Lockheed Martin [LMT] on Tuesday said it is collaborating with Red Hat, Inc. to bring advanced software to the tactical edge that will allow for better sensing based on artificial intelligence.
The partnership with a commercial company is part of Lockheed Martin’s ongoing effort to leverage digital and other technologies being developed and used in the commercial sector for military applications.
Red Hat, which is part of IBM [IBM], provided its new Red Hat Device Edge software on a Lockheed Martin Stalker unmanned aircraft system (UAS) for a recent demonstration of joint operations.
In the demonstration, the Group 2 UAS was flying a mission and detected a simulated military target. After detection, engineers used Device Edge to update the Stalker’s software during flight, allowing the aircraft to use updated artificial intelligence (AI)-based computer vision capabilities for automated target recognition.
The AI enhancement allowed for more accurate classification of the target, giving more useful data for decisionmakers and boosting their situational awareness.
“Lockheed Martin is at the forefront of global innovation that often defines a technological era,” Francis Chow, vice president and general manager, In-Vehicle Operating System and Edge at Red Hat, said in a statement. “With our latest solution, Red Hat Device Edge, we’ll be able to work together to change what communications and artificial intelligence looks like in the most space-constrained and far-flung environments, whether it’s a remote mountain range or beyond the boundaries of Earth’s atmosphere.”
The companies are planning further work together to utilize Red Hat’s Open Shift enterprise Kubernetes platform to improve 5G.Mil capabilities and help control radio frequency spectrum usage.