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Participants in the San Antonio-Electromagnetic Defense collaborative met virtually June 24 to share progress being made across the group’s four working groups toward building resilience, at Joint Base San Antonio and in surrounding communities, against an electromagnetic pulse.
The mission of SA-EMD is to ensure Joint Base San Antonio continues military operations in a post-electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, environment, said Michael Lovell, director of the JBSA-Electromagnetic Defense Initiative.
According to Lovell, SA-EMD is working to create resiliency and recovery plans for a catastrophic event, like a long-term regional power outage, where no one from outside the area would be available to assist.
“We have created an EMP resiliency model to replicate across the Department of Defense,” Lovell said, noting that several sister cities are already utilizing the information.
During this quarter’s meeting, the keynote speaker, Dr. Paul Rad, an associate professor in computer science with a joint appointment in the Information Systems and Cyber Security Department at the University of Texas-San Antonio, discussed how 5G enables augmented intelligence at the edge.
Rad specializes in cyber analytics and artificial intelligence, or AI, and he believes 5G and AI will drive the next wave of connectivity, and smart and application breakthroughs. He discussed AI’s impressive growth in recent years, and the “Internet of Things at the Edge” - how mobile cloud computing has revolutionized smartphone capabilities.
"Many of the large-scale AI models are so computationally intensive that they must be upgraded on the cloud,” he said. “In parallel, the recent mobile cloud revolution was brought on by the combination of smartphones, high-quality mobile broadband, and mainly cloud computing - availability of on-demand ubiquitous platforms for delivering apps from the cloud.”
Rad said the openness of the platform through applied programming interfaces, or APIs, allowed new applications to be hosted on smartphones, and to operate complete services back on the cloud through APIs.
He said this revolutionized every industry and everyone’s daily activities, from how people connect through social networks, read news, order food, request a ride, and even utilize map applications.
Commending local efforts, Rad said he is excited that San Antonio is recognized as the leading expert in 5G as a ubiquitous platform and that JBSA will investigate truly innovative breakthroughs and applications in the areas of 5G security, telemedicine, and medical training using immersive augmented reality/virtual reality, or AR/VR, technologies.
During the reporting portion of the meeting, Dr. Patricia Geppert, data analytics lead for the JBSA 5G Program Management Office, presented information on 5G core capabilities, security experiment goals and proposal submissions. She also explained the experimentation taking place with 5G cell-on-light trucks, or COLTs, in collaboration with U.S. Army North.
A new phase beginning at the JBSA 5G Project Management Office is 5G as a platform for ubiquitous data analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning.
“5G enables ubiquitous use of advanced decision-making tools such as artificial intelligence and machine learning,” Geppert said. “Think of 5G technology as untethered access to the internet. This has the potential to change the way the military, governments and industry use data for better informed real-time decision making.”
Geppert said the 5G technology being developed at JBSA will put San Antonio at the forefront of this rapidly emerging capability.
“A newly restructured 5G Steering Committee is charged with shaping the vision, goals and strategy for the line of effort two working group. The steering committee is comprised of 15 San Antonio community leaders that meet biweekly to fulfill their mission,” she said. “The restructured working group is comprised of over 60 members representing the military, local government, academia, research and industry.
“I look forward to working with the Steering Committee and Working Group as we build this ecosystem in San Antonio,” she said.
Domestic Electromagnetic Spectrum Operations, or DEMSO, was another line of effort update presented during the meeting.
Dr. John Huggins, technology officer for the National Security Collaboration Center at UTSA, discussed the DEMSO guide, which is currently in draft form. The guide will include information on electromagnetic-related threats and a discussion on how communities can evaluate their resiliency maturity to those threats. The guide will be distributed to other cities for their use in planning for EMP defense.
In addition to discussions on JBSA’s pilot programs, John Ostrich, program manager for risk and hazard analysis at the Department of Energy, discussed that agency’s EMP and geomagnetic disturbance, or GMD, pilot programs, which involve the generation, transmission and distribution of power to JBSA and San Antonio.
Brig. Gen. Caroline M. Miller, commander of the 502d Air Base Wing and JBSA, closed out the meeting by thanking the volunteers who are part of SA-EMD.
“I want to express my sincere appreciation again to all of our volunteers,” she said. “You really are making a difference in building resiliency in San Antonio, Texas, and the nation.”
| Date Taken: | 07.02.2021 |
| Date Posted: | 07.19.2021 16:45 |
| Story ID: | 401232 |
| Location: | SAN ANTONIO, TX, US |
| Web Views: | 203 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Electromagnetic defense, 5G partners share progress, explore AI, by Lori Bultman, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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