of defense such as artificial intelligence (AI), enabling autonomous vehicles and improved targeting for precision weapons systems.

Deep learning is an artificial field with essential applications in many areas, especially in image analysis and natural language processing. In recent years, it has been observed that the algorithms that exhibit the highest performance globally, especially in image processing and natural language processing, are based on deep learning. In our world, where today's societies are shaped by information, according to recent studies, the data produced in one day worldwide is increasing. Therefore, artificial intelligence and deep learning fields, which can analyze like humans and produce results a million times faster than humans, have gained significant importance to benefit from this ocean of data in the rapidly growing size and complexity. Due to the increasing interest and ever–expanding application areas today, Artificial Intelligence and deep learning have become a topic of discussion that concerns all humanity, rather than being a topic that only scientists talk about.

The next wave of aerospace is just around the corner, and a lot of that innovation is happening thanks to new, faster methods of development. "What's happening now is that companies are trying to understand how they take the lessons from Agile software development and apply those to Agile product development," explains Dale Tutt, vice president of Aerospace and Defense Industry for Siemens. With Agile software development, you can build software and test it relatively quickly. "When you start talking about an airplane or an air taxi," Tutt says, "it's expensive to build a prototype and test them, so you have to think about it in a different way and take a different approach. It really takes good program planning." This new type of product development, where planes and other kinds of air transport are developed faster than ever, still needs to incorporate safety as a top priority, which creates new kinds of challenges. These kinds of products are different than smartphones or other consumer electronics, Tutt explains. "Part of it is driven by the safety and reliability you want to have--so that when you're flying around, you can safely operate the vehicle. There's a certain amount of durability and reliability that's built into the design of the product. The amount of investment that these companies or that an individual would make in buying one of these aircraft means there's an expectation that it's going to last a while, and that you're going to have value in that asset. It's a little bit different than some of the consumer goods that we buy, and it's more expensive to repair them than it is to replace them."

Investors in AI-first technology companies serving the defense industry, such as Palantir, Primer and Anduril, are doing well. Anduril, for one, reached a valuation of over $4 billion in less than four years. Many other companies that build general-purpose, AI-first technologies -- such as image labeling -- receive large (undisclosed) portions of their revenue from the defense industry. Investors in AI-first technology companies that aren't even intended to serve the defense industry often find that these firms eventually (and sometimes inadvertently) help other powerful institutions, such as police forces, municipal agencies and media companies, prosecute their duties. Most do a lot of good work, such as DataRobot helping agencies understand the spread of COVID, HASH running simulations of vaccine distribution or Lilt making school communications available to immigrant parents in a U.S. school district.

DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The "Global Artificial Intelligence & Robotics for Defense, Market & Technology Forecast to 2027" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The Global Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Robotics in the Defense market, which is valued at US$39.22 billion in 2018, is projected to grow at a CAGR of 5.04%, to value US$61 billion by 2027. The cumulative market for global expenditure on AI & Robotics Defense Systems is valued at US$ 487 billion over the forecast period. Demand for AI & Robotics defense systems is anticipated to be driven by the massive investment made by countries like the US, China, Russia, Israel in the development of next-generation defense systems and the large scale procurement of such systems by countries like Saudi Arabia, India, Japan, and South Korea. The United States is the largest spender in the domain with China, India, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Japan, and South Korea anticipated accounting for the bulk of spending.