New technology could make target acquisition more accurate

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. C. Todd Lopez
  • Air Force Print News
WASHINGTON (AFPN) --  At this moment, above Iraq and Afghanistan, American data sensors are collecting information and intelligence about what is happening on the ground.

What happens to the data depends largely on a sensor's owner and its mission. The data could be reviewed immediately, or it could be stored for later use. What is for sure is that terabytes of information, wherever they come from, often go unused -- left on a secure hard drive until they are no longer relevant to anyone.

The Air Force is now engaged in an experiment to take that data and make use of it the moment it comes off sensors. During the Northern Edge exercise this June in Alaska, the Air Force will test a system that does just that: the Global Net Centric Surveillance and Targeting, or GNCST, system.

Called "Gun Coast" by those involved with the project, the system can take near real-time information from a nearly unlimited set of data sensors and process it into useable information for the warfighter, said Maj. Gen. Gregory H. Power, Air Force director of operations and support integration.

"With GNCST, a lot of platforms and capabilities will be fusing their data into one single funnel and GNCST is at the bottom of the funnel," he said. "It takes all that information in, and through algorithms, is able to digest and disseminate very quickly and very accurately, the position of something like a (surface-to-air missile) site." 

The system uses a Web-based interface on a secured computer network. An end user might access the system and ask it to locate surface-to-air missiles that appeared in a specific region within the last 45 minutes. The GNCST system would then respond, in as little as a few seconds, with target coordinates for those SAMs.

That type of responsiveness and accuracy would be of great use to pilots, General Power said.

"If we had a sortie that was going to attack a target, GNCST might identify a mobile SAM system that had moved into the area as the aircraft took off," General Power said.

"Of course, the pilot would not know about that," he said. "But by having GNCST and being able to digest that data -- getting it accurately and fast -- that data would be available for the air operations center to pass to the pilot. This really is a kind of life-saving technology that, once fully developed, is really going to give us an edge on the battlefield."

The Air Force processes much of its intelligence information by using manpower. But, humans who process intelligence information cannot work as fast or process as much data as the machines.

"A human being processing the data we are talking about here, it could take in some cases days, sometimes even weeks," General Power said. "This machine-to-machine interface we will have with GNCST will allow us to do it in seconds, minutes at most. And the timeliness and accuracy of the information is the value we bring to the warfighter."

The GNCST system was developed primarily to locate SAM sites, but it can be modified to find any number of potential threats, from Scud missiles to tanks. Complex computer algorithms allow the system to look at nearly any kind of raw sensor data and locate threats. And as the GNCST system develops, those algorithms will be adjusted to recognize any new threats.

"In the future, this target set will grow to eventually include all threats," General Power said. "The database will be a living document, if you will. The list of threat systems will continuously be changing. As new systems are developed they, too, will be added to the database."

The GNCST system could even find "non-threat systems," General Power said.

One concern with allowing a computer to pick a target is the fear of removing the "human element" from the kill chain. In the Air Force command and control community, "kill chain" refers to the series of events leading from identification of a potential target to the ultimate destruction or "kill" of that target. The target could be a building, a cave, a convoy or a communications tower.

While the kill chain can be shortened through the use of computers, at the end, there is always a human who makes the final decision to employ force, General Power said. That will not be eliminated with implementation of GNCST.

"Just like in any execution decision, there will be rules of engagement on scenarios," he said. "Once the concept of operations is developed, there will be certain checks and balances in it. The final element is the executing human being -- the pilot on the sortie -- at the end of the kill chain who will have the final say on if they drop on the target."

Development of the GNCST system is spearheaded by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. Partners in the project include the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., and the United States Strategic Command.

While the system is only in development now, General Power said he hopes the Air Force signs on for the system. Its performance at Northern Edge will figure into the Air Force's decision to become more involved in the technology.

"This technology has a lot of promise and we want to see it developed," General Power said. "We are pretty optimistic that it will succeed."

"GNCST will bring intelligence information with more accuracy in a much shorter time period than currently possible," he added. "It means we can find and accurately locate bad guys in a much shorter period of time, and hopefully prevent them from causing harm to friendly forces -- in other words, saving friendly lives."