General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc (GA-ASI) announced a partnership with onboard data specialist Shift5 on 8 May 2024 to integrate the company’s onboard cyber anomaly detection and predictive maintenance capabilities into the MQ-9A Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) for US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) and Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC).
The GA-ASI-Shift5 partnership is intended to assure AFSOC and SOCOM mission readiness and cyber survivability.
“GA-ASI has long maintained a focused commitment to unmanned combat operations and unmatched unmanned aircraft system (UAS) experience, exemplified through our MQ-9A Reaper,” GA-ASI President David R Alexander was quoted as saying in a company press release. “The next logical and immediate extension of our work in enabling the US Air Force is empowering AFSOC and SOCOM with additional resiliency and survivability of the MQ-9A on the battlefield. Shift5 represents a new class of dual-use defense tech business that can successfully operate at speed and scale with us to make an immediate impact for the warfighter.”
Describing its capabilities on its website, Shift5 says it “unlocks the complete ecosystem of onboard data for operations, maintenance, and cyber security teams for the first time, enabling real-time decision intelligence through complete onboard data access and observability from the asset level to fleet scale”.
The Shift5 platform, which is deployed on premises or in the cloud and supports streaming and air-gapped modes for offline and online capability, is hardware, bus and protocol agnostic and is designed to perform passive, full-take data capture from any onboard source.
“The battlefield of the future will include more remotely piloted, autonomous and unmanned systems. Central to maintaining advantage in this operating environment is access to real-time data,” said Josh Lospinoso, CEO and co-founder of Shift5. “Our work with GA-ASI represents one of the most efficient and effective ways that AFSOC and SOCOM can gain access to critical operational and cyber security insights, democratise that data and maintain decision dominance.”
Shift5 achieved its first cross-platform Authority to Operate (ATO) certification from the US Department of Defense in April 2023, validating the resilience and security of the Shift5 platform. Most recently, the company announced a contract with the US Army to secure the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) against cyber threats and provide readiness assessments to enable predictive maintenance. It has also introduced the GPS Integrity Module: the first known cross-platform solution to automate detection and alerts to combat GPS spoofing risks.
