HIS Consortium and partners provide the cross-functional AI development platform for FCAS (“AI Backbone”) to BAAINBw and industry just nine months after the start of the contract.
The HIS Consortium is proud to have reached a key milestone with the first release of the AI Backbone in just nine months. The HIS Consortium consists of Helsing GmbH and Schönhofer Sales and Engineering GmbH, a wholly owned subsidiary of Rohde & Schwarz GmbH & Co. KG. As a software platform for the traceable and high-performance development of artificial intelligence (AI), the AI Backbone is a key component of the Future Combat Air System (FCAS). As part of the German initiative “National Research and Technology (R&T) Project NGWS”, the cross-functional platform is already being used by more than 50 pilot users from a total of ten organizations to develop pioneering technologies.
The AI Backbone is the first software platform in the military sector to enable collaborative AI workflows across organizational boundaries. As a customer-side solution, the platform ensures standardized processes as well as open, interoperable architectures. It overcomes the current status quo, which is characterized by highly manual and fragmented processes with numerous interfaces. The AI Backbone now creates a standardized path toward military AI through a central platform that ensures the data security and data sovereignty of each user. In addition, the open architecture and transparent provision of the Software Development Kit enable seamless integration, increasing flexibility and efficiency across the entire MLOps workflow.
“The use of AI will be crucial for the air superiority of FCAS. AI accelerates the evaluation of sensor data, mission planning and the deployment of effectors,” explains Frank Schrudde, Managing Director of SSE. “As an innovative long-standing partner of the German Armed Forces, we bring momentum to the research landscape. We are proud to have contributed the agility of a medium-sized company to the project in collaboration with our partners. This enabled us to provide the first demonstrator within an extremely short period of just nine months.”
“With the first release, an important milestone has been reached in the implementation of the AI Backbone,” says Stephanie Lingemann, Program Director and Head of the Air Domain at Helsing. “We are proud to have advanced the AI Backbone from the initial idea through to implementation. Even in the current phase of the national R&T projects, it is now supporting the development of AI and making a decisive cross-functional contribution to enabling the NGWS.”
The next development stage will be reached with the second release, which is expected in November 2024: enabling standardized, collaborative AI workflows in highly sensitive environments while also adding further capability components.