The Armed Forces Ministry Invests in Artificial Intelligence (AI)

(Source: French Armed Forces Ministry; issued May 23, 2019)

(Unofficial translation by Defense-Aerospace.com)

In the wake of the Viva Technology exhibition in Paris where the Ministry of the Armed Forces presented its latest innovations, the Ministry’s press briefing on May 23 came back on the development of artificial intelligence in weapons programs and in research and technology. Chief Engineer Jérôme Jérôme, who is in charge of the Artificial Intelligence and Digital Transformation at the Directorate-General of Armament (DGA), presented artificial intelligence for defense applications.



He first recalled the policy of the ministry as defined by Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly, which confirms the need to take part in the development of this strategic technology, essential to ensure the operational superiority of our armed forces while having a responsible approach to control it. ethically and technically.



Artificial intelligence for defense applications



The DGA official went on to discuss the six areas of priority investment for equipment: decision support and planning, intelligence, collaborative combat, robotics and operations in cyberspace.



Several operational achievements using artificial intelligence are already available or in development, such as:



-- the Toxic Emissions Monitoring System, which has an algorithm for automatic detection of information leakage via certain types of documents and which is already in use,



-- a module for the automatic detection of vehicles in satellite images that will be delivered to the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DRM) by the end of 2019,



-- data processing modules for collaborative protection and tactical situation development within the framework of the SCORPION program,



-- the development of on-board detection of areas of interest and information processing functions to optimize maintenance of the F4 Rafale standard, ordered at the beginning of the year.



Thirty other projects, studies and demonstrators, are already launched among which:



-- Automatic Imaging Target Acquisition (2ACI), to automatically recognize vehicles in thermal images and make them shippable, presented at Viva Technology,



-- Man-Machine Teaming (MMT), for the use of Artificial Intelligence in Combat Aviation,



-- Dream, speech recognition project in noisy environment.





The project Architecture of Mass Treatment and Exploitation of Multi-Source Information (ARTEMIS), whose second phase of the project was notified on May 14 by the DGA was exposed. Intended to develop the future sovereign and secure platform of big data and artificial intelligence, ARTEMIS aims to revolutionize the way the armies will process their data.



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