The Russian military is more technologically advanced than the U.S. realized and is quickly developing artificial intelligence capabilities to gain battlefield information advantage, an expansive new report commissioned by the Pentagon warned. The federally funded Center for Naval Analyses examined the Kremlin's whole-of-government approach for artificial intelligence development and found it is largely driven by the perceived threat from the United States, combined with lessons learned from its continuing conflicts in Syria and Ukraine about what the future battlefield will look like, the report released Monday said. However, the Russian government faces limitations because its AI efforts are primarily government funded, and it lacks a strong defense industrial base, noted the report, written on behalf of the Pentagon's Joint Artificial Intelligence Center. Still, analysts cautioned Pentagon leadership not to underestimate the Russia's technological advances as the U.S. pivots its strategic focus to the Indo-Pacific. The Russian military has been undergoing modernization since 2009.

NATO officials are kicking around a new set of questions for member states on artificial intelligence in defense applications, as the alliance seeks common ground ahead of a strategy document planned for this summer. The move comes amid a grand effort to sharpen NATO's edge in what officials call emerging and disruptive technologies, or EDT. Autonomous and artificial intelligence-enabled weaponry is a key element in that push, aimed at ensuring tech leadership on a global scale. Exactly where the alliance falls on the spectrum between permitting AI-powered defense technology in some applications and disavowing it in others is expected to be a hotly debated topic in the run-up to the June 14 NATO summit. "We have agreed that we need principles of responsible use, but we're also in the process of delineating specific technologies," David van Weel, the alliance's assistant secretary-general for emerging security challenges, said at a web event earlier this month organized by the Estonian Defence Ministry.

The Pentagon's Joint Artificial Intelligence Center is recruiting businesses to help prepare military data for use with AI. The solicitation released March 31 is a sign of the AI office's shifting role from product developer to provider of AI readiness services for Defense Department components. The basic ordering agreement would allow those components and federal partners to issue task orders for the work to get data in shape for artificial intelligence -- that could include everything from capturing data to sorting it for storage to modeling how employees will use it with AI to get better insights. The Data Readiness for Artificial Intelligence Development (DRAID) Services ordering agreement will "help the DoD and Government users prepare data for use in AI applications by providing an easily accessible path to access the cutting-edge commercial services needed to meet the complex technical challenges involved in preparing data for AI," the solicitation read. "The services addressed by the DRAID span the entire AI data preparation lifecycle, from data ingestion, through labeling, right up to before model training begins," an April 1 blog post from the JAIC states.

The Pentagon's top artificial intelligence official warned Tuesday that the department's biggest competitive threat is obsolescence. "The biggest competitive threat is our own obsolescence," said Lt. Gen. Michael Groen, director of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center. "I could walk out into the parking lot of the Pentagon, turn on my iPhone and join a data-driven, completely integrated environment. I can get whatever services I want. I can review, I can find, I can research. I can do it all at my fingertips. I can't do any of that on a defense network."

A new report emphasizes why it is urgent that the Department of Defense and Congress work together to modernize the way defense programs and budgets develop, integrate and deploy the latest technologies in support of American national security. Released by the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, a federal body created to review and recommend ways to use artificial intelligence for national security purposes, the report recommends the use of AI to update America's defense plans, predict future threats, deter adversaries and win wars. Because AI will be "incorporated into virtually all future technology," it is easy to recognize that national security threats and opportunities posed by AI should be a catalyst for necessary changes to defense requirements and resourcing processes. In an AI-enabled world, the Defense Department will be unable to modernize the way it recruits talent, trains the force, develops and integrates technology, and funds all of these elements without internal culture shifts and help from Congress. "Unless the requirements, budgeting and acquisition processes are aligned to permit faster and more targeted execution, the U.S. will fail to stay ahead of potential adversaries."

Congress signaled its confidence in the Pentagon's young artificial intelligence office through a series of measures to increases its standing in the agency, including giving its director acquisition authority. The annual defense policy bill, called the fiscal 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, would alter the reporting structure of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, raising the office to report directly to the deputy secretary of defense, instead of the department's chief information officer. The bill, which still needs President Donald Trump's approval, establishes a board of advisers to give the center strategic advice and technical expertise on AI matters. The measures to bolster the importance of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center come as the organization pivots from focusing on artificial intelligence projects to identifying and solving problems within the services using AI. The JAIC was established in 2018 to increase the adoption of AI across the Pentagon.

Raytheon's intelligence and space business is partnering with C3.ai, a software company known for its predictive maintenance business with the U.S. Air Force, the companies announced Monday. The alliance between C3.ai and Raytheon Intelligence and Space aims to speed up artificial intelligence adoption across the U.S. military. The partnership will pair Raytheon's expertise in the defense and aerospace sector with C3.ai's artificial intelligence development and applications. "The military and intelligence community have access to more data now than any time in history, but it's more than they're able to make quick use of," said David Appel, vice president of defense and civil solutions for space and C2 systems under Raytheon Intelligence and Space. "Artificial intelligence can be used to help them make sense of that data, which will allow them to make smarter decisions faster on the battlefield.

The new leader of the Pentagon's top artificial intelligence office wants the hub to shift from a product development organization to one that enables the armed services and combatant commands to further develop AI tools. Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Michael Groen, who now leads the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, said Friday that his organization is looking to perform "broad enablement" for different components as the department starts to apply AI tools to war-fighting operations. The plan is part of what the JAIC dubs "JAIC 2.0," which realigned JAIC mission areas to meet the needs of the war-fighting community. "We think that our transformational value will be much better in the enablement space," Groen said on a webinar hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "We obviously will continue to do products, we'll continue to work on some of the high-end, gamechanging technologies and programs. But we really want to start a tide that rises all boats across the department."

After weeks of work in the oppressive Arizona desert heat, the U.S. Army carried out a series of live fire engagements Sept. 23 at Yuma Proving Ground to show how artificial intelligence systems can work together to automatically detect threats, deliver targeting data and recommend weapons responses at blazing speeds. Set in the year 2035, the engagements were the culmination of Project Convergence 2020, the first in a series of annual demonstrations utilizing next generation AI, network and software capabilities to show how the Army wants to fight in the future. The Army was able to use a chain of artificial intelligence, software platforms and autonomous systems to take sensor data from all domains, transform it into targeting information, and select the best weapon system to respond to any given threat in just seconds. Army officials claimed that these AI and autonomous capabilities have shorted the sensor to shooter timeline -- the time it takes from when sensor data is collected to when a weapon system is ordered to engaged -- from 20 minutes to 20 seconds, depending on the quality of the network and the number of hops between where it's collected and its destination. "We use artificial intelligence and machine learning in several ways out here," Brigadier General Ross Coffman, director of the Army Futures Command's Next Generation Combat Vehicle Cross-Functional Team, told visiting media.

The Central Intelligence Agency announced Monday the launch of its first-ever federal lab, a new internal organization that will allow its officers to obtain patents and licenses for intellectual property they create while working at the agency. The new office, called CIA Labs, will be an in-house research and development office through which the spy agency will develop the future technology it needs for intelligence collection for national security, while also helping U.S. economic security, according to Dawn Meyerriecks, head of CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology, in an agency press release. In a speech last week at the Intelligence and National Security Summit, Meyerriecks listed several broad areas where the agency has intellectual property that could "change the conversation" around key emerging technologies. She listed 5G, battery technology, augmented and virtual reality, artificial intelligence and machine learning, computation, geospatial information representation, navigation, and analytics as areas of focus. "It's an endless list that we collectively own, but the world desperately needs," Meyerriecks said.