Navy: Intel Systems Suck?

Navy: Actually, Most Military Intel Systems Suck

from Danger Room by Spencer Ackerman

It’s one of Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ lasting legacies: pumping billions into producing drones, cameras, sensors and aerostats so U.S. troops can have a better picture of the wars they fight. And the Office of Naval Research is saying it’s still not good enough.

Not that the office is criticizing Gates. It’s just that a new solicitation from the Navy’s super-scientists to create a big new “autonomous persistant tactical surveillance” is really impatient with all the inefficiencies that confront troops starved for better intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance tools. And no wonder: the program’s out-there goal is no less than “measuring the value of information across an area as a function of time given knowledge of current and future missions and to measure the amount of known relevant information spatially organized as a function of time.”

The basic idea behind Autonomous Persistent Tactical Surveillance is to link collected intelligence into the command-and-control systems that let small units talk to their headquarters. That should better allow “sensor and data analysis nodes to anticipate the information needs of the tactical warfighter.” That linkup could work in a secured cloud which mobile handsets should be able to access, providing “simultaneous situational awareness” to a Marine squad and its command center. Eat your heart out, Army smartphone program.

That’s not all. The program wants to expand the Navy’s aperture, using “coverage history, data and context from available sources” to get a persistent fix on a huge area of space — “typically 40 nmi [nautical miles] by 40 nmi.” (Eat your heart out, Air Force “Blue Devil” super-blimp. Gorgon Stare, you might have a rival.) That should knit together into an “autonomous sensing system” thanks to a variety of unmanned vehicles “operating in autonomous mode.”

So think networked drones working in concert to get a long-term view on a massive area, “deciding” what’s relevant to a small Marine unit by “anticipating” its mission requirements, all linked to headquarters, and discarding information that’s either perishable or useless. Darpa wants to create a thinking camera. This is a step beyond.


To get a sense of why the Navy thinks it’s necessary to upgrade the military’s arsenal of cameras, sensors and drones, the solicitation basically itemizes all their shortcomings — at excruciating length.
They don’t weight the relative importance of collected information to specific missions, or indicate to analysts what info is perishable. They don’t use “unified information ontologies or data mappings,” and a snapshot that lacks “space-time and geo-cultural context” isn’t of much use. They can’t “assess large quantities of imagery and full motion video information and determine potential threat activities using algorithms that work with limited IT assets.”

They can’t be a voice for the small unit commander, channelling his or her needs up to the higher headquarters that controls a drone or a satellite.  They can’t “project the value of information versus location given mission plans and area events over time.” And they can’t “align tactical and strategic analysis capabilities and sensor resources to current and future information requirements.”
Aside from that, military intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance is working great.

The Office of Naval Research didn’t make anyone available to discuss Autonomous Persistent Tactical Surveillance, and demurred from further comment since the solicitation is a long way from being awarded. Whether this actually gets seen through to completion is a separate question. Many, many problems have vexedsimilarly ambitious surveillance platforms. And this looks to be one of the most ambitious of all.

Photo: U.S. Navy/Flickr