“The strength of what we have been able to accomplish with our QRCs is that while they met an immediate need for aerial ISR in Afghanistan and Iraq they also allowed us to learn some very valuable lessons, which will inform our permanent solution with the Enhanced Medium Altitude Reconnaissance Surveillance System (EMARSS) POR,” said Wittstruck. “EMARSS will offer a mulit-int sensor suite including DCGS-A enabled FMV and COMINT. Having DCGS on board will truly bring this capability to the next level as it allows collected information to be quickly processed, exploited and disseminated to users via the DCGS enterprise.” The increase in demand for full motion video has led companies to adapt technologies toward the development of different FMV applications. Rafael, an Israeli company, combines sensors, processing power and networking to tailor solutions to customer requirements. “We have been in contact with U.S. and other forces in Afghanistan about tailoring these types of solutions for camp protection,” said Haim Jacobovitz, the company’s vice president and general manager of the NCW. “They have been applied to force protection as well as border protection in Israel.” The building blocks of this type of system include a network of sensors and image processing power that allows commanders to make decisions about camp security in real time. “What we do is provide commanders with relevant information so they can make relevant decisions,” said Jacobovitz. “If you have a series of cameras surrounding a camp or infrastructure, human beings can’t process all of the necessary information in real time. Our system automatically prioritizes the images to help commanders make decisions about protecting their people and assets.” Rafael’s processing of video imagery has traditionally been done centrally, but of late the company has been pushing more processing power to the sensors themselves, especially, said Jacobovitz, in the case of aerial sensors. IDirect Government Technologies (iGT), a provider of satellite communications to the U.S. military and government, applies its expertise to provide FMV capabilities to operations in geographical areas without line of sight access to direct UAV feeds. Most of today’s FMV is broadcast directly to the ground over the L-band frequency from manned and unmanned airborne assets, noted Karl Fuchs, the company’s vice president of technology. “The biggest advantage to satellite communications is ubiquitous coverage,” he said. “L-band communications direct to the ground implies some existing infrastructure to leverage. In some areas, such as in the Horn of Africa, that is not the case.” IGT has worked to integrate their satellite communications technology on the aircraft providing the FMV. This has included working on antennas, modems and routers. “This work has resulted in increases in output from 512 kilobits per second at first to two megabits per second, and in the latest runs up to 2 to 14 megabits per second off a 60-centimeter aperture antenna,” said Fuchs. “Once you get over 12 megabits you can accommodate high-definition full motion video.” IGT’s technology was used by the U.S. Coast Guard during last year’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill to locate oil in the Gulf of Mexico. The technology was also integrated by Sierra Nevada Corporation on a Beechcraft King Air aircraft equipped with infrared sensors. Related to capabilities provided by full motion video is wide area motion imagery, essentially a low-rate video with image formats measured in tens or hundreds of millions of pixels. “These large formats make possible systems that don’t need to be tasked to specific targets,” said Fields. “With these sensors, multiple users can find different 6 | TISR 1.5
targets in the field of view of the sensor. With efficient storage, it is possible to find things that were not originally expected.” “Wide area capabilities allow us to look at a much broader expanse of real estate,” said Wittstruck. “A platform may be flying over an area for eight hours. Analysts can use that data to determine what has changed in areas of interest. Have traffic flows changed? Are there changes in patterns in behavior? Wide-area surveillance provides a capability to trace the history of events across a greater area than that provided by imagery with a more narrow field of view.” The Constant Hawk is an Army QRC that delivers persistent wide-area surveillance high-resolution day and night imagery. “It also provides the ground commander with the ability for forensic back-tracking of areas of interest,” said Wittstruck. “This allows the ground commander to use fewer assets to cover more ground as well as a forensic tool to back track the origin of a threat to its source.” Logos provides systems and services for wide area motion imagery and has supported the development of multiple systems, including Constant Hawk. “We expect this technology to be as ubiquitous as conventional FMV,” said Fields. “This technology is dependent on and driven by advances in processing technology.” Fields also expects that there will continue to be an expansion in the availability of FMV, fed by its presence on air, ground and sea platforms. “I particularly expect to see a continued expansion of autonomous airborne platforms,” he added. “Improved quality in imaging systems and the standardization around digital transmission will increase the power of traditional FMV.” For Jacobovitz, FMV will provide added value in the future by having its data being fused with data from other sensors. Wittstruck agreed, saying that the combination of video imagery with data from communications, humans and other sources of intelligence will provide context to users and analysts of FMV. “We still need other forms of intelligence to set the conditions for the video imagery,” he said. “We may know that high Karl Fuchs value individuals are in a general area. kfuchs@idirectgt.com We need to be able to look in the right haystack. We could use ways to bring infrared imagery and hyperspectral data into the video.” This fusion of data to provide context to video comes in the form of Ageon ISR, a solution from Bostonbased DRG. Deployed as a compact appliance or software package, Ageon ISR supports plug-and-play compatibility with most ISR sensors and sysStephen St. Mary tems. “Video and data from airborne sstmary@digitalresultsgroup.com platforms, aerostats, towers, mobile and ground sensors can be displayed within context of real-time and historic operations and intelligence activity,” explained Stephen St. Mary, co-founder of DRG. “Ageon ISR’s ability to process this data locally or across a distributed, cloud-like architecture enhances the warfighters’ ability to plan, protect and respond.” www.TISR-kmi.com