William Scherlis, director at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) information innovation office, said artificial intelligence is at the early stage of its rapid development. Scherlis said in a statement published Friday that artificial intelligence (AI) currently lacks robustness and does not have trustworthiness yet.

He cited three waves in the development of AI. The first wave involved the usage of explicit rules, while the second wave featured neural nets to imitate human thinking processes. Scherlis noted the third wave uses elements from the first two waves and will potentially serve as a "game changer."

"This is a wide open research area, but there's a lot of good work in this area — and I think it's very promising," added Scherlis.

He noted that various AI components should come together to support warfighter needs.

"If you want to do strategy planning, then you're gonna have a mashup of machine learning with, maybe, game theory and a few other elements," Scherlis said.

The Department of Defense Cyber Crime Center has been officially recognized as a field operating agency within the U.S. Air Force, the service reported Friday. DC3, which previously operated as a unit under the Office of Special Investigations, will now run as an independent agency aligned under the inspector general, office of the secretary of the Air Force.

“DC3’s recognition as an Air Force FOA serves as a testament to the substantive evolution of its overarching capabilities and purpose,” said Jeffrey Specht, executive director of DC3. “I have every confidence this new structure and alignment will not only serve as a catalyst for DC3’s continued evolution to best meet Air Force and DOD mission needs, but will enhance our capacity and focus on amplifying effects for those we’re charged to support.”

The capabilities, size and services of DC3 have evolved in the past 20 years to meet the changing requirements of the DOD counterintelligence and law enforcement community. The center relies on the expertise of over 500 military, contractor and civilian personnel to provide cyber training, multimedia and digital forensics and cyber analytics services for the Pentagon, defense industrial base and international mission partners.

Maj. Gen. DeAnna Burt, commander of Combined Force Space Component Command (CFSCC), told C4ISRNET in an interview published on Friday about plans to improve missile warning satellites and one of those is the need to equip satellite constellations, ground systems and other space-based missile warning capabilities with software that could be reprogrammed quickly in response to threats.

“For the future, we’re looking at how do you create app-based applications to then allow you to expand or contract your constellations as need be. This is now software-based versus hardware-based,” Burt said. “I’m not necessarily worried about the chassis and the bus itself. I’m more concerned about the guts, and can I reprogram the software more rapidly to adjust to threats and other things happening. And you’re doing that both on the satellite and in the ground system, as well as any receiver equipment.”

She cited the need to protect such systems from cyber threats and noted that diversification in the satellite development industry helps reduce costs and promote competition.

When asked about the Space Development Agency’s (SDA) tracking layer and Next Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared satellites, Burt said those missile warning satellite programs are meant to improve the country’s “resiliency, our accuracy and reporting, and to address emerging and future threats.”