Technical Workshop: Advanced Helicopter Cockpit Design

Information processing demands on both civilian and military aircrews have increased enormously as rotorcraft have come to be used for adverse weather, day/night, and remote area missions. Applied psychology, engineering, or operational research for future helicopter cockpit design criteria were identified. Three areas were addressed: (1) operational requirements, (2) advanced avionics, and (3) man-system integration

US and USSR Military Aircraft and Missile Aerodynamics 1970-1980. A selected, annotated bibliography, volume 1

The purpose of this selected bibliography (281 citations) is to list available, unclassified, unlimited publications which provide aerodynamic data on major aircraft and missiles currently used by the military forces of the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Technical disciplines surveyed include aerodynamic performance, static and dynamic stability, stall-spin, flutter, buffet, inlets nozzles, flap performance, and flying qualities. Concentration is on specific aircraft including fighters, bombers, helicopters, missiles, and some work on transports, which are or could be used for military purposes. The bibliography is limited to material published from 1970 to 1980. The publications herein illustrate many of the types of aerodynamic data obtained in the course of aircraft development programs and may therefore provide some guidance in identifying problems to be expected in the conduct of such work. As such, this information may be useful in planning future research programs

Context-aware Collaborative Neuro-Symbolic Inference in Internet of Battlefield Things

IoBTs must feature collaborative, context-aware, multi-modal fusion for real-time, robust decision-making in adversarial environments. The integration of machine learning (ML) models into IoBTs has been successful at solving these problems at a small scale (e.g., AiTR), but state-of-the-art ML models grow exponentially with increasing temporal and spatial scale of modeled phenomena, and can thus become brittle, untrustworthy, and vulnerable when interpreting large-scale tactical edge data. To address this challenge, we need to develop principles and methodologies for uncertainty-quantified neuro-symbolic ML, where learning and inference exploit symbolic knowledge and reasoning, in addition to, multi-modal and multi-vantage sensor data. The approach features integrated neuro-symbolic inference, where symbolic context is used by deep learning, and deep learning models provide atomic concepts for symbolic reasoning. The incorporation of high-level symbolic reasoning improves data efficiency during training and makes inference more robust, interpretable, and resource-efficient. In this paper, we identify the key challenges in developing context-aware collaborative neuro-symbolic inference in IoBTs and review some recent progress in addressing these gaps

DRONE DELIVERY OF CBNRECy – DEW WEAPONS Emerging Threats of Mini-Weapons of Mass Destruction and Disruption (WMDD)

Drone Delivery of CBNRECy – DEW Weapons: Emerging Threats of Mini-Weapons of Mass Destruction and Disruption (WMDD) is our sixth textbook in a series covering the world of UASs and UUVs. Our textbook takes on a whole new purview for UAS / CUAS/ UUV (drones) – how they can be used to deploy Weapons of Mass Destruction and Deception against CBRNE and civilian targets of opportunity. We are concerned with the future use of these inexpensive devices and their availability to maleficent actors. Our work suggests that UASs in air and underwater UUVs will be the future of military and civilian terrorist operations. UAS / UUVs can deliver a huge punch for a low investment and minimize human casualties.https://newprairiepress.org/ebooks/1046/thumbnail.jp

Technology review of flight crucial flight controls

The results of a technology survey in flight crucial flight controls conducted as a data base for planning future research and technology programs are provided. Free world countries were surveyed with primary emphasis on the United States and Western Europe because that is where the most advanced technology resides. The survey includes major contemporary systems on operational aircraft, R&D flight programs, advanced aircraft developments, and major research and technology programs. The survey was not intended to be an in-depth treatment of the technology elements, but rather a study of major trends in systems level technology. The information was collected from open literature, personal communications and a tour of several companies, government organizations and research laboratories in the United States, United Kingdom, France, and the Federal Republic of Germany

Law and Ethics for Robot Soldiers

Lethal autonomous machines will inevitably enter the future battlefield – but they will do so incrementally, one small step at a time. The combination of inevitable and incremental development raises not only complex strategic and operational questions but also profound legal and ethical ones. The inevitability of these technologies comes from both supply-side and demand-side factors. Advances in sensor and computational technologies will supply “smarter” machines that can be programmed to kill or destroy, while the increasing tempo of military operations and political pressures to protect one’s own personnel and civilian persons and property will demand continuing research, development, and deployment. The process will be incremental because non-lethal robotic systems (already proliferating on the battlefield) can be fitted in their successive generations with both self-defensive and offensive technologies. As lethal systems are initially deployed, they may include humans in the decision-making loop, at least as a fail-safe – but as both the decision-making power of machines and the tempo of operations potentially increase, that human role will likely but slowly diminish. Recognizing the inevitable but incremental evolution of these technologies is key to addressing the legal and ethical dilemmas associated with them – U.S. policy for resolving those dilemmas should be built on these assumptions. The certain yet gradual development and deployment of these systems, as well as the humanitarian advantages created by the precision of some systems, make some proposed responses – such as prohibitory treaties – unworkable as well as ethically questionable. Those features also make it imperative, though, that the United States resist its own impulses toward secrecy and reticence with respect to military technologies, recognizing that the interests those tendencies serve are counterbalanced here by interests in shaping the normative terrain – the contours of international law as well as international expectations about appropriate conduct – on which it and others will operate militarily as technology evolves. Just as development of autonomous weapon systems will be incremental, so too will development of norms about acceptable systems and uses be incremental. The United States must act, however, before international expectations about these technologies harden around the views of those who would impose unrealistic, ineffective or dangerous prohibitions – or those who would prefer few or no constraints at all

The problematisation of autonomous weapon systems - a case study of the US Department of Defense

Robotics systems play an increasingly important role in armed conflicts and there are already weapons in service that replace a human being at the point of engagement. The United States (US) is the first country to have adopted a policy on autonomous weapon systems (AWS) in the Directive 3000.09. The US policy on AWS is however poorly understood in the academic and policy circles. This thesis addresses the question of how the US Department of Defense (DoD) problematises the concept of AWS. By applying a Bacchi’s poststructuralist approach to policy analysis, the thesis asks how the US DoD constructs the ‘problem’ of AWS, what assumptions underlie this representation of the ‘problem’, how has it come about, what effects it produces, what is left out of problem representation, and how could it be questioned. The US DoD problematisation of AWS does not only clarifies the Department’s approach, but also it explores the role of human involvement over the use of AWS. The US policy states that AWS shall be used by ‘appropriate levels of human judgment’. This term is, however, open to different interpretations, and some argue that it prohibits a lethal use of AWS, while others disagree. The thesis focuses not only on content of the US concept of human judgment, but primarily on how this concept relates to the wider US military understanding of ‘control.’ In that, it unpacks the concept of human judgment and distinguishes it from the concept of human control. I argue that both concepts are important in the debate on AWS as they represent alternative policy approaches to the use of such weapons. By making these concepts more explicit, my thesis contributes to the specific and emerging academic debate about the role of human involvement over the use of AWS

Aeronautical Engineering: A continuing bibliography with indexes

This bibliography lists 725 reports, articles and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in April 1985

Legal Reviews of War Algorithms

States and scholars recognize legal reviews of weapons, means or methods of warfare as an essential tool to ensure the legality of military applications of artificial intelligence (AI). Yet, are existing practices fit for this task? This article identifies necessary adaptations to current practices. For AI-enabled systems that are used in relation to targeting, legal reviews need to assess the systems’ compliance with additional rules of international law, in particular targeting law under international humanitarian law (IHL). This article discusses the procedural ramifications thereof. The article further finds that AI systems’ predictability problem needs to be addressed by the technical process of verification and validation, a process that generally precedes legal reviews. The article argues that ultimately, as the law needs to be translated into technical specifications understandable by the AI system, the technical and legal assessment conflate into one. While this implies several consequences, the article suggests that emerging guidelines on the development and use of AI by states and industry can provide elements for the development of new guidance for the legal assessment of AI-driven systems. The article concludes that legal reviews become even more important for AI technology than for traditional weapons because with increased human reliance on AI, more attention must go to a system’s legality