NGA puts a "template" on the products that "literally acknowledges … what you are looking at has not been touched by human hands,” said Director Frank Whitworth. “It's important [for] combat commanders and the Secretary and the President that they have that knowledge.”
"NGA Maven is now available to all services and all combatant commands. There are 20,000 active users through more than 35 service and combat and command tools across three security domains," said NGA Director Vice Adm. Frank Whitworth.
Do more with less: streamline workflows, reduce duplication, invest upfront to save long-term.
The Sequoia ID/IQ contract will support the Maven Program, "which applies AI capabilities to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance sensors and platforms, primarily through computer vision," the NGA announcement said.
Data labeling is key to enabling the AI model to properly separate friend from foe, explained Vice Adm. Frank Whitworth.
Evolved from JAIC’s controversial Project Maven, Palantir’s Maven Smart System pulls together data from satellites, social media and other disparate sources for military commanders and planners.
Breaking Defense reporting about what the Defense Department wants out of its next generation cloud capability, DIA artificial intelligence strategy, NGA's Project Maven updates and more can be found in our latest eBook.
Breaking Defense Europe will launch May 4 with Tim Martin and Elisabeth Gosselin-Malo as co-editors.
"We’ve hit our milestones and you’ll start seeing as we look to the next few months a lot more activity from the Maven office in terms of contracting," Rachel Martin said.
“The bottom line here is that under NGA’s watch, Maven… has made some of its most significant technological strides and has already contributed to some of our nation’s most important operations,” Vice Adm. Frank Whitworth said.
Project Maven, the Pentagon's flagship AI program established in 2017, was shifted to the NGA last year.
"There are some other capabilities that I can't talk about here, but we will look at how to build out the same type of approach Maven used for these non-GEOINT type use cases," Deputy CDAO Margaret Palmieri said.
The Sixth Domain is not defined by geography. It’s a new kind of conflict in which autonomy and networked systems allow thousand-dollar consumer electronics to destroy multi-million-dollar conventional weapons systems.
Vice Adm. Robert Sharp, outgoing NGA director, said the fusion of Project Maven with his agency's current AI efforts will "give us our millions of eyes to see the unseen."
Google's addition is somewhat surprising since, in recent years, the company has pulled away from DoD work due to internal pressure on executives from its workforce. The apparent omission of IBM is also notable.
Combatant commanders, have been clamoring for real-world access fast to new software tools.
"We need to move away from these single point demos to true scalability," Jean-Charles Ledé, AFRL's advisor on autonomy tech, says.