At the beginning of July, the French Defense Procurement Agency (DGA) announced the industrialization phase of the ARTEMIS.IA project (Architecture de Traitement et d’Exploitation Massive de l’Information Multi-Sources et d’Intelligence Artificielle). Led by the French Defense Digital Agency (AND), this program aims to provide the French Ministry of the Armed Forces with a sovereign and secure solution for massive data processing (big data) and AI. On June 24, ATHEAwas awarded this third phase of the project.
Military equipments are more and more interconnected and equipped with very powerful sensors, thus generating a considerable volume of data. It has become necessary for the army to develop new solutions to exploit, analyze and correlate all this data in order to quickly transmit to the forces the information useful for decision making. It is with this objective in mind that the Artemis.IA project has taken shape, demonstrating the desire of the Ministry of the Army to develop robust, controlled and sovereign capabilities in the field of AI. As a reminder, the 2019-2025 military programming law devotes more than 700 million euros to the development of AI technologies.
Artemis.IA
Phase 1 of the project consisted of a proof-of-concept, the second in the realization and evaluation of demonstrators.
These initial phases of Artemis.IA allowed to validate, with users, the technical solutions selected and to create an industrial ecosystem composed of academic and industrial actors (large groups, start-ups and SMEs). This third stage of the project, led by the AND, includes the scaling up and industrialization of the platform delivered in the previous phase.
The industrialization phase
The Artemis.IA project is now entering an industrialization phase, which includes not only the deployment of this first operational platform, but also the realization of successive standards, training and support for a period of three years.
The first application will be dedicated to the exploitation of multi-source information for the benefit of the joint intelligence function and will be delivered as of 2023.
In the future, ATHEA’s solution will allow the Ministry of the Armed Forces to develop new AI applications within its various systems, by reconciling decompartmentalization and controlled information sharing. The fields of application are numerous and concern all domains that handle large volumes of data and for which sovereignty and security are crucial: intelligence, logistics, cybersecurity, military health monitoring, predictive maintenance or maritime surveillance.
In addition, an Artemis.IA development and integration kit, open to the industrial and academic world, will also enable the creation of easily integrated applications and accelerate the innovation cycle. As a modular platform, Artemis.IA will benefit from future technological advances in the field of big data and AI, allowing to better meet the evolving needs of the ministry.
The realization of the platform awarded to ATHEA
Launched in July 2021, ATHEA, co-founded by Atos and Thales, relies on an ecosystem of major industrial and digital companies such as Capgemini, Sopra Steria Group and Airbus Defense & Space, as well as on ETIs, SMEs, startups and research organizations specialized in massive data processing and AI. Around 100 experts have been working on the optimization and industrialization phase of the program for over a year.
Philippe Gasc, President of ATHEA, states:
“This first major contract illustrates the confidence that the DGA and the armed forces have in ATHEA’s teams to develop a very high level technological solution, specifically adapted to the defense world. The exploitation of data represents a major challenge to maintain the operational superiority of the armed forces. We are proud to develop a sovereign solution that will enable France to act autonomously in the fields of intelligence, operations command and in the digital space.”
Translated from La Direction Générale de l’Armement attribue la réalisation de la plateforme ARTEMIS.IA à ATHEA
