The Rise of Artificial Intelligence and its Impact on the Defense and Security Industry

The global interest in Artificial Intelligence has risen dramatically since OpenAI first launched its AI-powered chatbot, ChatGPT, in November 2022. The technology nowadays is not only one that most companies and organizations are trying to implement into their operations, but also a technological turning point for most industries. This rapid evolution in technology is also reflected in $92bn worth of corporate investments into AI in 2022 and an extraordinarily high annual growth rate of 109% of the worldwide market for Artificial Intelligence in the period from 2023 ($207bn) to 2030 ($1,800bn).

The Defense and Security industry is a frontrunner when it comes to the use of AI. For one thing, defense spending, especially in AI, is significantly on the rise since a couple of years. The global defense expenditures, for example, rose to $2,240bn in 2022, whereas the spendings in Artificial Intelligence of the U.S. Department of Defense will be increased by 63.6% to $1.8bn in 2024. According to the “2024 aerospace and defense industry outlook report”, that was published by the consulting company Deloitte, the main focus of spending in technology within the defense sector will be on enhancing capabilities and improving readiness. This general trend is also reflected in rising investments into private defense companies. Anduril Industries, a US-based startup company in the defense sector, for instance, even received the worldwide second highest private AI investment of $1.48bn in 2022. Deloitte also emphasized the importance for military organizations of investing in digital transformation.

The advantages of applying Artificial Intelligence technology are not limited to defense organizations. Emergency services organizations can profit from AI in a similar manner. Good examples for this are AI-powered tools, that support emergency personnel during operations. Artificial Intelligence here can, for instance, optimize the medication of patients, or help to prevent and better manage natural catastrophes, like wildfires or floods. What also should not be underestimated in this context is the potential that AI brings for preventing potential emergency situations in advance. Nowadays technology is, for example, already capable of monitoring human health data in real-time, which can prevent people from experiencing diverse health issues, such as strokes or heart attacks. On the other side, Artificial Intelligence is also a core element of Internet of Things and Smart City concepts, where the technology is used for preventing different forms of accidents. Examples include sensor-based software solutions, that are able to evaluate potential risks at any time, and in case of necessity automatically initiate countermeasures, such as evasive maneuvers or automatic emergency braking. Such solutions are not limited to single cars but can be integrated and interconnected with all vehicles on the road. Moreover, Artificial Intelligence can also ease the work of police or border control in various ways. The European Union, in this context, is continuously evaluating how AI solutions can improve border controls in an ethical way. Examples of this are AI tools for better risk assessment, migration monitoring, biometric identification, or emotion detection. Other application areas of AI for law enforcement authorities include criminal investigations, preventative policing, terrorism prevention or crowd and traffic control.  

 

The SAP Business AI Approach

Figure 1: SAP Business AI approach

Artificial Intelligence is arguably at the peak of the hype phase, but AI products and solutions differ in terms of functions, modeling, and use cases. SAP in this context is focusing on using AI for improving business processes across over 25 industries, and therefore summarizes its AI products and solutions under the brand SAP Business AI. SAP Business AI is embedded into all common functional areas of companies and organizations, including human Resources, finance, procurement, and supply chain management.

In addition, SAP also launched its own Generative AI-powered Copilot, Joule, that allows customers to directly interact with SAP applications. SAP Joule can immediately answer questions, provide insights, solve tasks and create content, such as job descriptions, summaries, or SAP programming code based on simple commands. This enables users to solve tasks more quickly and run SAP systems more effectively.

SAP Business AI solutions are developed with a special emphasis on security, ethics and compliance. The basis for this is SAP’s own AI Ethics Policy, AI Ethics Steering Committee, and AI Ethics Advisory Panel. SAP in that respect was also the first European technology company to establish AI guiding principles back in 2018. The company summarizes all of these guidelines with its 3 R’s, that are:

Relevant

Relevant refers to the fact that AI is used for enhancing your business performance.

Reliable

Reliable means that SAP Business AI operates with integrated data from your organization or company for optimizing your business outcomes.

Responsible

Responsible stands for the use of the highest ethics, security, and privacy standards for all of our AI solutions.

Apart from that, SAP has also established a wide network of partners in the AI industry, including companies, such as, Amazon Web Services, Google, and Aleph Alpha. The aim of these partnerships is to enhance our products further, but also to provide our customers access to the best available AI services in the market.

Our 5 main SAP Business AI Solutions for D&S Organizations

 

1)  Force Posture and Resource Allocation with SAP Business AI

Figure 2: AI-based resource allocation with SAP

Force posture and resource allocation are critical processes for D&S organizations, regardless if within exercises or during real missions. SAP has therefore developed an AI-powered solution, that allows defense organizations to automate and optimize the matching of expected- and modelled demand and capabilities to the existing forces. This solution is likewise applicable to areas, like, military doctrine, organization, training, material, personnel, and financials. By implementing this solution, D&S organizations are enabled to raise military readiness, guarantee the most-efficient use of funds, and raise their organizational flexibility.

2)  Smart Procurement with SAP Business AI

 

Figure 3: SAP Business AI solutions for different procurement areas

 

Organizations in the field of Defense and Security are typically very material intensive. These organizations need to manage complex, and time critical supply chains, which usually involves a lot of manual work. SAP Business Artificial Intelligence can ease such tasks significantly by automating and speeding up these processes. The technology can be used for:

AI-powered Contract Generation

Our AI-powered solution for contract generation allows customers to create their purchase requests for diverse materials or services with just a few clicks and then automatically receive a completely pre-filled purchase contract. The responsible employees then only need to quickly check the draft contract, which enables them to save valuable time and money. In addition, it enables them to avoid potential human errors. Moreover, this solution also allows the customer to simply integrate their respective organizational guidelines and compliance rules.

The AI-powered contract generation solution is thereby built on SAP Business AI, which includes advanced Large Language Models just like Generative Artificial Intelligence and SAP’s Business Technology Platform (BTP).

Automated Supplier Search

Finding the right supplier from a large number of vendors can be a difficult endeavor. SAP therefore wants to help its customers to ease this process with the help of SAP Business Artificial Intelligence. Our Automated Supplier Search solution in this regard enables our customers to find, evaluate and contact the right supplier for every command in an automated way. By implementing this solution, D&S organizations can speed up their procurement processes and make them more efficient.

Further AI-based Functions for Procurement

SAP, beyond that, offers a wide range of additional AI features for procurement. This includes automated category management, delivery-date predictions, invoice and payment management just like supplier management or the recruitment of external workforces.

 

3)  Accelerated Engineering Information Handling with SAP Business AI

 

Figure 4: Exemplary presentation of Accelerated Engineering Information Handling with SAP Business AI

 

Military-, but also different emergency organizations usually need to handle large volumes of technical documentation for their equipment. This process involves the registration, categorization, control and maintenance as well as the provision of engineering documents. The organizations usually receive these documents from their suppliers like, for instance, military system integrators and then have to manually process them. In order to overcome these challenges, SAP created an innovative software solution, that is called Accelerated Engineering Information Handling. With this solution, that is based on SAP Business AI, our customers are enabled to automate and optimize the complete engineering information handling process. This not only allows them to reduce costs and process time, but also to improve force readiness. The Accelerated Engineering Handling solution thereby not solely speeds up and eases the process, but also allows the user to manage the data sets in an easy and comprehensive manner. This, as the below graphic shows, also includes the ability of measuring the data quality and identify incorrect and incomplete data.­ 

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Figure 5: Example illustration of data quality evaluation process with SAP

  

4)  Humanitarian Response with SAP Business AI

 

Figure 6: United Nations humanitarian aid camp

 

Humanitarian aid missions are typically extremely time critical, which requires immediate action by all members of the humanitarian aid organization and other stakeholders. Especially worth mentioning here are supply chains for medicine or food. SAP for this reason created the SAP 4W-Wizard tool, a software solution, that allows to better manage disaster relief missions. The 4W-Wizard tool is based on SAP Business AI and allows to completely digitize and better coordinate different forms of aid missions. The solution, that is based on the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP), enables aid organizations to easily create supply chain collaboration platforms. The SAP 4W-Wizard tool has been successfully implemented by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA), which used the application for different rescue missions in the Asia Pacific region, including countries like Nepal, Vietnam, the Philippines, South Sudan or Turkey. The implementation of the software solution allowed UN OCHA to achieve a 100% auditability and digitization of its aid operations. In addition, the aid organization was able to achieve time savings of more than 99%.

 

5)  Forecasting and Managing Extreme Weather Events with SAP Business AI

 

Figure 7: Assessment of landslide risk by region with SAP EDiSON Dashboard

 

As the recent temperature record for April of more than 30 degrees in European countries like Austria, Germany or the Czech Republic have shown, extreme weather events and natural disasters, such as heat waves, earthquakes, floods, or landslides, are forecast to occur more frequently and intensely due to climate change. This development poses a severe threat for people around the world, and here in particular for the ones living in developing countries. In response to these threatening developments, SAP and the Japanese Oita University successfully established a partnership for the creation of a response collaboration tool. This software tool is called EDiSON Dashboard (an abbreviation for Earth Disaster Intelligent System Operational Network) and enables weather organizations, road operators, railway operators just like national, regional, and local governments or aid organizations to better forecast and manage extreme weather events. The EDiSON Dashboard thereby includes functions, such as:

• Risk Assessment for Road Traffic
• Risk Assessment for Rail Traffic
• Assessment of Landslide Risk by Region
• Soil Precipitation Index and Risk Analysis
• Landslide Risk for Elderly Population
• Chronology of Events

 

SAP EDiSON at its core analyzes multiple data, such as, real-time data from diverse sensors, weather forecasts and historical weather data and processes it with the help of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning technology. The EDiSON software application therewith can perform real-time disaster-risk evaluations and create precise forecasts. These forecasts then can be used for initiating preventive measures or timely evacuation orders. EDiSON has been successfully applied by the very earthquake-prone Japanese Oita Prefecture, and here allowed to create a 40% increase in data granularity of disaster-response risk compared to traditional methods. In addition, the SAP EDiSON Dashboard is capable of creating precise forecasts for up to 15 hours. It beyond that can create automated early warnings in case if a certain event, such as rising water levels, occurs.

Additional AI Solutions from Partners and SAP in the SAP Store

 

Apart from the above-mentioned five core solutions, SAP also offers several helpful AI applications from selected partner companies and SAP itself directly in the SAP Store. Applications, that are of special interest for D&S organizations are, for instance:

 

Figure 8: ERPsim simulation for Defense and Security organizations

With ERPsim by Baton Simulations Inc., companies and organizations can run different business simulations on a live SAP S/4HANA system in a fun way. ERPsim is based on AI technology and can be used for trainings, exercises or onboarding.

 

Figure 9: Decision Intelligence for Military Readiness by 4CAST Systems LTD

Decision Intelligence for Military Readiness is an AI-powered software solution, that allows military organizations to train and improve military readiness. The solution, that was developed by 4CAST Systems LTD, thereby does not only allow to measure, adjust, and forecast readiness, but also provides helpful suggestions for improvement to the exercise participants.

 

Figure 10: Intelligent Mobile Asset Maintenance with FieldTekPro

FieldTekPro by Enstrapp IT Solutions Pvt Ltd uses AI for improving asset and plant maintenance operations. By applying FieldTekPro, D&S organizations can reduce asset downtime and increase technician productivity, while also reducing the amount of paperwork.

SAP Enterprise Threat Detection

 

Figure 11: SAP Enterprise Threat Detection

SAP Enterprise Threat Detection is an additional software package, that includes advanced security features and add-ons for SAP systems. It allows D&S organizations to monitor and enhance the security of SAP applications and protects them from potential cybersecurity threats.

 

Figure 12: The metaverse solution for enterprise dual carbon by iSoftStone

The metaverse solution for enterprise dual carbon is an advanced, AI-backed energy emission management software, that allows to monitor and steer emissions in real-time. The solution, that was created by iSoftStone Information Technology (Group) Company Limited also entails a sophisticated graphical user interface, with detailed graphical representations.

iSoftStone Dual-Carbon Solutions for Buildings

 

Figure 13: iSoftStone’s Dual-Carbon Solutions for Buildings

The iSoftStone Dual-Carbon Solutions for Buildings is an additional AI solution by SoftStone Information Technology (Group) Company Limited. It allows D&S organizations to measure, monitor and reduce emissions of buildings. The SAP partner solution also includes advanced, three-dimensional graphic animations as well as the ability to build energy-saving and emission-reducing applications with it.

 

 2BM Mobile Warehouse

 

Figure 14: 2BM Mobile Warehouse app

2BM Mobile Warehouse was developed by 2BM A/S, and is an AI-powered solution for improving warehouse scanning. The application allows for a better warehouse scanning experience by combining advanced barcode scanning technology with a state-of-the-art user interface and full integration into SAP warehousing systems. 

GMetri

 

Figure 15: Demo of metaverse-base onboarding with GMetri

GMetri by GMETRI Inc. with offers D&S organizations a revolutionary, no-code metaverse platform for employee onboarding. By implementing GMetri, D&S organizations can not only bring their onboarding process to a new level, but also offer their employees a truly unique onboarding experience, that is entirely time- and location-independent. 

 

Land Displacement Monitoring 

Figure 16: Example of a land displacement analysis

Land Displacement Monitoring was created by Synspective Inc., and allows Defense and Security, and here especially civil protection organizations, to better monitor, detect and analyze land displacement. The solution works based on millimeter precise satellite technology and therefore can be applied even in areas, that are normally not accessible for measuring engineers.

 

Key Takeaways

 

To sum up, it can be said that SAP Business Artificial Intelligence does sustainably improve the Defense and Security industry by automating and optimizing various business processes. Good examples for this are the SAP Joule Copilot, which helps the user to solve diverse tasks within SAP applications faster and easier, or AI functions and features, that are integrated into SAP applications for functional processes like human resource management or procurement. In this way D&S organizations are enabled to save valuable time and money, that they can instead use for their core tasks. Apart from this, the blog entry also showed that SAP offers a great variety of additional AI solutions and partner solutions within the SAP Store.

Sources

 

Artificial intelligence at EU borders: Overview of applications and key issues. (2021, July, 07). European Parliament.

How AI is establishing itself as the newest public safety officer. (2020, January, 31). EY New Zealand.

How Technology Can Help Meet Rising Military Demand (forbes.com). (2024, March). Forbes.