An image of destruction

As soon as the P–3K2 returned to Base Auckland from its first of two surveillance flights over Tonga the images taken of the damage were sent to the geospatial and intelligence teams at No. 230 Squadron for analysis.

senior intelligence specialist said they immediately downloaded the high resolution images to begin analysis.

The team trialled a new process, developed last year, where they made fast initial assessments of the images and lined them up with baseline images of areas. Then two senior analysts started working on all the different locations where there was damage.

“When I was flicking through them, I knew the situation over there wasn’t great straight away,” the specialist said.

“We can empathise with the situation, but we can also remove ourselves from the emotional part pretty well. But even for us it was hard to see the destruction – it was different to anything we had seen.”

The team worked solidly, analysing about 900 images that came from two flights, finishing up after working for about 12 hours.

“When we came across some of the worst places we had no reference points because they were all gone. That was a wow moment.” – Intelligence specialist

“It was a massive team effort. I feel that everyone gets up for humanitarian aid and disaster relief missions. We had three qualified analysts and junior analysts, an intelligence officer and senior non-commissioned officers, and others doing the work, putting it all together.”