A Brief History Of Autonomous Tech In The US Air Force with Gene Renuart

The knock-on effects of new technology manifests itself in often unpredictable ways. This of course includes the autonomous technology used in the vehicles racing around the track at Indianapolis. In a truly surprising turn, these race cars are now considered a matter of national security. Today, the DoD has taken a serious interest in the IAC and how Artificial intelligence is changing the way the United States Military protects its technology and its secrets. To gain some insight, the Inside Track sits down with retired 4-Star General Gene Renuart of the U.S. Air Force Northern Command to discuss the future of military and private innovation.

From Straw Hut Media

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
We're so connected now, interconnected globally, that it's hard to say anything is
not a national security issue, becausewhether it's banking, or diplomacy or race
cars, the technology that goes intoall that is also the same technology we
rely on for national defense. Theworld around us is changing faster than ever

(00:24):
before. Ideas once only imagined inscience fiction are becoming a reality. Throughout
the course of our amazing twenty threeepisode season, we'll speak to some of
the greatest minds in robotics and artificialintelligence to discuss the groundbreaking work that's fueling
it all. I'm your host RyanMarine joined me and my co host Paul
Mitchell, the president of the IndianAutonomous Challenge, and see why we call

(00:46):
this the inside track. As technologybecomes more widely accessible at races, faster
and further into the unknown, wheredo military and private innovation meet, how
do we keep the spirit of collaborationalive while also safeguarding our secrets? And
just how much is artificial intelligence changingthe way our military protects itself. To

(01:08):
help answer these questions and more,we're speaking with retired four star General Gene
Renuarts of the US Air Force NorthernCommand, today, Gene is the chairman
of the Board of Directors at theIndiana Innovation Institute and the founder and president
of the Renuart Group consulting firm.Is many years of experience give him particular

(01:29):
insight into why the work being doneat the Indy Autonomous Challenge is a matter
of national security. Gene, I'msuper excited for this conversation. First of
all, thank you for fitting usinto your schedule. But we're here on
a podcast talking about cutting edge technology, and I think when people think about

(01:53):
something that embodies cutting edge technology,race cars and fighter jets probably come to
mind. So this is a perfectthe combination for us. Tell us a
little bit about how technology and theAir Force have been working hand in hand
for some time and how perhaps that'snever been more important than it is today.
Well, absolutely, this is We'reat a at an inflection point really

(02:17):
within the Air Force in terms ofhow we value artificial intelligence and how we
incorporate it into what we do dayin and out, from things as simple
as well not simple, as complexas training new pilots, to even more
complex, how do we integrate unmannedsystems with manned systems in a very complicated

(02:42):
electromagnetic environment. I think we're goingto see an explosion of activity over the
coming years. Gee, just forthose who are listening who don't don't know
your background, kind of what's beenyour journey in the evolution of technology innovation
and how has that driven your careerchoices and your path up to through the

(03:07):
ranks over the years in the AirForce in the military. Well, you
know, in the probably fifty fiftyyears since I graduated from pilot training fifty
one years in the Air Force,we've seen things like flight simulation be merely
a box with moving actuators, USand actuators and the like, but there's

(03:32):
no real movement in the stimulator itself, so no full motion in that process,
no ability to replicate weather conditions oreven have tactical scenarios. It really
was an instrument trainer or an emergencyprocedures trainer. To today where there is
virtual reality and artificial intelligence you usedacross a board. Yeah, you know,

(03:55):
you think about the technologies that you'vebeen discussing throughout this podcast series that
are on the INDI Autonomous Challenge Carand we talk about them being cutting edge,
and they are cutting edge, right, There's this challenge around sensor fusion.
There's the challenge of operating in aGPS let's say, unreliable not necessarily

(04:17):
disabled, but unreliable environment, likeyou go under a bridge and you lose
GPS signal. There's this challenge aroundmulti agent tracking and trying to decide what
the other agent in this case,another car is going to do, realizing
that it's operating on a different algorithmthat you don't have access to. So

(04:41):
there's a lot of these technology challengesthat we're working on, and we've got
lots of commercial industry partners who aretrying to work on these with us.
But what you're talking about about thedeployment of AI and the use of it
across all aspects of training in cockpit, the vr AR integration into the pilot's

(05:03):
helmet, the concept of three hundredand sixty degree perception and sensor fusion that
enable the pilot. That stuff's beenin place and in development for sounds like
you're saying better part of a decadeor even longer. So why has it

(05:24):
taken so long for the commercial worldto enjoy the benefits of these technologies,
And that is that a strategic decisionon the part of the US government,
US military because of the concerns ofhow that technology and those use cases could
proliferate in the use cases that arenot so helpful to us. Well,

(05:46):
you bring up a really great point, and I'll use GPS as an example
of sort of what you've described.We built a separate layer of GPS within
the satellite system so that the militaryuse of that is much more more precise
than the commercial use. And whatwe saw over time is those began to
merge together. Because if you thinkabout things like autonomous vehicles, race cars,

(06:13):
taxis, you name it, theyhave to understand what the obstacles are
around them, and they have tounderstand how to integrate things like road signs
and pedestrians and all of that intothe to the mind of the car,
if you will, to allow tofunction. But what we're seeing is as
we do more and more of this, much like NASA years ago, that

(06:35):
technology can be brought into the civilianworld in a way that it honors the
need for the military to have thecompetitive edge, but it also recognizes the
need for the civilian community, whetherit's automotive or hospital services or the like,
to have much of that same technologyavailable to them too. So this

(06:55):
is it's we're accelerating the military's useand wholly along with it the opportunity for
the civilian communities to take advantage ofthat. I think along similar lines,
going back to your previous comment aboutthe ability of the commercial sector to actually
supersede the defense industry to a certaindegree in pursuing some of these new technologies.

(07:19):
Is that something that is concerning tothe Department of Defense, especially when
we think about this in a contextof competition. One, the Department of
Defense, I'm sure would love tohave access to the brightest minds. There's
a competition for talent there. Butthen you also look at the global competition,
the great power dynamic as well thatis in play. And if some

(07:43):
of these things are available to anyactor with good or dubious intentions, you
know what kind of implications are therefrom a defense perspective. Well, there's
huge implications to the first part ofyour question. I think the Defense Department
relishes the ability of industry and moveas quickly as it can. And we're
seeing this in a space industry wherewe're seeing ULA and SpaceX and others becoming

(08:09):
the launch vehicle of choice because companieslike SpaceX and others can be much more
agile. They've taken advantage of thelessons that we've learned through NATO and already
incorporated them into their first vehicles,whereas it took NASA, as you know,
decade to get to where we coulddo that. So the government is

(08:30):
still a bureaucracy, and so itwill have its own inertia to overcome within
the wault of its own organization,and that's maybe a harder obstacle to overcome
than the desire to have some ofwhat industry can produce. Gene. We're
talking about talent, and I knowthat's something that you're passionate about. And

(08:54):
one of the things that Indian AutonomousChallenge seeks to do, and I think
it has been one of the thingswe can play to as a real success,
is creating a challenge, a competitionthat attracts the best and brightest minds
from top research universities across the USaround the world. We've seen this level
of collaboration and coordination across countries,across universities that has led to exponential improvement

(09:26):
in the ability to achieve this goalof high speed automation. And you know,
we went from in the summer oftwenty twenty one struggling to get a
car to go fifteen twenty miles anhour around Lucas wyl Speedway, let alone
the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and nowwe're going, you know, one hundred
and eighty miles an hour, passingeach other. You know, the way

(09:46):
human race car drivers do. Thatcould not have happened. It would there's
no way that we would have beenable to be successful if each of the
universities, in each of the teamshad taken a you know, a a
closed off approach. So just howdo you think about this, this need
to get talented and smart people tocollaborate and work together, but to also

(10:11):
do so in a way that protectsagainst adversaries You may be looking to,
you know, infiltrate that and pullthe information out. Well, first,
I'd just like to say that thetalent that you've brought into the inn Autonomous
Challenges is incredible, probably the bestand brightest that there is in the world.

(10:33):
And the fact that you can attractthat level of talent with with the
sponsorship of their universities and obviously manyof the names you see written on your
on your race star. There atest to the fact that there's a huge
need and a strong desire to bringthat talent together to collaborate. And I

(10:54):
will say that we see that withinthe defense world, we were sometimes our
own worst enemy in that regard becausewe classified everything and so you know,
I couldn't sit in my OP centerand share a computer screen with my Canadian
counterpart because it had us input intothat. We've we've broken down those barriers
within the autonomous challenge and when youthink about you've got the same kinds of

(11:16):
processing capacity on that car as wedo on our many of our most current
fighters running around the world, it'sdone in a different way and it's you
know, et cetera. But Ithink on a broader scale we have to
understand that I will guarantee you thereare competitors, probably other nations, competitors

(11:39):
who know enough about Indy Autonomous Challengethat they're trying desperately to figure out how
they get inside that car and they'regoing to continue to do that. So
encouraging the collaboration but insisting on thesecurity aspect to protect the technological edge is
is an art form, and it'ssomething we have to work really really hard

(12:01):
at. I'd be curious to gogo back in time a little bit in
your tenure within the Air Force.When did you first start hearing about AI
and when did it start to registerwith the decision makers that this is something
that could revolutionize the defense industry specificallywhat you do in the Air Force.

(12:22):
Well, i'd say, in avery unsophisticated way, when we began,
and back when I was still flyingcombat aircraft, we began talking about this
thing called a helmet mounted queuing systemand it was this bulky thing that you
bolted on the front of your helmet, but it allowed you to get it

(12:46):
fused data together for the pilot,so that then that was projected on your
visor and it's simplified in many waysthe workload and the pilot because it was
being displayed for you in a waythat you could use it today. When
we train a new pilot, theystart out with AI and virtual reality as

(13:07):
a means to before they ever getinto an airplane. They've already started flying
that airplane and working through simulations anddoing instrument training, and they can do
that at home with the our tools. They can do that in a computer
augmented dome that is, you know, essentially fused together with some artificial intelligence,

(13:28):
and that's growing more and more aswe as we train each day.
We talk about one of the aspirationsfor india Autonomous Challenge being an ability to
prove out technologies and systems on formularace cars. They could certainly save lives
and that is the altruistic and mostimportant goal for commercial mobility. But there's

(13:52):
a there is a there is amotorsports passion that we have. Can you
see a scenario where human race cardrivers go down the path that human fighter
pilots went? And then the secondpart of that question is I'm going to
assume you're gonna say yes, butyou can talk about it. But then
the second part of that question iswhen that started getting introduced, were there
people that said that those human fighterpilots weren't as good as the ones before

(14:16):
because you're giving them too many toolsor you're you know, it's no longer
the human that's in the loop,And like, do you view the skills
of the top gun fighters today asequal to or do you view them as
greater than the ones from you know, I don't know the time when the
planes were still fully mechanical. Well, I think, as you said,

(14:39):
the first answer is yes, andit really I serve on another company's board
that is heavily partnered in the movetowards connected cars, and so you have
vehicles that basically talk enough to eachother that an autonomous vehicle can be safely

(15:03):
operated on the LA Freeway at eightthirty in the afternoon morning or whatever,
and all the other cars out thereknow to stay out of its way because
they talk to each other. Well, the same is true for race cars,
not necessarily that it may demand thedriver change something, but give him
situation awareness. You know, westill have spotters that sit up in the

(15:26):
corner of every turn and talk tothe driver and say, you know number
car fives coming up on your left. Well, if that driver has his
or her heads up display, hecan see that occurring, and so that
changes their decision making process and hestill has to drive the car. And
the same is true in the combataircraft world. Ultimately, you still have

(15:50):
to fly that airplane. So theability to train that pilot to be extraordinarily
qualified and capable is still going tocontinue. Was there ever pushback from the
the aviation purists as as technology changedto say, you know, what you're

(16:11):
adding is not going to improve theperformance of the of the pilot. You
know, it's going to distract himor her, or it's going to make
them less less effective or or wasthat something that was you know, easily
overcome because the D O D kindof is is always on this technology innovation
trajectorysus versus a purist in motorsport,Yeah, no, I think there was

(16:36):
pushback. I mean we started withnight vision goggles. Initially people, we
had these horrendous training programs that youyou know, before you could fly with
night vision goggles, you had togo out and sit in a car and
in the dark on the runway andjust turn them on and off so you
could see what they did. Andthen you and you went through this laborious
checkout program. And the same istrue as we began to get the helmet

(16:57):
maticuting systems and what realized is wow, I mean, we should never be
flying without those as augmented capabilities andso charted as not so much concern that
from a purist. It was concernedby overly conservative regulators that this was dangerous
because what you're going to allow apilot to see in the dark, how

(17:18):
can that be safe? Well,in fact, enhanced safety by five or
tenfold, So the skill set mayhave changed bit. Then the ultimate F
thirty five top gun pilot got askill set that includes perhaps more ability to

(17:40):
process information, perhaps to manage thesedifferent technologies, to feel comfortable moving in
and out of the ar VR environment, because I could I could see it
being a bit disorienting to have threehundred and sixty degree perception for a while,
right, And so if you're usedto flying a certain way, than

(18:02):
the introduction of that may be tough, but it sounds like the early guinea
pigs that dealt with it. Atfirst, it might have been it might
have been more difficult, but nowyou're sort of training your pilots that way
from day one. Yeah, that'sexactly right, And it makes training them
easier in many ways because they've beenexposed to this right from the beginning,
even in the early stages of basicaircraft training, and we've begun to incorporate

(18:25):
this at the very beginning of theirtraining programs. So to them it's not
second nature because it's still learned skills. But you've introduced that from day one,
and so their ability to absorb thatknowledge and make their judgments based on
that has matured along with the paceas they moved through the pilot training programs.

(18:48):
Out of curiosity, which transition doyou think would be the more difficult
someone coming from a less sophisticated,less technologically advanced platform to a more advanced
one, or the opposite, wheresomeone who has only grown up in a
world knowing AI, knowing virtual reality, having these tools or you might even
call them crutches to some degree,trying to transition back to a retrograde form

(19:14):
of equipment. And I ask thisbecause all of this reminds me of the
eternal debate of race car drivers.Who is the greatest one ever? Could
Louis Meyer, who won three Indyfive hundreds in the twenties and thirties,
be successful today? Or would thetransition for a modern driver who is used
to the tools of a modern cargoing back to the old days? Would
that be too big of a challenge. So I'm curious you've gone through to

(19:37):
your point there in that previous story, going from something that is more simplistic
and having to adapt but being ableto do so do you think the opposite
would be more difficult? To somedegree, I would say the opposite would
be a little more challenging, onlyin that once you learn to use all
those tools, you rely on themand it's sort of second nature that you

(19:57):
have them, right, take themall away. And again an example,
the F sixteen guys that I wasstarting to fly with, they never carried
maps in their airplane. And atthat time, the F sixteen had two
onboard computer units they could fail.And so then how do you know where

(20:18):
you are? Well, we don'thave any stinking maps. I today dial
up ways and if what happens,if ways is sure or your phone dies,
gosh, you got to read streetsigns. You know, we've been
talking a lot about the positive applicationsof all of this new technology, the
integration of artificial intelligence, the interconnectivityof different platforms, and there are so

(20:41):
many positive things that can come withit. But presumably with every new and
untested technology, there are potential pitfallsas well. So what perils do you
foresee the defense sector having to grapplewith in the coming years with so many
any of these new things coming online? Well, it's it's really about information

(21:04):
management. And fusion. You wantto be able to take billions of bytes
of data and pull them together andproject them in a manageable way to whether
it's a pilot or an airborne battlemanager or a commander in an operations center.

(21:25):
And so we have to we haveto accelerate the data fusion capabilities of
all these systems so that because wecan collect way more data than we use.
You go into intelligence operations centers andthere's tons that falls out on the

(21:45):
cutting room floor, and yet todaywith AI we can collect all that.
Then okay, how do you thenturn that around and find a way to
search it and mine it for thequestion you want to ask? So,
how do we ensure that there's appropriatefilters on the information so that it doesn't

(22:07):
cause us to be extraordinarily exposed yetallows for you know, continuing to take
advantage of the talent that went intobuilding that car. So we're so connected
now, interconnected globally, that it'shard to say anything is not a national
security issue because whether it's banking,or diplomacy or race cars, the technology

(22:33):
that goes into all that is alsothe same technology we rely on for national
defense. So we've got to bereally careful about who has access to how
it's protected, and what use wewant that information to have. I've got
just one last question for you.You know you are you weren't born in
Indiana, but you spent a lotof your formative years and college years in

(22:59):
Indiana, and you've had this connectionback to the state. Yet most of
your career you were all over theworld and and serving in the in the
armed forces. You know, partof what we're looking to do in this
podcast conversation is is to you know, talk about the origin story of India

(23:19):
Autonomous Challenge and you know, thehistory and the legacy of motorsports in Indiana
and the pursuit of the economy ofthe future. Sort of what are your
observations about Indiana's position and how thingslike the India Autonomous Challenge and other innovative

(23:41):
activities in the state, you knowposition us visa the other places in the
US, but also we're in aglobal competition, so you know, competitively
around the world. Well, you'reright, I've got a really strong soft
spot in my harder for Indiana obviouslyas an IU grad and and a lot
of my wife's a native who'sire andso we are tied to the state in

(24:04):
so many ways. I think thatthe state of Indiana has some really incredible
opportunity. Certainly, I think ifyou look back in history, the automotive
industry has been a part and theheart of Indiana for decades. But the
other thing that's important about the stateis there a state that can set its
mind to build something and succeed.There's a work ethic in the state.

(24:29):
There's a sense of commitment going backeven the World War two days, where
we were building aircraft in Indiana andsupporting the war efforts and vehicles, in
fact continuing to do that to supportthe military. So I think that there's
a strong tradition within the state tolook at ways to rapidly deploy innovation.

(24:51):
And I will say that the fusionof the IEDC and the Applied Research Institute
is something that can really be anaccelerator for the state. I think the
thing that is important going forward ishow much risk is the state willing to
take to jump out of the packand to lead well. Geene, thank

(25:14):
you so much for your time,thank you for your insight, and above
all, thank you for your service. This has been endlessly fascinating and something
we've really enjoyed. Well, it'sbeen by pleasure and we obviously we could
talk about this for hours, butPaul, I wish, I wish you
guys lots of success. I knowthere's there are a lot of next steps
for Indy Autonomous Challenge and so bebold. Thanks for joining us. This

(25:41):
week on the inside Track, thatwas retired United States Air Force four star
General Gene renu Art lending his experience, knowledge and insight into how military and
civilian technologies are mixing and improving eachother. And next week, Sarah Burnett,
the author of The Autonomous Enterprise,comes on the show to discuss how
the private sectors in just about everyarea are using AI to automate complex human

(26:07):
tasks. Imagine creating a bank accountor announcing public health concerns in a fraction
of the usual time and at theclick of a button.