[iwar] [fc:Officials:.Digital.Defense.Systems.Are.Military's.Future]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-11-06 16:13:57
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From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
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Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2001 16:13:57 -0800 (PST)
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Defense Week
November 5, 2001
Officials: Digital Defense Systems Are Military's Future
By Ann Roosevelt 
The military is heading toward digital operations, aiming at a direct
connection between sensors and shooters. This means pulling together the
high-performance computing and visualization applications that will help
U.S. forces continue to have the dominant edge, defense industry and
military officials say. 
Data must be put into forms where it can be manipulated into the information
and intelligence commanders and shooters need, and in a format they can use
that arrives fast enough to be effective. 
"A seamless flow of information is absolutely critical," said Art Money,
former assistant secretary of defense for command, control, computers and
intelligence and Defense Department chief information officer, at a
Washington, D.C. conference last week. 
"The key to decision superiority is, in fact, the visualization and the high
performance computing," said Money. "This is, to me, the secret and gives us
and the allies the edge that we need," he said. 
"What we need, and are slowly developing, is an infosphere that nets
commanders, sensors and shooters to ensure that timely, relevant and
accurate targeting data is available on demand to platforms and individuals
to perform precision engagement," said Lt. Gen. James King, former director
of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency. 
"For us the issue is reducing the time to insight," SGI CEO Bob Bishop said.
The job is to make sure stored data doesn't lie "dead" but is analyzed and
moved to where it's needed. 
The world is shrinking rapidly because of fast-moving information and
military reaction time that has accelerated as well, said Money, now on the
SGI board of directors, which held its first annual defense summit Tuesday
in Arlington, Va., to discuss digital defense technologies. 
During Desert Storm, the reaction time between seeing a target and making a
decision to do something "was in hours if not days," Money said. In Kosovo
the reaction time "evolved down to roughly four hours." 
"We need to make that time shorter, ever shorter," Money said. 
Information databases are growing, Bishop said, and most of them are
generating at least a terabyte (a trillion bytes) of data a day, a number
which will only increase. 
Building an infosphere 
The Pentagon's sensor-to-shooter concept is a "system of systems" approach
that links command-and-control and decision-support centers with sensors,
communications and weapon systems, said King on his last day in uniform
before retiring Thursday. 
Offering industry his view of what the military needs, King said that first
and foremost the Pentagon and intelligence community must invest in both
technology and people. 
"The area requiring immediate attention is to be able to provide the warrior
with a fused, real-time, true representation of the battlespace, to give our
warriors an ability to order, respond, coordinate to the degreee necessary
to prosecute the assigned mission that they're given," King said. 
NIMA has provided a geospatial reference framework for visualization and
spatial awareness, he said, but the agency can't stop there. It must
continue to acquire all-source imagery and data for a global framework of
"trusted geospatial content at the accuracy and resolution needed for
successful operational planning, navigational safety and targeting," he
said. 
"Government and industry should join together to generate this data that is
needed," King said. 
How to deliver the proper content in the proper time is a concern for all
providers, said Jeff Young, executive director of global sales for Space
Imaging. 
"Place matters," Young said. Representations must be accurate, which means
the collection, storage, indexing and retrieval of data must be accessible,
so products can be delivered accurately and in a timely manner. 
In the future, advanced sensors on the ground and in orbit must allow a
rapid response to specific requests, Young said. 
King agreed that other collection capabilities on the ground and in the air
needed to be brought up to the level of orbital systems. And, he continued,
government and industry must work together on the processes and procedures
to produce mission-specific data sets with more detail and time-sensitive
information. 
The database issue must be solved, King said. Operational and intelligence
databases must be "current, accurate and interoperable, which they are not,"
he said. "We will not achieve a true sensor-to-shooter system until database
interoperability is achieved that enables information to be exchanged
directly and satisfactorily between systems and warfighters. We need the
tools to mine data from databases that exist. In many cases we have the
data, we just can't get to it." 
Tech today 
Lockheed Martin is expected to use SGI visual technology for the
multi-service Joint Strike Fighter program, the company said in a handout.
The company's visual supercomputers will aid the company as it tries to
reduce cost by finding the best ways to virtually design, build and maintain
the aircraft. 
The Navy currently uses TOPSCENE, a mission-planning and rehearsal system
developed by Lockheed Martin that converts imagery from satellites and other
sources to create 3-D views of the world. 
The system allows pilots to plan a mission and then pre-fly it through
real-world terrain on the machine, said Bob Mace of Anteon, which supports
the Navy TOPSCENE office. 
The system is avilable on all deployed nuclear aircraft carriers, the
special operations SEALS use a laptop version, and the Marines use it on
deployed amphibious assault ships, Mace said. 
Harris Corp. offers InReality and RealSite, homeland security visualization
tools for urban security planning and monitoring. Harris has constructed
databases that reproduce all the buildings and open spaces of a city.
Security and law enforcement personnel used such a database of Quebec City
before the Summit of the Americas in April, and did a before-and-after Sept.
11 visualization of New York City. The company also has a database of Salt
Lake City, scene of the 2002 Winter Olympics.

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