Johannes Pinl – entrepreneur, technologist and CEO/Founder of MARSS Group. (Images courtesy of MARSS Group) What is the biggest change coming in your market, and how will it affect you? The biggest change, which actually manifested itself a few years ago, but is only now becoming apparent in the mainstream media, is the Machine vs Machine war. Aggressors are increasingly making use of fully autonomous machines, which make autonomous decisions, at machine speeds. The only effective way to defend against such threats is to use the same means: we need to master autonomous machine capabilities and make them an even better match for such opponents. This means the development and update cycles of products in the field need to be paced in months, not five year cycles - as the traditional defence industry is practicing. MilTech Perspective Pinl raises an important and cogent point, which both the magazine and our associated website will continue to investigate as the arena fills up with more and more participants: how is the concept of ‘machine vs machine’ warfare changing the face of conflict? And how will it affect the evolution of battlefield solutions? Is ‘hybrid intelligence’ indeed the future of defence? As we continue to observe and draw lessons from the ongoing struggle in Ukraine, we are already seeing the effects of automated warfare and deriving both positive and negative lessons. Those will be incorporated into tactics, techniques and procedures in the field – but, perhaps more importantly, will shape and define the continuing evolution of technology aimed at effective protection at an affordable cost and with adequate safeguards in place. Johannes Pinl is CEO – and Founder – of MARSS Group, a global technology innovator with offices in London, Bristol, Monaco and Riyadh. Specialising in leveraging technology and innovation to help communities and agencies protect what they most value, what started as a concept for an autonomous docking system almost twenty years ago has evolved into a diverse technology group that now protects millions of lives around the globe, in all domains, embracing military and civil assets and critical infrastructure. Here he responds to the traditional 3-2-1 suite of questions. What are your three most important products and/or services? Taking into account the current geopolitical situation driven by the events in Ukraine and the Middle East, I would say first is the NiDAR CUAS - our world-leading counter-UAS system - which is successfully proven on the battlefield against the increasingly prominent threat of Category 2 UAVs – the Shahed 136, for example. NiDAR CUAS builds on our NiDAR Central Command solution, and relies on our second important asset, the MARSS Interceptor. This, the latest innovative development for countermeasures in our arsenal, is a hit-to-kill UAV, neutralising such Cat 2 UAVs intelligently, without explosives, and for a fraction of the cost of traditional countermeasures. And I suppose to answer that question at a higher level, and adding the third component - our focus is on the continual development of technology to protect people and save lives - after all, that is the vision this business is founded on. What are the two greatest challenges you face, and how are you addressing them? From a technical perspective, it is ensuring our solutions can deal with ever-changing threats. To give an example, we had to overcome the immense challenge of positively identifying UAVs from a distance of more than 20 kilometres, while simultaneously tracking 1,000 similar-sized objects - such as birds, balloons etc. To overcome this, our in-house team developed what we call Hybrid Intelligence. We essentially combined artificial intelligence and traditional algorithmics, which were trained and tested on hundreds of thousands of terabytes of battlefield data. The result is now that our systems can identify what is actually a threat and what can be ignored - a huge benefit in terms of reducing false alarms and saving time in situations when lives are at stake. As a business, we believe such Hybrid Intelligence is the future of defence, and that means we have to continually grow our team, which is the business challenge. We want to double our team again this year - which we will do by continuing to recruit the very best engineers and experts. 54 · MT 2/2023 The 3-2-1 Interview Tim Mahon is Editor-in-Chief of Mönch Online. Tim Mahon Hybrid Intelligence – the Future of Defence? The MARSS Interceptor – a small, agile hit-to-kill UAV that lies at the heart of the NiDAR CUAS capability. Schematic showing the comprehensive protective nature of the NiDAR CUAS solution. Johannes Pinl has over 15 years’ experience in the software development sector. In 2003, he started his first marine venture, following this by establishing the MARSS Group in 2005. He sold a minority stake of the company to Sonardyne in 2010 and the Group was subsequently acquired by FLIR, Inc. in 2013, with Pinl remaining as CEO. An opportunity arose two years later for Pinl to lead a management buyout and regain full control of MARSS. f
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