More factors play a profound role in defense and military strategies today, and technology is one of them.

Lockheed Martin Corp. and the United States Department of Defense have leaned on Red Hat Inc. and its artificial intelligence chops to keep as many soldiers as possible alive on the battlefield.

“Part of our 21st-century security strategy as a company is to partner with companies like Red Hat and bring the best of the commercial world into the Department of Defense for our soldiers on the ground,” said Greg Forrest (pictured, left), director of AI foundations at Lockheed Martin Corp. “And so the ability to take commercial products and utilize them in theater is really important for saving lives on the ground.”

Forrest and Nick Barcet (pictured, right), senior director and chief technology officer for customer-led open innovation at Red Hat, spoke with theCUBE industry analysts John Furrier and Lisa Martin at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA 2022, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed the transfer of private-sector AI and computer vision capabilities to both the public sector and defense industry. (* Disclosure below.)

DoD stays on the cutting edge

The technologies being enabled by Red Hat will allow unmanned aerial vehicles to quickly “switch modalities” in theater, allowing the soldiers controlling them to more accurately locate and track real-time targets, Forrest explained.

Carrying out these tasks, and more so in real time, implies the use of multiple sensors that gather large swathes of data. Moving all that data, using it to train AI algorithms, and redeploying at the edge are all possible through Red Hat’s MicroShift.

Red Hat had been working on small form-factor Kubernetes for a while, but the realization of such a strong use case as the military forced the company to package it into a product, according to Barcet.

“With MicroShift, we’re able to do that in a way that’s robust, repeatable and automated, and that really instills trust in us and our customers,” Forrest stated.

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA 2022 event:

(* Disclosure: Red Hat Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Red Hat nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE