Misinformation, fake news, or information warfare, the concept is not new, but technology and innovation have created an expressway for its dissemination. An information warfare network, known as @HutEighteen, was launched on the 24 November in partnership with the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom for those operating in the field to collaborate and act as a force multiplier.

Information warfare is “controlling one’s own information space, protecting access to one’s own information, while acquiring and using the opponent’s information, destroying their information systems and disrupting the information flow,” as described by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).

Information warfare touches so many aspects of our society, @HutEighteen seeks to bring together technical and non-technical practitioners. By harnessing diverse talent and aptitude, @HutEighteen aims to uncover new and innovative ways of conducting hybrid or information warfare.

As a community of interest, @HutEighteen will bring together practitioners, policy makers, and thinkers within the Ministry of Defence, as well as other government departments, academia, industry and the international community. Its mission is to connect, inform, support, collaborate and exploit cyber, information advantage and information outreach through education, events, and experimentation.

Colonel Caroline Woodbridge-Lewin, Head of the Information Warfare Group at the Defence Academy said:

Big data, autonomy, machine learning, social sciences, social media and global connectivity all play an increasingly important role in our lives. And if used against us, form the basis of information warfare.

How well we perform in information warfare is less likely to be related to our specific equipment, but more towards attitude, approach and collaboration. This is exactly what @HutEighteen strives to build: the network and the relationships of those working in the diverse field to counter these disruptive techniques.

Major General Andrew Roe, Chief Executive of the Defence Academy and Commandant Joint Services Command and Staff College said:

Information Warfare is a fast-moving discipline, requiring a constantly innovative and agile approach. In order to continue to outperform our adversaries, professional military education must include the study of information warfare concepts and techniques. By innovating and collaborating across sectors and institutions, @HutEighteen has the potential to drive forward our capabilities in information warfare.

To find out more or to get involved, please contact informationwarfarenetwork@da.mod.uk or comms@da.mod.uk, or on Defence Connect for those in the Ministry of Defence.

The Expanding Universe

Until 20-30 years ago, scientists thought that the Universe was composed of ordinary matter: protons, neutrons and electrons. Now we know that this accounts for only 4% of the Universe mass-energy budget. The rest is composed of two mysterious components, dark energy and dark matter, which are causing the expansion of the Universe to accelerate, and which cannot be adequately explained by our current knowledge of fundamental physics.

The UK Space Agency is funding research teams in 7 different institutions across the UK to contribute to the Euclid spacecraft. A team at University College London’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory is leading the development of one of the two science instruments on board, the visible imager (VIS), and researchers across the country are working to establish the complex data-processing capability to allow scientists to use the data that will eventually be sent back to Earth to study dark energy and dark matter.

Find out more from the ESA Mission Factsheet

What will Euclid do?

Euclid is a medium-class European Space Agency mission due to launch in 2023. Its objective is to better understand the nature of dark matter and dark energy by mapping the ‘Dark Universe’ and by accurately measuring the acceleration of the expansion of the Universe.

The Euclid spacecraft will have two scientific instruments on board that will use specialist techniques to answer key questions about our Universe.

• What is the distribution of dark matter in the Universe?
• What is the history of expansion of the Universe?
• What does this tell us about the nature of dark energy?
• How do large-scale structures form in the Universe?

What will the instruments be measuring?

The two techniques will be weak gravitational lensing and baryonic acoustic oscillation (BAOs). These will be used to measure galaxy shapes and distortions, telling us about the distribution and evolution of dark energy and dark matter.

Weak lensing will be used to measure distortions of galaxy images due to gravity. BAOs are wiggle patterns imprinted in the clustering of galaxies which act as a standard against which to measure the expansion of the Universe. Weak lensing in particular requires a visible imager which can achieve extremely high image quality – any optical distortion due to the instrument optical systems must be calibrated out so that any distortions which are measured will be due to gravity.

The scientific instruments

To study the nature of dark energy and dark matter, Euclid will carry two science instruments, each built by a consortium of European partners:

The VIS Principal Investigator is Prof Mark Cropper at MSSL. The MSSL team has responsibility for managing the instrument consortium that has designed and built the various subsystems for VIS. MSSL is also directly responsible for the development of the detector chain of the instrument (the readout electronics receiving data from the sensors and their associated power supplies).

The Charge-coupled device (CCD) detectors are provided by Teledyne e2v in Chelmsford, under contract to ESA. The Flight Instrument was delivered to ESA for integration and testing in 2020 and will then begin being integrated with the spacecraft for the final environmental test campaign to confirm readiness for launch.

How is the UK involved?

During the 6-year mission the spacecraft will be bombarded by radiation in space, damaging the sensitive CCD detectors. To support the development at MSSL, the Open University has conducted modelling and simulations to understand how this radiation damage affects instrument performance. This will ensure that the science data can be interpreted accurately.

Euclid will generate an unprecedented volume of science data (850Gbit compressed data per day) and to cope with this, Euclid will employ K-band communications to provide the necessary rapid download rate.

In addition to the lead role on VIS, the UK also has a strong role on the development of the Ground Segment for Euclid. This includes a Science Data Centre in Edinburgh and the lead role on shear measurements and analysis, a critical element of Euclid science. Professor Andy Taylor of the Edinburgh Astronomy Technology Centre leads the development of the UK ground segment, with contributions from research teams at Oxford University, Cambridge University, University of Portsmouth, University College London, MSSL and Durham University.