WASHINGTON — As trans-Atlantic tensions rise over Trump’s rhetoric on Greenland, the US and China race on AI, and suspected Russian drones buzz airports from Brussels to Riga, the European Union is developing a distinctly European artificial intelligence to help protect its critical infrastructure.
Lead contractor GMV announced this week it has officially launched a European Defense Fund program called PRECISE, a contrived English-language acronym for Prediction and Response of Effectors on Critical Infrastructure and Structural Environments. GMV’s project coordinator, Ángel Segundo, told Breaking Defense that the EDF is funding the effort to the tune of just under €15 million (about $17.5 million US) over four years.
“Effectors” is jargon for anything that could have an effect on something else, from “kinetic” attacks like bombs to “non-kinetic” cyber-attacks and GPS jamming, while “critical infrastructure” covers everything from airports and railways — like the Polish line blown up by alleged Russian saboteurs last year — to the electrical grid and the internet.
The goal of the project is to build “detailed 3D structural models” of real facilities— sometimes called “digital twins” — and then simulate potential attacks and how to mitigate them. What’s particularly ambitious here is that PRECISE isn’t building a toolkit that human software engineers then use to hand-craft models, which would take prohibitively long for a large-scale project like this. Instead, the announcement explains, the goal is “automated generation of detailed 3D structural models,” where the algorithm takes the available data and builds models at machine speed.
To do so, the project will be “combining multi-source data collection […] exploiting satellite imagery, aerial and ground collected data, from EO [electro-optical], SAR [synthetic aperture radar], LiDAR and other sensors,” the announcement reads. All those sources will then feed data into a simulation engine, one that combines the flexibility of machine learning with more traditional, predictable, but relatively rigid models, in which human programmers write core to simulate the laws of physics.
The project is led by Spanish-based multinational GMV, whose products range from cybersecurity software, to weapons effects analysis for the Spanish air force, to GPS-independent navigation for future European Space Agency moon rovers. According to the announcement, GMV is coordinating nine other companies from five EU countries — Belgium, France, Greece, Italy and Spain itself — as well as the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre and Royal Military Academy of Belgium in Brussels. (Those nine firms, not counting GMV itself: COTESA, FlySight, GMV, IKH, Indra, Indra Space, MEWS Partners, MEWS Labs, and XenomatiX.)
Bringing in lots of companies from lots of countries is classic European politics, but it’s also helpful given the breadth and complexity of the technological toolkit the initiative aims to build.
At the end of the four-year project, the project director told Breaking Defense, the project will deliver a working demo of the software, with further development to be determined.
“PRECISE will deliver an advanced demonstrator system that significantly advances European capabilities in 3D structural modelling and effect prediction over critical infrastructures,” Segundo said. “While not intended to result in an immediately deployable operational solution, the technologies and knowledge generated will serve as a foundation for future prototyping and future applications. [They] may evolve into operational solutions in the future, and could also be adapted for dual-use or civilian purposes.”