The Eyes Have It
Written by Peter Buxbaum
TISR 2011 Volume: 1 Issue: 5 (December)
The Counter Terrorism Airborne Analysis Center (CTAAC), a unit run jointly by the Department of Defense and interested civilian agencies, has been making use of large volumes of full motion video (FMV) of late. Captain Sam Percy, a reserve Army officer assigned to CTAAC and a solutions engineer at Overwatch Systems, works in the first phase of video analysis, which means that he monitors live video feeds streamed into the center from unmanned aerial vehicles.
“Working with video enables us to identify targets, create analysis surrounding target sets, and generate correlations among the targets from different locations,” Percy said. “It is especially useful when it comes to following and tracking individuals and personalities.”
CTAAC analysts also use video and imagery to construct route analysis for warfighters pursuing targets. “We can analyze routes from a helicopter landing zone to a target and assess enemy threats in the area,” said Percy. “At the end of the day there is a great feeling of accomplishment knowing that we equipped our troops with as much intelligence information as needed for them to complete their mission and safely return home.”
There is no question about the increased demand in the military and intelligence communities for access to and analysis and exploitation of full motion video. Experts say this is driven by the explosion in the number of available sensors and platforms that provide FMV; a few dozen assets 10 years ago have exploded to thousands today. The volume of video taken in Afghanistan and Iraq in any given year can be measured in decades.
The key added value that video brings over still imagery intelligence is the ability to observe targets over time. FMV provides a capability to understand human activity over and above the insights to be derived from still imagery.
“Military operators have become increasingly dependent on FMV for general situational awareness and target specific reconnaissance,” said David Fields, chief technology officer at Logos Technologies. “The primary development for platforms has been the advent of unmanned aircraft. The advance of this technology will continue for the foreseeable future, making airborne FMV ubiquitous.”
The need for FMV has been advanced as well by the changing nature of warfare, according to Dr. Richard Wittstruck, system of systems director at the Army’s Program Executive Office, Intelligence, Electronic Warfare & Sensors (PEO IEW&S). “During the first Gulf War we used imagery for target acquisition and battle damage assessment,” he said. “In the current campaign we are operating in a full spectrum of landscapes with a mix of urban and rural and a lot of moving components. We have noncombatants trying to live their lives. We need an unblinking eye to provide patterns of behavior to indicate that something is happening. Full motion video has become that gap filler.”
The Army utilizes several integrated platforms that include FMV capabilities. Airborne Reconnaissance Low (ARL) integrates the aircraft, payload and analyst multifunction workstations to form a system that employs imagery intelligence, as well as GMTI and SAR radars, for the collection, processing and dissemination of intelligence products. The aircraft can also support the simultaneous dissemination of full motion video data.
The Medium Altitude Reconnaissance Surveillance System (MARSS) and the Aerial Reconnaissance and Multi-Sensor System are both quick reaction capabilities (QRCs) that deliver FMV directly to the warfighter. “ARL is a program of record, which means it has line item in the defense budget and is integrated into the Army’s force structure,” said Wittstruck. “The QRCs represent a limited time investment respond to niche requirement in theater, often fielded within weeks or months. QRCs can transition to a program of record, remain a niche capability, or be retired and disposed of.”
ARL has been used since the 1980s, when it had its genesis during counterterror and counternarcotics operations in Central and South America. MARSS gained notoriety a few years ago when it was used by Task Force ODIN (observe, detect, identify and neutralize). Activated in Iraq in 2007, Task Force ODIN provided intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets to U.S. Army commanders to better detect and act against insurgent forces. It has also been used in conjunction with Project Liberty, an Air Force effort begun in 2009 to identify targets in Afghanistan and Iraq from the air.
“The strength of what we have been able to accomplish with our QRCs is that while they met an immediate need for aerial ISR in Afghanistan and Iraq they also allowed us to learn some very valuable lessons, which will inform our permanent solution with the Enhanced Medium Altitude Reconnaissance Surveillance System (EMARSS) POR,” said Wittstruck. “EMARSS will offer a mulit-int sensor suite including DCGS-A enabled FMV and COMINT. Having DCGS on board will truly bring this capability to the next level as it allows collected information to be quickly processed, exploited and disseminated to users via the DCGS enterprise.”
The increase in demand for full motion video has led companies to adapt technologies toward the development of different FMV applications. Rafael, an Israeli company, combines sensors, processing power and networking to tailor solutions to customer requirements. “We have been in contact with U.S. and other forces in Afghanistan about tailoring these types of solutions for camp protection,” said Haim Jacobovitz, the company’s vice president and general manager of the NCW. “They have been applied to force protection as well as border protection in Israel.”
The building blocks of this type of system include a network of sensors and image processing power that allows commanders to make decisions about camp security in real time. “What we do is provide commanders with relevant information so they can make relevant decisions,” said Jacobovitz. “If you have a series of cameras surrounding a camp or infrastructure, human beings can’t process all of the necessary information in real time. Our system automatically prioritizes the images to help commanders make decisions about protecting their people and assets.”
Rafael’s processing of video imagery has traditionally been done centrally, but of late the company has been pushing more processing power to the sensors themselves, especially, said Jacobovitz, in the case of aerial sensors.
IDirect Government Technologies (iGT), a provider of satellite communications to the U.S. military and government, applies its expertise to provide FMV capabilities to operations in geographical areas without line of sight access to direct UAV feeds. Most of today’s FMV is broadcast directly to the ground over the L-band frequency from manned and unmanned airborne assets, noted Karl Fuchs, the company’s vice president of technology.
“The biggest advantage to satellite communications is ubiquitous coverage,” he said. “L-band communications direct to the ground implies some existing infrastructure to leverage. In some areas, such as in the Horn of Africa, that is not the case.”
IGT has worked to integrate their satellite communications technology on the aircraft providing the FMV. This has included working on antennas, modems and routers. “This work has resulted in increases in output from 512 kilobits per second at first to two megabits per second, and in the latest runs up to 2 to 14 megabits per second off a 60-centimeter aperture antenna,” said Fuchs. “Once you get over 12 megabits you can accommodate high-definition full motion video.”
IGT’s technology was used by the U.S. Coast Guard during last year’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill to locate oil in the Gulf of Mexico. The technology was also integrated by Sierra Nevada Corporation on a Beechcraft King Air aircraft equipped with infrared sensors.
Related to capabilities provided by full motion video is wide area motion imagery, essentially a low-rate video with image formats measured in tens or hundreds of millions of pixels. “These large formats make possible systems that don’t need to be tasked to specific targets,” said Fields. “With these sensors, multiple users can find different targets in the field of view of the sensor. With efficient storage, it is possible to find things that were not originally expected.”
“Wide area capabilities allow us to look at a much broader expanse of real estate,” said Wittstruck. “A platform may be flying over an area for eight hours. Analysts can use that data to determine what has changed in areas of interest. Have traffic flows changed? Are there changes in patterns in behavior? Wide-area surveillance provides a capability to trace the history of events across a greater area than that provided by imagery with a more narrow field of view.”
The Constant Hawk is an Army QRC that delivers persistent wide-area surveillance high-resolution day and night imagery. “It also provides the ground commander with the ability for forensic back-tracking of areas of interest,” said Wittstruck. “This allows the ground commander to use fewer assets to cover more ground as well as a forensic tool to back track the origin of a threat to its source.”
Logos provides systems and services for wide area motion imagery and has supported the development of multiple systems, including Constant Hawk. “We expect this technology to be as ubiquitous as conventional FMV,” said Fields. “This technology is dependent on and driven by advances in processing technology.”
Fields also expects that there will continue to be an expansion in the availability of FMV, fed by its presence on air, ground and sea platforms. “I particularly expect to see a continued expansion of autonomous airborne platforms,” he added. “Improved quality in imaging systems and the standardization around digital transmission will increase the power of traditional FMV.”
For Jacobovitz, FMV will provide added value in the future by having its data being fused with data from other sensors. Wittstruck agreed, saying that the combination of video imagery with data from communications, humans and other sources of intelligence will provide context to users and analysts of FMV. “We still need other forms of intelligence to set the conditions for the video imagery,” he said. “We may know that high value individuals are in a general area. We need to be able to look in the right haystack. We could use ways to bring infrared imagery and hyperspectral data into the video.”
This fusion of data to provide context to video comes in the form of Ageon ISR, a solution from Boston-based DRG. Deployed as a compact appliance or software package, Ageon ISR supports plug-and-play compatibility with most ISR sensors and systems. “Video and data from airborne platforms, aerostats, towers, mobile and ground sensors can be displayed within context of real-time and historic operations and intelligence activity,” explained Stephen St. Mary, co-founder of DRG. “Ageon ISR’s ability to process this data locally or across a distributed, cloud-like architecture enhances the warfighters’ ability to plan, protect and respond.”
Users require nothing more than web browser on a desktop, laptop or mobile device to access Ageon ISR. “A mobile app allows in-vehicle and dismounted units to quickly create and share and collaborate around spot reports, photos and video,” said St. Mary. “Automated video tagging, ISR coverage alerts and email notifications help to reduce the resources required to maintain awareness and identify critical activity. An augmented video scene displays geospatially positioned assets, personnel and tracks of interest.” Ageon ISR was recently deployed to Southwest Asia and is now operating on classified intelligence networks.
Hints about other future FMV applications can be found at recent Army exercises. At this past summer’s Network Integration Evaluation (NIE) at the Army’s White Sands Test Center in New Mexico and the Joint Forces Command’s Empire Challenge 11 at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., Overwatch was able to make video accessible to warfighters over handheld devices such as smartphones.
“At Empire Challenge we took video from a Canadian ScanEagle UAV and exposed it to a private cell network so soldiers in vehicles could see video coming in from the UAV as they were riding along,” said Evan Corwin, an Overwatch senior program manager. “In one instance soldiers watching their cells saw a group of bad guys up ahead getting ready to ambush their convoy. They were able to defeat them by ambushing the ambushers.”
The feats at NIE and Empire Challenge were performed with products such as AAI Unmanned Aircraft Systems’ One System remote video terminal, which enables warfighters to remotely downlink live surveillance images from tactical unmanned aircraft systems; the Forward Airborne Secure Transmission and Communication (FASTCOM) solution developed by AAI, Overwatch and ViaSat, which creates a secure, mobile cellular network that can accommodate Top Secret and below communications; and Overwatch’s SoldierEyes, a mobile data network and smartphone apps.
All of this is aimed at maintaining unswerving surveillance of adversary activities, noted Wittstruck. “These capabilities put the enemy on notice that we are watching him day and night, in good weather and bad,” he said. “Enemy mobilization factors go way down when they know there is an unblinking eye on them and that when we are alerted that something is about to happen someone will go out on the street to find out what it is.
“The enemy then needs to learn more complex ways to conduct their missions. If they are back in school, they are not on the street conducting insurgency operations.” ♦