SENSOR OVERLOAD
unexploited and unavailable for future analysis. Tis inefficiency leads to gaps in situational awareness and sometimes duplicative collections.
Te Defense Science Board in February 2011 came to a simi- lar conclusion, stating: “[T]he rapid increase of collected data will not be operationally useful without the ability to store, pro- cess, exploit, and disseminate this data. ... Current collection
generates data that greatly exceeds the ability to organize, store, and process it.” Tere are not, and never will be, enough ana- lysts to review the massive amount of raw intelligence collected on the battlefield.
To complicate this already difficult problem, the Army is consol- idating analytic personnel, setting up centralized sites outside of conflict zones where specialized Soldiers can support operations by focusing on exploiting sensor data. However, legacy systems were not designed to move this amount of data across the net- work or support the collaborative analyst workflows needed to support decentralized processing, exploitation and dissemina- tion (PED).
Te Intelligence and Information Warfare Directorate of the U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center (CERDEC), a subordinate organiza- tion of U.S. Army Materiel Command’s Research, Development and Engineering Command, initiated the Extensible Process- ing Exploitation and Dissemination (ExPED) Science and Technology Objective (STO) in October 2016 to improve the process of converting raw sensor data into usable situational understanding. A STO is a three- to five-year critical science and technology (S&T) project that has direct oversight from the Warfighter Technical Council, a one-star-level governing body that addresses strategic program topics, recommending and reviewing major new S&T investment efforts. Te STO com- prises several research focus areas combined under one program to work collaboratively on high-priority Army capability gaps, which for ExPED is “developing situational understanding.”
+ GATHERING INTEL—THEN WHAT?
A Soldier with the Regimental Engineer Squadron, 2nd Cavalry Regiment assembles an RQ-11 Raven unmanned aerial vehicle during a surveillance mission in May during Saber Junction 17 at the Hohenfels Training Area, Germany. Saber Junction is designed to assess the readiness of the regiment, which is assigned to U.S. Army Europe (USAREUR), to conduct unified land operations, with an emphasis on operational and tactical decision-making, among other skills. The collection, analysis and dissemination of intelligence play an indispensable role in accurate, timely decision-making in combat. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. William Marlow, Viper Combat Camera Team, USAREUR)
Te program title, ExPED or Extensible PED, refers to the desired capability to adapt Army PED operations based on mission needs and available resources such as sensors, comput- ers and human analysts. Under optimal conditions, tactically deployed intelligence analysts will develop and refine the intel- ligence COP by combining data from multiple organic and strategic sensors with the help of advanced processing resources and subject matter experts who may be distributed around the world. Te tools used to perform PED must support these distributed workflows and also adapt to more constrained con- ditions where networks or limited timelines don’t allow for an enterprise solution.
Te ExPED effort began with an intensive effort to analyze and study the PED process, by observing and interviewing analysts to determine what architectures, systems and sensors exist in the tactical environment and how these capabilities
126 Army AL&T Magazine January-March 2018
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156 |
Page 157 |
Page 158 |
Page 159 |
Page 160 |
Page 161 |
Page 162 |
Page 163 |
Page 164 |
Page 165 |
Page 166 |
Page 167 |
Page 168 |
Page 169 |
Page 170 |
Page 171 |
Page 172 |
Page 173 |
Page 174 |
Page 175 |
Page 176 |
Page 177 |
Page 178 |
Page 179 |
Page 180 |
Page 181 |
Page 182 |
Page 183 |
Page 184 |
Page 185 |
Page 186 |
Page 187 |
Page 188 |
Page 189 |
Page 190 |
Page 191 |
Page 192 |
Page 193 |
Page 194 |
Page 195 |
Page 196 |
Page 197 |
Page 198 |
Page 199 |
Page 200 |
Page 201 |
Page 202 |
Page 203 |
Page 204 |
Page 205 |
Page 206 |
Page 207 |
Page 208 |
Page 209 |
Page 210 |
Page 211 |
Page 212 |
Page 213 |
Page 214 |
Page 215 |
Page 216 |
Page 217 |
Page 218 |
Page 219 |
Page 220 |
Page 221 |
Page 222 |
Page 223 |
Page 224 |
Page 225 |
Page 226 |
Page 227 |
Page 228 |
Page 229 |
Page 230 |
Page 231 |
Page 232 |
Page 233 |
Page 234 |
Page 235 |
Page 236 |
Page 237 |
Page 238 |
Page 239 |
Page 240 |
Page 241 |
Page 242 |
Page 243 |
Page 244 |
Page 245 |
Page 246 |
Page 247 |
Page 248 |
Page 249 |
Page 250 |
Page 251 |
Page 252 |
Page 253 |
Page 254 |
Page 255 |
Page 256 |
Page 257 |
Page 258 |
Page 259 |
Page 260 |
Page 261 |
Page 262 |
Page 263 |
Page 264 |
Page 265 |
Page 266 |
Page 267 |
Page 268 |
Page 269 |
Page 270 |
Page 271 |
Page 272 |
Page 273 |
Page 274 |
Page 275 |
Page 276
