WEBVTT

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There are absolutely certain areas

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within the defense business
where we could apply AI

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much better than we
have been to this point.

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Sean, welcome.

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Sean, you've spent your career

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at the forefront of military aviation.

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Just how big has the shift
in aircraft technology

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been over recent years?

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The shift has been pretty large.

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Although there are things
that are now coming

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to the forefront that
have been talked about

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for a very long time.

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One of those is open architecture.

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You know, we've talked about
bringing open architecture

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into development programs
for a very long time

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because of the ease that allows you

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to bring in new technologies
and upgrade technologies.

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And yet we still don't
actually have open architecture

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fully deployed across all of our systems,

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particularly the legacy systems.

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The other one is AI.

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Of course, everybody's talking about

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how can you apply AI in defense.

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And we haven't, obviously, fully explored

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how far we can take it,

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but there are absolutely certain areas

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within the defense business
where we could apply AI

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much better than we
have been to this point.

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Where do you think AI

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could have the most impact in defense?

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I think that the most immediate impact,

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recognizing AI is still developing, right,

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we're still figuring out
what it is, what it could be.

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I think that in sustainment,

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and in enabling readiness,

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there's far more that we could be doing

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where we could apply AI
to help us understand

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what our supply postures are,

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what our supply postures
should be for spare parts,

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for those kinds of things.

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So certainly for me, the first
place we should be looking

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is readiness and sustainment.

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And then we also have, I
think, untapped potential

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within how we develop new systems.

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And then also we've got to figure out

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how we can apply it to legacy systems,

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because the legacy systems
are going to be the ones

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that are currently out there,

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but we have to figure out

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how we apply both open architecture and AI

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to a legacy system to
develop the new capabilities

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for those systems much faster.

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What does this evolution mean

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for traditional prime contractors?

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I think it means that they need

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to adapt their models.

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They need to truly
adopt open architecture.

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Again, open architecture
has been talking about

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for a very long time,

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but has not been applied in
the development of our systems.

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And they need to, I think,

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invest and adopt the AI elements,

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because they're the ones
who develop the systems.

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They know best where those applications

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can be brought to bear.

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And I think that if they
were to truly do that,

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then they would be able to,

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I think, recapture some of the momentum

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that I believe they've lost
over the past number of years

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by being stuck to legacy
development methods.

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Sean, thank you so much for your time.

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Oh, you're so welcome.