Airbus Defence and Space (formerly Cassidian) - Experts & Thought Leaders

2022 Airbus helped ensure the safe hosting of the FIFA World Cup 2022 as the communication technology partner of the global sporting event which took place in Qatar.   Airbus deployed its mission-critical communication and collaboration solutions for use by security, public safety, and emergency personnel assigned to different key points and areas in, and around the stadiums and the metro. Multimedia-enriched features The resilient Tetra network, the Tactilon Dabat terminals, as well as more than 20,000 reliable radios, and Tactilon Agnet were used to secure various areas, and guarantee the safety of the international football teams and spectators. Security personnel and first responders, including 5,000 policemen, benefitted from the technologies’ multimedia-enriched features such as video and text, and voice messaging as well as emergency calls and location tracking. Mission-critical solutions In any mega events such as the World Cup, collaboration is key in the area of security and safety" “In any mega events such as the World Cup, collaboration is key in the area of security and safety. Our mission-critical solutions helped connect the first responders during the football tournament, giving them the possibility to carry out their jobs efficiently." "Airbus is delighted to have contributed to Qatar’s efforts to guarantee everyone’s safety, from the footballers, to fans and spectators, as well as those who work behind the scenes,” said Selim Bouri, Vice-president for Airbus Secure Land Communications in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, explained. “We were fully aware of the great lengths that went to security and safety planning and training, and to be picked as the sporting spectacle’s communication technology partner was an honour and a proud moment for us,” Bouri added.

Taking off from Leonardo’s plant in Caselle (Turin), the final and most advanced Eurofighter Typhoon of the Italian Air Force was handed over during a ceremony becoming one of the defence aircraft assigned daily to the protection of the Italian skies. The ceremony was attended by the Chief of Staff of the Italian Air Force, Gen. Alberto Rosso, the CEO of Leonardo, Alessandro Profumo and the Aircraft Division Managing Director, Marco Zoff. "The collaboration path we are celebrating today, embodied by an aircraft with extraordinary capabilities, is the result of a long-term supranational strategic, political, and industrial vision, which has allowed Europe to have its own security asset, and benefit from a programme that has been able to represent a technological accelerator and a unique engine of development in the history of our continent”, declared Alessandro Profumo, CEO of Leonardo. Air defence system “The Eurofighter Typhoon will be a pivotal element in the path of innovation which is aimed at fully safeguarding European technological sovereignty in the coming years", he added. “The delivery of the last aircraft, which completes the Eurofighter fleet, is the main asset of a complex and diversified national and NATO air defence system, is a major programme milestone,” Italian Air Force Chief of Staff, Gen. Alberto Rosso said at the hand-over ceremony of the aircraft, which is destined to the Italian Air Force’s 51st Wing Istrana Air Base. Intelligence surveillance reconnaissance The aircraft has proven to be a reliable, flexible, and versatile asset, and is ready to face technological challenges" “The aircraft has proven to be a reliable, flexible, and versatile asset, and is ready to face new technological challenges to continue to guarantee the highest level of safety across the Italian skies and protection of national interest. This is thanks to a wide range of operational capabilities which complement air defence duties such as Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance (ISR) and attack (swing role)." "Today’s aircraft capabilities are the result of a long-term close and effective cooperation between the national defence industry and the Italian Air Force; a synergy that, further supports and empowers the country system, and allows us effectively to carry out our daily mission, the protection of people.” Aerospace and defence technologies The Eurofighter was designed as an open architecture, with a well-defined programme of technological updating and improvement that guarantees its competitiveness throughout its life cycle. Constantly evolving technologies, both on board the aircraft and in the context of logistical support, increase its operational effectiveness, survivability, and efficient management. The Eurofighter programme is a cornerstone in the development of European aerospace and defence technologies and provides the industries involved with technological leadership that will guarantee competitiveness for many next generation programmes. Fundamental avionic technologies Leonardo represents with its activities about 36% of the value of the entire programme, with its key role in the aeronautical components and in the on-board electronics, which sees the Company responsible for two primary sensors (radar and IRST) as well as other fundamental avionic technologies. The Eurofighter programme is managed by the Eurofighter GmbH consortium Leonardo also plays a key role in the evolution of the Eurofighter thanks to the new AESA (Active Electronically Scanned Array) radar, which increases the aircraft's performance and competitiveness, which, in turn, will enhance the targeting of a significant proportion of the international market over the next decade. The Caselle plant is now producing the Kuwait Air Force’s Eurofighters, the first ones are to be delivered in this highly advanced configuration. International customers The Eurofighter programme is managed by the Eurofighter GmbH consortium, a company based in Munich (Germany) owned by Leonardo, BAE Systems and Airbus Defense & Space for Germany and Spain. On the government side, it is managed by the NATO Eurofighter & Tornado Management Agency (NETMA), set up to meet the procurement needs of the air forces of the four participating countries: Italy, United Kingdom, Germany and Spain. In addition to the four partner countries, which have already ordered 472 Typhoons, international customers now include: Saudi Arabia (72 aircraft), Austria (15), Oman (12), Kuwait (28) and Qatar (24), a total of 623 ordered planes. In terms of workforce, the Eurofighter programme involves more than 100,000 people in Europe, over 20,000 people are based in Italy (including direct, indirect and induced employment). More than 400 suppliers work for the Typhoon, including 200 in Italy.

The French authorities have renewed the maintenance contract of the French Coastal Surveillance System, SPATIONAV, building on an over 20 yearlong successful collaboration between the French Navy and Airbus for safer oceans. Since 2002, Airbus develops, deploys and maintains the SPATIONAV system, under the supervision of the DGA (French General Armament Directorate) for the programme direction and the SSF (Service de Soutien de la Flotte) for the sustainment, to support the French authorities gather information, direct maritime surveillance and intervention at sea. Maritime navigation security The system provides them with a tactical picture of the maritime situation to prepare and conduct their respective operations related to maritime border protection, search and rescue missions, maritime navigation security, detection of illicit activities and environment protection. With over 6000 kilometers of coasts monitored in real time 24/7 by 750 operators, SPATIONAV is the cornerstone of France’s maritime surveillance operations. It provides the administrations involved in state sea operations with a real time surveillance system It provides the French Navy and the main national administrations involved in state sea operations with a real time surveillance system covering maritime approaches for mainland France and the French West Indies - Guiana zone. Thus, it constitutes a veritable multi-agency operation and command information system for the French Navy, the Coast Guards and the Customs. Cyber secured gateway SPATIONAV’s coastal Recognized Maritime Picture integrates over 10,000 real-time tracks thanks to a vast network of sensors spread over the French coasts (105 sites, 88 radars, 77 AIS stations and 8 equipped Falcons). In addition, the system integrates over 50,000 extra European and International tracks through a cyber secured gateway. The consolidated situation awareness is shared with the entire SPATIONAV community thereby optimising missions at sea. SPATIONAV is based on STYRIS Coastal Surveillance System (CSS). The solution associates core CSS functions as a real-time coastal Recognised Maritime Picture, 24/7 monitoring of areas of interest, advanced tracking and data fusion with some key features among which improved event management and advanced simulation capabilities to support decision making. Command and control tools Ensuring an informed vision of maritime activities in real time is a technological prowess" Specifically, the solution supports operator decision by providing intuitive command and control tools to accelerate decision making and stakeholder coordination, to maintain operator focus and to reduce the workload. Commander Laurent Frayssignes, Spationav programme officer, declared: “Ensuring an informed vision of maritime activities in real time throughout the national metropolitan territory is a technological prowess. We value the strong relationship that we have established over the years with Airbus and we count on Airbus team to continuously integrate technological advances to maintain our position at the cutting edge of innovation in the field of Maritime Surveillance." Coastal surveillance missions "Improved and new capabilities will allow us to face new and bigger challenges in terms of protecting our maritime borders and perform coastal surveillance missions.” Evert Dudok, Head of Connected Intelligence at Airbus Defence and Space said: “When security is at stake, territorial waters are critical areas due to the number of potential threats. In such circumstances, well-informed maritime domain awareness as well as fast decision making is needed to successfully protect the coastal borders and this is exactly how Airbus supports the maritime authorities. Our company helps to anticipate the threat, to connect and disseminate and to analyse and understand the situation in order to take the right decision and act at the right time.”

Unrealistic promises by over-enthused marketers and under-delivery by R&D departments have damaged the cause of video analytics almost since its inception. For me, the exaggeration reached its worst point when industry pundits suggested that we would soon be able to identify and alert on anomalous behaviour of the kind demonstrated by the Tsarnaev brothers in the moments before the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombings. Mainstream journalists speculated that the two Chechen brothers might have stood out in a crowd because they were wearing … err … baseball caps. Irresponsible claims are widespread in the analytics field, and real technological advances will only come about when product developers engage with institutions who are conducting research with academic rigour. A cynic might be forgiven for believing that, with the exception of capturing license plate numbers, CCTV needs human beings to monitor it, period. The reality is more subtle: as Algernon notes in The Importance of Being Earnest: “the truth is rarely pure and never simple.” Cardiff University collaboration with Airbus Defence and Space SourceSecurity.com spoke to David Marshall, Professor of Computer Vision at Cardiff University, about his own research, collaboration with applied clinical researchers and the current work of doctoral students. Prof Marshall acknowledges that his current modeling is in essence a research project, but Cardiff University has reached out to industry by collaborating with Airbus Defence and Space on programs with commercial potential. Flocking birds model The background to the analytics algorithms being developed at Cardiff is remarkably broad: Marshall is working with a psychologist (Prof Simon Moore, also of Cardiff University), and one of the starting points has been the simulation of drunken behaviour based on models of flocking birds. He explains: “My colleague Simon was keen to bring standard modelling patterns for group movements of birds and even shoals of fish to bear on research into how crowds of people flow around obstacles at times when many of them may be under the influence of alcohol. Drunkenness immediately introduces an element of randomness to what would otherwise be a tendency to form regular and natural lines.” Personal space as a simple two-dimensional radius "The aim is to learn about the warning signs for a potential confrontation, and the algorithm looks for unusual behavioural traits" He continues: “The other thing we modelled was personal space as a simple two-dimensional radius. Drunk people are less sensitive to occupation of space: they don’t demand a larger radius around them though they are more likely to encroach on what others will consider their own personal space. But get too close to somebody under the influence, and they will tend to lash out. Under normal conditions, people rarely bump into each other, though, of course, if you add alcohol to the mix then collisions become frequent. We wanted to validate our models with real data and obtained surveillance camera streams from police forces in South Wales. We’re also active in police science social research here at Cardiff.” As with any experimentation of this kind, there was separation of controlled groups; in this case footage of violent incidents compared with normal behaviour. The aim is to learn about the warning signs for a potential confrontation, and the algorithm looks for unusual behavioural traits. Night-time illumination with low contrast is always a challenge, and camera resolution varies. Picture quality, even from local councils with limited budgets, is improving rapidly, but street lighting levels are likely to remain the same.” The university is sceptical as to how much the improved resolution from megapixel cameras will help its work. “High resolution will not necessarily help us with peoples’ heads and torsos moving around in a seething crowd. The nature of the data remains challenging.” So is Prof Marshall willing to use the adjective ‘intelligent’ of the scene analysis here, this being a crucial distinction for many analytics providers in the commercial sector? Artificial intelligence machinery and techniques “We’re certainly using recognised artificial intelligence machinery and techniques for our classifications. We’ve looked at what features can be used to describe the data so we can get discrimination, and then train a standard classifier. But problems with occlusion [obscuring of objects] mean we treat the crowd as a texture flow. When violence erupts, the texture of the crowd changes and otherwise unified movement becomes random and high-frequency.” Video analytics - A tool for assessing social behaviour "We’re never going to accommodate all the eccentricities of human behaviour, but the goal is to develop systems that can alert operators in control centres" Arguments from those who are skeptical about video analytics as a tool for assessing social behaviour in public spaces can be overwhelming. Early algorithms for street observation proved incapable of distinguishing between the movement involved with somebody taking off their coat and somebody attacking the person next to them. Similarly, for artificial intelligence, greeting a friend with a hug can resemble trying to throttle them. Prof Marshall remains optimistic about the potential. “A hug is lower frequency in movement than a scuffle and will only occur once! Yes. We do of course get some false positives when people use their arms to gesticulate during an animated but non-violent argument. ” Evaluating footage of crowd dynamics He continues: “We’re never going to accommodate all the eccentricities of human behaviour, but the goal is to develop systems that can alert operators in control centres if violence may be brewing while accepting a small rate of false positives. The quicker camera control centres can detect a threat, then the quicker police officers and first-responders can be on the scene. We really want to procure substantial video streams that we can study for flashpoints and incidents as they develop rather than footage that has been taken once a situation has unfolded.” If researchers in computer vision can be given more opportunities to evaluate real rather than simulated footage of crowd dynamics then video analytics may begin to live up to what until now has been seen by many as a series of false dawns.