WASHINGTON \u2014 A few years ago, Marines had to patrol a remote side of Air Station Miramar in Southern California to watch for teens sneaking in to party in old buildings or for cyclists who wandered onto the property.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today, that area still doesn\u2019t have cell phone service, and unexploded ordinances remain from its time as a World War II mortar range, according Lt. Col. Gregory Rooker, provost marshal at MCAS Miramar in San Diego. That combination makes the property especially dangerous for outsiders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But now, the base has installed an autonomous surveillance system to detect trespassers, a platform that may have a future in defending installations in wars. The technology uses artificial intelligence to crunch surveillance data to recognize possible threats, eliminating the time the Marines spent on regular in-person patrols \u2014 assignments that sometimes lasted for days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt was a heavy manpower intensive operation,\u201d Rooker said in an interview with C4ISRNET. \u201cBut at the time we didn\u2019t have anything better. So when we heard about this system \u2026 we thought it would be a great asset for us to put out there and use so that we could scale back and reallocate that manpower to some other things that needed to be looked at.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The autonomous system from Anduril works like this: The company\u2019s towers overlook remote areas of MCAS Miramar and feed information to the company\u2019s Lattice AI system that identifies and classifies threats. The system notifies security personnel of suspicious activity, and the Marines can be sent to investigate. Some other bases that use the Anduril system deploy a drone to investigate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an easy system to use. It\u2019s on the computer, it can kind of run in the background, and when it alerts to something, it sends a \u2018ding,\u2019\u201d said Gunnery Sgt. Melissa Polich, the administrative chief in the provost marshal\u2019s office. \u201cSo then it\u2019ll pop up, and the monitor will go to whatever it is.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of course, MCAS Miramar is not a forward operating base in a warzone. But Anduril CEO Brian Schimpf said some forward bases use the tool, though he declined to say where in an interview with C4ISRNET.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The company has done some initial pilots with the Air Force and had \u201cearly conversations\u201d with the other services. To deploy the technology in combat areas, Schimpf said Anduril is developing more mobile systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOne of the biggest areas we\u2019re working on is just how do I make this so that you can throw it on a trailer, drive it out, set it up, and then you instantly have a secure perimeter? You know, potentially combining that with a UAV doing patrol,\u201d Schimpf said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Declan Lynch, head of force protection and installation base defense at Anduril, said that the company is also focused on reducing the size, weight and power requirement to meet the Marines\u2019 expeditionary needs. To prepare for near-peer fights of the future, the company is trying to reduce the electronic signature so adversaries can\u2019t locate operational units in the field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the base, the security system frees up Marines to patrol busier areas and protects civilians who disregard federal property warning signs, sometimes disrupting training exercises. If a local entered the base and was hurt, the lack of cell coverage would make calling for help nearly impossible \u2014 a scenario that happened to a cyclist who crashed at Miramar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And Marines still turn up mortar testing remnants, Rooker said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey could never clear it 100%. Every so often we do find something out there,\u201d he said. \u201cSo that\u2019s another hazard that\u2019s out there that someone could run across.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the future, Schimpf said Anduril wants to move beyond solely counter-intrusion capabilities for its AI system as the military prepares for joint war fighting. The company is expanding Lattice\u2019s capabilities for air and sea operations and is adding small motion sensor-like devices that can be deployed in blind spots in the field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s kind of like a microcosm for how the broader JADC2 space overall is going to operate, which is much more about how do I have kind of this comprehensive connected systems, not these massively disaggregated things,\u201d Schimpf said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The technology at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar uses artificial intelligence to crunch surveillance data to recognize possible threats, eliminating the time the Marines spent on regular in-person patrols<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":54992,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":36,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":{"6":{"categories":["daily-news-roundup","newsletters"],"primary_category":"daily-news-roundup"},"7":{"categories":["daily-news-roundup","newsletters"],"primary_category":"daily-news-roundup"},"10":{"categories":["industry","daily-news-roundup","newsletters"],"primary_category":"industry"}}},"categories":[7,8,106,29,13,36,38,32],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3252],"class_list":["post-17628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-battlefield-tech","category-c2-comms","category-daily-brief","category-home","category-industry","category-it-networks-battlefield-tech","category-mobility","category-newsletters"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"XDAPK4PYLZFF5PRWHFT2IWQTOA","arc_canonical_url":"\/battlefield-tech\/it-networks\/2021\/02\/16\/ai-for-security-autonomous-surveillance-at-marine-base-has-warzone-potential\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n