Every year the editorial staff behind C4ISR Journal selects the Big 25 programs and innovations within the ISR community. When the Big 25 selections have been made, our editorial staff and outside defense intelligence experts gather to select the Big 5. At the Awards Ceremony we gather C4ISR community together to publicly honor the Big 25 and announce the Top 5. The Top 5 are selected from five categories: Platforms; Sensors; Networks; Agencies and Organizations; and Innovations. Nominations are not mandatory for consideration but they are helpful to our staff.
Each year, C4ISR Journal scans the world of networks, sensors and intelligence, looking for the best 25 new technologies and efforts changing the way military forces and policymakers do their jobs.
Arrayed in five categories (sensors, innovations, organizations, network systems and platforms),
We scrutinize each and ask — Is it new? Is it available? Is it useful? Is it being used?
This year’s winners run the gamut from “app stores” that can put crucial mission information on an infantryman’s smartphone to a reusable space plane that flies home from orbit.
Today we recognize the 2012 C4ISR Journal Big 25.
SENSORS:
- ARGUS-IS: An airborne wide-area surveillance camera system for daytime observations.
Who: BAE Systems, DARPA.
- CHIRP: A heat-detecting sensor installed on the SES-2 commercial communications satellite.
Who: U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center, SES of Luxembourg, SAIC, Orbital Sciences Corp., Aerospace Corp.
- ELM-2112: A radar that observes in all directions without mechanical rotation or electronic steering.
Who: IAI-Elta Systems.
- IMAGING SYSTEM FOR IMMERSIVE SURVEILLANCE: A multicamera video surveillance system.
Who: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory.
- KESTREL: Wide-area surveillance cameras for aerostats.
Who: Logos Technologies.
INNOVATIONS:
- CENTAUR: An optionally piloted aircraft based on a Diamond Aircraft DA42 MPP piloted surveillance plane.
Who: Aurora Flight Sciences.
- MORPHINATOR: Software in development to continually change a user’s IP address and computer configurations to make it harder for hackers or foreign intelligence agents to crack.
Who: Raytheon, U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Research Development and Engineering Center.
- MANTIS i23: New day-night camera for the U.S. Army’s Raven hand-launched planes.
Who: U.S. Army Small Unmanned Air System Product Office, AeroVironment.
- WINDSHEAR: Software that connects a soldier’s handheld device to a host of biometric data and intelligence products on the Distributed Common Ground System-Army.
Who: U.S. Army G-2 intelligence staff, National Reconnaissance Office, the Intelligence and Information Warfare Directorate of the Communications-Electronics Research Development and Engineering Center, Thermopylae Science and Technology.
- X-47B: An unmanned combat and reconnaissance demonstrator.
Who: Northrop Grumman, U.S. Navy.
ORGANIZATIONS:
- NETWORK INTEGRATION EVALUATION TRIAD: Brigade Modernization Command, System of Systems Integration Directorate, Army Test and Evaluation Command.
- NATO COMMUNICATIONS AND INFORMATION AGENCY
- NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE UNIVERSITY
- ARMY CERDEC
- NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY’S PROJECT FISH BOWL
NETWORK SYSTEMS:
- APPSMART MARKET PLACE: A commercially operated online applications store.
Who: Raytheon.
- CORAL REEF: An intelligence community computer application that lets analysts upload, search and perform analysis on data extracted from cellphones and GPS devices.
Who: Distributed Common Ground System-Army, 42Six Solutions.
- DISTRIBUTED MISSION CREW CONCEPT: Voice communication links between Air Force analysts and Predator/Reaper crews.
Who: Air Force ISR Agency, Lockheed Martin.
- INTELLIGENCE CARRY ON PROGRAM: A portable computer and displays linking sailors to video services and subsets of the data available on the Navy’s intelligence network, the Distributed Common Ground/Surface System-Navy.
Who: BAE Systems, SPAWAR.
- TRANSAPPS: Transformative Applications are commercial-style applications for Android smartphones carried outside the wire by U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
Who: DARPA.
PLATFORMS
- ADVANCED EXTREMELY HIGH FREQUENCY SATELLITES: Satellites for survivable, highly protected strategic communications.
Who: Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman.
- GRAY EAGLE: The U.S. Army’s version of the Air Force’s Predators and Reapers.
Who: General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, U.S. Army Product Management Office for Medium Altitude Endurance Unmanned Air Systems.
- E-8C JOINT STARS: Boeing 707-300 aircraft equipped with battle management computers and radars.
Who: U.S. Air Force, Northrop Grumman.
- P-8 POSEIDON: the U.S. Navy’s new submarine hunter and maritime patrol plane.
Who: Boeing, U.S. Navy.
- X-37B ORBITAL TEST VEHICLE-2: A reusable space plane.
Who: Boeing, U.S. Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office.