From an original field of 29 problems, 8 teams and 8 problems that have been selected for the Hacking for Defense 2020 cohort. These problems have come from a wide variety of branches of the U.S. Department of Defense.
2020 Problems
#1 Eat, Sleep, Fly, Repeat
#2 Hide My Signature
#3 Identification of Protected Civilian Facilities
#4 Surfacing Exploitable Data
#5 How Can U.S. Government Best Accelerate Autonomous Driving
#6 Gone Fishing: Tracking China's Flotilla in the South China Sea
#7 Improve Election Security and Safeguard the Information Environment
#8 Stretchable Batteries
#2 Hide My Signature
#3 Identification of Protected Civilian Facilities
#4 Surfacing Exploitable Data
#5 How Can U.S. Government Best Accelerate Autonomous Driving
#6 Gone Fishing: Tracking China's Flotilla in the South China Sea
#7 Improve Election Security and Safeguard the Information Environment
#8 Stretchable Batteries
#1 Eat, Sleep, Fly, Repeat
CHALLENGE
Squadron schedulers need an interface that integrates air crews’ training and personal schedules
with priority operations in order to effectively allocate available personnel.
BACKGROUND
Air Mobility Command (AMC) operational flying units conduct missions on a 24-hour basis
resulting in dynamic schedules for personnel who balance training, operations, and personal time
while prioritizing the mission. This presents a unique challenge to allocate personnel to
operations at odd hours while they fulfill their other duties. When scheduling flight operations,
Higher Headquarters (HHQ) uses the Global Decision Support System Software (GDSS), which
tracks an Air Wing’s manpower availability. However, GDSS is ineffective at capturing time
allocations at the squadron level, which includes mandatory training and personal time. These
priorities are non-negotiable to maintain skilled and rested pilots; thus, the burden falls upon
squadron schedulers to juggle these dynamic schedules for roughly 150-200 people. GDSS is
user friendly for the HHQ schedulers to plan and task squadrons for operations, but it is not
friendly to the squadron schedulers and squadron training shops to allocate manpower locally.
Squadron schedulers currently resort to whiteboards, Excel spreadsheets, and a roster to allocate
personnel into a visual forecast of the squadron’s schedule. This is an incredibly brittle,
inefficient, and error-prone system that can lead to dangerous consequences with under-rested air
crews. If squadron schedulers had the ability to look across individual schedules alongside
mission priorities, they would be much more able to effectively task air crews. Furthermore, this
functionality can boost morale as air crews optimize their schedules with one another to better
balance their operational tempo.
OPERATIONAL CONSTRAINTS
While factoring training and personal time will grant transparency to the true availability
of air crews is helpful for HHQ, manpower needs for missions will not change.
It is possible other Air Force Bases may have more robust methods of scheduling
squadrons, interviewing other Air Force Base Squadron Schedulers is encouraged.
PROBLEM SPONSOR: U.S. Air Force
#2 Hide My Signature
CHALLENGE
Unmanned systems pilots need to eliminate unmanned air and ground systems’ electromagnetic spectrum (EMS) signature in order to protect the mission and the locations of the force.
BACKGROUND
Unmanned air and ground systems are used on the battlefield to identify obstacles, detect the enemy, etc. Often, these systems must gather environmental and positional data in GPS-denied environments. To do so, most autonomous navigation systems emit signals on the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS) and use the response to increase their environmental awareness. However, broadcasted signals may be used to identify and target both the system and the pilot’s location.
There are unmanned systems that do not broadcast an EMS signal to determine their relative position – instead, they use two cameras to correlate the distance between themselves and objects in their sight. However, these unmanned systems are costly, and the cameras place a high processing power burden on the overall system.
OPERATIONAL CONSTRAINTS
• Solution must be operational in GPS-denied environments
PROBLEM SPONSOR : Joint Artificial Intelligence Center
#3 Identification of Protected Civilian Facilities
SHORT-TERM CHALLENGE
Targeting analysts need to develop effective tools to aid in the identification of protected sites in order to preserve them during military operations.
BACKGROUND
The Department of Defense develops and maintains “No Strike Lists” in accordance with international and domestic laws, as well as the rules of engagement governing engagement planning in a given area of operations. “No Strike Lists” include protected civilian facilities, such as hospitals, schools, as well as religious and cultural sites.
However, “No Strike Lists” run the risk of quickly becoming incomplete or outdated. In wartime, buildings are often converted temporarily into hospitals or other protected facilities. “No Strike Lists” may not be updated frequently enough to reflect current infrastructure uses in the area.
Targeting analysts must manually review an enormous amount of satellite imagery and situational reporting to confirm whether a site holds strategic military value or is protected. However, targeting analysts are overburdened by the vast amount of imagery that must be analyzed in a limited time in order to identify and categorize a facility. In addition, publicly available information (e.g. social media, OpenStreetMaps, Wikimapia, etc.) can provide an untapped data source to improve identification. Therefore, targeting analysts need more effective tools to help identify and preserve protected sites during military operations.
OPERATIONAL CONSTRAINTS
• Identification and classification must reduce targeting analyst cognitive burden.
• Complete traceability is required to enable analysts to assess confidence in information collected and inferences drawn.
PROBLEM SPONSOR: Joint Artificial Intelligence Center
#4 Surfacing Exploitable Data
CHALLENGE
Operators need an automated way to review a larger quantity of collected imaging data in order to surface actionable intelligence to leadership.
BACKGROUND
The Distributed Common Ground/Surface System (DCGS) collects data from multiple Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) platforms. This includes Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) such as the RQ-4, as well as the non-UAV U2. Once the data is collected, DCGS operators parse through the data manually, reviewing each individual piece of data and pulling it up in the system. This exploitation process allows them to determine which data is actionable intelligence based on a set of previously established parameters.
However, with the increase in the quantity of data points collected, now numbering in the millions, most of the data is never looked at due to time constraints. For this reason, DCGS operators need a way to automate the exploitation of ISR imaging in order to increase the quantity of data that can be reviewed, therefore increasing process efficiency and the ability to surface actionable intelligence to leadership.
OPERATIONAL CONSTRAINTS
- Affects all multi-source imagery (ground, air, and space)
- Students will liaison with two DCGS centers, located at Langley Air Force Base and the Beale Air Force Base
PROBLEM SPONSOR: U.S. Air Force
#5 How Can U.S. Government Best Accelerate Autonomous Driving
CHALLENGE
In-Q-Tel needs a method of utilizing existing institutional knowledge in order to improve recommendations to relevant partners in the US Government (USG).
BACKGROUND
Members of the In-Q-Tel investment team have accrued highly technical and specialized knowledge of the autonomous vehicle (AV) industry. This accumulated expertise is primarily used internally for the evaluation of players in the AV space and understanding the state of the industry as a whole. In-Q-Tel regularly provides updates on the evolution and current state of the industry, and is often asked by for recommendations from partners in the US Government (USG). Given the substantial knowledge-base In-Q-Tel has garnered about AV, it is difficult to determine how best to compile this information into useful, actionable, and unbiased recommendations for USG. Therefore, In-Q-Tel needs to know which set of government tools best advance US Market Share, acceleration, and actual & perceived safety of autonomous vehicles, then package and deliver these recommendations to relevant partners in the US Government (USG).
To best serve its government partners, In-Q-Tel asks the following questions:
• Based on In-Q-Tel's expertise, what should those recommendations to USG be (e.g. initiatives, regulation, test regions) regarding AV?
• How should In-Q-Tel package and deliver those recommendations to USG (e.g. policy guidelines, proposals, incentives)?
OPERATIONAL CONSTRAINTS
• Must be within existing legal and policy parameters
PROBLEM SPONSOR: In-Q-Tel
#6 Gone Fishing: Tracking China's Flotilla in the South China Sea
CHALLENGE
The Special Operations Command Pacific and Pacific Fleet Maritime Working Group need a tool that creates a “Maritime Neighborhood Watch to source maritime positional data on Chinese ships illegally operating in partner territory in order to more quickly inform maritime law enforcement and local populations.
BACKGROUND
Chinese fishing fleets, with the support of the People Liberation’s Army (PLA) Navy and Maritime Militia, frequently harass non-Chinese fisherman and encroach on non-Chinese territory to bolster their contentious territorial claims. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) currently lack the capability to effectively deter and respond to these incursions. These coordinated and centralized operations to fish the waters outside China’s territory aim to create de-facto Chinese control of the resources (i.e. oil, gas, fish) within the ASEAN member states’ respective territorial waters.
In current scenarios, fisherman who come into direct physical contact with aggressive and sometimes violent Chinese militiamen report it to their nation’s Coast Guard. However, the Chinese have an integrated satellite and GPS network called “BeiDou” to coordinate and enable their civilian auxiliaries to pass information and positional data on vessels they encounter, oftentimes reacting in real-time to avoid ASEAN maritime law enforcement vessels. Thus, with their current sensing abilities and reaction time, ASEAN maritime law enforcement is unable to react in time to catch perpetrators in the act.
The Special Operations Command Pacific and Pacific Fleet Maritime Working Group share intelligence with partner nations when Chinese vessels encroach on partner territory. Improving the team’s ability to monitor Chinese vessel movements, ideally in real time by capitalizing on local fisherman’s sightings, will enable ASEAN maritime law enforcement to respond in time to Chinese aggression.
OPERATIONAL CONSTRAINTS
Student team should strongly consider interviewing local fisherman to validate tools they would use to gather situational awareness data (NGO, Spirit of America, has agreed to help resource this field phase)
PROBLEM SPONSOR: United States Special Operations Command Pacific (SOCPAC)
#7 Improve Election Security and Safeguard the Information Environment
CHALLENGE
US allies and partner nations need a tool to help improve the resiliency of their Information Environment and specifically to protect the integrity of their political elections from outside interference. At present we have no available tools that we can share with them.
BACKGROUND
As AI-powered technologies create more realistic, synthetic data, our adversary's ability to capture and redirect the information environment has been increasing faster than the DoD's ability to understand the players, campaigns and impact, let alone counter the malicious nature of disinformation in warfare.
OPERATIONAL CONSTRAINTS
The system should equip DoD with the ability to identify, attribute, map, and respond to foreign disinformation campaigns and achieve tactical and strategic dominance in the information environment.
PROBLEM SPONSOR: United States Special Operations Command Pacific (SOCPAC)
#8 Stretchable Batteries
CHALLENGE
Isolated personnel (IP) need an integrated power source on their person in order to ensure access to power for necessary electronics used to increase their probability of being rescued.
BACKGROUND
The most significant initial challenge faced by personnel recovery (PR) forces is to locate and communicate with isolated personnel (IPs) effectively. This data transmission is critical in supporting the IP and determining if the rescue team can perform an A-TLC (authenticate their identity, determine any threats, confirm their location, and assess their condition) analysis. IPs field numerous disparate devices to provide these functions, varying based on user requirements (soldiers have team radios, aviators carry beacons and signal devices in ejection seat-kits, etc.). A standard pilot carries a radio, beacon, and strobe. Each operates on a different power source and will quickly run dry (or lose all power) during use. To ensure longevity, they must carry multiple spare batteries, which add significant weight and physical burden for an evader. Further, postincident access to ejection kits and survival vests (commonly found within aircraft) cannot be guaranteed for isolated personnel (IP) and have limited storage capacity for the long list of survival items.
IP’s frequently need to use evasion during the period of isolation. Therefore, all equipment must maintain a very effective size, weight, and power (SWaP) tradeoff by giving the IP an “organic,” naturally integrated ability to meet their power demands. IPs must sustain power demands over a time in which there will be limited to no opportunities for resupply. Therefore, isolated personnel (IP) need an integrated power source on their person in order to power necessary electronics used to increase their probability of being rescued.
OPERATIONAL CONSTRAINTS
- Optimal ratio in SWaP reduction and easy scalability (reduction of power requirement equates to quick reduction in scale/form factor with little major engineering).
- Maximum potential for integration (think wearables and soldier “kit”)