Vanguard Magazine

Dec/Jan 2014

Preserving capacity, General Tom Lawson, Chief of the Defence Staff, Keys to Canadian SAR

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S sit rep Analyze this, Watson When we think of technology, few conjure images of machines that can interact with us, much less think on their own terms. But at the IBM Smarter Defence Summit in Ottawa in October, Zachary J. Lemnios, vice president of research strategy, argued that the intelligent machine – otherwise known as cognitive computing – is the future of business. IBM's Watson may have come to fame by defeating Jeopardy champions Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings in 2011, but the company is working with the system to analyze massive volumes of data and turn it into information, a capability that Lemnios says will be sorely needed as data sets multiply in size in the coming years. According to Lemnios, this challenge will be IBM's key focus in the next era of cognitive computing. Data is growing at a tremendous speed, and it is becoming increasingly complex – yet many industries need this data to be consumable, and to have it delivered at a rapid pace. This is especially true in the defence sector, where intelligence must be analyzed as quickly as possible, and split-second decisions must be made in the field. As a result, organizations of all shapes and sizes, including the defence industry, will be turning to cognitive computing to translate data into information – and to use that information in a more efficient way. Watson will revolutionize the way organizations, both private and public, use analytics, he said. "This issue of operating in the cyber domain, in integrated operations, is driving the size of the data and the ability to make decisions real-time. We've got to get our heads around it. We've got to do that with much greater assurance, much greater resilience, and an understanding of what the next step looks like. This explosion of information is driving us to new computational environments. We're going to see this whole field of cognitive systems take off. It's a great domain for the ISR community to take hold of and to drive into their data sets." Watson currently has access to 200 million pages of data, both structured and unstructured, and is capable of responding within three seconds to questions posed to it. It's an ideal application for fields that must filter and analyze large volumes of information. Like anything, there is room for improvement. As Lemnios pointed out in his keynote address, Watson is incapable of understanding context and has difficulty operating in natural environments. But now that the technology has entered the mainstream, computer scientists can build on the foundation that IBM has laid for them in the cognitive computing sphere, all while IBM works to refine the science behind Watson and develop a computer with reasoning, language, and perception capabilities. Lemnios believes that IBM's great challenge for the coming years will be figuring out how to extract information from unstructured data and build it into timelines for the Department of National Defence and other clients. And he is certain that Watson will be the defence industry's solution to this particular problem. "This is a disruptive technology. You'll see changes in the field in the next few years," he said. "It will obsolete many of the technologies that are in place right now, in terms of tracking and finding and timecritical assessments. And moving to this field is going to require moving side by side with [the defence industry] in order to build our technology base on problems that [the defence industry faces]." — Amy Allen 6 DECEMBER 2013/JANUARY 2014 www.vanguardcanada.com Fiscal reality bites The good news: The Canadian Army still has a substantial capital procurement program. The bad? Fiscal reality is setting in and many capital activities will likely slip into the future. That was the somewhat sobering message from the Soldier Systems Program Management (SSPM) office during a presentation to Soldier Systems, an annual showcase hosted by the Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries in early December. The conference was conducted under the Chatham House rule, so speakers cannot be identified. In an overview of soldier system projects – from small arms replacement to sniper systems and clothing requirements – officials laid out a wide range of initiatives that will require industry input. The caveat, though, was that acquisition will "slow," which could mean lower quantities and the exercise of fewer contract options. Capability-based acquisition will continue, an official said, "[but] the procurement forecast will change to reflect fiscal realities." One example could be the Integrated Soldier System Project, an effort to network the dismounted solider which had anticipated first deliverables in 2014. The bid evaluation is still ongoing, the conference was told, and a contract award is not expected until December 2014. However, the army will be seeking to institutionalize the highly successful Soldier System Technology Roadmap process that brought together operators, defence scientists, academia and industry for a series of workshops to map technology trends to soldier requirements. "It's been a great success," the official said, noting that "it is aligned with the current government's intention to leverage procurement." Mismatch: Ambition and capability For those anticipating another scathing critique of government defence procurement, the Auditor General's fall report on government shipbuilding was not as harsh as expected. But it did confirm what many analysts have been saying for a long time: the dollars allocated to building the Royal Canadian Navy's next generation of ships do not square with the navy's quantity or capability requirements. While the National Shipbuilding Procurement Strategy worked well in the selection of the two

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