In a world where the boundaries between digital and physical increasingly blur, how is artificial intelligence (AI) transforming the defense landscape? Rob Merryweather, Group Technology Director at BAE Systems, returns to Tech Talks Daily to discuss the groundbreaking impact of AI in defense and beyond.
Rob Merryweather, positioned at the helm of technology strategy within BAE Systems, plays a pivotal role in harnessing technology to fuel collaboration, innovation, and business growth. With a rich history of leading multi-domain integration across land, sea, air, space, and cyber divisions, Rob's insights offer a unique vantage point on the evolving role of technology in defense.
This episode will explore how BAE Systems, leveraging partnerships and open architectures, creates what they term "decision advantage" – turning actionable information into strategic power on the battlefield. We'll delve into the transformative applications of AI, from natural language processing and autonomous systems to developing intercept behaviors that protect critical infrastructure.
Rob will share how AI is not just about automating tasks but is pivotal in enhancing performance, speeding up capability development cycles, and, ultimately, shaping a future where technology and human decision-making coalesce more seamlessly than ever.
Expect to hear about AI's opportunities to automate mundane or complex tasks, thus enabling human operators to concentrate on critical decision-making processes. We will also touch on the excitement surrounding AI's potential, the pace of technological advancement it allows, and how ethical frameworks are being integrated to guide this rapid evolution.
Rob's journey, from fostering cross-division collaboration to his current focus on marrying the agility of AI startups with the robust assurance frameworks of a leading defense company, offers a compelling leadership narrative at the technology frontier.
As we navigate these discussions, we invite you to reflect: How can the defense sector and broader industries leverage AI to enhance operational efficiency and ensure ethical, sustainable growth? Please share your thoughts and join the conversation as we unpack the transformative impact of AI with one of the industry's leading figures.
[00:00:00] In an era where warfare transcends traditional battlegrounds,
[00:00:06] comes seeing land, air, sea and space.
[00:00:09] And now the digital realm.
[00:00:11] How are global defence leaders adapting to these multifaceted challenges?
[00:00:16] This is a topic we're going to explore today on Tech Talks Daily,
[00:00:20] because once again I'm going to welcome back Rob Merriweather,
[00:00:24] Technology Director at BAE Systems. negotiable. Legacy managed file transfer tools, they simply don't cut it now. So that's where KiteWorks comes in. Revolutionising the MFT landscape with unparalleled security credentials including the much-covertive FedRAMP Modra authorization. This isn't just about compliance though, it's about offering a secure, efficient platform for today's remote
[00:01:42] workforce. So with KiteWorks, you can benefit from advanced file sharing, email security and fundamentally I work across our business to try and drive forwards our technology strategy and the product strategies that those technologies feed into. Well the last time we spoke was all about quantum computing and its impacts on defence and just about every area really absolute killer episode, I urge anyone to check that out for anyone that
[00:03:03] missed that. But today we're going to be talking about all things AI and in particular AI applications gone through a number of revolutions and eolutions as we've gone through time. So, if you go back to that Enigma machine that was the size of a small warehouse, you then got to the revolution of microprocessors. So, when could computing then massively increase in speed and power? And that allowed us to code AI into computers. So, even early computer games,
[00:04:23] even when I was a kid, you would still have actors in those computer games that were performing with content so it looks as though it is doing the human role of creativity. But even in that instance you can ask AI now to create a piece of art and there's been a famous example of an artist submitting a piece of work into an art festival and that piece of work winning
[00:05:42] because of the artistic merit of what was created seeing isn't that. It's the latest acceleration of an evolution of technology. I'm so glad you mentioned the history of it now and what happened over 80 years ago and I think we should also give a shout out 80 years ago to the role of female coders back then. He was largely women that were involved in this. He was. Yeah, no, absolutely. I think
[00:07:03] all of these kind of big, we use AI in a huge number of applications. If I start with some of the more conventional aircraft like our UF fighter Typhoon, that's
[00:08:20] an aerodynamically unstable aircraft.
[00:08:23] A human can't respond fast enough to keep that aircraft on the flight narrow, on the
[00:08:28] straight narrow. of them. They're the countermeasures that are there to confuse the missiles. But you only fire those if you know that a missile has been fired at you. So we use conventional AI to identify patterns in images and in video streams where we have these sensors that are
[00:09:41] looking at the environment to detect those missile launches. But that's an area where AI and the AI isn't just looking for, you know, code, recognizing coded messages of maybe three consecutive words. It's seeking to understand what you have said and extract meaning from it. So you can talk to the AI in a much more natural way. So it started to experiment with how we use that to query military systems. We're using them, using
[00:11:01] it for things like maintainers in, you know it? And quite rightly so. Paul It is. And yeah, very that we will always come back to in any of these ethical decisions is there will always be a human person, a responsible and educated
[00:13:40] and suitably skilled individual making the decisions
[00:13:44] on how best to apply the technology. transforming defense strategies and operations at BA systems and also Maybe share an example or two of AI driven innovations in some of your projects Yeah, sure. I think is some a way of I've kind of talked earlier I think AI is evolving strategies rather than transforming them is building on Any capabilities that are mature understood and deployed but moving them on to another level
[00:15:03] I think some some really interesting areas things like the natural language
[00:16:05] that comes from the AI being able to understand language and makes those kind of systems much more
[00:16:13] Effective to use a much easier to use so you're starting to see an interaction between AI and autonomous systems
[00:16:17] Increasing the ease of use which I think is really interesting
[00:16:24] We're looking at you know machine learning or how to develop more capable behaviors in autonomous vehicles
[00:16:28] so how to block intercept courses how to systems on vessels and disable the boats in a safe way. So looking at how we might use AI to be able to have an uncrewed asset that can be permanently on stage and 24-7 protecting critical national infrastructure. That's another piece of experimentation work that we have going on at the moment. So yes,
[00:17:40] there's a couple of examples, I think also? And how are you preparing for the evolving role of AI? It can be difficult keeping up sometimes, it's moving at such a pace right now. It is moving at a pace. Again, though, I think I've come back to, I wouldn't describe the future defence as being AI led. I think defence will always be led by human
[00:19:04] decision making and the associated values and judgment that come with that. I would say, Any residual risks that may may resolve in those areas and that we put you know Appropriate gates and safeguards around that to make sure that yeah, those effects are mitigated I think there's also a challenge around even more practical one With where we're looking at developing the synthetic environment capabilities they provide that infrastructure for us to
[00:20:24] Help train and evaluate that that AI before we move into the into the physical world
[00:21:26] bureaucracy that a lot of the small agile organisations in this space don't naturally
[00:21:32] don't have. We're working really hard to bridge that gap and understand how we can bring in those latest capabilities, but then deploy them within the frameworks that we've talked about that ensure
[00:21:39] that kind of safe and ethical use and that some of those risks such that they can be more focused on the critical decision making elements. So there's a real opportunity around making the most of the effective people, how we use AI collaboratively with people to enhance
[00:23:00] performance is probably a huge area of opportunity. When you put that pace of change in line with a robust and well-understood ethical framework, that means we understand how we are deploying that and how we're moving it
[00:24:21] forwards. From an engineering perspective, it of us are able to achieve any degree of success without a little help along the way. So if I was to ask you to look back at your career, is there a particular person that you're grateful towards? Maybe they saw something in you, invested a bit of time,
[00:25:43] who helped you get you where you are that we can give a little shout out to today? conversations like these. So, yeah, I do regularly actually think back to quite how grateful I am to her. She probably doesn't realise that. I haven't seen her since I left school. On the off charts that her and your family are listening to this, then yes, a thank you to Miss Taylor, who taught A-level physics at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School in 1992,
[00:27:01] would go down very well indeed. So thank you.
[00:27:03] And I'm confident that Miss Taylor will that the fusion of AI and defence strategies is not just innovative, it's transformative because today's discussion illuminated for me how BAE Systems is at the forefront of this revolution harnessing AI to automate tasks, enhance performance,
[00:28:23] accelerate capability development. But it's not just about technological prowess, it's about