The Applied Vehicle Platform: A New Approach to Develop Software-Defined Vehicles
Applied Intuition's biggest product launch to date and our takes on the FY24 defense bill
Welcome back to the Nexus Newsletter, Applied Intuition Defense’s biweekly newsletter covering the latest in national security, autonomy, and software-defined warfare.
In today’s edition, we announce the biggest product launch in our company’s history, touch on a few items that caught our eye in the fiscal year 2024 defense bill, and news we’re reading.
Introducing the Applied Vehicle Platform
We recently announced the biggest product launch in our company’s history: The Applied Vehicle Platform.
Software is changing the character of warfare, just as it has in the automotive industry. But the automotive industry has been working on software-defined vehicles for years and is light years ahead of the defense sector in developing and fielding them at scale. The Applied Vehicle Platform offers industry-leading technology and best practices forged by years of work with 18 of the world’s 20 largest automotive OEMs. Reach out to us at defense@applied.co to learn more.
We’ll discuss military vehicle software development and many other topics related to software-defined warfare at this year’s Nexus 24 symposium. A core theme of this year’s event will be what the automotive industry can teach the Department of Defense and defense companies about building sophisticated software-defined vehicles.
Join us on June 13th at The REACH at the Kennedy Center where industry experts, defense leaders, and technologists will discuss what we must do to get critical technologies into the hands of the warfighter.
Spots are limited, so register for free at the RSVP link below.
We (finally) have a defense bill
While the FY24 defense bill arrived much too late, we’re thankful to our friends on the Hill who we know share our relief that this funding has finally been released. A couple items caught our eye:
A huge boost for the Pentagon’s innovation hub
The bill largely endorses Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) 3.0 with a surging of resources up to $946.5 million, up from $111.8 million in FY23. The question is how this funding affects DIU’s role in relation to the program executive offices.
Whether we like it or not, programs of record remain the backbone of acquiring and sustaining capabilities. One potential metric of success is ensuring this funding is tied to larger acquisition strategies of the relevant acquisition executives. One potential solution is to have DIU field capabilities that de-risk technologies for the program offices or help to provide bridge funding as program offices POM for funding in the out years. Either way, the $220 million for the combatant commands will be key to acquire technology rapidly for urgent needs.
AI/ML scaffolding for the Chief Digital and AI Office (CDAO)
The legislation also supports CDAO’s new Alpha-1 initiative ($54.9 million) to provide the necessary scaffolding for artificial intelligence/machine learning and autonomy development. In an era when the executive branch is struggling to wrap its hands around AI, the CDAO has successfully carved out an important role for itself in fulfilling the mission of accelerating the development and deployment of safe and trusted autonomous systems. Rather than forcing service programs to use its tools with OSD policy, the CDAO is actually serving its DOD customers with enterprise-level tooling including modeling and simulation, data labeling, and validation/verification. And the taxpayer should be happy to not pay for this scaffolding over and over again.
This scaffolding will play a critical role in Replicator given CDAO’s role as the AI/data hub in the initiative. It will provide the ability to ensure the interoperability of multiple autonomy stacks while also sustaining and rapidly updating the software based on battlefield conditions. To scale up this effort, more robust funding will be needed in the out years to meet the needs of program offices across services and domains.
A sign of support for the Army’s future robot tank
We were also pleased to see that the funding for the Army’s Robotic Combat Vehicle (RCV) program was restored in the final agreement. We were thankful to our friends at the Association for Uncrewed Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) who lended their support for the program in the form of a letter to the Defense Appropriators. We view this as a sign of Congressional confidence in a program office that has effectively used the agile acquisition framework to acquire commercially proven technology, including software pathways and MTAs. Appropriators should encourage enlightened program managers who responsibly use these pathways and build trust with Congress with increased funding and support.
Replicator
While a departure from original claims that Replicator needed no new appropriations, this funding is a welcome action to kickstart this critical initiative. Although more funding will need to be appropriated and reprogrammed to ensure success of the effort, $200 million is a solid foundation to move the ball forward. As we have always said, Replicator’s success will hinge on the quality of the software infrastructure. Stacks from multiple vendors will need to collaborate and learn together based on rapidly evolving battlefield conditions (i.e., Russians putting tires on aircraft to spoof perception models). Additionally, the Department will need to devise a way to rapidly update the software to the fleet across domains – not within months or weeks, but minutes. We’re very pleased with the current collaboration between DIU and CDAO to ensure the autonomy stacks are integrated into a DevSecOps pipeline to ensure success.
A review of the FY25 Unfunded Priorities Lists (UPLs)
We were pleased to see several services prioritize autonomous and counter autonomous systems as a sign of the importance of these capabilities in their UPLs. The Army in particular focused their requests on countering autonomous systems given the recent deadly drone attacks in the middle east and globally. As we build up our autonomous capabilities, greater investments are needed to neutralize threats from enemy drones in a cost effective manner, not with expensive missiles. The war in Ukraine has shown our nation’s industrial frailty when it comes to producing munitions or hardware in general to meet the needs. We must acquire attritable platforms or leverage other cheap means to neutralize these threats. Equally as important is developing perception models that can recognize oncoming drone threats.
News we’re reading
Defense Daily | CDAO Supporting DoD Autonomy Efforts With Autonomy Scaffolding
Key quote: “Autonomy is one of three lines of effort within the CDAO’s Alpha One portfolio, which is a set of capabilities and services related to AI and ML ‘scaffolding’ the office will bring to the larger enterprise, Navy Capt. M. Xavier Lugo, the CDAO’s Algorithmic Warfare Division Chief For AI Scaffolding and Integration, said at an event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Autonomy scaffolding refers to the infrastructure elements such as modeling and simulation and ‘other synthetic areas’ separate from traditional AI capabilities such as data labeling and containerization, he said.
The CDAO is working to cross-pollinate sensor data across the program offices that have autonomy efforts, he said.
So, the program offices have been…very stove-piped in the way they think of autonomy,’ Lugo said. ‘As with AI/ML, in general, we are looking at how can we leverage the similarities of autonomy across weapons systems and more specifically the data.’
For example, data from one aircraft will likely benefit another aircraft, and the same is true between ground vehicles, and between surface vehicles, Lugo said.”
Our take: Autonomy infrastructure includes uniting quality data, quality process, and quality software. We believe CDAO is well positioned to start to provide these things to the DOD to accelerate autonomy across the Department.
By making use of the DOD troves of data, and picking up the tab for software that platform program offices are often loathe to spend on, CDAO can provide programs with a separate, software-focused way to develop and test autonomy. As firm believers in the tenet “autonomy is a software problem” we think this CDAO initiative is primed for success.
Defense News | The robots are coming: US Army experiments with human-machine warfare
Key quote: “The scene was the culmination of a U.S. Army effort to understand how it can use human and machines together on the battlefield. Service leaders descended on Fort Irwin, California — home to the National Training Center — in March for a large exercise known as Project Convergence.
The demonstration was a glimpse of the Army’s future, according to top officials. Gen. James Rainey, who leads Army Futures Command, expects the service’s future force to be so integrated with machines that humans will face a much lower risk.
‘We will never again trade blood for first contact,’ he frequently says, promising to deploy robots instead.
But getting these formations right won’t be easy, leaders acknowledge. For human-machine integration to work, a functional and user-friendly network must underpin it, it requires protection from cyberattacks, and the systems must have the right amount of autonomy.”
Our take: The Army is insisting it’s ready to move forward with human-machine integrated formations and has requested funding for these formations in its FY25 budget request, according to Defense News. These accelerated learning events are critically important to generating learning across the ecosystem, including requirements and DOTMLPF considerations.
However, learnings on how to fight robots in a simulated operational setting will be based on many assumptions that will dynamically change (including the current state of technology, the data sets that support it, and changing tactics we are seeing in Ukraine and other areas), which means that the lessons-learned may have a short shelf life before they become overcome by new advancements or operational conditions. Therefore, it’s strongly recommended that these HMI events focus on the connective tissue that can capture machine-meaningful data (operators all the way to developer, and then back down the chain). The assurance of capturing drive log and sensor data at the edge will uncover otherwise invisible insights over many iterations, and allow for a true convergence on a solution of how to fight robots in an operationally optimized way.
C4ISRNET | First round of Replicator to heavily feature Army systems, Bush says
Key quote: “Doug Bush, assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, told an audience at the Ronald Reagan Institute’s National Security Innovation Base Summit in Washington that the Pentagon selected a system the service proposed for the initial tranche of Replicator — an effort to field thousands of drones and other autonomous systems over a two-year period.
‘We’re the biggest participant in terms of what’s actually going to come out of round one in terms of quantity,’ he said March 20.”
Our take: We’re happy to see the services moving out on Replicator, a relatively secretive effort within DOD. Bush did not reveal details of what the service has proposed for Replicator (DefenseScoop last month reported that the Army proposed AeroVironment’s Switchblade 600 for Replicator). At the same panel Bush spoke on, Air Force Vice Chief Gen. James Slife said the service “has ideas for future Replicator proposal rounds, but those efforts weren’t ready for the first tranche,” according to C4ISRNET.
While the Pentagon hasn’t yet revealed which systems have been selected under the initiative, it’s good to see the services are deeply involved in the effort and we support DOD with this initiative.