Real-time battlefield intelligence for fighters at the push of a button is what’s promised by Nomad, a new AI tool developed by Babcock International.
The firm launched the new capability at DSEI 2025 in London this week; it said it had identified a gap in market provision as a result of shortage of on-the-ground linguists and analysts.
The edge-processed, AI-powered product cleans, transcribes, translates, and analyses voice and text data within seconds or minutes in communications-denied environments, providing direct and near real-time intelligence.
Speaking with Defence Leaders, its Chief Technologist AI Dr Peter Passaro explained: “It’s often a very noisy, rattled audio that we’re operating on. So we’ll clean that audio up, and then take that to the transcription step. So whatever the native language is, and then we’ll turn that into a translation for the operator.”
Defence Leaders was given the opportunity to hear examples of how Nomad parsed actual battlefield comms taken from the Ukraine conflict. A demonstrator version will be available within six months for an as-yet unnamed potential customer.
The firm said the nature of the cumulative-learning AI system meant that it was continuing to improve all the time; the system currently operates within minutes and sometimes seconds depending on input, but Defence Leaders is given to understand the system is expected to reach real-time, as-it-happens capability by year-end.
Going into more detail about the raison-d’etre behind developing Nomad, Mission Systems CEO Neal Misell added: “We’re generally agnostic, so Nomad is is quite a step for us, because our our general business model has been to find the best — very often from SMEs — and bring it together integrate it and deliver it to our customer knowing what they want because we work with them very closely, however when we see gaps in the market that’s where we’re really happy to invest in a product….
“We just felt that we knew that there was a real paucity of analysts and translators. You know, this is not about replacing them: this is about allowing them — to highlight to them — things that they can spend more time on…
“The battlespace is now full of sensors… And all of those platforms have got lots of sensors on them and they’re all sending back lots and lots of data. And the challenge is how do you make data into information?
“Because if you’re sat there, you’re just getting all this language, all sorts of signals, intelligence, just coming at you. How do you know what you should focus on in as close to real time as you can get?
“And that’s where I think we thought AI had a real part to play. That’s why it’s a game-changer, because that sort of analysis a week after the event is far less valuable than as close to real time as you can get.
“And therefore, AI can sift through all of that and clean it up, which is really important and translate it and sift through it, look for keywords, flag those keywords to a human much, much quicker than if they had to go through that themselves. And then they can use their skills and their expertise to really make a difference within minutes. That’s something that we don’t believe happens currently.”
As he observed at the official product launch: “Nomad can give end-users the ability to make critical decisions where every second counts and lives are at risk — even when they are cut off from a command and control centre.
“We have created a product, which can give any operator vital intelligence in real time, where and when they need it.”
- You can read more details about Nomad on the Babcock website
