Page 61 - Ranger Demo

The second innovative event was a ‘Dragon’s Den’ to end the first primary day of the Conference. Mark Munsell, NGA’s Chief Technology Officer, Jim Hill, from the US Army Office of Research and Technology Transfer and Nigel Clifford, Deputy Chair, UK Geospatial Commission interviewed four exciting new geospatial technology start-ups in a similar approach to the TV programme of the same name. All four were brilliant, but there must be a winner, and it was a privilege to award the trophy to Adam Kaplan of Edgybees.
My key takeaways from DGI, as ever, are personal. They are related and require the geospatial and geospatial intelligence community to get closer to the broader changes of the 4th Industrial Revolution.
Readers are aware that data science and predictive real-time data analytics helped win Liverpool the Premiership. Whilst play is in progress; the data scientists help determine tactics to achieve particular objectives, how and where to position players and move them. We need to move from thinking GEOINT as a bespoke discipline to think outcomes achieved through a range of datasets and analytical tools. A change in thinking points to the need for major GEOINT organisations to have chief data officers and a significant range of new skills to help integrate spatial and non-spatial data and get real value for decision-making.
Secondly, as UK CDS made clear in late 2019, to win in hybrid warfare Armed Forces modernisation must be led by information-centric technologies and that this must be done in partnership with the private sector to capitalise on the best technologies, innovation, and skills. The 4th Industrial Revolution is moving faster than Defence procurement can manage, and these partnerships are no longer not an option.
The Return from Dunkirk May 1940: Survey-style
Massimo Mangilli-Climpson
Massimo is British, of Anglo-Italian parents. He lived in Grantham but now
lives and teaches in Northern Italy. He has written several books on military
history including;
Men of Heart of Red, White & Green: The Italian Anti-Fascists in the
Spanish Civil War (1985), Islands in a Stormy Ocean: Bilingual study of the
Gazelles' sojourn in Friuli Venezia Giulia (1991) and Larkhill's Wartime
Locators: Royal Artillery Survey in the Second World War (2007); labour
history: A British Janus: Essays on British Trades Unions and the Labour
Party (1985); several English language textbooks for school and university level learners in Macedonia and Italy, a play: Life is a Garden of Roses (1984) which was performed in Novi Sad, as well as countless book reviews on language teaching, and on military history.
"Operation Dynamo" had been brought to a close on June 3 1940.
The Post World War II history set out the myth of the "Spirit of Dunkirk" and victory. By the fall of France, at the end of June, 337,000 British, French, Belgian and Dutch servicemen were evacuated. Not just 20,000 or 30,000 men rescued as had been imagined.
Despite the thousands of books written, what rests firmly implanted in the minds of generations are visions portrayed in post-war films, such as Dunkirk (1958), starring John Mills and Richard Attenborough. Of crews of little sailing boats facing long, endless queues of uncomplaining dirty, tired Tommies wading through cold waters, waiting patiently for days to be picked up, before starting the voyage back, with long detours, to avoid floating mines and hovering predator Stuka pilots. Such scenes of "organised" disorder were not the general norm for the three Survey Regiments R.A., of the three Corps in the BEF.
59