SitaWare Insight delivers new AI features for military operations

Systematic’s intelligence management system, SitaWare Insight, receives boost with new AI tools

SitaWare Insight, the SitaWare suite’s intelligence management and decision support tool, now gives users the ability to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) into their operations through the latest update to the platform. New features give operators the ability partner up with an AI chatbot for mission support, the opportunity to bring their own AI models and tools to the platform, and enhanced AI and platform deployability to field locations. These allow commanders in a variety of locations to uncover critical insights with greater ease and speed, helping to enhance responsiveness in the observe-orient-decide-act (OODA) loop.

Not operating alone

AI systems have become much more accessible since the emergence of AI systems like ChatGPT. A simple interface has helped to demystify the capabilities of AI technology, removing the need for potentially complex coding that might have been needed in the past.

As part of Systematic’s approaches to technology and customer engagement, the latest update of SitaWare Insight has a  new large language model (LLM) chatbot feature integrated to operate as a “wingman” for users. Operators access the chatbot feature through a standard SitaWare chat window in the platform, maintaining a common look-and-feel user interface to improve usability and simplify the user experience.

Much like familiar systems such as OpenAI, the dedicated chatbot can use data provided by users and their own AI systems, in addition to mission data generated by an operational deployment to provide assistance. The LLM can be, as users need, kept away from the open internet to ensure full security and ownership of their data, its processing, and results.

According to Henrik Sommer, Director for Multidomain C2 and Intelligence, “The role of AI LLMs has grown exponentially in recent years, with people now becoming more comfortable with asking an AI bot for increasingly complex tasks. This can range from code generation, through to preparing analysis of data, and reporting. In delivering an AI wingman for users, we are working to reduce the workload on analysts, while leveraging data lakes to their maximum effect.”

The AI wingman can be used for answering a variety of queries based on data available in a data lake. This could include intelligence such as movements of enemy forces into areas and force strength, as well as information about a unit’s own position and disposition of friendly forces. This can then be used to help generate plans, orders, and reports by analysts and commanders at all levels of the chain of command.

Bring your own AI model

SitaWare Insight now also give users the ability to use their own preferred AI system to deliver their operational data.

“As an increasing number of companies in the market are developing AI solutions to provide support for national security and defence customers, integrating these into a military planning or C4ISR platform is important. This allows for more transparency in the planning and intelligence cycles, while also improving situational awareness. Additionally, it removes the risk of vendor-lock around AI and C4ISR systems,” Sommer said.

The ability to bring a preferred AI system enhances user trust in a model and the products produced by SitaWare Insight, as well as helping to ensure data sovereignty over a military’s mission data.

SitaWare Insight comes with a fully integrated AI workbench, which allows for simplified bolting-on and integration of new services into a workflow. In providing the ability for third-party applications to be brought into the SitaWare Insight operating environment, users can easily integrate pre-trained AI tools that can focus on providing specialist support in areas such as object detection and classification, electromagnetic spectrum (EMS) analysis, and more.

The system’s Robot takes in data from an AI system, as well as other sensor feeds and inputs, before delivering them into SitaWare Insight for further analysis and processing. Using the Robot within the Insight solution makes the distribution of semi-structured and unstructured data into the SitaWare Insight system more efficient, and enabling unparalleled access to intelligence for commanders and analysts.

Adding AI field deployability

The processing power required for AI operations means that operating at speed can be limited to larger servers with the capacity to deliver the insights needed for large-scale operations. The move towards more power intensive and heat generating graphics processing units (GPUs) for AI operations means that requirements for power production and cooling are increased. Deploying this into a field environment also comes with a corresponding increase in heat and communications signatures for deployed AI operations.

“Reducing the size and computing power requirements of an AI system can be a driving factor in how they can be used in the modern battlefield. Using an AI model that is smaller can help with deployability, as lower specification and more portable hardware can deliver the same effects. Enabling a software solution that can operate on a variety of hardware options – both cloud and on-premise servers and even those deployed in the field – gives military operators greater flexibility in their intelligence operations,” added Sommer.

The latest updates, in combination with the ability to use a separate AI model, means that users can balance out their requirements for AI usage, model size and capability, and operational deployment requirements.

Recent operational training deployments showed that SitaWare Insight could be run on a stand-alone, SECRET classification server, utilising a local AI model to reduce the amount of data requests over limited bandwidth. In addition to reducing the communication emissions footprint of the intelligence cell, the localisation of the AI model and its processing demonstrated a significant reduction in costs for users, increased responsiveness, and the opportunity to redeploy an AI capability easily if a more mobile operation is needed.

For more information, please contact Charles Forrester, Communications Manager (Defence), at Charles.Forrester@systematic.com.