The Army is in a state oftransition. Not only are we changing organizationally but also in the way we operate on the battlefield. These changes are driven by the current nature ofthe environment in which we live, fiscal realities, and the need to adapt to future requirements as we see them.

This paper discusses the potential uses of teleoperated missiles (TMs) as reconnaissance (recon) assets in addition to their primary attack mission. This potential role has long been recognized, but not given serious consideration because it was generally thought or assumed that other means would be more effective and cost efficient. For reasons associated with increased combat risk and cost of manned and unmanned recon-capable assets, as well as increasing force structure and cost constraints, the use of TMs for recon missions appears to warrant closer examination. For the analysis the Enhanced Fiber Optic Guided Missile (EFOGM) is used as a representative TM. The assumption is made that other recon assets, except for certain ground sensors, are not available, or are of limited availability. Loss exchange ratios (LERs) were analyzed to determine the effectiveness of TMs in this role. Simulation results show that TMs can perform recon with effectiveness comparable to other recon means, with LERs improving with TM maximum range.

The following information is designed to provide a brief description of the Battlefield Awareness and Data Dissemination (BADD) Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration (ACTD.) The BADD ACTD is a three phase program. Phase 1 began on 1 Oct 95 and will end on 30 Sep 97. Phase 2 will begin in July of 1996 and end on 30 Sep 98. Further information, to include details regarding the ongoing procurement and supplemental reference material, can be found by following the hotlinks from the DARPA solicitations page <http://www.arpa.mil/baa< listed under the Informafions Systems Office Broad Area Announcments #96-11 and #9612.

The US Army is pursuing a phased program to progressively develop and field combat identification (CID) capabilities across multiple combat mission areas. These capabilities, when combined with battlefield digitization advances and other service combat identification capabilities, will greatly reduce the potential for fratricide and increase total combat effectiveness. The Army program began with quick reaction, `Quick Fix' devices which have been fielded to a large number of operational units worldwide. The next phase will provide a system known as the Battlefield Combat Identification System for ground vehicles, which offers significant improvements in performance and robustness compared to Quick Fix. Follow-on development and demonstration programs address issues such as air-to-ground CID; integration of CID with advanced command, control and communications (C3) systems; integration of CID with advanced target acquisition sensors; CID for the dismounted soldier; and development of advanced technologies for long term CID needs including positive hostile identification.

As proven in Desert Storm, the confusion of a rapidly moving air-land battle involving multinational forces is a situational awareness (SA) nightmare. Current methods of communication require traversing layers of networking or searching for frequencies to reach users in different outfits, which is time consuming and frustrating. The digital data link increases realtime SA in the digitized battlefield by providing mechanized platoons with a wireless horizontal local area network SA data passing capability. This increased real-time SA data acts both as a force multiplier and helps reduce the incidence of fratricide.

The Fire Control Division at ARDEC is developing prototype decision aid tools to enable fire support echelons to rapidly respond to requests for fire support. Decision aids on fire support platforms can assist in route planning, site selection, and develop mobility overlays to enable the shooter to rapidly move into position and prepare for the fire mission. The Decision Aid system utilizes an integrated design approach which has each module interacting with the others by sharing data bases and common algorithms to provide recommended courses of action for route planning and generation, position selection, self defense, logistics estimates, situational awareness and fire mission planning aids such as tactical assessment, tactical planning, sustainment, etc. The Decision Aid system will use expert system artificial intelligence which will be developed from knowledge bases utilizing object oriented design. The modules currently reason on Defense Mapping Agency Interim Terrain Data and Digital Terrain Elevation Data and collect mission, intelligence, and sensor data from the digitized battlefield information distribution system to provide the crew or mission planners with intelligent recommendations. The system can provide a trade off analysis of time vs. safety, enable commanders to rapidly respond to fire support request, automatically generate OpOrders, and create overlays which depict mobility corridors, NBC areas, friendly units, overhead concealment, communications, and threat areas. The Decision Aids system can provide a vastly improved mobility, situational awareness, and decision cycle capabilities which can be utilized to increase the tempo of battle.

A UAV-based weapon system can perform boost phase intercept and attack the booster's launcher. A critical ingredient for the success of this mission is a smart BMC3 that is fully integrated with the weapon system elements. It must have many functions digitized to meet the requirements of the very stressing mission timelines. Weapon system architecture, concept of operations, and approaches to smart BMC3 are described in this paper. Examples include BMC3 function digitization and integration.

This paper provides an overview of the Joint Direction of Laboratories Data Fusion Group Data Fusion Process Model and in particular the role and functions of Situational Awareness within it. Additionally, the processing and technological aspects of executing this function automatically in software are discussed, as are the technological shortfalls and research requirements to advance existing capabilities toward improved and more reliable Situational Awareness processing.

Operators of Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGVs) need a graphical assistant to guide them through every step of UGV operations from route planning to reconnaissance reporting. The system will use digital elevation and vectorized terrain data to perform tasks such as determining lines-of-sight for communications, evaluating mobility characteristics of terrain, and determining mobility corridors. The system will also provide an interface between battlefield sensors and the operator, speeding collection of information about the enemy, terrain, and other critical battlefield features. The system will report information collected on the battlefield back to tactical operations center through the battlefield C⁴I system where it will be integrated with information from other battlefield sensors.

An important computer calculation in military planning is determining the optimal paths that a set of flying objects (airplanes, cruise missiles, UAVs) should take toward their targets. The current practice is to represent the problem with static graphs, then apply search algorithms (e.g. network flow) that can yield least cost paths. A number of significant problems must be solved in order to determine optimal and realistic paths. These include the difficulty associated with representing dynamic (time dependent) and realistic phenomena, and the associated difficulties of solving the graphs with polynomial-time algorithms. In this paper we discuss the limitations of modeling with graph theoretic techniques, and we present some results that permit significantly more accurate problem representation and solution than the previous state of the art. These include: a new method for graph representation of dynamic of phenomena associated with strike routing; some general relations that are important in modeling with graphs whose edge traversals represent independent probabilistic events; and a number of new models for use in optimizations. Some of the issues and solutions that we present are very general and they are also given detailed discussion in the context of two important military problems: general radar detection representation for optimization, and representation of the overflight problem (the increased threat to strike assets as they repeat flights over threats). Finally, the models and algorithms are considered in relation to single asset routing and joint routing of multiple assets.

To meet its objectives of winning the information ware and digitizing the battlefield, the U.S. Army must leverage advances in commercial technology. The Department of Defense has adopted a new approach to acquiring and fielding systems in response to economic realities and the need to incorporate rapidly advancing commercial technology into Army systems. This approach calls for the evaluation of commercial breakthroughs in a laboratory environment followed by evaluation by the user in a warfighting experiment. The most promising products are then transitioned to a program executive officer/project manager for accelerated acquisition and fielding. The U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Command (CECOM) Research, Development and Engineering Center Space & Terrestrial Communications Directorate is working with the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) to study the applicability of personal communications systems and related technologies for Army applications. The results of this cooperative effort were demonstrated in 1995 through the use of the trunked Land Mobile Radio (LMR) during field exercises. This paper will describe the joint CECOM/ARPA programs that sponsor the evaluation of commercial technologies, characteristics of the LMR and the details of its interface with the legacy systems, and current plans for further experimentation/evaluation.

This paper will review the deployment, demonstration, and test of an Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) network to support the Air National Guard `Global Yankee' field exercise held at Fort Drum, New York. The network provided forty five (45) megabit per second (mbps) ATM connections between the Air Operations Center (AOC) and Forward Operating Location (FOL) located at Fort Drum, the State University of New York (SUNY) Health Science Center located in Syracuse, New York and Rome Laboratory located in Rome, New York. Connections were made with both fiber and free space equipment. The fiber connections used were part of the existing ATM New York Network (NYNet) between Rome Lab, SUNY Health Science Center and NYNEX Corporation. This network was extended to Watertown, New York by NYNEX to provide connectivity to Fort Drum. The free space links were provided by commercial DS-3 (45 mbps) radios, and 2 to 6 mbps Troposcatter Satellite Support Radios (TSSRs). This paper will also discuss significant digital Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence enhancements to the battlefield provided by the deployed ATM network. For example, videoconferencing and shared workspace capability was demonstrated over the AOC-to-FOL TSSR link, enabling remote intelligence briefings, pilot Battle Damage Assessment, and Search and Rescue coordination. Remote Medical Diagnostics videoconferencing with MRI high resolution digital imagery was demonstrated between the FOL, AOC, and SUNY Health Science Center. Finally, the network provided connectivity between the AOC and the Joint Surveillance System (JSS) radar's located at Griffiss Air Force BAse. The JSS data combined with the Rome Lab developed Radar Analysis Program provided AOC personnel with air picture areas of interest.

Increased use of joint task force concepts is expanding the battlespace and placing higher demands on interoperability. But simultaneous downsizing of forces is increasing the workload on warfighters; while there is a demand for increased decision aiding there has not been a corresponding increase in computational resources. Force wide situation management, the proactive command and control (C²) of the battlespace enabled by broad situation awareness and a deep understanding of mission context, is not likely given today's computational capability, system architecture, algorithmic, and datalink limitations. Next generation C², e.g. decentralized, `rolling' etc., could be significantly enhanced by distributed situation management processing techniques. Presented herein is a sampling of core technologies, software architectures, cognitive processing algorithms, and datalink requirements which could enable next generation C². Dynamic, adaptive process distribution concepts are discussed which address platform and tactical application computational capability limitations. Software and datalink architectures are then presented which facilitate situation management process distribution. Finally, required evolution of current algorithms and algorithms potentially enabled within these concepts are introduced.

Experiences in Operational Desert Shield and Desert Storm revealed deficiencies in several areas of major importance in the post-Cold Ware era. Early entry forces must be provided with improved warfighting capabilities, especially against heavy armor, without affecting their deployability. The Rapid Force Projection Initiative (RFPI) Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration (ACTD) is tasked with addressing this deficiency. The RFPI ACTD features a hunter/standoff killer concept that relies on a variety of hunters and standoff killers to provide a significant increase in the warfighting capability of early entry forces. One of the hunters is the Remote Sentry Advanced Technology Demonstration (ATD). The Remote Sentry ATD will provide an autonomous, remote, ground based, wide-area Reconnaissance, Surveillance, and Target Acquisition capability during day/night and limited visibility conditions. The Remote Sentry ATD is being produced by Alliant Techsystems in partnership with the Harris RF Communications. The ATD is managed and technically directed by the CERDEC Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate.

Recent research in unattended ground sensor (UGS) systems has established the basis for significant advances in determining the local conditions in a tactical battlefield environment. In particular, new technology allows the creation of `throw-away' sensors which can be placed in a battlefield environment and are capable of self-location (via low cost global positioning satellite system technology), self-calibration using a portfolio of sensors to monitor the local environment, and inter-sensor site communications, e.g. via low level commercially available ethernet spread spectrum transceivers and peer-to-peer networking. At the Penn State University Applied Research Laboratory, such a capability has been developed and demonstrated at the breadboard level. Each node of a multi-node system involves a suite of sensors for acoustic/seismic target identification, sound propagation monitoring (depends greatly on weather conditions), barometric pressure, relative humidity, air temperature vertical gradient, wind, soil temperature, moisture, salinity, dielectric constant, and resistance. A small network of UGS nodes can be distributed widely in an array for non-line-of-sight target identification and tracking as well as real time characterization of the battlefield environment. This paper briefly describes the UGS implementation and unclassified experimental results showing a significant impact of the changing environment of acoustic detection.

The U.S. Army/DOD has a requirement to deploy on short notice to a variety of locations around the globe in order to effectively respond to an ever changing threat and environment. In order to preserve combat capability and ensure mission success, it must be capable of projecting power through global surveillance and communications that can be focused on a specific area of interest. It must also have a surge capability and be responsive to the needs of Field Commanders. A requirement exists for a self-deployable airborne multisensor system that will correlate/fuse data from multiple sources to quickly produce finished intelligence and targeting information that is disseminated to commanders at all echelons. This paper will outline an approach to integrate onboard radar, SIGINT, EO/IR, and SAR sensors with external data sources using a common high performance computer networked to mission configurable operator workstations. Technology developments are underway to repackage supercomputer class machines for airborne embedded processing. Functions that have been traditionally confined to ground processing facilities will soon be performed on the aircraft. The paper describes a current program that leverages recent advances in microelectronic packaging, high density interconnect, thermal management, and power distribution to achieve this goal.

In recent years, numerous multisensor data fusion systems have been developed for a wide variety of applications. Defense related applications include; automatic target recognition systems, identification-friend-foe-neutral, automated situation assessment and threat assessment systems, and systems for smart weapons. Non-defense applications include; robotics, condition-based maintenance, environmental monitoring, and medical diagnostics. For each of these applications, multiple sensor data are combined to achieve inferences which are not generally possible using only a single sensor. Implementation of these data fusion systems often involves a significant amount of effort. In particular, software must be developed for components such as data base access, human computer interfaces and displays, communication software, and data fusion algorithms. While commercial software packages exist to assist development of data bases, communications, and human computer interfaces, there are no general purpose packages available to support the implementation of the data fusion algorithms. This paper describes a visual programming tool developed to assist in rapid prototyping of data fusion systems. This toolkit is modeled after the popular tool, Khoros, used by the image processing community. The tool described here is written in visual C, and provides the capability to rapidly implement and apply data fusion algorithms. An application to condition based maintenance is described.

As sensor technology advances, military systems, air- and space-borne, are being equipped with an increasing variety of sensors with highly specialized capabilities. These sensors perform specific tasks which are centered around the detection, identification, and tracking of various objects. In a multiple sensor environment a great deal of information is constantly being produced and is available, at some level, for further use by other sensors. However, the majority of today's sensors operate independently. The sharing of information between sensors, that could collectively improve sensor performance, is not being performed. The Wright Laboratory Armament Directorate has recently discovered greatly extended capabilities of a uniquely powerful set of Image Flow/Inertial algorithms being developed for the Smart Tactical Autonomous Guidance program. These new capabilities hold great promise for direct application to many aspects of the information sharing problem. Target and scene image transformation algorithms are under development which may permit translation of target and scene information to a person (or machine) located at some other vantage point. It is believed that this translation can be done such that the person (or machine) receiving the image can view it, properly scaled and transformed, as if it were being obtained directly from the perspective of the new vantage point.

Force XXI is the vision to synthesize the technology, doctrine, and organization of the U.S. Army so that it can fight and win the wars of the 21st Century. Digitization--taking advantage of the microprocessor revolution--is a key enabler of the Force XXI plan. In the Crewman's Associate Advanced Technology Demonstration, crew stations for ground combat vehicles are being developed that allow the soldier to use digitization to maximum weapon system performance.