By DAVE MAJUMDAR

Keeping control and data links with UAVs in contested airspace remains a tough problem — and one that needs solving before the U.S. Air Force can develop a next-generation Reaper, the service’s intelligence chief said Oct. 28 at the C4ISR Conference, Arlington, Va.

Lt. Gen. Larry James said enemies can be expected to jam the radio and satellite communications that keep UAVs on mission and transmitting data. James said the service will need an Analysis of Alternatives, and is watching the Navy’s Unmanned Carrier Launched Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) aircraft program.

Speaking on the same panel, the Navy’s deputy intelligence chief said his service and James’ have similar intelligence-gathering priorities in the anti-access, area-denial environment.

James said the two would cooperate closely on such matters in the Defense Department’s AirSea battle construct.

James said that to gather intelligence in such highly contested areas, the U.S. would have to use “layers” of capabilities in the air, space and cyberspace.

David Deptula, former Air Force intelligence chief, said future surveillance aircraft would have to persist inside hostile airspace inside dense air defenses. The days where the U.S. could beat air defenses into oblivion are over; hostile forces have adapted, he said.

The stealthy, multifunctional F-22 and F-35 will be crucial intelligence platforms in future wars, Deptula said.

STAFF REPORT

C4ISR Journal celebrated its 2011 Big 25 Awards and revealed its Top 5 winners today at the C4ISR Journal Conference in Arlington, Va.

Lt. Col. Andrew Page, left, of the U.K. Ministry of Defence Joint Aeronautical and Geospatial Organisation, accepts the C4ISR Journal Top 5 award in the Network Systems category from C4ISR Journal Editor Ben Iannotta. JAGO and Esri earned the award for developing DataMan, the Data Management System.

This was the fourth annual Big 25 Awards ceremony. C4ISR Journal editors scan the industry and intelligence community for the technologies and organizations that they believe have had the most impact. They are divided into five categories: Sensors that gather ISR data; Innovations are promising technologies; Organizations are government agencies or groups that are addressing intelligence-related problems; Network Systems route information to where it needs to go; and Platforms are the aircraft, ships or ground vehicles that carry the sensors.

C4ISR Journal Editor Ben Iannotta said that every member of this year’s Big 25 group represented “a real achievement” in their category.

The Top 5 winners are:

Sensors: Sierra Nevada Corp. industry team and the U.S. Air Force for Gorgon Stare

The Gorgon Stare sensor pods for U.S. Air Force Reaper unmanned planes were first deployed to Afghanistan in March to meet a call for wide-area airborne surveillance. With Gorgon Stare, troops and intelligence analysts receive snapshots at two frames a second of an area the size of a city. Images also can be shipped to 10 individual users. Gorgon Stare is a way for one aircraft to provide coverage comparable to what would otherwise have to be assembled from numerous planes providing soda-straw views of the ground.

Innovations: Northrop Grumman and the U.S. Army for the Long Endurance Multi-intelligence Vehicle (LEMV)

LEMV is a football-field-length airship being designed to carry a multi-intelligence payload at altitudes of about 20,000 feet. Because of its size, this airship will be able to carry larger payloads than other aircraft on longer duration missions. Northrop has been preparing to inflate the first of three airships it is scheduled to provide to the U.S. Army. The first LEMV is scheduled to fly in Afghanistan in December. Northrop says the LEMV will fly for 21 days with 2,750 pounds of payload. The heart of its design is the “Murphy Bay,” a pod named for Medal of Honor recipient Navy Lt. Michael Murphy, who died in Afghanistan in 2005.

“If it works, it will be a paradigm change for ISR,” said Terry Mitchell, the director of intelligence futures in the Army's G-2 office, as he accepted the award.

Network Systems: U.K. Ministry of Defence Joint Aeronautical and Geospatial Organisation (JAGO) and Esri for DataMan (Data Management System)

DataMan is a centralized computer server and deployable software tools that deliver intelligence-rich digital maps to NATO’s Helmand Task Force and provincial reconstruction teams in Afghanistan. Before DataMan, NATO troops and reconstruction workers operating in Afghanistan’s South West Regional Command had no easy way to view information about helicopter landing sites, insurgent networks or the locations of recent roadside bomb explosions. Two years ago, JAGO and Esri UK decided to fix this problem. JAGO’s 42 Engineer Regiment worked with Esri to consolidate information into a single repository and design an online tool called Helmand GeoViewer to display the information. Now, users with secure online browser access can layer 300 kinds of information onto digital maps. JAGO created the viewer using Esri’s ArcGIS Application Programming Interface to ensure that the end product could be implemented and maintained by troops on the front lines. The DataMan technology was introduced in March 2010 and has grown enormously in popularity. In January alone, there were 2.5 million views.

Platforms: Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and the U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center for the Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS) Geo-1 Satellite

Geo-1 was launched toward geosynchronous orbit May 7. It is the first satellite in a constellation of long-delayed geosynchronous orbiting missile-warning satellites. The U.S. is counting on the SBIRS spacecraft to replace its aging Defense Support Program satellites. The contractors and government had to overcome serious mistakes in the design phase of the project to get Geo-1 into orbit. The satellite beamed its first infrared image to the ground June 21. In addition to providing warning of missile launches against the U.S. homeland, the infrared payload will provide intelligence about foreign missile tests and tactical intelligence for battlefield commanders.

Organizations: The CIA Counterterrorism Center and Office of South Asia Analysis

The intelligence unit with the main responsibility for hunting down Osama bin Laden was located at the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center. Experts there worked in close cooperation with the CIA’s Office of South Asia Analysis and the intelligence staff at U.S. Joint Special Operations Command to determine that bin Laden was almost certainly the occupant of a safe house in Abbottabad, Pakistan. After the May 2 killing of bin Laden, then-CIA Director Leon Panetta publicly recognized these elements of his agency on the CIA website: “My deepest thanks and congratulations go out to the officers of our Counterterrorism Center and Office of South Asia Analysis for their outstanding expertise, amazing creativity, and excellent tradecraft. I also extend my profound appreciation and absolute respect to the strike team, whose great skill and courage brought our nation this historic triumph.”

BY ZACHARY FRYER-BIGGS

Concurring on the need to effectively share information while disagreeing about the usefulness to companies of government cyber intelligence, panelists at the C4ISR Journal Conference discussed the merits of disclosing classified information to private companies.

Jenny Menna

The panel, moderated by C4ISR Journal Executive Editor Brad Peniston, discussed a variety of cyber issues, including the potential for offensive operations as well as the true magnitude of the cyber security threat. While largely in agreement that the threat has been overblown, the topic of information sharing proved more controversial.

“For a very long time there was this feeling like ‘Boy, the government’s got this classified stuff and if I could just get my hands on it, it would solve all the problems,’” said Jenny Menna, director of critical infrastructure cyber protection and awareness at the Department of Homeland Security. “I think they’ve looked at some of the classified information at the same time that we’ve been able to strip out those actionable indicators, and they say, ‘You know what, it’s not the classified information that I need every day. Maybe its nice to get a briefing once a quarter for context, but that’s not something what we need every day to take action.’”

Mark Weatherford

Mark Weatherford, vice president and chief security officer at the North American Electric Reliability Corp., said that his experience with classified intelligence proved that the information can be useful.

“I can’t tell you how many times, because I do have a security clearance and do get classified briefings, that I get classified information that’s important and I would like to share with my industry, but I can’t talk about it,” he said. “It’s critically important that we figure out how to take classified information within government and sanitize it to a level that’s actionable for the critical infrastructure in the private sector, because it does absolutely no one any good to have classified information that perhaps is threat-related or vulnerability-related that can’t be shown to the private sector.”

Weatherford is slated to leave his current position to join the Department of Homeland Security, and said that the issue of disclosure would be on his mind.

Weatherford and Menna were joined by Dmitri Alperovitch, president of Asymmetric Cyber Operations; Rich Plane, head of development and delivery at Harris Cyber Integrated Solutions; and Kristjan Prikk from the Embassy of Estonia.

BY KATE BRANNEN

Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., the ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, wants to see sweeping changes to how the U.S. military owns and operates its vast fleet of unmanned aircraft.

Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger

Today, the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps each train and operate on entirely different unmanned aircraft systems. With the current budget crisis, the military can no longer work in stovepipes, Ruppersberger said at the C4ISR Journal Conference in Arlington, Va.

“We need a Goldwater-Nichols for widgets and gidgets,” the congressman said.

The Goldwater-Nichols Act, signed into law in 1986, overhauled the way the Defense Department operated, elevating the power and influence of the combatant commanders in an effort to reduce inter-service rivalries.

Ruppersberger said it is time to bring that spirit of cooperation to the management, training and maintenance of unmanned aircraft, which have proliferated across the services over the last decade.

Ruppersberger said he wanted to see common standards for the procurement of all unmanned aircraft systems.
He also wants the services to share their training sites.

The military “must cross-train UAV operators in one location,” he said.

He also wants to co-locate command centers and standardize operations and maintenance.

All new unmanned aircraft purchased must meet these common standards so that the military has “one comprehensive UAV architecture,” Ruppersberger said.