GEOINT Aerial Vehicles

Transcription

1 Military Geospatial Technology, October 2008 Volume 6, Issue 5 GEOINT Aerial Vehicles UAVs are an emerging platform for the collection of geospatial data, but some issues still need to be ironed out. by Peter A. Buxbaum, MGT Correspondent Although the U.S. military has relied on unmanned aerial systems for some decades, UAVs have emerged as a true growth industry in recent years. The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have stimulated the military s appetite for enhanced tactical ISR capabilities, and UAVs provide a flexible alternative and complement to existing space assets. Another factor leading to an increased emphasis on UAVs was the action by China last year to shoot down an old weather satellite with a ground-based ballistic missile. This led to greater consideration by the Department of Defense about the potential vulnerability of U.S. space assets and increased thought to alternatives. Using more UAVs could answer potential anti-satellite threats by reducing the Pentagon s dependence on satellite systems. The expanded deployment of unmanned aerial systems has led to their increasing use to collect and exploit geospatial data. Few experts expect a true shift away from satellites and toward UAVs, but UAVs are increasingly thought of as complementary to space assets. As UAVs become less expensive and more accessible, they are beginning to carve out a niche for themselves in the geospatial intelligence arena. But they also face some challenges that have yet to be ironed out. They have not achieved the originally contemplated cost benefits. There are lingering problems involving deconfliction with other aircraft. The explosion in available commercial systems has also raised the perennial issue of the interoperability of multiple systems and the usability of their data. The idea of UAVs as a geospatial system has involved a fairly recent adjustment to thinking, said Rob Mott, executive director defense and intelligence solutions at Intergraph,

2 a provider of spatial information management software. Satellites are good for looking at wide areas, but their images are static. UAVs are better for detecting movement or updating changes to geospatial data. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is obtaining more of its data from UAV platforms in recent years, said Kevin Kelleher, the NGA s airborne executive agent. We look at UAVs as another arrow in our quiver, he added. Different platforms have different advantages when it comes to the collection of geospatial information. We want to take advantage of the abilities that each one provides. FLEXIBLE TASKING One UAV strength is as a supplement to the collection of geospatial information by satellites. You can send in a UAV to get a closer look at a certain area or an item of particular interest at a particular time, said Geoff Butler, engineering director at BAE Systems, Electronics and Integrated Solutions. One major advantage in the use of UAVs is flexible tasking. You can adjust the mission and do something you didn t plan on originally and you can do that relatively quickly. UAVs also typically obtain higher resolution data because they operate closer to the earth s surface, he added, and can also avoid adverse weather conditions by flying below the cloud cover. UAVs also have the ability to loiter over a single area. Continuous observation allows you to better understand changes in the environment and in unfriendly activity, said Butler. It is easier to pick up on that and react to it more effectively. Another advantage to UAVs is the absence of an on-board pilot. As opposed to flying a reconnaissance aircraft over a threat area, there is no life at stake with a UAV, noted Kelleher. You might lose a platform, but not a life. The recent development of smaller UAVs that can be operated by a small team of ground troops, or even a single solider, opens new possibilities for obtaining geospatial information at the lowest of tactical levels. I think we re going to see a paradigm shift as it becomes easier and more desirable to capture geospatial data on small areas, said Lee Hunt, a senior engineer at Prioria Robotics. Small UAVs are easy to launch, they require only one person to operate, and the fuel cost is negligible. In the right situation, this kind of system can do the job better than others. Prioria is receiving increasing numbers of inquiries about using very small systems for geospatial intelligence applications, noted Hunt. You can get a high-resolution look at a relatively small area, he said. Flying at 500 feet, you can get a really close look with a lot higher resolution than with a Predator or a satellite. The Army has purchased for evaluation several of Prioria s recently updated Maveric units, a single-person portable system weighing 2 pounds and with a 28-inch wingspan. Larger UAV systems have traditionally been used for surveillance, sending back video streams to their operators. Using video data for geospatial purposes is one of the challenges industry is working on. Video was not previously thought of as geospatial data. It was considered to be disposable, said Mott. But we are starting to see a greater appreciation for video as an important source of intelligence. The U.S. military is now making decisions on how it needs to manage video and how to store it for future retrieval.

3 Hours of motion imagery are not an intelligence product, added Jon Damush, president of 2d3, a subsidiary of OMG. The challenge is that these systems are producing volumes of data difficult to view with human eyes within a reasonable amount of time. Many times salient features and events go unnoticed or undocumented, and critical intelligence information is lost. 2d3 s product, called TacitView, is designed to convert motion imagery into actionable intelligence. It approaches this challenge by enhancing motion imagery using techniques such as real-time stabilization, spectrum optimization and providing superior resolution to improve the quality of the imagery. TacitView also facilitates the exploitation of the imagery by extracting new pieces of information such as the three-dimensional structure of the underlying terrain, or by providing geolocation information on moving targets. SEARCH CHALLENGE Video involves very large collections of complex data that present challenges for searching and retrieving. We can enhance the imagery and convert it to different forms of output, said Damush. We have developed a database to store video and still imagery and to search and retrieve them by the frame. Each frame of video data, some 3,600 per minute, is time stamped and provided a unique identity in the database. An Integraph system to be deployed later this year helps convert geospatial data into intelligence by brightening, stabilizing and removing atmospheric distortion from the image. The system also includes georeferencing, which takes raw geospatial images and properly orients them and places them within the context of their place on the planet by comparing an image of interest with other relevant ones in the system. UAVs deployed for geospatial purposes require specialized command and control systems. We develop tools that allow users of systems like the Predator and Global Hawk to understand the environment and plan and control missions more effectively, said Butler. BAE s command and control system allows UAV operators to plan and prioritize missions. Users receive large numbers of collection requests along with their associated priorities, said Butler. The system groups and ranks those collection requests and creates a mission plan for servicing those requests. This suite of automated tools addresses planning for the acquisition of geospatial data from the command and control perspective. Operators will quite often say, We need the UAV to be at this point at this time, and looking this direction, said Butler. These tools get them to the right point and the right orientation, and the support system enables them to acquire the geospatial data they are after. The system also allows users to follow up on items that may be perceived mid-mission. Something of interest may come up that needs to be captured right away, Butler explained. One of our key strengths is that we have dynamic re-planning built into the system. If you have a high-priority item pop up, you can generate a plan to make that diversion, then go back to the original plan to capture the maximum amount of data within the originally planned mission. Command and control for UAV missions involving the capture of geospatial data are affected by different constrains that those for other UAV missions. One is the volume of storage available for the data, and another is the necessity for higher fidelity resolution. These place a different set of system constraints on command and control decisions than the typical UAV missions of observing or deploying a weapon, Butler said. In the case of

4 persistent surveillance, the UAV has to keep the sensor trained on a particular zone. The constraints for that type of mission are easier to handle than for a more detailed geospatial data mission. There may be a number of target areas to survey and the constraints become more numerous. You need more horsepower to figure out how to do all that. The horsepower processing power required to perform these functions depends in part on the lead time provided to the planners. When you have a long time ahead of the mission to do deliberate planning, horsepower is less critical, Butler said, but when you have to do dynamic re-planning because you a new objective in the middle of a mission, you want to be able to do those calculations quickly, and they are not simple. Prioria Robotics has been working on enhancing its on-board processing system, dubbed Merlin, so that its small UAVs are able to transmit more refined images to the ground operator. The company has applied for a federal small business innovation research grant for that purpose, according to Hunt. What the ground controller will see is a nice pristine image, said the company s chief executive officer, Bryan da Frota. That means the ground station doesn t have to be that robust. It doesn t have to crunch a huge amount of data to make a better image. However, there are also a number of downsides to making such demands on small UAVs. One of that the vehicle lacks on-board storage capacity. You have to transmit the data immediately or nearly immediately, said Hunt. The vehicle does not have the capacity to store more than a couple of seconds of video. UAV LIMITATIONS Another limitation to the use of small UAVs is that they capture only analog rather than digital video, despite the fact that digital video provides much higher resolution images. The digital payloads are simply too large and too heavy for the very small UAVs. However, Hunt said, Prioria is working on developing a system that can capture analog signals and convert them into digital data. In addition, small UAVs have limited flight time for geospatial intelligence purposes. One of the key performance parameters for U.S. military customers is eight hours of flight time, said Hunt. Prioria s Maveric unmanned aerial system can stay aloft for only about one hour at a time, given the current state of battery technology. Moreover, the use of UAVs for geospatial applications is currently falling short in achieving cost savings. The military still has not realized its cost reduction goals with the use of UAVs, said Butler. They thought they would save a ton of money because they would not have to train, feed and house a human. Although they are making some good progress, and we are now starting to see cost reductions, so far they have not achieved what they originally hoped for. The cost reductions are part of a learning curve, Butler believes. Military units that deploy UAVs still take a conservative approach when it comes to deploying the UAV s autonomous decision making systems. They have been reluctant to trust the computers, he said, while adding that reviewing system mission decisions will at some point no longer be necessary.

5 The biggest disadvantage to the use of UAVs, Butler suggested, relates to mission deconfliction. UAVs typically have a poor ability to sense and avoid anything else flying in their area, he said. They simply fly wherever you tell them, even into a helicopter. There is work being done to deconflict missions so that other aircraft will know a UAV is in the area and will stay away. We are working to combine sense and avoid capabilities into the command and control technology on the UAV itself so that it will automatically veer away. The deconfliction of missions involving UAVs is still emerging. Another challenge associated with the use of UAVs for geospatial purposes involves the usability of their data. As opportunities for the use of UAVs have grown, many commercial companies have jumped into the arena, and they have not bothered to make their systems interoperable. One of challenges we have throughout the intelligence community is to standardize data formats so that data you get form one UAV platform can be compared with data from another UAV platform, said NGA s Kelleher. Data from different sources need to be easily integrated and manipulated and put in such a format to create products and reports. One thing we are trying to do is to improve the standardization of the data to that multiple agencies can use and manipulate it. COMMON GROUND SYSTEM There are several working groups involved in this effort, especially surrounding the Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS), a family of programs with common elements designed to meet the ISR needs of each of the armed services. NGA has published a handbook for standards for the acquisition of DCGS imagery, and representatives of the agency spoke of the need for UAV geospatial data harmonization at a recent DCGS conference. NGA is the functional manager for geospatial intelligence, said Kelleher. We are one of the leaders to help establish standards for data interoperability. In the end, the goal of using UAVs for geospatial collection as one platform in an arsenal of capabilities is to get more and better information to warfighters, analysts emphasize. I don t view UAVs as a replacement for satellites, said Mott. Each fulfills two different parts of the same mission and each has its advantage and advantages. We need to keep on getting faster and solving our problems quicker to outsmart our enemies, he added. UAVs collapse the decision cycle, especially when they become more conducive to supporting video and that video can be disseminated across analysts desktops quickly. But UAVs have their disadvantages. They can t always collect appropriate video because they are susceptible to weather, there may be too much buffer and jitter in the video and they are also subject to enemy fire. So we will need to continue to use satellites as well. But there is little question that UAVs are a growing business, and their use in geospatial applications will also continue to grow in importance. There are tremendous advantages to UAVs, said NGA s Kelleher. There is no need to schedule crew rest and you don t need a pilot to it. As missions and the technology continue to evolve making platforms and sensors less expensive, we will see a proliferation in the use of UAVs for some time to come.