Col. Marc Pelini, division chief for capabilities and requirements at the Joint Counter-Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Office, said the military is looking to develop a method that allows for artificial intelligence decision making without direct human intervention, when necessary.

He said at a teleconference the Department of Defense (DOD) considers this approach in response to enemy unmanned aircraft system swarms, a threat that may require military operations to move faster, DOD News reported Wednesday.

The Army still does not have the authority to have human involvement out-of-the-loop in AI operations, but the rising threat has led to discussions on potential, alternative approaches.

"When you're starting to see swarming activities of hundreds or potentially thousands [of UAS] in the future, obviously you want your system to operate as fast [as possible] to provide those weaponeering solutions to the operator, or operate within a set of parameters," Pelini said.

NASA will host a media teleconference to discuss science investigations and technology demonstrations launching on Northrop Grumman’s 15th commercial resupply mission for the agency to the International Space Station (ISS), NASA reported on Thursday. Northrop Grumman has projected its launch of the Cygnus spacecraft no earlier than Feb. 20, 2021.

The company will launch its spacecraft on the Antares rocket from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport’s pad 0A at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility. The Cygnus spacecraft will carry crew supplies, scientific research and hardware to the orbiting laboratory to support the Expedition 64 and 65 crews.

During the briefing, Mark Fernandez, solutions architect for Converged Edge Systems at Hewlett Packard Enterprise and principal investigator of Spaceborne Computer-2; Nicole Wagner, president and CEO of LambdaVision; Jordan Greco, chief scientific officer of LambdaVision; and Siva Vanapalli, professor of chemical engineering at Texas Tech University in Lubbock will discuss scientific studies and experiments. 

Victoria Drago, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Toledo in Ohio and Kerry Lee, Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) Radiation System manager, will also join the conference to address microgravity experiments and the Artemis II mission, respectively.  

Northrop Grumman’s cargo resupply will help deliver science research to the space station, which will increase NASA's ability to conduct new investigations at the only laboratory in space. The ISS has supported science, technology and human innovation that demonstrates new technologies and enables greater research. 

In Jan. 2020, Northrop Grumman reported that its Cygnus spacecraft is scheduled to depart the International Space Station and host a two-week demonstration of the SharkSat payload once it leaves the ISS.

The Northrop-built SharkSat is intended to test and demonstrate multiprocessor systems, digital receivers, integrated circuits and other electronic components to facilitate the development of a Ka-band software defined radio that could have potential applications in 5G, space-to-ground and space-to-space communications.

David Schiller, who served as a principal investigator for SharkSat, said the payload will gather and transmit telemetry data back to Earth for analysis.

“In this case, the telemetry data will provide insight into the health and functioning of the electronic components of SharkSat,” Schiller added.

General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT), a business unit of General Dynamics, has signed a Microsoft Partner Agreement for Online Services-Government (AOS-G), GDIT reported on Thursday. 

"Clients across the federal government are rapidly adopting cloud and Software-as-a-Service solutions," said Ben Gianni, vice president and chief technology officer of GDIT. "Microsoft offers Microsoft 365 for collaboration, Azure for cloud based workloads and Dynamics 365 for customer relationship management."

Under the agreement, GDIT will provide federal customers with the capability to access Azure services and offerings, including the classified regions of Azure Government. GDIT's agreement with Microsoft will expand the company’s cloud strategy and provide federal customers the full set of offerings to meet their enterprise and mission requirements. 

Microsoft is a Strategic Alliance Partner within GDIT's technology partner program. With Microsoft, GDIT will be able to provide Department of Defense customers with migration to both Microsoft 365 and Azure under its Defense Enterprise Office Solution (DEOS) contract. 

DEOS is an enterprise commercial cloud environment supporting the DoD strategy to acquire and implement enterprise applications and services for joint use across the Department, standardize cloud adoption, and enable cross-department collaboration. 

In addition, the alliance will enable GDIT to deliver a variety of solutions on Azure, including cloud computing, storage, analytics and machine learning, as well as support the federal government as it leverages cloud technology for its missions. GDIT will also use Microsoft's offerings to streamline costs and incorporate best-practice maintenance services for its customers.

"Microsoft and GDIT have long partnered to support the most complex missions across the government sector," said Greg Myers, vice president of Microsoft Federal at Microsoft Corp. "This agreement will further solidify this relationship through GDIT's deep knowledge of the government programs to enable cloud technology to support modernization and digital transformation efforts across the federal government."

Jen Psaki, a spokeswoman for the White House, said President Biden will not abolish the U.S. Space Force, Defense News reported Wednesday. Psaki told reporters Wednesday during a briefing the Biden administration fully supports the new service branch and is “not revisiting the decision.”

Gen. John Raymond, chief of space operations and 2021 Wash100 Award recipient, said he would “welcome the opportunity” to discuss with the Biden administration the Space Force’s ongoing work.

The new service is overseeing the country’s GPS constellation, monitoring space debris and managing communications satellites, among other responsibilities.

“I’m very proud of the guardians in the Space Force,” Raymond told reporters Wednesday during a morning roundtable. “I see the value of this force each and every day, and I’m happy to talk to anybody about the great work [it’s doing].” 

Gen. Christopher Cavoli, commanding general of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, said the service branch needs a multidomain task force in the European theater, Defense News reported Wednesday. The Army established an MDTF unit at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state with plans to form a second unit in the Pacific region within fiscal year 2021.

“The capabilities that the multidomain task force are going to bring and help us integrate, the expertise that it will bring, are going to be very, very important to updating the way we plan to operate on the European continent,” Cavoli said at an Association of the U.S. Army virtual event Wednesday. “And we will be able to extend that to the African continent as well when we get those capabilities.”

Cavoli said recent exercises highlighted the significance of an MDTF unit in theater operations and one of those exercises – Defender Europe – tried to plan “against the hypothetical scenario of large-scale combat operations” in 2035.

He also cited the need for increased fires capability in the European theater and discussed the Theater Fires Command concept.

“We’re also excited about proposals for something called a ‘Theater Fires Command,’ which would develop and curate, hold custody of targets during the competitive phase, and then execute during a potential conflict,” he said.

“That Theater Fires Command will also bring enormous capability with it, and it will put us into — it will help us, as MDO promises, to push away out of a close fight and be able to fight a little bit more at a standoff so that we, when we do engage in a close fight, it would be under much more advantageous circumstances.”

U.S. Army researchers worked with Northeastern University and the University of Southern California to further study ethical artificial intelligence by covering moral dilemmas involving automated vehicles and other autonomous systems.

In the study, they found that the perceived risk of injury to drivers and pedestrians moderated the probability of making the utilitarian choice or reducing the risk of injury to humans or pedestrians. The research also demonstrated how other decision makers’ moral decisions influence those of the participants.

Celso de Melo, researcher at DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory (ARL), said the study is relevant to the service’s modernization efforts.

“As these vehicles become increasingly autonomous and operate in complex and dynamic environments, they are bound to face situations where injury to humans is unavoidable,” de Melo said. “This research informs how to navigate these moral dilemmas and make decisions that will be perceived as optimal given the circumstances; for example, minimizing overall risk to human life.”