Speaking Friday to members of Russia’s Security Council, Putin noted that “the challenges in this area have become even more pressing, serious and extensive.”

He charged that “an outright aggression has been unleashed against Russia, a war has been waged in the information space.”

Putin added that “the cyber-aggression against us, the same as the attack on Russia by sanctions in general, has failed.”

He ordered officials to “perfect and enhance the mechanisms of ensuring information security at critically important industrial facilities which have a direct bearing on our country’s defensive capability, and the stable development of the economic and social spheres.”

Also on Friday, Ukrainian authorities said their troops repelled a Russian attack in the east, as Moscow struggled to gain ground in the region that is now the focus of the war even while intensifying its campaign there.

Battered by their monthslong siege of the vital port city of Mariupol, Russian troops need time to regroup, Britain’s Defense Ministry said in an assessment — but they may not get it. The city and the steelworks where Ukrainian fighters have held off the Russian assault for weeks have become a symbol of Ukraine’s stoic resistance and surprising ability to stymie a much larger force.

On Friday, a number of soldiers — just how many was unclear — were still holed up in the Azovstal plant, following the surrender of more than 1,900 soldiers in recent days, according to the latest figure from Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. Efforts to remove the dead from the battle were also underway, according to Denis Prokopenko, the commander of the Azov Regiment, which is among those defending the plant.

Speaking of the “fallen heroes,” Prokopenko said: “I hope soon relatives and the whole of Ukraine will be able to bury the fighters with honors.” The Red Cross, meanwhile, said it has visited prisoners of war from all sides of the conflict, amid international fears that the Russians may take reprisals against Ukrainian prisoners.

With the battle for the steel plant winding down, Russia has already started pulling troops back from the site. But the British assessment indicated Russian commanders are under pressure to quickly send them elsewhere in the Donbas.

“That means that Russia will probably redistribute their forces swiftly without adequate preparation, which risks further force attrition,” the ministry said.

The Donbas is now President Vladimir Putin’s focus after his troops failed to take the capital in the early days of the war. Pro-Moscow separatists have fought Ukrainian forces for eight years in the region and held a considerable swath of it before Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion.

But the effort to take more territory there has been slow-going. In a sign of Russia’s frustration with the war, some senior commanders have been fired in recent weeks, the British Defense Ministry said.

It was all part of the Army’s XVIII Airborne Corp artificial intelligence-enabled live-fire target identification exercise on Thursday that used nearly 20 platforms and units from each of the other branches.

The event was the fourth of its kind for the Scarlet Dragon program, which began in 2020.

The Corps, assisted by elements of the Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, worked with various platforms in all domains. But a key ingredient was the National Geospatial-Intelligence Center, which provided satellite imagery for software to sift through and find targets.

Due to safety concerns with weather conditions, no steel struck any targets, but Col. Melissa Solsbury, chief data officer for the Corps, told Army Times that the event “achieved machine to machine learning at scale.”

“Since our first event we have been able to reduce the speed of moving data from sensor to shooter by nearly 50 percent,” she said.

Officials did not disclose the time necessary to move data from sensor to shooter.

And maritime assets in the exercise were used for intelligence, allowing leaders to test maritime asset integration with AI algorithms on synthetic aperture radar systems, she said.

Which, essentially, gave them a chance to test out aspects of their system in inclement weather, Solsbury said.

Had steel hit target, two GBU-32 bombs would have hit on a 10-digit grid after having scanned across a plethora of potential targets along the mid-Atlantic seaboard.

The first test-fire in December 2020 proved AI-enabled fires set up. The second, in March, worked Multi-Domain Operations tasks. While the third, in June, doubled the number of units and platforms being used and tested the Combined Joint All Domain Command and Control interoperability.

This most recent event worked through Joint All-Domain Operations with the addition of deep troves of an intelligence agency’s data.

Scarlet Dragon is using existing platforms and networks to harness that imagery so that leaders can use it to identify certain targets in a vast array of options. The software for the project comes out of the Pentagon’s Project Maven, an algorithm-based tool used to quickly process drone video for target ID and selection which started in 2017.

Thursday’s iteration worked through all steps to drop two GBU-32 bonds on range targets after scanning possible targets in a 7,200 square kilometer area stretching from Virginia to Georgia, officials said.

“The Scarlet Dragon series is designed to increase our joint warfighting capability and how AI-augmented decision making significantly increases the scale, speed and accuracy of our targeting process,” Lt. Gen. Erik Kurilla, XVIII Airborne Corps commander told Army Times.

The Corps is using today’s technology to increase that capability with other services, Kurilla said.

Some of that tech included fires support elements from II Marine Expeditionary Force, F-35s from 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, A-10s out of 75th Fighter Squadron, F-15s with the Air Force’s 4th Fighter Wing, an E-2 C/D Hawkeye and F-18 from the Navy’s Carrier Air Wing Three, Army 18th Field Artillery Brigade with High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, rotary wing aircraft, command and control and other assets.

“It’s about seeking ways to achieve decision advantage in large-scale combat operations,” he said. “It’s about learning, as an organization, how to employ data as a strategic asset in the joint fight.”

What AI can do is “accelerate the targeting space,” said Col. Joe O’Callaghan, the XVIII Airborne Corps Fire Support Officer.

Which means helping soldiers make better decisions faster.

“We fully understand that in any future conflict it’s going to be the best shooter for the target or the least worst-case shooter,” O’Callaghan said. “AI is allowing us to rapidly understand an environment and take advantage of it.”

The work being done by Scarlet Dragon is expected to feed into the larger Project Convergence effort by the Army, tying together all of these joint systems, shooters and sensors for a unified battlefield management system.

Undergirding much of the work are efforts that may go unseen during an event such as a large-scale live fire.

That’s creating data-literate soldiers who know not only how to run the machinery and execute code, but to understand the importance of data and how it shapes the fight.

Solsbury told Army Times that effort is Project Ridgeway and it is how the Corps is tackling that concern.

Ridgeway is targeting staff officers and NCOs to upgrade their data skills, in part through a six-week program with Joint Special Operations Command, she said.

The main “data gatekeepers” in the formation are the brigade staff officers, she said.

“By that, I mean that they horde data and do not understand where and how to ensure their data contributes to a body (an aggregate) or insight,” she said. “Our staff officers do not appreciate the power in aggregating, consolidating, and harnessing data—they don’t value or view data as a strategic asset.”

Ridgeway is how officials hope to solve that problem.

Another part of Ridgeway is to help the XVIII Airborne Corps find practical ways to apply emerging technology as they figure out how best to put AI into the fight, she said.

The next live fire is scheduled for early 2022 and will focus on data-centric warfare, using all joing partners in all domains and achieving information advantage over adversaries, officials said.

Marines will be armed to the teeth with sensors and potentially missiles capable of sinking enemy ships. That’s the vision of Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger that was formulated specifically to faceoff against China in the Pacific Ocean, but Marine leaders say can it be used in any other potential theater of war.

While the Corps is still fine-tuning certain aspects of dispersed operations, like training and equipment, one major questions remains.

How will the Marine Corps provide logistical support to dispersed Marines in a hostile environment?

Marine Lt. Gen. Eric Smith the current commander of the Marine Corps Combat Development Command and the deputy commandant for combat development and integration has one possible solution: Foraging.

“The first thing about being able to handle a logistics enterprise support you in a distributed environment is need less,” Smith said Tuesday at the 2021 Sea-Air-Space conference.

“Why would I move water to the South China Sea? That’s insane, why would I move food? It’s called expeditionary foraging,” he added.

In the future Marines may be tasked with getting their own food, processing their own water and potentially even buying replacement parts for their equipment while dispersed on small far-flung expeditionary advanced bases, the general said.

In December 2019, Marines with the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit put some of those foraging concepts to the test while training on the island of Tinian, Northern Mariana Islands.

During the exercise Marines with Combat Logistics Battalion 31, were tasked with maintaining logistical support of the MEU using “21st century foraging,” Marine Corps Times previously reported.

Smith believes future Marines will deploy with small water purifiers, which can be carried by a single Marine, and wearable power generators.

“The only thing I wish to move is lethality,” Smith said.

“Fuel, additives you don’t have to bring everything.”

The information made available by accounts on certain apps “is a privacy and security concern,” according to a Marine administrative message signed July 28.

Marines also are prohibited from having gaming, dating or gambling platforms on their government-furnished mobile devices, per the memo.

“Users are strongly encouraged to delete any apps from their personal devices that the US Government has deemed a risk,” the memo urged.

Lists of authorized and unauthorized apps will be made available to Marines, and prohibited applications will be automatically removed from devices by a management server.

Banning apps

Banning applications is not a new cybersecurity measure in the military.

Earlier in 2020 each branch of the military banned service members from installing the Chinese-made video sharing app TikTok on government-issued phones over fear that the app was being used by the Chinese government to collect data and spy on American citizens.

Cryptocurrency, favored by cybercriminals for its anonymity and ease of use, can be obtained through the resource-intensive process of mining. Because of the high processing power and energy costs associated with such activities, mining popular coins like Bitcoin can be unprofitable without a specialized setup.

Less popular coins with smaller networks, however, can be more easily mined on individual devices, cybersecurity expert Randi Eitzman told Marine Corps Times.

For this reason, criminals often “cryptojack” computers, infecting them with malware that will install mining applications and use a victim’s electricity and processing power for profit, FireEye reported.

Even if a service member were to use cryptocurrency mining applications on a government device without malware, they would still be using government resources for their personal gain.

“While some may try to argue cryptocurrency mining is a sort of ‘victimless crime,’ it is important to realize that it is theft,” Eitzman said.

Other branches of service have their own guidelines and lists of authorized apps, though none specifically outlaw the act of cryptocurrency mining.

The Army and Air Force use the Defense Information Systems Agency’s regulations.

“Users are only authorized to download approved applications, and users who download unapproved or third-party apps may result in the device being flagged,” a DISA spokesperson told Marine Corps Times.

DISA did not comment on what types of apps are or are not approved.

The Navy’s acceptable use policy limits personal use of government technology, prohibiting activities inappropriate for the workplace but allowing some personal use like posting items for sale on a forum, similar to a workplace bulletin board.

The policy prohibits any use of Navy technology that would reflect poorly on the Department of the Navy, said Joe Gradisher, spokesman for the office of the deputy chief of naval operations for information warfare.

“Using the AUP as the guide then, cryptocurrency mining would not be a permissible activity on GFE (government furnished equipment),” said Gradisher.

The Marine Corps was not able to immediately respond to requests for comment or about whether or not there have been cases of Marines mining cryptocurrency on their government mobile devices.