Data Analytics
Written by Jeff Goldman
SOTECH 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 1 (February)
As the amount of data available to warfighters in the field continues to grow, the ability to manage and make use of that data as efficiently as possible becomes increasingly crucial.
Several companies now offer a variety of ways to improve battlefield awareness through leading edge technologies and data analytics capabilities that provide soldiers with a better understanding of the situation around them than they’ve ever had before.
Still, SOCOM spokesman Kenneth McGraw said there is some key functionality SOCOM continues to seek from industry today. “Within the battlespace-awareness functional area, SOCOM is interested in technologies that will enable cross cueing of SOF organic, DoD and coalition partnered intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) collection assets and technologies that improve precise target location, identification accuracy, and analytic confidence and speed,” he said.
And in meeting SOF needs in particular, McGraw said, it’s all about flexibility. “In tactical deployments, SOF typically operate in smaller elements as compared to conventional forces, as well as within multiple theaters concurrently,” he said. “The technologies that support SOF in these broad roles need to be as scalable, agile and flexible as our deployed forces.”
Mission Planning
Meeting those needs starts with training and mission planning. David Irwin, director of ground forces training at Boeing, said the company’s 55-inch touch-screen Virtual Mission Board, which provides a three-dimensional view of terrain, can be key for planning (the same technology is also available on a Panasonic ToughBook for greater portability). “When you do, say, a night insertion and have to move over land 10 miles, in the dark … having a three-dimensional view of the area in front of you really helps you get oriented on the ground—as opposed to looking at a two-dimensional map and trying to figure out where you are,” he said.
And it’s not just for visualization. “The Virtual Mission Board gives the military personnel access to a training area or a real mission area in 3-D,” Irwin said. “We allow them to plan on it, so they can put military graphics on it, they can draw on it, they can zoom into the terrain, they can do a simulated flyover or walkthrough of the terrain—they can do a lot of virtual rehearsals in that terrain.”
The same is true for planning UAV deployments. “We allow them to fly virtual routes of different types of UAVs—whatever type they specify—over the area, so they get used to what kind of data they’re going to get from that unmanned aerial system, and how they’re going to share that with the people on the team,” Irwin said.
Using Boeing’s Virtual Battlespace 2 training tool, Irwin said, the company worked with some students at Iowa State University on model development, then did a demonstration at Fort Leonard Wood. “The Iowa State students who had helped us came to the demonstration—they had never been to the training area that we were in, but they had been in that area in Virtual Battlespace 2 for weeks,” he said. “And when they walked into the training area, they knew where everything was—they knew the insides of buildings, they knew where the windows were, the stairwells, they knew it all.”
Real Time Data Analysis
In an actual mission environment, Barbara Flanagan, CEO of Boeing Kestrel, said the company’s TAC solution can make an enormous difference in monitoring and managing data. “Leveraging the inherent data processing and visualization capabilities of TAC, Boeing Kestrel supports elements of the special operations community by providing a real-time and holistic common operations and intelligence picture,” she said. “Boeing is placing special emphasis on supporting global synchronization of SOF missions by marshaling vast quantities of all source data and persistently searching and monitoring all of that data via TAC for SOF’s essential elements of information.”
The results of that process, Flanagan said, are then presented to planners in a common user interface that incorporates both geospatial and nodal analysis tools. “This advanced analytic capability allows planners, analysts and decision-makers to share data, questions, methodology and findings in real time, and plug any new data source into the picture as the operational situation dictates,” she said.
Flanagan said the company’s products enable analysis of a wide variety of data types, both by analysts at various headquarters and by warfighters in the field. “These data sources include unstructured text, whether open source or record message traffic, complete with attachments, and multimedia files, including larger documents and sound files, sketches, images, diagrams and videos,” she said. “These sources of information, from any language, are added to sources of data extracted from databases—structured data— so that the combination of these unstructured and structured data sources provide all-source insight to the analyst and decision-maker.”
John Purvis, president and CEO of AME Unmanned Air Systems, said the biggest challenge his company currently faces in meeting SOCOM forces’ needs lies in providing a persistent ISR capability in non-permissive environments. “We’re developing and delivering a runway-independent system that has long endurance, but also can be based off-field in pretty rugged, austere environments—but then also has low signatures, low acoustic IR and even radar signatures so that it can operate in places where the current systems might not be able to operate,” he said.
The first fielding of that system, Purvis said, is slated to be in AFRICOM in June 2012. “What we’re focused on is making sure that we have comparable payload capabilities to some systems that are much larger than we are, but at a much lower cost and in a much smaller package,” he said. “Because we’re focused on keeping our signature low … we can use smaller sensors but get the same fidelity of imagery off of the platform by flying much closer to the targets.”
The company’s SharkFin mission management solution combines planning and mission execution in a single software package. “It allows us to do very quick, dynamic re-tasking in the system,” Purvis said. “We can do route planning in a predictive manner to make sure that we can service the targets in the manner which we’re required to, while also making sure that our signature that could be detected is very, very low.”
The SharkFin solution, Purvis said, is also designed specifically to control multiple UAVs. “Our ground team, because of where we operate and our mobility requirements, has to be much smaller than comparable systems,” he said. “So for instance, our system might operate with about a third of the amount of people on the ground as some of the current systems out there right now … and in order to have that be possible, we’re relying on a lot of software tools to allow our limited amount of crew to do a lot more than they would normally be able to do.”
In general, Purvis said, the system is very focused on delivering data directly to the people on the ground. “For SOCOM, our whole intention is for us to be able to use our aircraft to transmit as much information and intelligence to the ground forces as possible … so we try to do whatever basic exploitation we can, and then pass it off immediately to the SOF team in the field,” he said. “We’re trying to be as real-time as possible … to greatly reduce the amount of time it takes to get some of this intel and this information from our platform directly to the guys in the field.”
Drew Fisher, GXP director of sales, Americas at BAE Systems, said SOCOM leverages the company’s SOCET GXP (geospatial exploitation product) solution for access to a wide range of key image processing and intel product generation functionality. “The analysts that are assigned in the [SOCOM component commands] are building map and imagery products to help with identifying areas to land helicopters, doing route reconnaissance and surveillance to look at potential hazards from when a group is moving from Point A to Point B along a route, or to identify alternative routes … any of the intel overlays that are needed to successfully and safely move people from one location to another, all those tools are available in SOCET GXP,” he said.
One example, Fisher said, is the Grid Reference Graphic tool. “It puts a grid down on top of an image that provides a quick reference so that everyone is operating off the same sheet of music when they’re conducting their missions,” he said.
And in making optimal use of imagery, Fisher said, it’s key to be able to consolidate a wide range of distinct data sources into a single view. “It can be satellite imagery, either classified or commercial, it could be an airborne source … and these analysts can pile all that data into SOCET GXP, sift through it, organize it, and get an understanding of the area that they’re going to be operating in,” he said. “We have a very significant terrain generation and analysis capability as well—it is one thing to look at an image and say, ‘Yeah, I can move from Point A to Point B, but there could be some very significant terrain challenges in moving from 2,000 feet to 12,000 feet in elevation, which can cause a lot of issues operationally.”
What’s more, Fisher said, SOCET GXP is designed to allow analysts to handle a wide range of tasks that would previously have required several different pieces of software. “They might have used one piece of software to create these terrain products, another one to do some of the image analysis, another one to do an overlay or create a hard copy product … but with our software, what we’ve been able to do is consolidate that whole operation into one package,” he said. “It reduces the training time, it reduces the amount of software maintenance that the organizations have to pay, and it increases the effectiveness of the analyst … these analysts don’t have a lot of time to be jumping around from one software to the other to pull an intel package together—so what they’ve found with our application is it’s very, very efficient.”
Data Management and Predictive Analytics
Rebecca Garcia, director at SAS Federal, said functionality like social media analytics can also help provide crucial information in the field. “Special operations has a difficult mission—not only is time a critical factor, complete understanding of the enemy is necessary,” she said. “SAS provides several analytic capabilities that could be used to provide greater awareness of the battlefield or threat. Social media analytics provides understanding of tweets, blogs, Facebook postings and other social media outlets … the combination of social media analytics and geospatial coordinates can show how the sentiment of a region has changed over time. This can give better understanding to how humanitarian or other efforts have had a positive or negative effect on the sentiment of individuals or groups in a specific geographic area.”
Regardless of the data source, Garcia said, SAS can also offer a significant benefit in enabling information sharing across a wide variety of data formats. “One key advantage that SAS provides is our ability to connect disparate data sources, bring them together into a single dashboard and even provide alerts associated with time-critical changes,” she said. “SAS’ Enterprise Data Integration allows us to connect varied data types and formats into a single view so that they can be correlated and make sense of data that may not have been correlated previously. When this is combined with our Data Quality tools, tools that can manage massive amounts of data, missing data fields, mistyped information, incorrect data, there can be a huge increase in understanding that results.”
And coupling data management with predictive analytics, Garcia said, can ensure that users are as fully informed as possible in planning their next steps. “In some cases, data may uncover a known pattern of behavior, or identify patterns that resulted in a specific outcome—so SOF will be able to recognize these patterns early in the process next time, and be able to proactively address instead of reacting after the fact,” she said. “This is especially helpful when dealing with large volumes of continuous data, where it is too difficult to determine patterns due to the amount of data available and the velocity in which it is received or ingested. Predictive analytics will also help provide a degree of certainty with each possible outcome, based on the type and amount of data available and models that have been built for the purpose.”
Portable Satellite Antenna
Still, no data is useful if you can’t get it to the people who need it in the field. One of the many options for ensuring ongoing connectivity no matter the location is Gatr Technologies’ unique inflatable satellite communications system. “The key benefits of the Gatr are the packaging form factor and weight, due to the ability to pack a large aperture (2.4-meter) antenna in a compression bag weighing only 22 pounds (dish and radome),” said Cyrus Wilson, Gatr’s SOCOM program manager. “The whole system can pack in as few as two cases under 100 pounds each (vs. 1,000-plus pounds and six to 10 large cases for conventional rigid 2.4-meter portable systems), is easy to set up, and enables high-bandwidth communications in areas where other systems are not feasible.”
Crucially, Wilson said, Gatr’s reduced space requirements during transport can allow for other critical gear or personnel to be added, while its reduced weight makes it cheaper to transport or ship. “At the same time, Gatr preserves the advantage of larger dishes, such as higher bandwidth, C-band capability and lower satellite power/cost required to establish a link,” he said. “Also, the radome shape [round] makes it more aerodynamic and therefore significantly more stable in high winds.”
Thanks to their portability, Wilson said, Gatr antennas are a perfect solution for enabling high-bandwidth satellite communications in remote areas. “This makes them ideal for all types of data transmission, voice communication, video relay and other IPenabled activities—the system has been used all over the globe by a diverse range of U.S. military, NGO and private sector operators,” he said.
Several different versions of the solution are available. “Gatr’s flagship product is the 2.4-meter communications terminal—however, we also have a 1.8-meter solution in production that is popular within the U.S., and we will be announcing a new 1.2-meter backpack solution in March,” Wilson said. “We even have a 4.6-meter inflatable antenna in development for quick deploy/set-up of hub solutions until permanent units can be installed.”
Leveraging Smart Sensors
From an ISR perspective, Neil K. Peterson, director of strategy and business development for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems (ISRS) at Raytheon, said his company’s emphasis for the U.S. military is on smart sensors—leveraging technology innovation to provide increasingly capable systems that are more effective, more affordable and require less manpower to support. “This in turn enhances realtime decision-making, minimizes the data pushed through constrained data-link pipes and reduces operator workload,” he said.
Raytheon, Peterson said, is enabling distributed, netted operation by enhancing the architecture, interfaces, processing and capabilities of its sensors. “With these enhancements, the military will better address threats in the future battlespace,” he said. “Operating in contested or denied air space, for example, will require gathering information from far away and processing through it more quickly in order to take action.”
One example of smart sensors at Raytheon, Peterson said, is the company’s hyperspectral sensing capability, which can provide expanded spectrum coverage for emerging missions. “Missile defense and wide area surveillance are also among the capabilities Raytheon is looking to add to its sensors. … The marketplace and threat drivers for our future technologies are greater affordability for our customer, rapid fielding of enhanced capabilities, need to reduce data overload, and a requirement for persistent surveillance in areas of concern,” he said.
Jon Percy, vice president of business development and strategy at Overwatch Systems, said the key challenge in meeting special forces’ needs comes down to the fact that they can’t be tied down to a single network. “They are generally very light on available bandwidth, and they don’t have a lot of heavyduty computing capability,” he said. “They do periodically tie back to a FOB, or maybe even via satellite they’ll go back to national assets—but as a rule these guys execute pretty independently.”
As a result, Percy said, efficiency and ease of use are key. “They require analytic capability that doesn’t count on heavy-duty processing and significant access to large databases,” he said. “So Overwatch has really architected its systems from the bottom up. … As we’ve architected our systems to work at that most fundamental level, we’ve developed systems that all execute on laptops, on handheld devices—something that’s light that can be easily manipulated by the soldier.”
That means automation is crucial—as opposed to simply flooding the user with data. “We see over and over again that the traditional response when people say, ‘We need more intel,’ is they build more sensors,” Percy said. “And as you have more sensors, what you get is an accumulation of more and more data—but data still requires that analysis to turn it into actionable information. So we’ve developed our systems such that they are focused on reducing the data that’s portrayed to a human being, so that what the human being is being presented with is patterns of behavior—and the operator can then make decisions of what patterns make the most sense in terms of actionable intelligence.”
It’s all about assembling data into the most useful or usable patterns possible, Percy said. “To illustrate that, you can create a social network and portray that in a social network diagram, and it may or may not provide a real instantaneous pattern of behavior,” he said. “But you can throw that same set of data onto a time wheel, do a time wheel analysis on it, and start recognizing, ‘Ah: I’m seeing these same two people meeting at the same place every Thursday at 4:00.’ That’s a pattern that very quickly becomes recognizable, depending on the way that you’ve portrayed that information.”
Overwatch’s InSite system, also called SoldierEyes, is a handheld solution runningsecure Android that provides the user with a wide range of information to maximize situational awareness. As an example, Percy said, at Empire Challenge, an InSite/SoldierEyes unit was sent out with a convoy that faced an ambush. “We actually hooked up to a Canadian UAV which was collecting full motion video, and we were able to analyze that video, recognize the ambush that was being set up, and pass that information via SoldierEyes, or InSite, back to the users in the convoy,” he said. “They recognized then that they were about to fall into that ambush, and they were able to circle around it and capture the bad guys. It’s a very, very powerful tool, and it’s designed from a cloud-based solution at the server, so you can collect the data from a huge variety of data sources—as evidenced by being able to collect from a Canadian UAV that otherwise did not have an interface to U.S. forces.”
Another Overwatch solution, AXIS Pro, is designed for deployment on a laptop. “It’s got a plethora of different analysis tools, again focused on pattern recognition, portraying patterns within the data that lead to intelligence,” Percy said. “And within those tools, [the user] will download the latest database of what’s going on in a given area of interest, they’ll disconnect, they’ll go out, do their op, they analyze data and feed in data as they’re out on the op—and then they’ll come back in, plug it back into the network, and then download that data from the network and get the updates accordingly.”
Looking ahead, Percy said, the need for tools like these will only increase. “As we move forward in the conflicts that we are currently engaged in, and as we throttle back, we’re not going to see any kind of reduction in the activities associated with special forces,” he said. “They’re still going to be out there, they’re still going to have the mission they have now—and it’s going to expand as the regular forces pull out. So the tools that they’re going to demand are going to be even more advanced than what we see right now … and the ability to reduce the [flood of data] down to something that is consumable by humans is going to become more and more critical—because they’re going to be the only ones out there continuing the mission. ♦