JobsOhio’s pursuit of defense partnerships: Weapons and Warfare

[RYAN ROBERTSON]

“The most valuable commodity I know of is information. Wouldn’t you agree?”

YES, MR. GEKKO I WOULD. AND IT’S AS TRUE NOW AS IT WAS IN THE 1987 CLASSIC ‘WALL STREET’.

BUT HOW DO YOU KNOW YOU HAVE ALL OF THE INFORMATION AVAILABLE TO YOU?

HOW DO YOU MAKE SURE YOU’RE NOT MISSING A CRUCIAL PIECE THAT COULD AFFECT WHATEVER IT IS YOU’RE TRYING TO DO?

THAT’S A PROBLEM THE SUBJECT OF OUR WEAPON OF THE WEEK IS TRYING TO SOLVE.

BASED IN MCLEAN, VIRGINIA, RAFT TOUTS ITSELF AS A LEADING DEFENSE TECHNOLOGY COMPANY DEDICATED TO EMPOWERING THE U.S. MILITARY AND GOVERNMENT AGENCIES WITH CUTTING-EDGE A-I, MACHINE LEARNING AND DATA SOLUTIONS.

TO THAT END, IN MARCH THEY RELEASED A NEW PLATFORM CALLED AIMS, SHORT FOR A-I MISSION SYSTEM.

[SHUBHI MISHRA]

“Focused on solving a lot of the decision making problems for different sorts of user personas, whether that be acquisition professionals, whether that be war fighters, whether that be policy makers or military decision makers, focus is on helping them aid their decision making and getting them more accurate and faster decisions”

[RYAN ROBERTSON]

ONE OF THE BENEFITS OF THE U.S. HAVING A MILITARY LARGE ENOUGH TO COLLECT AND COMPILE TROVES OF INFORMATION, IS ALSO A WEAKNESS IF EVEN SOME OF THAT DATA FAILS TO GET TO THE PEOPLE THAT NEED IT. RAFT’S FOUNDER AND CEO, SHUBHI MISHRA, SAYS THAT’S A PROBLEM AIMS IS DESIGNED TO TACKLE.

[SHUBHI MISHRA]

“Unlike a lot of the large language models that are trained on the internet, trained on all the data that exist outside in military, our platform is specifically trained on the doctrine, the data that makes these services possible. So it is not trained on the stuff that does not matter to a service. It’s trained on what the pilots, the army, soldiers, and all of the different services use to train their people. And that’s what makes it very, very special.”

[RYAN ROBERTSON]

MISHRA SAYS THIS NEW PLATFORM CAN NOT ONLY BRIDGE LEGACY SYSTEMS WITH NEWLY DEVELOPED SYSTEMS, BUT IT CAN ALSO DO IT AT SPEED, AT COST, AND AT SCALE.

[SHUBHI MISHRA]

“For both those problem sets, you require something that attaches to those legacy or new systems and pulls that information together such that a user on the other end can make fast decisions, quick decisions. So going back to the question you asked, how does how does this get them faster, quicker, better information. It is just that. It is the conduit that transforms the information they have into the information they need.”

[RYAN ROBERTSON]

AS FOR HOW IT’S WORKING IN THE REAL WORLD, MISHRA SAYS BEFORE AIMS’ PUBLIC LAUNCH, RAFT WAS WORKING WITH PEOPLE HANDLING ACQUISITION AND CONTRACTING.

[SHUBHI MISHRA]

“That’s a super hard job. And so, how can that make them how can this system make them faster and more accurate, and we, what we have tested out with them, has increased their accuracy by 45% and made them faster by 30x percent.”

[RYAN ROBERTSON]

SO WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?

ESSENTIALLY, AIMS AGGREGATES DATA COLLECTED BY PEOPLE ALL OVER THE WORLD AND GETS IT TO THE PEOPLE WHO NEED IT MOST.

[SHUBHI MISHRA]

“So they always had some way to get to the stuff. It took them months to get to it. Lot of phone calls. They have the data, but they don’t have the tools to make sense of the data. So what you have right now is the tool they have in front of them, where they can ask questions, as opposed to learning the system. So we have made it very intuitive using just you know, how you use a ChatGPT, how you use any large language model, ask a question, it’ll give you the answer. And the beauty is trained on their data, and it is trained on their doctrine.

[RYAN ROBERTSON]

WHILE MISHRA WASN’T YET ABLE TO TALK ABOUT ANY SPECIFIC DEALS IN PLACE, SHE DID SAY A LOT OF INTEREST IS BEING GENERATED, WITH POTENTIAL USERS LOOKING TO GET AIMS ONBOARDED SOON.

[RYAN ROBERTSON]

TIME TO HOP INTO THE WAYBACK MACHINE FOR THIS WEEK’S COMMS CHECK, WE’RE GOING ALL THE WAY BACK TO EPISODE THREE. THAT’S RIGHT, 62 EPISODES AGO WE TOLD YOU ABOUT THE ARMY’S DECISION TO BUY HUNDREDS OF RAYTHEON’S BLOCK TWO AND BLOCK THREE OF THE COYOTE COUNTER DRONE VARIANTS.

NOW A NEW VARIANT IS MAKING SOME NEWS.

RECENTLY, RAYTHEON WAS ABLE TO LAUNCH THE NEW COYOTE L-E S-R UNCREWED AERIAL SYSTEM FROM A HELICOPTER. THE COYOTE FAMILY INCLUDES A RAIL-LAUNCHED MISSILE VARIANT DESIGNED FOR HIGH-SPEED COUNTER-UAS AND LAUNCHED EFFECTS OPERATIONS. THIS NEW VARIANT IS PART OF A SERIES THAT CAN BE DEPLOYED FROM THE AIR, GROUND, OR SEA, MAKING IT SUPER VERSATILE FOR DIFFERENT MISSIONS.

WHILE IMAGES ARE SCARCE, WE DO KNOW RAYTHEON SHOWCASED THE COYOTE’S LE CAPABILITIES AT THE US ARMY’S EXPERIMENTAL DEMONSTRATION GATEWAY EVENT. WE ALSO LEARNED THAT WITH COLLABORATIVE AUTONOMY, IT CAN CONNECT WITH NEARBY SENSORS TO ADAPT ITS TACTICS IN REAL-TIME. MORE TESTS ARE SCHEDULED THROUGH 2025.

[RYAN ROBERTSON]

ALRIGHT FOLKS…THAT’S GOING TO DO IT FOR US THIS WEEK ON WEAPONS AND WARFARE. IN THE WEEKS AND MONTHS AHEAD WE’LL BE ROLLING OUT ALL THE STORIES AND CONTENT WE GATHERED HERE AT THE NAVY LEAGUE’S SEA, AIR, AND SPACE EXPO–SO BE SURE TO LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE TO ALL OF OUR SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNELS…AND DOWNLOAD THE STRAIGHT ARROW NEWS APP TODAY. 

FOR MY WRAP THIS WEEK–I’M GOING TO TALK ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF CLARITY–ESPECIALLY CLARITY FROM LEADERSHIP. 

OVER THE PAST FEW MONTHS–PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP AND HIS STAFF HAVE BEEN ON A MISSION TO END WOKENESS IN AMERICA–AND STOP ANY PROGRAM THAT CAN BE ASSOCIATED WITH DEI IN ANY WAY. 

IN THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE AND THE MILITARY AS A WHOLE–SECDEF PETE HEGSETH ORDERED THE REMOVAL OF ALL NEWS ARTICLES, PHOTOS, AND VIDEOS PROMOTING DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION…

BUT THERE WAS LITTLE CLARITY GIVEN ON WHAT CONSTITUTES A DEI ARTICLE, PHOTO, OR VIDEO–AND IN THE ABSENCE OF DIRECTION–FAR TOO MUCH WAS SACRIFICED ON THE ALTER OF ENDING WOKENESS. 

BOOKS THAT FEATURED WOMEN WHO FOUGHT DURING THE CIVIL WAR WERE REMOVED FROM LIBRARIES… THE AIR FORCE BRIEFLY PULLED LESSONS ON THE TUSKEGEE AIRMEN IN ITS BOOT CAMP….THE U-S NAVAL ACADEMY TOOK DOWN A DISPLAY COMMEMORATING THE FIRST JEWISH WOMEN TO GRADUATE FROM THE INSTITUTION. 

COUNTLESS HOURS WERE SPENT COMBING THROUGH EVERY SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNT RUN BY THE DOD OR MILITARY–AND THERE ARE A LOT OF THEM–

MAKING SURE ANY PICTURE OR POST FEATURING ANYTHING THAT COULD BE DEEMED A VIOLATION OF THE DEI ORDER WAS REMOVED–THE PENTAGON EVEN TOOK DOWN A WEBSITE HONORING JACKIE ROBINSON–AN ICONIC SPORTS HERO TO MILLIONS AND AN ARMY VETERAN. 

A PORTION OF THE REMOVED CONTENT WAS RESTORED….HEGSETH SAID SOME OF IT WAS REMOVED BY ACCIDENT….SOME OF IT OUT OF WHAT HE CALLED ‘MALICIOUS COMPLIANCE.’

BUT IF THERE WAS MORE CLARITY IN THE INITIAL ORDER–PERHAPS SOME OF THOSE ACCIDENTS AND CASES OF MALICIOUS COMPLIANCE COULD HAVE BEEN AVOIDED. 

IN THE ABSENCE OF CLEAR ORDERS–TROOPS AND APPARENTLY A-I PROGRAMS RUN AMOK DEFAULTED LARGELY TO WHAT THEY KNEW WOULD BE CONSIDERED SAFE CONTENT–ANYTHING THAT FEATURED WHITE MEN. 

BUT GUESS WHAT–THERE ARE A LOT MORE PEOPLE IN THE MILITARY THAN WHITE MEN…AND THE HISTORY ABOUT HOW WE GOT HERE MAKES US BETTER FOR KNOWING IT. 

IN A VIDEO POSTED TO X–PENTAGON SPOKESMAN SEAN PARNELL SAID HISTORY IS NOT DEI… SO, WHAT IS? WHAT EXACTLY CONSTITUTES A DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION-RELATED POST, ARTICLE, THOUGHT OR IDEA? 

IT WOULD SEEM TO ME..IF WE CAN’T CLEARLY DEFINE IT–WE SHOULDN’T BE GIVING ORDERS TO SCRUB IT. 

FOR SENIOR PRODUCER BRETT BAKER, VIDEO EDITOR BRIAN SPENCER, AND GRAPHICS ARTIST DAKOTA PITEO–I’M RYAN ROBERTSON WITH STRAIGHT ARROW NEWS, SIGNING OFF.