Gif 13 2 3 final

The Magazine of the National Intelligence Community

Special Supplement

NRO

Innovation Architect

Betty Sapp Director National Reconnaissance Office

www.GIF-kmi.com

March/April 2015 Volume 13, Issue 2/3

UAS Intelligence O Secure Borders O Spatial Data Analysis Intelligence Integration O Satellite Future

As world-class experts in geospatialintelligence, Ball Aerospace transforms data into dynamic, predictive, interactive intelligence across all GEOINT missions and communities. From persistent data collection hardware to advanced processing and exploitation capabilities, we provide innovative, integrated solutions for the nation and our world.

www.ballaerospace.com

GEOSPATIAL INTELLIGENCE FORUM Features

March/April 2015 Volume 13, Issue 2/3

Cover / Q&A

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Who’s Who in NRO

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Effective exploitation of drones requires new tools and applications, and industry is responding to the need. UAVs must be managed differently, and sensor data must be interpreted in innovative ways for new purposes.

By Henry Canaday

A growing array of geospatial technologies is available to help make sense out of the large amounts of confusing, and often contradictory, information that border protectors must work with in order to achieve their missions.

By Peter Buxbaum

Sensors, Software Boost UAV Uses

A guide to the organization and people of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).

Border GEOINT

17 Betty Sapp Director National Reconnaissance Office

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Authoritative GEOINT Enrichment

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22

New database technology is promising help for military, intelligence and other analysts seeking to understand and act on masses of location-based information streaming in from sensors and other sources.

Such technology is needed, say advocates, because the Internet of Things and sensor-enabled operations are overwhelming the ability of traditional GIS and database systems to manage data.

By Harrison Donnelly

As government and industry leaders ponder the future of government and military space, a National Reconnaissance Office official recently suggested ideas such as new operations and maintenance models, common satellite buses, alternative contacting strategies, leveraging the commercial market and changing the ground infrastructure.

By Harrison Donnelly

Spatial Data Analytics

The effective integration of high-resolution imagery with other sources of geospatial data and advanced analytics creates a rich resource of content and related capabilities for the analyst.

This resource serves as a force multiplier that supports the establishment of context.

By Colleen “Kelly” McCue and Christopher Incardona

Departments

Peering into the Satellite Future

Industry Interview Ron Cole

2 Editor’s Perspective 4 Program Notes/People 14 Industry Raster 27 Resource Center

Senior Technical Adviser Chair, ISR Center of Excellence Riverside Research

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“One area we are focused on is persistence, developing those long-dwell and diverse sensor handoff capabilities that will enable us to maintain a chain of custody and effective persistence on a target of interest.”

— Betty Sapp

100% Dedicated to the Mission of the U.S. Intelligence Community

Now in our 13TH year!

Geospatial Intelligence Forum Volume 13, Issue 2/3 • March/April 2015

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EDITOR’S PERSPECTIVE Military customers can rapidly find the maps they need to locate routes and operating areas with the help of a new catalog available in the Department of Defense Electronic Mall (DoD EMALL).

The Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) interactive map catalog gives customers the advantage of using online catalog features like visual displays of map coverage, reducing the chance that they will order the wrong products and create waste. The new features are improvements over spending hours scrolling through national stock number lists or leafing through pages of out-of-date, hard-copy catalogs, according to Robert Rogers, DLA Harrison Donnelly map catalog system manager.

Editor Although online versions of the catalog have long been favored over disc-based or paper catalogs because of their ability to offer the most current information, increasing security restrictions and operating system compatibility issues are making the online catalog even more popular.

The catalog’s product data is updated weekly, ensuring the most relevant and up-to-date information is available. The catalog presents a streamlined interface with tools for selecting products directly on a map.

Users can filter their search results by typing any relevant information about the product, including NSN, city and country. As information is entered into the catalog search engine, potential matches automatically appear to help users quickly narrow down their search results.

A product selected for ordering is added to the DoD EMALL shopping cart for checkout, eliminating the need to submit a separate request.

“The online catalog also removes technical snags that can occur with the stand-alone version and the users’ computers,” Rogers said. “With the online version, there are no Java or operating system compatibility problems to resolve before doing map searches.”

An unclassified stand-alone version of the Interactive DLA Map Catalog application and updated product data files can be downloaded from DoD EMALL. Classified and unclassified versions of the catalog are also available on CD for customers with limited access to the Internet. The stand-alone and CD versions of the catalog are released twice a year.

More information about the catalog is available at www.dlis.dla.mil/mapcatalog/default.aspx.

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Subscription Information

Geospatial Intelligence Forum ISSN 2150-9468 is published eight times a year by KMI Media Group.

All Rights Reserved. Reproduction without permission is strictly forbidden. © Copyright 2015.

Geospatial Intelligence Forum is free to qualified members of the U.S. military, employees of the U.S. government and non-U.S. foreign service based in the U.S. All others: $75 per year.

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Corporate Offices KMI Media Group 15800 Crabbs Branch Way, Suite 300 Rockville, MD 20855-2604 USA Telephone: (301) 670-5700 Fax: (301) 670-5701 Web: www.GIF-kmi.com Woolpert late last year received approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to fly its unmanned aerial system commercially in Ohio and Ship Island, Miss., making it the first surveying and aerial mapping company to be approved to fly a UAS commercially in designated airspace. [Photo courtesy of Woolpert]

MetaVR’s portable UAV can collect 1 inch-per-pixel imagery that you can use in your sensor simulation for intelligence training.

Aerial imagery collection Ground-level photography Terrain compilation 3D content modeling Scenario creation Real-time visualization

MetaVR visuals are used for simulating HD H.264 simulated sensor video with accurate KLV metadata in U.S. Army UAV training simulators.

With 3D terrain built from 1 inch per-pixel resolution imagery captured by our MetaVRC UAV, the sensor view with real-time thermal material classification simulates, with a high degree of accuracy, the actual sensor payload imagery of ISR assets.

Real-time screen captures are from MetaVR’s visualization system. The 3D virtual terrain is of a geospecific desert area with 1 inch per pixel imagery collected by the MetaVRC™ platform. The operational readiness testing of the MetaVRC was performed as described by the FAA and AMA applicable airspace operation rules and regulations. (AMA National Safety Code and FAA AC 91-57.) Data was collected as part of this testing. This screen capture is unedited except as required for printing. The real-time rendering of the 3D virtual world is generated by MetaVR Virtual Reality Scene Generator™ (VRSG™). 3D model is from MetaVR’s 3D content libraries. © 2015 MetaVR, Inc. All rights reserved. MetaVR, Virtual Reality Scene Generator, VRSG, MetaVRC, the phrase “Geospecific simulation with game quality graphics,” and the MetaVR logo are trademarks of MetaVR, Inc.

www.metavr.com

PROGRAM NOTES MrGEO Solves Geo-Problems The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency has released an application that simplifies and economizes the storage and processing of largescale raster data, reducing the time it takes analysts to search, download, preprocess and format data for analysis.

MapReduce Geo (MrGeo), a collaborative effort with DigitalGlobe, is designed to provide raster-based geospatial capabilities performable at scale by leveraging the power and functionality of cloud-based architecture.

“Available to the public through NGA’s GitHub account, the software can be useful in many situations,” said Chris Rasmussen, NGA’s public software development lead. “Sharing it with the public gives users at all levels another tool to help solve geospatial problems. For example, first responders could use it to plan the best ways in and out of dangerous areas, taking into account terrain, land use and changes in weather.”

The next slated release from the agency is the Disconnected Interactive Content Explorer (DICE) mobile application. This will be NGA’s second publicly released mobile application, following release last fall of the AntiShipping Activity Message database.

The DICE application, which will be available via the Apple iTunes and Google Play commercial app stores, allows users to load interactive content generated in HTML, CSS and JavaScript to a mobile device and have the ability to display and use that content without a network connection. It can also include local data such as tiles and vector data for interactive maps. Code for the DICE app is already available via NGA’s organizational account on GitHub, an open-source, collaborative software development environment.

Compiled by KMI Media Group staff

One Person, Many UASs

The Defense Advanced Projects Agency has invited interested parties to become involved with its Collaborative Operations in Denied Environment (CODE) program, which aims to develop algorithms and software that would extend the mission capabilities of existing unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) well beyond the current state of the art. The goal is to improve U.S. forces’ ability to conduct operations in denied or contested airspace.

CODE would enable mixed teams of unmanned aircraft to find targets and engage them as appropriate under established rules of engagement, leverage nearby CODE-enabled systems with minimal supervision, and adapt to situations due to attrition of friendly forces or the emergence of unanticipated threats—all under the command of a single human mission supervisor. CODE envisions improvements that would help transform UAS operations from requiring multiple people to operate a single UAS to having one person able to oversee six or more unmanned vehicles simultaneously. http://www.darpa.mil/uploadedImages/Content/NewsEvents/Releases/2015/CODE-CON.jpg[2/16/2015 2:23:06 PM]

PEOPLE

Compiled by KMI Media Group staff

new role as senior vice president of government solutions.

president for the Information Systems and Technology group, Johnson will be responsible for General Dynamics Information Technology and General Dynamics Mission Systems.

Wajsgras as vice president and chief financial officer.

Tom Arseneault

At BAE Systems, Tom Arseneault has assumed the role of president for electronic systems while retaining his positions as chief operating officer for BAE Systems Inc. and member of the BAE Systems executive committee.

Tony Frazier, formerly senior vice president and general manager of DigitalGlobe’s Insight business, has taken on a

4 | GIF 13.2/3

S. Daniel Johnson

General Dynamics has selected S. Daniel Johnson to be executive vice president of Information Systems and Technology, succeeding David K. Heebner, who has retired.

Johnson will also continue in his role as president of General Dynamics Information Technology. As executive vice

Jeff Young

David C. Wajsgras

David C. Wajsgras has been named president of Raytheon Intelligence, Information and Services, succeeding Lynn A. Dugle, who is retiring. Anthony F. “Toby” O’Brien will succeed

LizardTech, a provider of software solutions for managing and distributing geospatial content, has announced that Jeff Young will expand his role to become the company’s new global business development manager for geospatial solutions, supporting growth of its Express Suite line of geospatial products.

www.GIF-kmi.com

Profiles in real-world expertise » H EAT H R ASCO

Then: Federal First Responder

Now: Senior Geospatial Scientist

Disaster Insider

During Hurricane Katrina, Heath Rasco spent 20-hour days layering New Orleans street maps with GEOINT of the flooded city.

Q: How does having been there influence your work?

I understand the stress and constraints facing first responders.

And the kind of decisions that have to be made at the tactical level. During Katrina, we were initially supporting helicopter pilots trying to locate people stranded on rooftops. That experience eclipsed every other disaster relief effort I’ve led.

Q: How are you solving that problem today?

With our Global Enhanced GEOINT Delivery Program. Now a deployed team can access up-to-date imagery on their mobile devices. I work to make that intel even more useful. With human geography datasets or analytics that help decisionmakers focus resources.

Q: In retrospect, what challenges stand out?

Existing street maps were useless without current imagery.

These pilots were seeing water — not streets — and flooding conditions changed quickly. But imagery came in slowly. It was already dated by the time we got it.

Q: What USG mission are you serving?

The work I do supports disaster response and humanitarian assistance. I advance efforts like our Insight Common Operational Picture which directly impacts first response at the tactical level.

www.digitalglobe.com/expertise

Authoritative GEOINT Enrichment

Capabilities offer novel insight, meaningful response and sustainable solutions.

By Colleen “Kelly” McCue and Christopher Incardona In mid-19th century London, a cholera epidemic raged through the city’s Soho district. While numerous theories about the epidemic were advanced, Dr. John Snow made an important medical breakthrough by elucidating the source of the disease.

By not only mapping the location of the specific cases but also the underlying infrastructure, the now infamous connection between the source of the disease and the Broad Street pump was uncovered. This humble map, which is familiar to students of geography and epidemiology, represents one of the earliest examples of the effective use of GEOINT to provide context in support of novel insight and meaningful response to an apparently intractable challenge.

Moving forward to the 21st century, GEOINT is playing a similarly critical role in the Ebola epidemic currently devastating West Africa. By using satellite imagery, data science, crowdsourced mapping and human geography, the GEOINT community is enabling the type of enhanced insight that permits information-based approaches to understanding the origins and spread of the disease, as well as allocation and optimization of scarce health care resources and other approaches to response and consequence management.

In contrast to the methods utilized

by Snow, the community today has access to imagery of unprecedented resolution and clarity through the content delivered by commercial satellite imagery provider DigitalGlobe. With the launch of WorldView-3 (WV-3) last summer, 6 | GIF 13.2/3

DigitalGlobe expanded its constellation to include six sensors. In addition to the expanded coverage, WV-3 also includes short-wave infrared and cloud, aerosol, vapor, ice and snow multispectral capabilities that reduce atmospheric attenuation, and unprecedented roughly 30 cm ground resolution to give the community power to see the earth clearly and in new ways.

Insight Initiative While other domains are beginning to explore the concept of big data, DigitalGlobe has been realizing the promise with its Geospatial Big Data (GBD) initiative. The daily take of almost 4 million square miles of satellite imagery translates to the collection of more than 50 terabytes of new data each day. Underscoring the extraordinary volume of this resource, the size of the DigitalGlobe imagery archive as of spring 2014 was 63 petabytes, which put it at roughly 20 times that of Netflix, an identified analytic competitor and big data owner.

Harkening back to the Broad Street pump example, the geospatial environment and related content provide the context necessary for novel insight and related action.

This geospatial context enables meaningful integration of disparate resources, including invaluable “street-level knowledge” or domain expertise, which facilitates transdisciplinary “prosumer” collaboration in support of novel insight and innovative solutions by creating a space where the whole truly is greater than the sum of the parts.

Using this model, the analyst is able to effectively incorporate tacit knowledge and domain expertise, and fluidly transcend functional domains in support of novel insight and solutions.

Therefore, in addition to the imagery archive co-registered to foundation GEOINT layers such as buildings and roads, the increased availability of additional geospatial content, including human geography, further enriches GBD as a resource. It provides additional context and enables analysts to effectively model the true complexity of physical and human terrain as they interact to define and influence behavior.

Leveraging the 13 human geographybased themes outlined by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the human geography content collected and complied

by DigitalGlobe includes an array of variables that can be used to establish the culture of a particular region, which also incorporates significant events. As a primary shareable source, this content provides the context necessary to effectively interpret GEOINT. It also enables the development of multivariate models that better reflect the complexity of location, including more comprehensive, information-based approaches to geospatial predictive analysis.

From documenting and analyzing the subtle dance between displaced people and the predatory extremist groups that exploit them, to effectively responding to natural disasters, optimizing the allocation of scarce resources and monitoring infectious diseases, the ability to effectively www.GIF-kmi.com

integrate both human and physical terrain in support of truly informed analysis enables novel insight and meaningful approaches to prevention, thwarting, mitigation and consequence management.

In many situations, however, collection is necessary but not sufficient to create the insight required for meaningful solutions.

Increases in the ability to effectively exploit GEOINT, including advances in high-performance computing, have enabled fluid and dynamic exploration and exploitation of GBD only previously imagined. Marked improvements in knowledge management and processing capabilities have enhanced the ability to effectively compile and exploit imagery and associated geospatial content, while also enabling the dynamic pursuit of “what if” questions in real time. That gives the analyst the ability to accurately map and measure the true complexity of the environment, both physical and human.

These GBD and associated advances in high-performance computing offer the analyst the ability to effectively characterize and discover current trends, patterns and relationships. The use of geospatial predictive analysis in particular, and related data science capabilities, provides additional insight regarding the existence and location of unreported or otherwise hidden patterns as well as future trends and patterns, including displacement in response to operations.

These capabilities support informed resource allocation and optimization decisions, particularly in a resource-constrained environment. In addition, the effective characterization and scoping of the challenge supports analysis of where data is lacking, thus enabling the creation of meaningful responses that more directly fit the unique attributes of the challenge posed.

Ultimately, the use of data science and geospatial modeling provides the type of anticipatory guidance that supports truly informed influence and response, including information-based approaches to prevention, thwarting, mitigation, response and consequence management.

DigitalGlobe offers several complementary approaches to analysis that support the effective exploitation of GEOINT. For example, the company’s automated feature extraction utilizes machine learning algorithms to provide rapid, reliable and accurate analysis of large amounts of imagery data. Instances of this include the rapid processing of imagery after the Japanese earthquake and tsunami in support of timely insight. www.GIF-kmi.com

Moreover, capabilities like high-resolution urban globe, an image classification algorithm that can detect human built-up structures, can provide rapid analysis of imagery to identify human settlements. It can support population estimation and analysis, emergency response, disease eradication, resource allocation and urban planning.

Cooperative Analysis Some imagery analysis tasks, however, are not easily accomplished by existing machine learning algorithms or other automated efforts, thus requiring the human visual system and perceptual ability to detect subtle differences and nuance. An opportunity arising from the unique transdisciplinary collaboration environment created

by NGA’s Map of the World is the ability to enhance imagery analysis capabilities and expand content generation by leveraging the “prosumer” model. The model recognizes the inherent value that traditional consumers of GEOINT can bring to the process by contributing their mission-specific content.

This model of crowdsourcing represents a novel approach to effectively exploiting GBD and creating new user-generated content for the greater benefit of the community.

By using statistical analysis, authoritative content can be determined in an effort to ensure accuracy and reliability of the new content created, which can be customized through the use of thematic styling.

Social media capabilities and resources increasingly are being used for communication, recruiting and propaganda, creating a rich body of open-source content available for exploitation and analysis.

Extremist groups have been particularly adept at exploiting social media for influence and action and creating tailored messaging that resonates with specific groups and recruiting targets.

Exploitation of open-source social media content represents an important means by which to identify key individuals, networks and locations as well as trends and patterns in strategic communications and ideology. Additional integration of DigitalGlobe’s geospatial capabilities and content provides a unique opportunity to enrich and extend open-source social media exploitation and analysis.

The 19th-century use of geospatial capabilities to illustrate the distribution of cholera cases and provide the context necessary

to identify the disease source represented a great advancement in the use of GEOINT to provide insight in support of informed response. The intervening years have been associated with a marked advancement of GEOINT content and capabilities that represents far more than simple summaries can convey.

The effective integration of high-resolution imagery with other sources of geospatial data and advanced analytics creates a rich resource of content and related capabilities for the analyst. This resource serves as a force multiplier that supports the establishment of context and the associated creation of multivariate models that enable the analyst to model the true complexity of location and its relationship to human activity in support of informed anticipation and influence. Ultimately, this geospatial content and related data science capabilities offer novel insight, meaningful response and sustainable solutions to some of our most challenging problems. O

Colleen McCue

Chris Incardona

Colleen McCue is senior director, social science and quantitative methods, and Chris Incardona is senior director, NGA strategic program development, for DigitalGlobe.

For more information, contact GIF Editor Harrison Donnelly at harrisond@kmimediagroup. com or search our online archives for related stories at www.gif-kmi.com.

GIF 1 3 .2 /3 | 7

Spatial Data Analytics New database technologies manage mountains of location-based sensor data for fast decisions.

By Harrison Donnelly, GIF Editor

“When you look at existing technologies, including GIS and traNew database technology is promising help for military, intelditional databases, neither was architected to be able to handle the ligence and other analysts seeking to understand and act on real-time streaming, machine-generated data that is coming in at an masses of location-based information streaming in from sensors and unprecedented rate. How do you handle all that data?” Coyer asked. other sources.

Such technology is needed, say advocates, because the Internet of Things and sensor-enabled operations are overwhelming the ability Computational Geometry of traditional GIS and database systems to manage data, particularly at the speed needed for real-time decision-making.

The product of years of development ultimately spun off from The primary impetus for this spatial database analytics—or technology used in Google Earth, SpaceCurve integrates every availgeospatial big data—is coming from the commerable data source in real time while allowing immedicial market, as companies use location-based data ate access to the live data model using ArcGIS and for marketing and operations. But the benefits are other standard interfaces. SpaceCurve’s ability to conalso evident for such security purposes as countertinuously index and store this data concurrent with ing IEDs or studying population behavior through queries enables fast, interactive spatial analytics. activity-based intelligence.

This is combined with a computational geomeThe need for new approaches to spatial data has try engine designed to ensure maximum fidelity for been underscored by the explosive growth of social applications with global scope. The product includes media, which has generated yet more information a database engine designed to support the continuabout popular attitudes with the all-important charous ingestion and high-dimensionality indexing of acteristics of location and time. spatial data at the extremely high data rates typical Bob Palmer “In the national security realm, every commander of machine-generated data sources. It also enables adwants a common operating picture so they can have hoc queries and complex operations that run concursituational awareness of the battlespace. What we’re rent with data ingestion, immediately reflecting all seeing, and where our technology solutions can help, new data. is that something new is being added to the comTo make this possible, SpaceCurve implemented mon operating picture, which is bringing together a new approach to computational parallelism that formerly disassociated data types into a geospatial enables highly scalable ingest, storage and analysis context,” said Bob Palmer, senior director for SAP of complex space and time relationships across very National Security Services, a United States-based large and diverse data sources. It was developed to be company that provides its international parent comable to run on commodity hardware. pany’s HANA in-memory database technology as a The new approach was needed because the methsolution to many of these problems. ods used for handling spatial data—GIS systems or Dane Coyer “It’s becoming more prevalent to want to use traditional relational databases—were not ready for social media data in your common operating picture. the explosion of sensor-based data, SpaceCurve execuTwitter and other social media have become the chantives contend, adding that the shortfall even included nel of choice for the adversary, so the ability to incorrelational databases built for spatial data. porate multisource INTs with traditional geospatial “If you look at another spatial database, it was context can be a real benefit to situational awareness,” built for numbers transactions. It is optimized for he said. “That’s something that’s new, in addition to using numbers, but not for using polygons or path the traditional uses of databases.” analysis. Every platform has the fingerprint of its “The modern day battlespace is the ultimate original use case, and it’s hard to get away from that,” Internet of Things, where everything is instrumented said J. Andrew Rogers, SpaceCurve’s founder and chief and sensored. Look at how many sensors there are technology officer. on military personnel, vehicles and weapons, plus “It is similar with the Hadoop ecosystem, which J. Andrew Rogers UAVs and overhead assets,” said Dane Coyer, CEO of was originally developed to analyze relationships SpaceCurve, which recently launched a database system purposebetween webpages. Much like the traditional database, analyzing built for large volumes of high-velocity spatial data, such as senrelationships between webpages is a very different problem than sor data, and the fusion of this data with any combination of other infrastructure that’s designed to do spatial temporal analysis,” data sources.

Rogers continued. “What differentiates SpaceCurve from every other 8 | GIF 13.2/3

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database platform is that, at every level, the use case that it was optimized for was doing sensor aggregation, data fusion and analysis in real time.”

With the database, there will be “no limits on how you use your sensor data,” Coyer said. “You can use it in real time, without limitations by the platform or software architecture. You can create a realtime model of your area of operation, with a complete view of what is going on when you need it.”

Analytical Engines Although people have been putting data on maps for years, more recently there has been a desire to have a nexus between multiple sources of data with geospatial context, Palmer observed.

That is possible with the help of SAP’s relatively new computing platform, SAP HANA, which uses in-memory processing to achieve great speed. The system also includes four analytical engines: • Text analysis, for natural language processing from social media or other data.

• Geospatial, which allows data to be queried in a polygon or a radius around a point.

• Predictive analysis, which performs classification algorithms.

• Graph, which differs from traditional databases in that the relationship between entities is a first-class citizen in the data models.

Many scientific problems cannot be solved without the aggregation and integration of large and varied spatial data from a multitude of sources, team members noted. Yet existing approaches and software cannot effectively synthesize the enormous amounts of complex spatial data that often are available. The team will resolve problems associated with the use of complex and massive spatial data, thus facilitating work dependent on this type of data for scientific problem solving and providing opportunities to gain dynamic insight into complex phenomena.

DigitalGlobe’s cloud-based Geospatial Big Data offering, meanwhile, is a platform-as-a-service model that provides easy access to DigitalGlobe’s vast image library. It is designed to create a new ecosystem in which partners and developers can leverage their expertise and APIs to create new customer solutions without the cost of owning and operating costly IT infrastructure.

“We are committed to investing in Geospatial Big Data in order to create a living digital inventory of the surface of the earth, enabled by our unmatched satellite constellation, commitment to ecosystem partners, and ability to convert imagery at scale into searchable, analytics-ready information layers,” said Shay Har-Noy, DigitalGlobe’s senior director for geospatial big data. O

For more information, contact GIF Editor Harrison Donnelly at harrisond@kmimediagroup.com or search our online archives for related stories at www.gif-kmi.com.

“In a regular database, you can infer relationships between things by doing a query. You get a result that tells you relationships, but only as of the time you ran the query. It doesn’t persist as a relationship type. In the graph representation of data, the actual relationship between things lives on as a persistent object in the data,” Palmer explained.

“So now I can query not just on what the things are, but also on the types of relationships between things that I’m looking for.

This can be used in threat analytics, targeting or situational awareness. The graph representation of data is going to become more used in the future,” he said.

With the four analytical engines in one server, “we can bring to bear multiple modes of analysis to join with geospatial analysis and other data types to provide a more complete common operating picture,” Palmer continued. “The ability to synthesize an operating picture across multisource data types will allow an analyst or commander to understand evolving trends in the operating area and enable better execution of the observe, orient, decide and act loop.”

Synthesis Tools Other work on spatial databases and geospatial big data continues on both the academic and industry fronts.

The National Science Foundation, for example, recently awarded a $1.5 million grant over three years to a team based at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which will create scalable capabilities for synthesizing spatial big data.

This project will address the challenges in working with spatial big data, and will create a suite of tools for spatial data synthesis through scalable data aggregation and integration based on cloud computing and cyber GIS, which it defines as GIS science and systems based on advanced cyber-infrastructure. www.GIF-kmi.com

GIF 1 3 .2 /3 | 9

Effective exploitation of drones requires new tools and applications, and industry is responding to the need.

By Henry Canaday GIF Correspondent

from 15,000 feet. Users can chip out 10 With federal regulations beginning to areas of interest at a time and set up watch open up domestic airspace to unmanned boxes or tripwires for suspicious activaerial vehicles (UAV), and their uses for ities, dramatically reducing manpower both security and commercial purposes required for monitoring. growing rapidly around the world, this CorvusEye is the only system of its industry is entering a new era of imporkind with both EO and IR in a single turtance. Moreover, market-driven developret, according to Dwight Greenlee, direcment of advanced UAV technology for tor of regional surveillance. The turnkey commercial needs is likely to lead to CorvusEye can do processing onboard, enhanced benefits for the military and yet weighs only 145 pounds. Without cusintelligence users who pioneered the field. The Geospatial eXploitation Products division of BAE Systems has developed a broad set of products for exploiting UAV capabilities, tomization, it can be mounted on any UAV But effective exploitation of UAVs for including Xplorer, which does search and discovery. [Image courtesy of that holds a 15-inch ball turret. The commany new uses requires much more than BAE Systems] pany rolled out the EO capabilities late last year, and just the units themselves or their traditional sensors.

IR will be available this spring.

New use cases demand new tools and applications.

Executives describe the system’s tracking, detecSensors must do different jobs on tight civilian budtion and decision-making software as highly autogets. UAVs must be managed differently, and sensor mated and very fast. For example, 20 minutes after data must be interpreted in innovative ways for new the first 15 minutes of collection by CorvusEye, Exelis purposes. can generate a 3-D model of the area observed, accuThese advanced sensors and software will rate within 10 meters. Exelis software tracks everycome partly from the tools developed for military thing that happens in the circle of persistence. uses adapted for non-military needs. Or they may CorvusEye’s tripwires, watch boxes and recording come from geospatial intelligence tools developed are ideal for forensics. After an incident, analysts can for manned aircraft, compressed for UAV carrying.

Robert Stout track people or vehicles backward to their origin. If a Finally, a new base of civilian start-ups is reinventing road averages a set number of vehicles moving at cersensors and software from the ground up based on tain speeds, for example, the system flags variations from averages commercial appetites for economy and very wide flexibility. for analysts to examine.

One industry pace-setter with a long record of involvement is New software also allows users to rotate images taken from difExelis Integrated Sensing Solutions, which makes both UAV sensors ferent angles to look behind structures, measure building height or and systems for exploiting sensor data. The company is launching see into a sniper position. a new sensor, CorvusEye, which provides both electro-optical (EO) day and infrared (IR) night images over wide areas at two frames per second.

Video Analysis Full motion video (FMV) sensors typically must focus on small areas, creating imagery data that is frequently compared to viewThe Geospatial eXploitation Products (GXP) division of BAE ing the world through a soda straw. But CorvusEye provides a circle Systems has developed a broad set of products for exploiting UAV of persistence of 3 kilometers in daytime and 2 kilometers at night, capabilities, said Product Manager Robert Stout. SOCET GXP is an

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www.GIF-kmi.com

3-D Terrain Adds to Training Realism As military and intelligence deployments of UAVs continue to expand, and with them the need for trained operators, one critical emerging requirement is for high-resolution 3-D environments providing enhanced virtual training realism.

To respond to that evolving use case, MetaVR, a 3-D visualization software provider, has developed a low-cost aircraft data collection and processing workflow yielding real-time 3-D terrain imagery with geographically specific 1-inch-per-pixel resolution. When that is combined with elevation data using MetaVR’s Terrain Tools for Esri ArcGIS, the result is a realistic synthetic environment rendered in the company’s Virtual Reality Scene Generator (VRSG) product.

The data is collected with the MetaVRC, a small, portable UAV equipped to take still-frame images; the images are then orthorectified and used to build 3-D terrain for rendering in VRSG. “High-resolution geo-specific synthetic environments are important for achieving the level of realism required in successful training environments, and the realism of the synthetic environment in sensor mode is particularly important,” said W. Garth Smith, MetaVR’s president and co-founder.

“The overarching reason to produce 1-inch-per-pixel resolution imagery was to improve our day and thermal sensor modes as well as reduce the cost of accessing high-resolution imagery for building 3-D synthetic environments. By being able to obtain and compile 1-inch-per-pixel resolution imagery for 3-D terrain, the level of realism is improved dramatically,” he continued, adding that at that resolution, items such as small rocks become visible.

MetaVRC’s imagery data collection, which can cover 25 sq. km. in a day, yields imagery that is better in quality and lower in cost than satellite data, while also avoiding

image exploitation application, and GXP Xplorer catalogs and disseminates results. GXP’s InMotion Video Analysis Suite analyzes recorded videos, tracks events during live missions, assists collaboration among analysts and creates accurately defined targets.

The Analysis Suite has a desktop application and server which manages tasks for large enterprises. The server can ingest and stream real-time video and DVR-like video recordings. It automates video registration, distributes mission management and enhances collaboration among groups.

“Video recorded by any UAV or other feed is streamed to the server within a millisecond,” Stout said. “Live feeds are streamed to the server and then multicast to every analyst in a mission workgroup for review and analysis.”

GXP’s Desktop offers easy access to powerful tools, from simple viewing and screen capture to full video editing. “It was specifically designed to support real-time missions,” Stout noted. www.GIF-kmi.com

use restrictions imposed by imagery providers.

One common use case for the company’s UAV simulator technology, Smith explained, is to teach operators how to spot someone planting an IED in a dense urban environment.

Similarly, high-resolution models of various vehicles can be used to help operators learn to identify combat vehicles in the context of terrain.

“The higher the resolution of the terrain imagery, the better the resulting simulated sensor view,” he noted. “With 1-inch database imagery resolution compiled from imagery captured with our MetaVRC UAV aircraft, users can create a physics-based IR profile of their terrain with a very high degree of realism.”

VRSG’s technology also continues to evolve, with the recent addition of simulated real-time track impressions on the terrain made by people or vehicles, for example. “VRSG’s simulated sensor payload view became very realistic as the thermal signatures from the track impressions themselves are modeled. Track impressions from entities on lower-resolution terrain imagery, such as on 1-meter-per-pixel imagery, stand out unrealistically, but now the resolution of the terrain imagery and the terrain effects are well-matched,” he said.

A related new product is the VRSG Scenario Editor application, which enables users to build up scenarios on real-world 3-D terrain. “With this software, one can easily create ground vehicle simulations, simulate the pattern of life with realistic 3-D character models, and ultimately create mission rehearsal training scenarios,” Smith said. “Users can simply drag and drop models onto 3-D terrain and build up densely populated areas of culture. Also, users can easily script the paths of vehicles, airplanes and character models and render these scenarios in VRSG. In VRSG, users can play back the scenarios in a networked environment and also record their scenarios.”

The tool supports such areas as forensic analysis, confirmation of illicit activities, monitoring of ports and borders and surveillance. A built-in sensor model yields accurate positions.

GXP’s suite has a very wide range of capabilities, Stout explained. Xplorer does search and discovery, while SOCET analyzes images and handles photogrammetry, remote sensing and video processing. The Analysis Suite delivers end-to-end processing, dissemination and analysis. Combining all these functions in one suite reduces training time and maintenance cost.

GXP applications are now used by U.S., Canadian and Australian defense forces.

GXP tools work with data from standard military UAVs—including MQ-1 Predator, MQ-5 Hunter, RQ-7 Shadow, MQ-8 Fire Scout and MQ-9 Reaper—as well as small personal UAVs. These tools were originally developed to meet military requirements using mostly FMV. But not all UAV data is video. “As more affordable, smaller UAVs GIF 13.2/3 | 11

emerge, the civilian market is attaching frame cameras to them,” Stout observes.

This will yield structure-for-motion data, which makes it possible to estimate 3-D structures from sequences of 2-D imagery. GXP’s Analysis Suite is perfect for this, Stout said, because it works directly with SOCET GXP and structure-for-motion data. “Using SOCET GXP, frame data can be registered, triangulated and analyzed, making tasks such as pipeline observation and crop analysis easy.”

L-3 has just released Insyte 5.0 to support the company’s VideoScout, which works with almost every UAV used by U.S. defense forces.

Insyte manages video for entire UAV missions, from planning through intelligence gathering, re-tasking, analysis and playback.

Insyte 5.0 lets users capture unlimited and simultaneous FMVs, each with a seven-day buffer. The software clips, streams, maps, archives, annotates and recalls video and metadata from UAVs, datalink receivers, intelligence and other feeds.

Leidos provides customers with a range of solutions supporting UAVs, said Senior Vice President Rob Zitz. It offers system engineering and integration for UAV ground stations, advanced sensors including LiDAR, advanced signal processing and real-time algorithms for change detection. In addition, Real-time Aerial Video Exploitation provides precise positioning.

“We deliver a video processing capability (VPC) system that receives, processes and archives FMV,” Zitz noted.

Leidos’ VPC, the Advanced Intelligence Multimedia Exploitation Suite (AIMES), enables analysts to fully exploit FMV from UAVs. Leidos’ ISR CrossCue software enhances collaboration between UAV analysts and operators. Leidos also supplies avionics and maintenance of UAVs. Leidos leads in real-time integration of FMV and exploiting multiple sources of geo-intelligence and other intelligence when time is critical, Zitz said. “AIMES streamlines processes with advanced search video playback, chat, drag and drop interfaces.”

AIMES also has add-on applications. Its MI Reflector reads and redirects data from one user or transmission protocol to another on the fly, and switches between uni-casting and multicasting and vice versa. The MI Restream add-on re-streams multiple sequential files at different frame rates. Leidos’ Primary Image Capture and Transformation Element provides real-time streaming and capture of multiple types of FMV. The company’s video processing tools support standard military files, but can also integrate unconventional files and formats when needed. Zitz said he expects more varied UAVs in the future, including micro UAVs, adding that Leidos tools suit military, intelligence, homeland security and law enforcement and will support commercial uses.

and find specific types of objects, such as blue cars, turning unactionable masses of data into actionable intelligence, explained Vice President Robin Pengelly. The solution can also combine realistic videos of terrain with symbols of important assets or civilian infrastructure.

2d3 tools have been used with defense UAVs such as Predator, Reaper and Scan Eagle, and they are now being used for precision agriculture, pipeline monitoring and law enforcement. They work with any image—still or video, EO, IR or synthetic aperture radar— and can merge other data such as latitude and longitude. The software runs on laptops and Android-based devices.

2d3’s new civilian software will be cloud-based with functions and pricing that suit commercial markets, “down to one man, one drone,” Pengelly said, adding, “We spent 15 years making featurequality images, not just databases and mosaics.”

Woolpert has been doing aerial mapping and surveying from manned aircraft for 40 years and is transferring its software to UAVs, explained Research Scientist Matt Hutchinson. The company is working with Altavian’s Nova F6500 Block III, an all-electric drone for which Altavian has customized a metric camera.

Unlike standard EO, metric cameras are built to the demanding standards of photogrammetry, which makes exact measurements from photos of surface-point positions. “They are more robust, with better calibration and testing to understand internal errors in the charge-coupled device arrays,” Hutchinson explained.

The metric camera makes accurate images, and Woolpert processes images into accurate maps and surveys. To account for terrain variations—the closer proximity of some points to the camera—Woolpert orthorectifies images into a mosaic of accurate pixels, mathematically correcting errors. The resulting mosaics can be used confidently for agricultural and environmental management.

Woolpert also operates UAVs, and has been selected by FAA as the first mapping firm allowed to fly the devices in the United States. Hutchinson said he believes Woolpert is also the first to fly a UAV with a metric camera. Altavian’s F6500, with a 9-foot wingspan, carries a camera weighing only 3 pounds versus a 100-pound camera on a Cessna.

Altavian’s camera gets excellent resolution, with each pixel capturing 1-by-1 centimeters. The F6500 is flexible, can fly in any weather, be launched by hand, be carried by pickup truck, and land in water and on ground. UAVs are particularly suited for small areas, Hutchinson noted. “A big aircraft could not do small areas economically and get good resolution.”

Compression Tools

LizardTech works for a variety of military and civilian customers and offers several tools for UAVs. Jon Skiffington, director of product management, Actionable Intelligence noted that most UAVs generate high-resolution Jon Skiffington images, many of which overlap with one another.

Another player in this field is 2d3 Sensing, which High resolution and many overlaps mean images are large and got its start making special effects for Hollywood. The company has numerous. since moved into helping defense users exploit UAVs and will soon LizardTech’s MrSID format is perfect for handling the challaunch powerful software for civilian markets. lenges of size and volume. “It provides outstanding image-com2d3 software capabilities include cleaning, synchronizing, geopression capability, excellent visual quality and fast loading times,” referencing, stabilizing and focusing images, increasing resolution, Skiffington said, noting that MrSID works with almost all remotecorrecting for lens distortion and merging images with other data. sensing applications on the market.

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MrSID images are created using LizardTech’s GeoExpress software. LizardTech also offers Express Server for providing MrSID images over the network. Express Server works seamlessly with all other GIS applications and servers.

The solution offers two different compression options—lossless and lossy. Lossless compression reduces image size about 50 percent while retaining every pixel’s original data. “This means that the compressed image is mathematically identical to the source image,” Skiffington said.

MrSID can also compress images by discarding some data to make images smaller. In most cases, images can be reduced to 5 percent of their original size without loss of visual quality. “This means that the human eye won’t be able to tell the difference between the source image and the compressed image,” he explained.

MrSID also uses selective decompression. “In layperson’s terms, this means that it can automatically extract any portion of the image at any resolution,” Skiffington said. “So even if you’re dealing with images of 10 terabytes or larger, panning and zooming are instantaneous.”

The LizardTech tools work with many different UAVs and sensors. MrSID itself is independent of sensor type. As long as data arrives as a georeferenced image, LizardTech tools can compress and deliver it rapidly.

Most users of MrSID and other LizardTech tools have large volumes of geospatial image data, Skiffington noted, but the exact workflows that these customers use is not important. “We just do the heavy lifting of making sure that images are usable in their applications, whether that is image exploitation, analysis or other image use.”

Commercial Applications Several companies are taking a fresh look at what UAVs and their sensors could do in commercial applications. While focusing on the civilian market, these companies are developing technologies that may well end up offering benefits for military and intelligence users over the long haul.

Airware, for example, is building UAV technology specifically designed for commercial operation, which is more flexible and economic than military drones and more reliable and safe than amateur civilian equipment. The company wants to enable users to seamlessly connect airframes, actuators, sensors, payloads and application-specific software. It is essentially building an operating system for commercial UAVs, or what some call a “DOS for drones.”

Airware has developed an autopilot, a Linux-based box to be installed on UAVs. It is now being beta-tested by drone manufacturers, a government agency and university researchers. The company partners with producers of aircraft, payloads, sensors and application software, rather than making these components itself.

Airware’s box also collects the sensor data. Its software interfaces with user-chosen sensors, cameras, actuators and communication tools and configures their settings. The software manages the missions and transfers image data to the cloud, where it is available for customer exploitation.

Airware has raised over $40 million from investors, and is also working with NASA to develop a UAV traffic management system.

Another company attempting to make UAV sensors more flexible and economical is Visual Intelligence, which describes its iOne Software Sensor Tool Kit Architecture as offering a more efficient www.GIF-kmi.com

Leidos offers system engineering and integration of advanced sensors including LiDAR, such as this image of New York City. [Image courtesy of Leidos]

CorvusEye from Exelis Integrated Sensing Solutions provides both electro-optical and infrared night images over wide areas at two frames per second. [Image courtesy of Exelis Integrated Sensing Solutions]

approach to combining sensors on UAVs. IOne has developed a critical piece of hardware, the Advanced Retinal Camera Array, embedded in software.

“Like the original Dell with PCs, we want to make it much more economic for small UAVs to use multipurpose cameras,” explained CEO Armando Guevara. His aim is to allow multiple EO cameras— nadir, oblique and stereo imaging—to use one array. These cameras could then be built very economically and using them with a common array that would provide a small, efficient package ideal for small UAVs. The reconfigurable iOne software can work with imagery of 6,000 to 30,000 pixels across. “If I have nine camera modules with 29 megapixels each, I can make a virtual image look like one camera took it,” Guevara explained.

The company’s cameras are rigorously geometric and radiometrically calibrated, with errors of less than half a pixel. They can thus be used for photogrammetry to build up 3-D models of areas observed. Visual Intelligence can also co-mount and co-register with other sensors, such as LiDAR, IR and radar, and fuse images on the fly.

Guevara said he plans to release an iOne kite for small UAVs later this year. He is also developing a content ecosystem to interpret images that could serve virtually any use case. O

For more information, contact GIF Editor Harrison Donnelly at harrisond@kmimediagroup.com or search our online archives for related stories at www.gif-kmi.com.

GIF 13.2/3 | 13

INDUSTRY RASTER Satellite Imagery Shows Arctic Ocean In response to the rapidly increasing demand for high-quality geo-data of the Arctic Ocean, Earthstar Geographics has compiled a detailed satellite imagery mosaic of the entire region and released it in map projections optimized for visualizing the northern polar areas. TerraColor satellite imagery, long used by organizations and web-mapping portals worldwide, provides an accurate, high-value mapping component for scientific research, navigation, logistics and natural resource exploration. The imagery base map portrays all major landmasses and islands within the Arctic Circle in minimal

Web-Based Light Table Enables Image Exploitation http://media.directionsmedia.net/directionsmag/channels/pressreleases/TerraColor_Arctic_Ocean_Overview.jpg[2/13/2015 4:45:52 PM]

Textron Systems Geospatial Solutions, a Textron Inc. business, has announced the initial release of its newest product, the RVcloud web-based electronic light table (ELT), offering many of the image exploitation capabilities of its popular RemoteView GEOINT software. The release of RVcloud enables organizations to transform the way in which they deliver geospatial analysis capabilities to their users. Its web technology reduces customer costs, allows organizations to avoid the overhead required to deploy and update desktop products, and accelerates integration of new features and custom modules. Ease of use and simplified deployment of the RVcloud application broadens access to GEOINT for new, nontraditional users while meeting existing analyst needs. Developed with the latest HTML5 technologies, RVcloud runs in modern browsers and is designed for both desktop and mobile platforms. Its streaming display presents a high-fidelity view of source data and enables users to instantly access all standard GEOINT image formats without first downloading the full image.

http://textron.q4web.com/files/doc_news/2015/Feb16-2015-B-Nexus9_geosearch_chinshan_framed_300.jpg[2/18/2015 12:26:57 PM]

Tom Williams; twilliams@textronsystems.com

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ice conditions with nearly all coastlines visible.

The TerraColor dataset also includes previously unreleased 15-meter imagery of the far north archipelagos of Svalbard, Franz Josef Land and Severnaya Zemlya. TerraColor is a precision orthorectified global imagery base map built primarily from pan-sharpened Landsat 7 and Landsat 8 satellite imagery, and is suitable for mapping at scales of 1:60,000 and higher. Applications include web-based mapping, GPS tracking, scientific research, natural resource exploration, military/defense logistics, flight simulation and 3-D visualization.

Mikel Savides; mikel.savides@lmco.com

Web GIS Empowers Information on Any Device Esri has announced that ArcGIS 10.3 is now available with the release of ArcGIS Pro. ArcGIS 10.3 realizes the vision of web GIS, which empowers customers to use information anywhere and on any device. It includes new apps and enhancements that continue to revolutionize the science of geography and GIS and enable users to more readily share their work throughout their organizations. The release of ArcGIS 10.3 transforms the entire ArcGIS platform and is headlined by the introduction

of ArcGIS Pro. Designed as a multithreaded 64-bit application for Windows, ArcGIS Pro takes advantage of modern technology that allows users to visualize, edit and analyze data faster than ever before. With ArcGIS Pro, users can create and work with geographic layers in both 2-D and 3-D and share map information as feature layers, imagery, maps, analysis services, 3-D web scenes and web maps.

Robby Deming; rdeming@esri.com

Contract Supports GEOINT Learning at NGA Riverside Research, a not-for-profit scientific research company, has received the Advisory and Assistance Services, Geospatial and Signatures Intelligence contract from the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC). The five-year, $49 million, single-award contract enables Riverside Research to continue supporting NASIC in the advancement of technologies that preserve national security. The effort encompasses a range of technical and management pursuits including execution of research and development in the aforementioned domains, guidance of operations and maintenance activities, and assistance in information technology system acquisition. Ultimately aiming to cultivate a collaborative environment between the center’s Department of Defense and intelligence community partners, Riverside Research will also facilitate outreach and technical engagement.

Benjamin Leach; bleach@riversideresearch.org

www.GIF-kmi.com

Compiled by KMI Media Group staff

NGA Portal Deployed on Commercial Cloud Lockheed Martin and Esri have deployed commercial software to the Amazon Web Services Commercial Cloud Services (C2S) environment for the first time with an intelligence community customer, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. The deployment of the portal for Esri’s ArcGIS software provides a single environment for analysts to securely organize and share data throughout the intelligence community and Department of Defense. It also represents a foundational step in consolidating multiple geospatial intelligence portals into the single NGA-provided portal, resulting in technology and license cost savings. This is NGA’s second step in the cloud after the agency moved its Map of the World application to the C2S environment late last year.

Colin Thorn; colin.thorn@lmco.com

Satellite Camera’s Got the Whole World in One Shot

A new Lockheed Martin instrument launched aboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory spacecraft, the Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) will provide imaging of the entire sunlit side of Earth in one view, which hasn’t been done before from a satellite.

Today, real-time Earth images are patched together from various satel-

lites. With the whole-disk image— one that shows the entire face of the planet in one shot—scientists will have a broad view of the planet’s atmosphere at work. Using EPIC, scientists can monitor clouds and atmospheric particles moving across hemispheres, which will improve models for storms, droughts, dust, pollution and global climate.

Deep Space Satellite Monitors Solar Activity NOAA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) has been launched on its way to an orbit 1 million miles from Earth, where it will give NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center more reliable measurements of solar wind conditions, improving its ability to monitor potentially harmful solar activity. When it reaches its final destination and completes a series of initialization checks, DSCOVR will be the nation’s first operational satellite in deep space, orbiting between Earth and the sun. Data from DSCOVR, coupled with a new forecast model that is set to come online later this year, will enable NOAA forecasters to predict geomagnetic storm magnitude on a regional basis. Geomagnetic storms occur when plasma and magnetic fields streaming from the sun impact Earth’s magnetic field. TASC provided engineering mission assurance and independent verification and validation expertise for the Falcon 9 launch vehicle procured by the Air Force from SpaceX. The Falcon 9 launch was the first executed by the Air Force under its Orbital/Suborbital Program-3 contract, to which TASC is the mission assurance contractor.

Diane Clark; diane.clark@tasc.com

Contract Supports GEOINT Learning at NGA

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency has awarded BAE Systems a five-year contract with an estimated total value of $43 million to provide mission-essential training and instructional support to NGA analysts and intelligence officers stationed around the world. Under the GEOINT Learning Program contract, BAE Systems experts will provide NGA analysts with a robust training curriculum that includes more than 70 different courses from entry through expert level. The courses promote a core curriculum

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designed to sharpen analysts’ expertise in tradecraft areas such as imagery analysis, activity-based intelligence and human geography. These courses also provide context and background on different tools and sensors to help analysts expedite data collection, enrich their talents in processing intelligence and enhance their skills in imagery collection management.

Amanda Schildt; amanda.schildt@baesystems.com

GIF 13.2/3 | 15

Innovation Architect

Q& A

Increasing Space Persistence to Improve Performance Betty J. Sapp Director National Reconnaissance Office Betty Sapp was appointed the 18th director of the National Reconnaissance Office on July 6, 2012. Sapp began her government career as an Air Force officer in a variety of acquisition and financial management positions. In 1997, Sapp joined the CIA. She was assigned to NRO, where she served in a variety of senior management positions. In 2005, she was appointed the deputy director, NRO for business plans and operations.

In May 2007, Sapp was appointed the deputy under secretary of defense (portfolio, programs and resources), Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. Sapp was appointed principal deputy director of NRO in April 2009.

Sapp holds Bachelor of Arts and Master of Business Administration, management degrees, both from the University of Missouri, Columbia.

Q: What are the top priorities for NRO in 2015?

A: NRO’s priorities are to maintain its stellar record of acquisition and program success, while delivering a more capable, integrated, resilient and affordable NRO architecture for the future. This future architecture must respond to and keep pace with emerging threats and dynamic mission needs so we can maintain the U.S. decision advantage against increasingly capable adversaries. Specifically, we must increase our persistence from space if we are to improve our performance against, for example, mobile missiles.

We will continue to incorporate into our architecture the revolutionary new technology necessary to realize that more capable, integrated, resilient and affordable future. These technologies are made possible by our investments in research and development, and we will continue these investments to ensure our capabilities remain relevant and resilient. In the near term, we will continue to improve our ground and operational capabilities to ensure we get the most from our current operational space systems—adapting those on-orbit systems to support current warfighter needs.

Q: What do you see as some of the most important areas of R&D for your organization, and what are you doing to encourage innovation?

A: For NRO, R&D is not a “nice to do,” it is a “must do.” We are focusing on several areas that I believe are critical to the intelligence mission. The NRO operating environment continues to grow in complexity, and our adversaries are aggressively pursuing denial and deception techniques, as well as capabilities to threaten our collection assets. We must continually seek increasingly innovative approaches to keep pace and improve our capabilities. One area we are focused on is persistence, developing those long-dwell and diverse sensor handoff capabilities that will enable us to maintain a chain of custody and www.GIF-kmi.com

effective persistence on a target of interest. We are also developing a full spectrum of multi-intelligence (multi-INT) capabilities that will orchestrate multiple, diverse sensor types simultaneously to address and discriminate the target of interest.

We are rapidly advancing end-to-end automation and agility of the overhead architecture to greatly increase the speed, timeliness and accuracy of intelligence collection. Our goal is to enable an automated, multi-INT, problem-driven collection system that will revolutionize current operations. This focus on efficient, accurate intelligence collection will allow analysts more time for expert analysis, freeing them from lengthy and mundane data searches.

We have been very successful in this area with Sentient and we are continuing to push the envelope, striving for even more advanced collection capabilities.

Targets are becoming increasingly vague and fleeting, so we are vigorously pursuing new sources and methods that will broaden our spectral diversity, countering the threat with new sensors and phenomenology. We are thinking out of the box to create unusual or unexpected uses of existing sensor systems. Our adversaries continue to develop new and improved means to destroy our freedom of action in space, so we must develop collection systems with enhanced survivability built in from the beginning. And finally, we must also factor in affordability. We are designing architectures, systems and technologies to increase intelligence collection value, improve efficiency and reduce cost of ownership.

GIF 13.2/3 | 17

National Reconnaissance Office

NRO Organization

2015

Betty Sapp

Frank Calvelli

Director

Principal Deputy Director

Brigadier General Anthony J. Cotton Deputy Director

TASC.COM

AS&T

BPO

COMM

Advanced Systems & Technology Directorate

Business Plans & Operations Directorate

Communications Systems Directorate

MID

MOD

OSL

SIGINT

Mission Integration Directorate

Mission Operations Directorate

Office of Space Launch

Signals Intelligence Systems Acquisition

TRUSTED ADVISOR

Senior Mission Partner Representatives CIA NGA NSA

Corporate Staff

GED

IMINT

MS&O

Ground Enterprise Directorate

Imagery Intelligence Systems Acquisition Directorate

Management Services & Operations Directorate

SCO

SAO

SED

Special Communications Office

Survivability Assurance Office

Systems Engineering Directorate

ON GEOINT PROGRAMS, PRACTICES AND STRATEGIES

Innovation enables us to lead the world in intelligence dominance. To ensure that we are always on the leading edge with the newest technologies, I have one office, the Advanced Systems and Technology Directorate (AS&T), that is focused on research and development. AS&T explores, tests, develops and transitions revolutionary new capabilities to our current and future architecture. AS&T hosts a variety of forums and collaborative research programs with industry, government and academia, always searching for the most promising new technologies.

My Director’s Innovation Initiative (DII), which is managed in AS&T, fosters revolutionary new ideas by reaching developers not traditionally associated with the NRO. The DII provides a risk-tolerant environment to invest across the United States in cutting-edge technologies and high-payoff concepts relevant to NRO’s mission.

But AS&T is not the only innovative place within NRO. In fact, we encourage innovation throughout NRO though an initiative called the Innovation Campaign to identify new opportunities across the entire NRO enterprise to innovate not only in technology, but also in business processes, acquisition, security and a whole range of NRO activities. NRO began its existence by innovating—creating capabilities that did not exist— and it continues to create extraordinary intelligence collection capabilities, continuously redefining the boundaries between science fiction and science fact.

Q: What are NRO’s responsibilities in creating the Intelligence Community Information Technology Enterprise (IC ITE), and what progress have you made so far?

A: A core aspect of the IC ITE is the suite of enterprise-wide IT infrastructure services operated by common service providers for the IC. NRO is responsible for working jointly with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and other IC elements to define IC ITE, adopt IC ITE common services within NRO and be the IC ITE service provider for networks. In our role as service provider for networks, we have made excellent progress working with our IC partners to define the IC network reference architecture and identify common network services for both campus area networks and wide area networks across the IC. Q: How do you see the IC ITE changing the way NRO conducts business?

A: The IC ITE is not only changing the way we run IT at NRO, but it is also changing how we utilize capabilities from other IC elements— that is, the IC ITE services. In short, IC ITE is going to be a huge enabler for NRO and allow us to expose much more of our data to analysts and users, much earlier and much more often than we had previously been able to do. It really is a game-changer for us. NRO is already putting metadata of collected imagery into the IC ITE cloud environment, making it more accessible to the IC. We have also started utilizing the hardware in the cloud architecture for development and test of some ground software systems. NRO is also preparing for transition to the IC ITE common desktop environment in 2016.

Q: What steps are you taking to improve NRO acquisition programs?

What role does the Acquisition Research Center 2.0 play in that?

A: NRO’s long history of acquisition excellence has provided our nation with unmatched global surveillance capabilities supporting 20 | GIF 13.2/3

our warfighters and national decision-makers. The foundation of NRO’s acquisition success is our strong acquisition workforce, the application of best practices, and our close and enduring partnership with our industry partners.

A critical NRO organizational asset is the Acquisition Center of Excellence (ACE). For the past 17 years, ACE has provided targeted acquisition training and acquisition support services and helped to ensure open communications with industry. The targeted training augments the acquisition training NRO employees receive from their “parent” organizations, and ACE continually assess both the content of the training courses and the needs of the workforce to improve NRO acquisitions. In fiscal year 2014 alone, ACE provided 80 courses for hundreds of students. ACE also provides vital acquisition support services to the NRO workforce, particularly for competitive acquisitions. It provides the facilities, tools and support for competitive source selection processes. In doing this, ACE helps to ensure that NRO selects the best-value solution to its mission requirements.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, ACE provides a communication capability with our industry partners. The Acquisition Research Center 2.0 (ARC 2.0) provides classified and unclassified websites as portals for industry into NRO business opportunities, including upcoming solicitations and on-going acquisitions. We could not do our work at NRO without partnering with industry, and the ARC 2.0 capability allows industry to access data on upcoming NRO acquisitions and helps ACE reach a broader industry base for NRO’s mission requirements. The ARC 2.0 capability also allows industry to communicate with NRO early in the acquisition planning phase. This is extremely important since early industry input can help us revise our requirements to attract the widest industry interest. One new feature of ARC 2.0 is the Innovation Portal. This feature gives industry a single location for business opportunities to provide innovative solutions to some of the most complex challenges facing NRO. We also use ARC 2.0 to ensure industry has a chance to review and comment on proposed NRO contracting policy changes.

Q: How do you see NRO’s ground infrastructure evolving in the years ahead?

A: As the NRO space segment moves to increased persistence and diversity, the ground will use new innovative means to improve products, create new products, counter physical gaps in coverage and improve analytics, multi-INT opportunities, activity-based intelligence, object-based production and predictive models.

The move to the cloud-based IC ITE will enable the NRO ground to continue to provide current capabilities and products while striving to improve ground resiliency through flexible, sensor-agnostic apps and services hosted anywhere in the world. The NRO ground architecture will include a new enterprise collection orchestration (ECO) function to maximize and optimize collection opportunities, fully exploiting integrated intelligence alerts, providing a more automated tipping and cueing capability to enable collections that are relevant, and utilizing all available sensors. The goal is to allow the role of the analyst to evolve from sifting through large amounts of data to working the actionable, relative data that is provided to them.

ECO and the rest of NRO’s future ground architecture (FGA) will be hosted on a common mission environment that will leverage existing and future sensors and extend to non-overhead and nontraditional data providers. This will create an interactive, automated, iterative loop throughout a non-linear and dynamic mission management, www.GIF-kmi.com

collection and processing cycle. The NRO ground infrastructure will continually adapt and provide evolving and expanding capabilities to our mission partners by using new spacecraft sensors, taking advantage of commercial technologies and leveraging the IC ITE to enable the sharing of data and products via technology and algorithm improvements. This is a challenging but promising time for NRO ground as we continue our move to FGA cloud-based technologies that use automated and advanced analytics to address critical IC needs to further integrate the tip-cue mission.

Q: How would you describe NRO’s recent experiences with competition in launch contracts, and what future do you see for that concept?

A: We almost always procure launch services through the Air Force, and we fully support their strategy. That strategy seeks to lower launch costs by reintroducing competition for national security space (NSS) missions while meeting operational needs and maintaining mission success. The NRO Launch-79 (NROL79) mission was the first launch service acquisition pursued in response to that strategy. The Air Force issued the contract solicitation in July 2014, with contract award required by December 2014 to ensure a December 2016 on-time launch to meet mission requirements. On January 7, 2015, the Air Force announced that no new entrants had completed certification, a prerequisite to any award of a low-risk-tolerant NSS mission.

Subsequently, on January 28, 2015, the Air Force determined it was in the best interest of the government to cancel the NROL-79 competitive solicitation.

NRO remains committed to enabling competition in future launch service acquisitions as launch service capabilities are demonstrated and certified, and in full cooperation with our partners in the Air Force. However, I am also concerned about the potential unintended consequences of both competition and legislative restrictions on the only current launch provider certified and capable of delivering the full suite of NSS missions to space.

Q: What has NRO been doing in the past few years to support the warfighter?

A: Core NRO overhead reconnaissance capabilities are integral to supporting U.S. operations in Afghanistan and other theaters, but NRO also has programs specifically focused on support to the warfighter. For example, we steward the personnel recovery program that synchronizes national collection assets to assist in combat search and rescue operations. Another example is an NRO-developed system called Red Dot, which leverages multi-INT sources to provide an integrated IED situational awareness “picture” that can be provided directly to the warfighter at the unclassified level and in near-real time. Red Dot has been extremely successful; from 2012 to 2014, it contributed to the removal of at least 714 IEDs from the battlefield, preventing the loss of countless lives and limbs.

NRO develops warfighter-support tools, as well as systems. We help make sense of large volumes of data, allowing the warfighter to distinguish “normal” from “abnormal.” We provide automated tipping, cueing and alerting capabilities, improving the find-fixfinish cycle. Finally, we are leading the way in migrating tools to apps so that new capabilities do not require new hardware and www.GIF-kmi.com

are much easier and faster to integrate into warfighter systems and processes.

As a final point in our support to the warfighter, I must mention the outstanding field representatives we put in place at the combatant commands and in the theater battlespace. These representatives must understand the needs of the warfighters they serve and the capabilities NRO has available to help. It is their job to make the link between needs and capabilities—or to bring the need back to NRO for the larger enterprise to address. Our field representatives have a very critical, demanding job, and they do it very, very well.

Q: How would you assess the current state of the U.S. space industrial base, and what is your strategy for ensuring it remains viable?

A: NRO is concerned about the state of the U.S. space industrial base. Independent studies led by the Department of Commerce, the National Defense Industrial Association and the Aerospace Industries Association have all highlighted a similar concern: that the United States is facing a shrinking pool of talent at the prime contractor level. At the subcontractor and supplier levels, the situation is often even more worrisome.

We are addressing this in two ways. First, we try to ensure our development programs are as stable, predictable and doable as possible. “Stable” means that we plan so as to keep primes and suppliers going at a manageable rate, without stops and re-starts.

“Predictable” means that the prime contractors can forecast what they will need and when they will need it, thus improving chances for acquisition success. And “doable” means that the technology leap-aheads we require to keep up with targets and threats are developed and demonstrated in our research and development office before being transitioned to an acquisition program. The second way NRO tries to help is as part of the broader U.S. space community, collaborating with the Air Force, Missile Defense Agency and NASA to collectively address risks in the space industrial base.

Q: What are some of the key steps under way to strengthen the skills and enhance the careers of the NRO workforce?

A: Since we were formed more than 50 years ago, NRO has never owned its own workforce, but borrowed personnel from across the Department of Defense and the IC. Over time, that workforce model became increasingly problematic. Now, thanks to the support of Congress, CIA and DoD, NRO will have much more stability in the technical portion of its workforce. Specifically, we have stabilized the CIA element of our technical workforce by establishing the Office of Space Reconnaissance (OSR). Similarly, the secretary of defense just approved transition of former Air Force and Navy civilians serving at NRO to permanent DoD NRO cadre. Together, the OSR and DoD cadre comprise about one-third of our government workforce. This “stable element” will allow us to ensure in-depth NRO experience, with career assignments, employee development and training focused on specific NRO needs. The remainder of our workforce will continue to come from CIA and DoD (military) rotations. The combined workforce will give us the additional stability in core functions necessary for success in complex space acquisitions, with the broad-based experience and different thinking that comes from individuals who have done different things in different places. O GIF 13.2/3 | 21

Peering into the Satellite Future NRO official sees changes ahead in the strategy and business of government and military space.

By Harrison Donnelly, GIF Editor As government and industry leaders ponder the future of government and military space, a National Reconnaissance Office official recently put forward ideas such as new operations and maintenance (O&M) models, common satellite buses, alternative contracting strategies, leveraging the commercial market and changing the ground infrastructure.

Tina Harrington, director of NRO’s Signals Intelligence Systems Acquisition Directorate, appeared at a panel session titled “The Future of Government and Military Space: Safe Bets and Bold Predictions,” which was held during the Satellite 2015 conference in Washington, D.C. Members of the panel included Air Force Colonel Chris Crawford, director of space policy implementation in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, as well as executives of leading satellite companies in both the communications and geospatial/ISR fields.

Panelists agreed that the current era represents a critical turning point for military space programs, especially given anticipated budget constraints. As the conference program noted, “The Department of Defense’s space programs and policies are at a crossroads, with existing military satellite procurement programs nearing the end of their delivery cycles, and numerous studies and new procurement models under internal consideration.”

Harrington’s insights were particularly noteworthy in light of the fact—noted more than once by the session moderator, Vice Admiral Lyle Bien (Ret.)—that officials of NRO, whose programs are largely classified, have not been frequent presenters at the Satellite conference and many such open forums.

Reliance on Space In her remarks, Harrington began by noting the ongoing importance of space programs. “Reliance on space isn’t going to go away.

It has grown for the past 20 years and will continue to grow, not just in communications, but also positioning, navigation and timing and a lot of things that no one thought 20 years ago we would be doing, such as [public] GPS. Satellites are a key component of our lifestyle.”

But Harrington also acknowledged challenges that will have to be dealt with, including the facts that space is increasingly being seen as a contested environment and that military budgets are not expected to grow. “Over the last four years, every year we have had discussions about what we are going to shift in order so to continue delivering critical capability at a lower price point,” she said.

In response, the agency is emphasizing the principle of doing in common what is commonly done, which has also been the watchword for the intelligence community’s Information Technology Enterprise initiative. “Why do I want to buy my own IT, communications or ground systems when those things are already out there?

How do I better leverage the things that are being built for others so that I do not spend my limited resources on developing that area?”

Harrington asked.

Another area for change is in updating O&M models, she continued. “Some of the O&M models were developed 30 years ago. That’s not the world we live in today. When you look at commercial versus 22 | GIF 13.2/3

government O&M models today, it is not a good ratio. How do we leverage the practices of the commercial world so that we can draw down on them and do a better job in using money for things that are unique to the government? We will figure those things out.”

One of the things the government will need to address will be a better way to use common satellite buses, Harrington suggested.

“We have historically built our own bus, even though a lot of times the buses exist out there. Why do we need a specialized bus, and why should I spend my money there? Aren’t I better off spending money on sensors that only I need? We’re starting down that path, but I see that as a place where people will continue to grow into.”

Contracting Alternatives Development of alternative contracting strategies is also important, she said. “In the past, we have done everything the same way, and when you do that, costs grow. But what are my alternatives, and how do I acquire differently, using fixed price instead of cost plus?

How do I motivate people differently? Do I have to own the entire system, or can I be hosted on someone else’s system? These changes in acquisition strategy will enable us to get more for our dollars.”

But experience has also revealed the pitfalls of change, she recalled somewhat ruefully. “Twenty years ago, we had a strategy of better, faster, cheaper, and learned a lot of lessons, most of which were not to take any risks if you were a government official. So we stopped taking risks. But you can’t be in a risk-averse posture and make good, smart, bold moves.

“You have to balance that, and decide where you have to take risks in order to move forward and where you can’t take any risks at all. That is being looked at, and I see the government changing its posture so that as we move forward, we do the things where we need to have 99.999 percent mission assurance. But not everything needs to be in that category,” Harrington said.

Research and development remains a critical priority, she said.

“We also need to make sure we are still making the R&D investment.

One of the things that could kill us in the future is only building the same thing. The more I build the same thing, the less I drive innovation and the next generation of engineers.

“You also have to look at how we leverage the commercial market,” she continued. “We need to be using the commercial market in all ways that we can, because we are better off using limited dollars to buy commercial when we can rather than building our own. From our perspective, we need to stay in communication with our industry partners. That’s one of the things that has made NRO successful.”

Changes in satellite programs’ ground infrastructures are similarly vital, Harrington said. “Ground is where a lot of the magic occurs, and it is the place where we invest in last. But it’s one of the things that we can make the greatest leaps with.”

One key in Harrington’s eyes is to use a system architecture that enables cooperation and interoperability. “What we need is an architecture to make sure that we don’t keep building all of these stovepipes,” she said. “How can I tap into other infrastructures, www.GIF-kmi.com

and use that so I don’t have to rebuild it? There are a lot of things that we have to keep in-house, but there are other places where we can’t build just one. At today’s prices, we just can’t build everything as one-offs.”

Hosted Payloads and Small Sats

For more information, contact GIF Editor Harrison Donnelly at harrisond@kmimediagroup.com or search our online archives for related stories at www.gif-kmi.com.

Image Courtesy of f the DoD.

In response to audience questions, Harrington displayed a mixture of support and skepticism about highly touted alternatives to current satellite strategies.

Recalling that she had been involved in a hosted payload program some years ago, Harrington noted the problems that arose in sharing information, which boiled down to the old “tennis shoe” method of putting data on a disc and handing it to someone else.

“That is still often the case,” she observed. “Someone will bring up the idea of a hosted payload, and as soon as you try to get it into the right system, you’re back to the tennis shoe method. When we look at hosted programs, it needs to be more end to end. We can’t rely on people in the mailroom. You might end up spending all the money you saved in a higher O&M bill over the life of the program.”

Small satellites and miniaturized CubeSats offer exciting possibilities, Harrington said. “You can look at experiments that we might not want to do with a larger satellite, and we can bring things in at a lower price point. We frequently don’t want to do things because of the price, and if I can do it a different way, I see a lot of advantage there.

“I don’t know how well SkyBox, Planet Lab and some of the other companies are going to work,” she said. “But I think it’s a great opportunity for people to look at things differently. I know that we like to think of ourselves as all-knowing, but we’re not. I don’t know how well these are going to do or how many will actually get on orbit. But it’s a great opportunity to look and push the envelope and see what new things we can do.”

In a subsequent interview, Harrington outlined some of the steps under way at NRO to respond to these future trends.

“We have already begun changing our models, where appropriate, especially from a contracting approach,” she reported. “In the last four years, we have used several contract types beyond pure cost plus (CP) including fixed price (FP) deliver for the entire system, FP bus with CP payload, and CP system with an FP payload. We also model the test/risk profile to the contract type and mission criticality. These efforts are helping to inform our future approach.

“Taking chances and proving we can execute successfully with an alternate approach is allowing us to move forward on the ‘safe bets and bold predictions’ that we talked to in the panel, and appropriately tailor the contract type, program risk and total cost based on the mission need,” Harrington concluded. O

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GIF 13.2/3 | 23

Surveillance and analytical technologies provide situational awareness and a common operating picture of the nation’s lengthy borders and coastlines.

By Peter Buxbaum, GIF Correspondent

“Geospatial also facilitates the automation of sensors, such as panOne of the biggest challenges facing those charged with protecttilt-zoom cameras, with spotlights, range finders and loud hailers. ing U.S. borders involves the sheer size of the area that needs to be Items of interest detected from all types of sensors, whether groundcovered. They also must deal with the diversity of the terrain, the long based or airborne, geospatial video, radar, fence sensors or vibration ranges at which they must operate and a myriad of distractions that sensors, can all be displayed on the same geospatial map-based comcould prevent them from seeing and responding to threats such as mon operating picture. Border patrol vehicles and agents can be also illegal immigrants, drug smugglers or even potential terrorists. outfitted with GPS to know their whereabouts, which can aid in items All this makes it difficult to achieve border area situational awareof interest interceptions,” Bowe added. ness and a common operating picture. Fortunately, a growing array of geospatial technologies is available to help make sense out of the large amounts of confusing and often Video Analytics contradictory information that border protectors must work with in order to achieve their missions.

Border surveillance differs from run-of-the-mill Embedding geospatial capabilities in sensors allows outdoor perimeter protection mostly due to the size of items of interest to be pinpointed on a digital map that the border area to be surveilled and the diversity of the can be shared across an organization. Enhanced anaterrain, according to Bowe. “These factors introduce lytical capabilities can process the output of sensors a whole new set of challenges for sensors, including to provide operators and analysts with suggestions for video analytics,” he said. “The analytics must opercloser surveillance and cross-cue sensors to focus on ate on data taken at longer ranges in diverse terrains, suspicious items, individuals and activities. which means coping with more background clutter, Jim Youker “Geospatial technologies used in aid of border platform motion and atmospheric scintillation, just to protection address the same challenges as in other name a few.” applications,” said Jim Youker, a director of sales and “The use of full motion video (FMV) and the exploimarketing at BAE Systems. “Situational awareness tation of imagery allow analysts and operators to see and building layers of information that enable a comthe environment and develop patterns of life or threat mon operating picture allow analysts and operators to behaviors that can be understood forensically,” said develop techniques, tactics and procedures that mitiYouker. “They can also be analyzed for repeatable patgate the threats to border security.” terns that might tip and queue triggers that can poten“What we see is that there are growing numbers tially point to future threats.” of sensors out there,” said Christoph De Preter, chief But full motion video doesn’t provide a complete commercial officer at Luciad. “These can be motion solution for border surveillance applications, accorddetectors, unmanned aerial systems with video or ing to Dwight Greenlee, director for regional surveilLarry Bowe static cameras, hyperspectral imaging sensors and lance at Exelis. “FMV tends to provide a soda straw others. view of territory,” he said. “The problem with border “Geospatial technology comes into play by consecurity is that it involves such a wide area. Our solunecting all of these sources of data to make sense of tion provides 30 times the coverage and watches the them geospatially,” he noted. “They let operators and pixels for you. There is no need for just one person to analysts know what place on Earth it is that a UAV or a have to watch several screens and possibly miss the satellite or a sensor is looking at so that accurate data bigger picture.” can be sent to surveillance teams on the ground.”

Exelis has developed wide-area motion imagery “Geospatial technologies can be used for border (WAMI) systems that address the problems associated surveillance to provide users with enhanced situawith the broad swaths of real estate that border protectional awareness, improved detection and a more logitors must monitor. cal means to communicate between assets,” said Larry Video analytics that can map the image space Dwight Greenlee Bowe, president and CEO of PureTech. into the terrain space can help hold down the rate of 24 | GIF 13.2/3

www.GIF-kmi.com

estate and the individuals, objects and activities to be found on it, ensuring that systems that don’t need to be tasked to specific targets. Multiple users can find different targets in the field of view of the sensor.

“We have products that provide regional persistent surveillance over areas of 2 to 3 kilometers,” said Greenlee. “The sensors stare down at that region and record activity for as long as you want. The 2-kilometer range at night and the 3-kilometer range during the day are wider than anything else on the market. We have the ability to detect moving pixels to track individuals or groups. The video can also be rewound to ascertain where individuals, groups or vehicles came from.”

Analytical capabilities within the Exelis product identify areas and activities that require more intensive attention, whether from sensors or human eyeballs. The ability to chip out pieces of WAMI imagery enables operators to track multiple targets within a single field of vision at the same time.

“The systems generate a box on the viewing screen that tells the operator to take a closer look at a specific area or situation,” said Greenlee. “That way you don’t need 15 pairs of eyeballs viewSensor Accuracy ing video. You have a box pop up that says that it looks like something is going on. The operator can then click on the box to a get a Sensor accuracy, advances in computing and the availability of higher-resolution view of that specific area. The system can also creadvanced analytical and exploitation tools that eliminate functional ate tripwires to alert operators when people are movstovepipes have made the application of geospatial ing through a certain area.” technology to border protection more affordable as Every pixel generated by any of Exelis’ sensors, well as effective. whether mounted on an aerostat, UAV or manned “All of the sensor technologies are improving in aircraft, is geo-located, noted Bernie Brower, senior accuracy,” said Bowe. “This is being enabled by the product development manager for integrated sensing increase in performance of off-the-shelf computers, solutions at Exelis. which enable more powerful sensor algorithms and “Once we find something moving in an area of systems to be developed and yet be affordable.” interest, we can geo-locate that and put it on a map,” “The availability of advanced exploitation tools he added. “We can also generate watch boxes that tell represents a migration in legacy software that previoperators to keep a watch out for certain locations. ously only allowed UAV pilots to fly and watch activBernie Brower Data from activity detected by ground sensors can ity,” said Youker. “Now, software like GXP InMotion also be used to generate watch boxes. We can also quickly make 3-D not only connects the UAV operations of the mission, but also links models of areas, which enable us to evaluate terrain and determine the workflow and facilitates chat, feature extraction, mensuration where it might be easy to cross a border.” and image processing in real time so that the production and dissemination of geospatial intelligence is instantaneous with UAV flight operations. The tasking, collection, processing, exploitation Long-Range Surveillance and dissemination process has been rewritten so that it is no longer a time-consuming linear exercise.”

PureTech Systems is focused on development and refinement of GXP InMotion, BAE Systems’ video analysis suite, is available in a geospatial-aware video analytics system, particularly for video sura desktop version or through a server connection. veillance at long ranges of land and water.

“More and more integration is coming to geospatial sys“Our product, called PureActiv, is a wide-area surveillance and tems, eliminating stovepipes,” said De Preter. “A system-of-systems perimeter intrusion detection system that leverages geospatial techapproach allows for one unified view of the situation. With everyniques,” said Bowe. “It uses our geospatial video analytics and intething operating in the cloud, border surveillance systems are no longrates with other perimeter intrusion sensors to provide automated ger tools for specialists only. When we equipped customers with our detection and video corroboration of intrusion events, which reduces systems a few years ago, we were talking about 20 or 30 seats accesscost and increases flexibility. Essentially, we turn visible and thering the system. Now when we set up systems, we are talking about mal video cameras into intelligent geospatial detection and tracking hundreds and sometimes thousands of users, all accessing relevant sensors, and integrate them into our geospatial common operating data in the cloud. picture. Our product works on both live and recorded video.”

“Cloud computing gives system access to a very wide audience PureActiv also performs sensor collaboration with other geospawithout endangering the performance of the system. That is a real tial and non-geospatial devices. Its features include a map-based, game-changer,” he added. point-and-click interface that allows the user to control pan-tiltExelis’ WAMI sensors, which include both electro-optical and zoom cameras and other sensors through interaction with both infrared varieties for daytime and night operations, are essenmaps and video images. It also makes possible the use of real size tially low-rate video units that can capture wide swaths of real and speed to accurately detect items of interest at long distances, nuisance alarms, such as those caused by animals or weather conditions, for example. “The benefit of knowing the location of items of interest is obvious, but video analytics is also much more challenging at longer ranges with variable topography,” said Bowe. “The video analytic algorithms must be much more robust.”

Operators and analysts today are often asked to look at a multitude of screens, one displaying a static map and others showing live imagery and video feeds. “All of these are separate,” said De Preter.

“Where geospatial technology adds value is simply on the basis of the GPS position of a sensor. Projecting that imagery on a map view in real time, as well as integration of all the different sensor data, develops a single common operational picture for use by all.”

Geospatial technologies also facilitate interactivity and interoperability, allowing operators to project a live video feed on a map, where they can more easily see trends. “Pulling all of this data together makes it more intelligible for the operator,” said De Preter.

“They are able to discern patterns and make faster decisions.

Geospatial technology is the glue that pulls it all together.”

www.GIF-kmi.com

GIF 13.2/3 | 25

and allows users to add geographical place-markers, distance markings, bearings and route indicators.

The system also includes a “camera auto follow” feature. “This is not a geospatial feature per se,” said Bowe. “But after a camera has been steered to a location using geospatial technology, this feature will lock on the target and automatically keep it centered in the camera’s field of view.”

The PureTech system is typically used by customers with geographically expansive or distributed operations that need to protect critical assets and lives. “This includes installations at airports, seaports, subways, railroads, utilities, borders, bridges and military bases,” said Bowe. “In addition to these critical infrastructure protection applications, our ability to apply geospatial concepts to video has also enabled us to develop solutions for other non-security applications, such as man-overboard detection for cruise ships, car counting and queue management.”

“The most recent development that we have seen is the increased use of unstructured data and big data to develop pattern analysis and predict possible future border dangers and violations,” said De Preter.

Luciad’s modular software has been developed in conjunction with SAP’s HANA computational platform, which combines database, data management and multicore processing capabilities. These capabilities facilitate quick and accurate analytics by exposing all the elements of very large data sets, instead of only a sampling, to complex algorithmic processing.

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The more data points used in the algorithm, the more accurate predicted outcomes are. SAP uses a Luciad product as the geospatial plug-in module for HANA. “We have applications in the field of human geography,” said De Preter. “All sorts of unstructured data, such as diplomatic cables, press releases and news reports, can be loaded into the application, and all this data becomes geo-referenced to allow analysts to predict how, for example, political events can impact migratory flows and border security situations.”

The unstructured data is geo-referenced through the use of business intelligence software that picks up words in the text that have a geographical connotation. The system has been used by the governments of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Spain, France and Greece, as well as several others in South America and North Africa, to protect maritime and air space.

Luciad develops software in a modular fashion so that it can be incorporated into other, larger systems. “We build geospatial software not as a finished product, but as a set of building blocks that allow other developers to build it into their own systems,” said De Preter. “Governments and system integrators no longer want finished solutions, but instead something nimble that can be integrated into existing infrastructures and can interface with third-party sensors and systems. We don’t know what the sensors of tomorrow will look like or who the users of these systems will be in a couple of years.”

Imagery Exploitation BAE Systems delivers software tools for the processing, exploitation and dissemination of imagery for border security, counterterrorism and counter-drug missions. “GXP tools are being used by multiple agencies across the Department of Defense, intelligence community and federal government,” said Youker. “Future developments are likely to include shared data access across domains between international mission partners and federation of data sources for faster response times to threats.”

Bowe foresees the incorporation of capabilities to uniquely identify a specific subject using video analytics, enabling the tracking of specific targets and their whereabouts back in time through automated data-mining of recorded video. “This can be a very powerful forensic tool for investigations of terror events occurring in urban environments,” he said.

“What we really want is to move from data to real information,” said Brower. “The cross-cueing of sensors, gathering data from multiple sensors and correlating that data, no matter its source, will facilitate quicker and more confident decisions.”

Exelis has demonstrated that capability by using hyperspectral sensors to identify potential targets and then cross-cue high-resolution, high-frame-rate video cameras to track the targets.

“The big key to it all is the geospatial information,” said Brower.

“Geo-referenced data of all kinds, including imagery as well as other information from other ground sensors and other sensors, enables easier correlation of data by computers and the presentation of more accurate information to users.” O

For more information, contact GIF Editor Harrison Donnelly at harrisond@kmimediagroup.com or search our online archives for related stories at www.gif-kmi.com.

26 | GIF 13.2/3

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Compiled by KMI Media Group staff

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10 Feb

current fiscal year. The Pearl harbor Shipyard and Interm Naval this award ediate Mainte Facility, Pearl and will expire nance harbor, is at the end current fiscal the contra activity. of the year. This cting development contract was petitively , test and procured comevaluation, as a service 2014 weapo veteran-owne fiscal -disabled ns procur Lockheed d small-b ement (Navy) Cooperative Martin Corp., usiness set-asi via and Agreements Martin Aerona Lockheed PE the Federal Busine de funding in amount of utics Co., O Aie, ss Oppor websit the Fort Worth, $9,603,500 tunities is being awarde r with Texas, will be obligat AS12 proposals receive at time of d a $35,60 Naval Faciliti W, ed award and 0,000 costplus-fixed-fee d. The ASering es engine will not expire SAul end of the delivery order Southwest, Comm at the current fiscal viously issued against a t &and, San Diego, year. The preSea System Basic Orderin is the contra SP activity Naval s Ec (N00019-14-G Comm (N6247 g Agreem cting and, Washin 3-15-D-2415) iA ent D.C., -0020) to lM is the contra . complete Strike Missile iSSi cting activity gton, a Joint (JSM) risk On .

Sikors reduct tegration PrOg ion and inky Suppo study of the rt Services Krempp Stratford, F-35 Air System inc., the govern Construction rAMS Conn., is ment of Norwa for being awarde business) inc., (small $11,582,807 Jasper, Ind., y. The objecti d an of the study modification is being awarde ves are to further $6,699,538 to a previously awarde for firm-fix d mature JSM weapon design d firm-fix ed-price 0003 under ed-price and to ensure task order (N00019-09-C contract a previou ibility of the compat-0024) to weapon with award design HEA sly awarded multipl exercise an for organiz the F-35.

DqUAR will be perform -build constr e option ational, selecte Work uction (N40083-14-D ed in Fort TERS contra d intermediate and limited Worth, Texas ct (50 percen -2722) for depot-level t) and kongs renovations Building 2034 maintenance aircraft operat berg, Norwa to percent), and Buildin for ed by Advers y (50 and is expect g 2035 at Naval Suppo Work will ary Squad the ed to be compl rt Activity in March be perform rons. , Crane. The 2018. Interna eted to be perform ed at the 201 Station work tional partne 5 Naval Air in the amoun ed (NAS) provid key r funds es for all West, Fla., t of $10,00 equipment, labor, NAS Fallon, (40 percen 0,000 are tools, supplie obligated Nev., (30 t), being on this award, s, transportatio supervision, percent) and Marine Corps none of which quality expire at n, the control, profes Air Station the end of will design service , Yuma, Ariz., the curren percent), sional Rear The Naval s and manag and is expect t fiscal year.

(30 Adm Air System ement necesed to be complJay . CJsary to perform in June 2015. s Command, Prograeted ent River, nes asbestos Fiscal 2015 PatuxMd., is the abatement, operations m Executi gutting the existin and mainte contracting Glenn Officer nance (Navy ve activity.

Perbuildin Deputy g tion rymangs, constr Reserve) of interior in the amoun ucfunds Prons, partitio Executi H & H builde t of $11,58 gra installa fire-rated ve Offi m 2,807 are rs inc., (small tion of Cm obligated ceiling, fire ness) Tooele being cer at time of busidr. suppre , Utah, is award, all electrical ssion system Sch Laura expire at being awarde and mecha of which maximum low-p the end of will Chief, uessler nical upgrad da amounrofile Cargo handl the curren addressing t $30,00 of Sta es, The Naval t fiscal year. seismiCompiled 0,000 firmThe Boeing ing System fixed-price, NAVAI ff Air System c issues

by KMI Company Media Group indefin , ity R access s compl Comm staff ite-delivery/in SUPPO ent River, ibiliance, installa and, under quantityCountry of origin: uSA PatuxMd., is the water definiteRT of interior job order tion Vehicl finishe contracting language e Simula contract for s, installa : english U.S. Navyactivity tion mechanical, tion of anti-te electrical, . paintin Aircraft protec rrorism force have Country of g, engine tion compl differentering/d Raytheon origin: uSA paving (aspha spaces and iant window cargo areas Missile System esign, areas. Some for carrying language installation ltic and s and the of of origin: english areas may s, Tucson of an exterio Cargo areas Ariz., isthe or on the lower concrecargo. (tile work/c being te), be flooring awarde , may deck r Daily arpeting), be on the main insulation system. Work of the aircraft. d a $9,603 global ocean forecasts modific roofing the cargo area finish ,500 repair, fencing ation to deck includes but , structuralwhile an aircraft that include may be unloaded is on the ground, previously(latitude, longitude, depth to design a four-dime is not , heating systems nsional (4-D) awarde limited contract (N0002 and time) estimation used in aircraft , ventilation and loaded. Existing , general be generated air condit d cargo constr may .

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Naval engineering the cargo ent. and and technic ageuse upper the vector sum (USbL), terrain-ba ThisThe andbaseline Commandwill contact, may extend men ed in contract surface is expect of Ste west areathe cargo floor. Since service of the throughalthe sed, t s. vehicle ve Nic South2’”‘ to 3”‘‘will the cargo velocityed to be compl provide for water) byforecast with the above (heading area may haveand of of JulyCon therespon kle sibility cargo to 2016. engine and eted technic a fixed be loaded for the Diego, Calif., Validation current. tracFiscal ering height, althe maySan 2015 Navy speed service of this approach ts be restricted volume heights in suppo metrop capital of working canfunds and was received and cargo compartm be accomplis theSM-6 overallto rt of SM-2 area. Noent may orders are Currentthe olitan contract from underwat useable hedfunds ensure continu using logSha wn Slad task be reduced. being issued er gliders which data of $6,699 cargo conveyan each dive and in the that tion, design Scieamoun ityIST LOG ,538 provides surfacing point. in produc ce systems will be perform trays in a cargo at this time. nce & et positions integrity and a buoyancy An underwatare being GpS ICSengineTec obligat compartment. Work may incorporate several at award ed at Faciliti er glider propels ed hno total system integra and will not The on this and wings longitudin ing and Acquis al axis of thees engine roller trays may be tion of theroller that create tion. From s expire at itself usinglogy lift to produce oriented along aircraft. Inera vehicle missile round curren the may beition motion addition, end Divisio horizontal t the compo present in a n (FeAD modeling of the transverse nents. and its must have Base Point moRDfiscal year. ve, perspecti cargo doorway trays with Four T&E This ) Naval an propos freely Loma, balls contracterscombi vertical motionreceive underwatals area. Thepurcha rotating. Freely to move er glider d horizontal balls may were do notnes for this task Naval JAnuARy rotating Diego andand aroundFeAD use engines ses befor ly. Since 2014 metal iMPlEMEntAtion Base may TESerT underwat theand be defined order. for San propulsion, FeAD Naval PlAn FoR nAtionAl U.S. Faciliti any axis.

The endurance as rotating glid& they generally EVA StRAtEGy es engine and Existing commerc suitable for in any direction Navy (23 percen FoRthe govern ARCtiC (excludingthe loading of Base REGion LUTNaval Corona ering have substantia ocean sampling, t) ments sustained surveillan do ial cargo handling standard or Naval Auxilia l Atlanti underwat Command, ATI ON non-standard percent), systems allowof Japan (50.2 Midcargo or special ce. however,c, Public Workser plume tracking ry Landin San Cleme cargo Taiwan (14.8 horizontal speeds On May g these vessels 2013, the Obama containers, Department and nte Island) equipmen palletized t. 10,Field Crane, Adare slow, percent), typically with sustained . Theministration Crane, below is released a document erlands (4.3 the lenging, 0.5the contra contract is Some applicatio term m/s, titled ns, as Nethofas and navigating percent), such ocean currents cting activity the “National notbetoloaded may fuselage-m Strategy korea (4.2 for the Arctic ounted them.is chalcan exceed exceed Region.”

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60 On January Naval Coastal an expectmounted ny (2.9fuel month 30, 2014, the Obama during t), tanks, percen s maintenanAdminOcean Model ed compl auxiliary t) andate ce. These fuselageistration released with daily global Correc(NCOM) fuel etion date percen Spain tanks mayan implementation was developed tion: Contra ary 2020. be carried but (0.6 ocean forecasts plan t) under increase for thisof Februto generstrategy. the Bru Fiscal 2015 are limited amount of ct award Of the 36 or the ce n currents.

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plus: • WhO’S WhO AT PeO(A) • NAVY SBIR INNOVATIONS

PuBlicATioN

First iness Warfighter, Mate and Personal Read rial Readiness

Thomas S. Vice Admiral Rowden commander Forces/ Naval Surface t Pacific Flee

Combat Readiness

The Navy’s Proposed et FY2016 Budg

d its of the Navy release The Department for fiscal year billion budget proposed $161.0 ry 2.

2016 on Februa billion part of the $534.3 This budget is Obama President Barack defense budget the same day.

Congress on submitted to r, deputy t the William Lesche l condition to suppor Rear Admiral for budget, in the best materia ry of the Navy e “warfighting first.” assistant secreta ment of Defens CNO’s tenet of at the Depart briefed media Navy and six nce about the about confere nd in comma budget press budget. your Q: You’ve been portion of the established as you Corps es have Marine months. What submission balanc metrics goals and what “Our PB16 budget s fiscal nation’ our most important with ss ss? measure progre warfighting readine “Our force employ will you use to said Lescher. challenges,” lity, capacity hting aligns capabi ant thing is “warfig ment approach demands, the A: The most import to regional mission primary tenet and y and readiness and technologicall first.” It’s the CNO’s commost modern charge as the type ensuring our their comone I take as my guides my are located where NaIt at forces force. ed zation ce surface advanc your organi as delivering presen mander for the Q: Tell me about what needed most, force. It is as simple bat power is headquarters and .” vision for the surface ant com, when it matters val Surface Forces like. Do you where it matters “Providing combat footprint looks crucial: sion was guided is ed and it submis ined deploy in your same ready, well-tra This year’s budget chart to look the ons’ tenets of manders with lethal, to assure, expect your org naval operati ted surface forces by the chief of and be ready. s? logistically suppor prioritizing operate forward 12 to 18 month You get there by warfighting first, people, ships deter and win.” : to investments in command,” only one real priority It makes critical ment of the known as a “type goals, and I have us better A: We’re what’s so that the Depart outfitting ing we do makes and innovation responsible for strategy. ensure that everyth e the defense which means we’re we have execut sure can ted making Navy ants, warfighters. of the Navy reques the surface combat ations meeting three The Department d on prothe right qualific goal is built on with This focuse sailors ting the right procurement, ining these which enable warfigh t and $44.4 billion for properly mainta ilding accoun ss and enduring pillars shipbu readine l the nders and that we are in y 44 comma ss, materia | ships viding stabilit ready when fleet questo reach 304 first: combat readine ships so they’re Navy on track provides answers a basic the staff g Each my ss. keepin end, that buy nine new personal readine training the Navy will require them. To supss asks, “Are we ers,

by FY20. In FY16 g and combat systems Burke destroy tion. Combat readine al readilogistical, trainin ng two Arleigh ions to stay and win?” Materi ships, includi material inspect our sailors to fight rines, three littoral s ready subma port, as well as warship ng -class n we providi two Virginia ges. ness asks, “Are first next-generatio ahead of challen l readiness asks, we handle t ships and the persona how in And ). comba s ?” the T-AO(X for combat We’ve seen progres ” of the resupply ship, ing our sailors? logistics fleet g and equipping s fully “Are we develop tie into budget include the manning, trainin laid of these pillars Additionally, this carrier few years, and we’ve You’ll notice all warfare g for the aircraft force over the past next. Our ss. Every surface funding the refuelin for what’s coming the procurement one word: readine importance the foundation Washington and evolved, understands the USS George has grown and that Congress officer (SWO) ship (LPD 28) I have the organizational chart Surface . of a dock landing ss. As “SWO Boss,” bring the Naval FY15 budget we readine the as it’s of in and larly for ss, funds particu ibility for readine provided partial request pment Center online. primary respons s a $50.4 billion nd everything Warfighting Develo first include the ting—a in budget The reflecting e to see growth paramount to warfigh We will continu and maintenance, DDG 1000 to do. for operations ship squadron, else we are called

littoral combat on 7 as Destroyer Squadr squadron, as well move in of these events in Singapore. All fleet e of keeping our sync with the purpos

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FeBRUARY 10,

2015

Defense inn ovations

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gation hazard can ests in the polar regions cargo conveyan ly, which poses and subjects and facilitate research ce systems. a potential the vehicle that advances the fundamental understanding surface. navito the faster Inertial [i.e., Icebreakers of the Arctic. systems Polar Star currents near next Steps: The and can Polar Sea] and research be federal government Velocity ineffective the accommodations facilities and Logs (DVL) equivalent to Healy. requires the ability without operations in ice-impacted to conduct This cost includes the use of Doppler and government whose ranges can waters in the Arctic. all shipyard As maritime activity eration unless the project costs. Total time be too limited in the Arctic region to procure increases, expanded vehicle is very er a new icebreakfor deep ocean mission analysis, access will be required. mounted[including Next steps include: near studies, opthe seafloor. design, transpond contract award construction] and Surfaceer systems is eight to 10 years.can 24 Chuck or bottomthe geograph be expensive ic area that Cob to deploy and • The lead and the vehicle supporting departments The Coast Guard restrict Logistic augh with a USbL and agencies operate in. a document that lists system further stated that thiscan will develop notional new ship A ship designed for a 30-yearcan be used s the capabilities needed would be equipped service life. to track an to operate in ice- can be an expensive impacted waters Jim McL Study underwater to support federal The high-Latitude option activities in the polar vehicle, which for long provided and emergent sovereign to Congress regions A complicat deployme aug that in July the above figure responsibilities over 2011 states nts. ion hlin $800 the next 10 to 20 RDTinof million to $925 million years by the end open ocean is thatin 2008 dollars of 2014. equates to $900 million problema &Ethe tic while submerge to $1,041 million position estimation • Develop long-term in 2012 dollars. provides the following plans to sustain federal The study by the is capability to depthJim vehicle using estimates,d.inGlider physically access canacquisition be directly Sch of the for new the Arctic with sufficient a pressure 2012 dollars, Tes capacity to support from depthpolar icebreakers: sensor. Vertical t & Eva midcosts U.S. interests by t measured the end of 2017. versus time, velocity luat can be derived and horizontal estimated • $856given speed through ion million for one ship; vertical velocity, Measuring progress: the water can Sustaining federal • $1,663 million ized vehicle capability for be hydrodyn two ships—an average pitch angle strated through the will be demonamic model Federal Government’s of about $832 million andeach; • $2,439 million a paramete for the vehicle. ability to conduct for three ships—an in the Arctic to support roperations position average of Conseque informatio statutory missions $813 million each; • $3,207 million for n, four ntly, the only and sovereign responsibilities, for purpose and to advance interests ships—an average time),• the certain of simulation of about $802 million in the region. progress $3,961 timemillion , is depth each; for dive of the five ships—an average in implementing this objective will be measured and the starting of about $792 million (as a function by completion of and of the capabilities document,In the present and ending each; and long-term sustainment embodiment, surface positions.

• $4,704 million plan. the motion assumptio for six ships—an Lead Agency: Department average ofmodel can ns, including of homeland Security use initial simplifyin each. zero hydrodyn $784 million Supporting Agencies: ocean current amic slip between g Department of Commerce The study and refers a symmetric to the above estimates and Atmospheric (National Oceanic the vehicle Administration), Department as “rough order-of-magniV-shaped lations tude and costs” that “were conducte flight trajectory. of Defense, Department developed as part State, Department d, of of Transportation, of Coast Guard’s indepenFor the simudent polar platformthe maximum National Science dive depththe can of Foundation[.]22 be used to business Case Analysis.”

25 the dive and the time CoSt EStiMAtES compute an FoR CERtAin ModERnizAtion beyond of the 25-yEAR estimate of SERViCE liFE ExtEnSionS this model, www.NpEO-kMI.C a single vertical oPtionS sources of velocity.

OMnEW REPlACEMEnt error in position The Coast Guard stated prediction SHiPS in February 2008 that performing the can include sive maintenance, extenrepair and modernization The Coast Guard work needed to extend estimated in February service lives of the the 2008 that new replacement two ships by 25 years ships for the Polar might cost roughly Star and Polar Sea per ship. This figure, $400 might million cost the between Coast Guard said, and $925 million per $800 million FEbRUAR is based ship in 2008 dollars made by independent on assessments y 3, 2015 to procure.23 The contractors for the said that this estimate Coast Guard | 33 Coast Guard in 2004. service life extension The work, the Coast Guard said, would improve icebreakers’ installed the two systems in certain is based on a ship areas. Although the be intended to permit with integrated electric work would the ships to operate drive, three propellers and a combined for another 25 years, diesel and gas (electric) not return the cutters it would to new condition.26 propulsion plant. icebreaking capability The would be equivalent An August 30, 2010, to the pOLAR Class press report stated that the commandant the Coast Guard of at the time, Admiral Robert papp, estimated 14 | FEbRUARy the cost 3, 2015

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GIF 13.2/3 | 27

INDUSTRY INTERVIEW

Geospatial Intelligence Forum

Ron Cole Senior Technical Adviser Chair, ISR Center of Excellence Riverside Research Q: What unique benefits does Riverside Research provide to its customers compared to other companies in your areas of expertise?

Q: To help our readers better understand the role Riverside Research plays in supporting the intelligence community, share with us your “elevator speech” as it relates to intelligence-focused remote sensing.

A: First and foremost, Riverside Research is a not-for-profit organization with a 48-year history of advancing scientific research in the public interest and in support of the U.S. government. We have about 600 employees supporting customers from 26 locations around the nation and a couple folks overseas. With regard to intelligence-focused remote sensing, Riverside Research offers extensive capabilities and competencies in measurement and signature intelligence and GEOINT systems, infrastructures and domains with community-unique expertise in overhead persistent infrared and airborne reconnaissance. In addition, we have led in the development and operations of the most advanced radar systems deployed for intelligence collection and are developing capabilities in big-data exploitation. Our subject-matter experts stand ready to support new ISR programs that provide persistent, integrated, multisource wide-area tactical battlefield surveillance in response to the growing demand for high-resolution and timely intelligence.

Q: How would you specifically characterize Riverside Research’s support to the GEOINT community?

A: The most visible area would be our support to persistent geospatial intelligence collection and processing as well as the development of unique reporting formats to meet the specific requirements of GEOINT users. We are very much aware of the direction Director Cardillo wants to take NGA— to enable mission consequence for those that NGA serves—and we believe our established subject-matter expertise can aid in reaching that goal.

Q: What are some examples of these capabilities?

28 | GIF 13.2/3

A: Operationalizing intelligence for global missions requires a novel approach to current ISR challenges. Riverside Research provides comprehensive systems engineering support to the Multi-Agency Persistence Integrated Program Office, making critical persistence-derived GEOINT information available to the military services and national agencies involved in our nation’s defense. In 2012, we partnered with IBM and Exelis VIS to leverage commercial big-data solutions and cloud-based PED systems for efficient, cost-effective ISR applications. Finally, on behalf of the Air Force, Riverside Research is leading comprehensive technical and operational support in the development, testing, and employment of the Airborne Cueing and Exploitation System Hyperspectral, the Air Force’s premier tactical hyperspectral imaging program.

Q: How does Riverside Research support GEOINT users at various levels?

A: Riverside Research has a technical talent pool that is brought to bear when new sensor capabilities need to be exploited in support of tactical users in a timely fashion. From our labs that develop the algorithms, to the verification and testing before operations, to the exploitation and reporting of data, our subject-matter experts are embedded with key government customers to meet these requirements. Our core capabilities in modeling and simulation, research and development, systems engineering and integration, program management, rapid system acquisition, independent verification and validation, collection management, analysis, and report production can be applied to programs at the national and tactical levels of operations.

A: Two key points: First, our not-for-profit charter, culture and commitment to the customer’s mission allow us to provide truly objective and unbiased advisory and assistance services (A&AS). As a not-for-profit, we do not answer to shareholders; therefore, we adopt the customer’s mission as our own and reinvest our profits in things that benefit the United States. This brings me to the second unique benefit Riverside Research provides—our integrated research laboratories. Our biomedical engineering lab, cyber research lab, electromagnetics lab, modeling and application development lab, and radar assessment and development lab work independently and collectively to support customers, conduct independent research and development, and provide technical reachback support to our A&AS programs. In fact, we just broke ground on a 28,000 sq. ft. building expansion to our Dayton Research Center, which will include a plasma lab and GEOINT lab to support nearby customers at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. Our slogan, “Moving Science from the Lab to the Field,” is not just a marketing pitch; it’s our mission statement and operating model.

Q: Your title includes chair of the Riverside Research ISR Center of Excellence (COE). Tell us more about this Center of Excellence in Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance.

A: The ISR COE is one of four centers of excellence established across Riverside Research to enhance customer support and effectively communicate our technology focus areas. Other COEs include biomedical engineering, cyber and electromagnetic sciences. As a not-for-profit company, we are privileged to support education, research and workforce development efforts in all areas of science, technology, engineering and math. O www.GIF-kmi.com

NEXTISSUE

May/June 2015 Vol. 13, Issue 4

The Magazine of the National Intelligence Community

Cover and In-Depth Interview with

James R. Clapper Jr. Director of National Intelligence (invited)

Special Section: Intelligence Community Poster

Features Video Big Data

Mini-SARs and More

With video representing the biggest of big-data sources, analysts at NGA and elsewhere are looking for entirely new methods of interacting with video and video-derived information.

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) technology is developing into a host of new capabilities for formats, such as a miniaturized SAR system developed by the Sandia lab to detect IEDs.

Advanced Image Exploitation

Visualization and Situational Awareness

Software systems can increase the intelligence value of imagery by stabilizing, focusing and tracking movements in raw video data.

Data visualization is a key tool for achieving military and intelligence situational awareness.

Insertion Order Deadline: May 29, 2015

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Ad Material Deadline: June 5, 2015

To Advertise, Contact: Scott P. Parker, Associate Publisher Phone: 301.670.5700 x 135 Email: scottp@kmimediagroup.com

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Airbus Defence and Space has a constellation of optical and radar satellites that can cover any point on Earth at least twice a day. Whether it’s detecting suspicious ships under heavy cloud cover or tracking their trajectory in near-real-time, it is vital to have the most relevant and current information at hand. Having timely satellite imagery and geo-intelligence will bring fresh intel to your plan when it matters most.

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PIONEERING THE FUTURE TOGETHER