Surveillance: ADF seeks persistent FOB surveillance | ADM Jun 2010
Tom Muir | Canberra
The Improvised Explosive Device (IED) is the number one threat to ADF personnel and the local civilian population in Afghanistan.
In 2009, bomb attacks on Coalition troops in Afghanistan have spiked to an all-time high.
The Chief of the Defence Force raised the Counter Improvised Explosive Device Task Force (CIED TF) in 2006 to ensure that Australian service personnel and officials deployed on operations are trained, equipped and operate with appropriate doctrine to counter the IED threat.
Surveillance is crucial in counter insurgency (COIN) operations, to counter IED attacks, improve force protection and detect change.
Currently, the ADF Surveillance capability is restricted, due to the extent of terrain to be covered and the limited assets deployed.
Defence believes that extending the capability to persistent and expansive surveillance will improve the detection and analysis of insurgency attacks and networks, and provide significantly improved Situational Awareness (SA).
In August last year the Defence/Industry RPDE program initiated a Quicklook to identify industry solutions for persistent surveillance over a localised area to protect ADF Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) on operations.
The aim of RPDE Quicklooks is to garner advice from industry on particular Defence issues.
The FOB Eye, as the proposed system has been dubbed, is expected to provide continuous (all weather, day and night) systematic watch over a defined battlespace to provide timely information for combat intelligence purposes.
Strategic ISR solutions were not to be considered due to cost, time and large projects already in progress within Defence.
Currently, the ADF relies on obtaining intelligence through reconnaissance missions - Special Forces patrols, UAV surveillance and forward operations.
The requirement for the ‘FOB Eye' is to address a capability shortfall in conducting surveillance over multiple areas of interest, within an area of influence, in support of a FOB.
Such a capability would enhance the ADF's ISR operations, reduce troop-led surveillance operations and facilitate post-incident event analysis.
Completed in October, the Quicklook Report on FOB Eye evidently provided sufficient information for the commander of the CIED Task Force, Brigadier Phil Winter, to request RPDE to progress to the solutions development phase of what is now Task 34 FOB Eye, involving the development of a CTD for testing machine-driven Pattern-of-Life analysis in support of ADF Counter IED operations.
The question put to the RPDE Task is ‘of the current and emerging persistent surveillance systems available, can a capability be developed to enable pattern-of-life analysis within areas of interest in vicinity of ADF FOBs, in support of the CIED battle?
Persistent surveillance systems
There is no shortage of systems available to provide the type of elevated fixed surveillance the ADF seeks for FOB protection and generally improved situational awareness.
In 2006, the ADF acquired three TCOM Aerostat airships to trial at the ACT's Majura Range as concept demonstrators for sensor and communications range extensions.
Basically tethered blimps, TCOM aerostats and their ground support equipment have evolved into the present state-of-the-art systems over more than three decades of on-station operations.
ADF configurations of the system aimed at supporting heavier payloads and elevations up to 2,500 feet.
Canada is spending $23 million to buy towers and aerostats, both equipped with cameras and radars.
These will be used for base defense, and surveillance in general in Afghanistan.
The Canadians have noted the success of the US forces with this kind of intelligence collection and base security system.
The widely employed Rapid Aerostat Initial Deployment (RAID) system employs a variety of sensors tethered from an aerostat, and later evolving to other platforms, including fixed towers and relocated masts.
It was soon found that tower mounted cameras were just as good as the aerostats, in most situations, and much cheaper.
Since 2003 more than 300 RAID towers and over 60 ‘blimp' systems have been deployed by US Forces as part of the Persistent Surveillance and Dissemination Systems (PSDS2) fielded in Iraq and Afghanistan, safeguarding forward operating bases (FOB), improving surveillance by day and night and accelerating response to evolving threats.
RAID generally use EO/IR sensors, radars, flash and acoustic gunshot detectors, to provide persistent, panoramic surveillance of the covered area.
The main sensor is an EO/IR payload, carrying a laser rangefinder, designator and target marker.
In some configurations, radar, RF signal interceptors or gunshot detectors are employed, providing a primary scanning sensor pointing the EO/IR payload to points of interest, where movement or suspicious actions are detected.
Sensor data is fed through standard radio links (SINCGARS and EPLRS) to the ground control system (PSDS2) providing essential situational awareness necessary for improved security and daily operations in and around the FOB.
For example, convoy leaders check with RAID operators for ‘road clear' indication before leaving the FOB.
Over the last five years, towers have become more mobile and grown taller.
The tower of the Raytheon Transportable Multi-Domain Surveillance System (TMDS2) extends to 127 ft as opposed to the 107 ft of the Eagle Eye tower, which allows cameras to spot vehicles up to 25 kilometers away.
It also serves as a communications relay for widely dispersed troops.
The towers can be easily taken apart or erected by troops.
When temporary bases are set up, an Eagle Eye tower provides the equivalent of a permanent UAV presence, which, just by being there, tends to discourage attacks, or any misbehavior in the vicinity of the base.
Pattern of life analysis
However BRIG Phil Winter wants more than a persistent surveillance system - he wants one that can discriminate and record pattern of life data in areas of interest, a capability which would lead to such benefits as:
• decreased loss of ADF personnel life due to IED strike;
• persistent surveillance security layer for Forward Operating Base force protection;
• increased C2 situational awareness;
• reduced reliance on similar Coalition assets in-theatre; and
• disruption of threat activity within line-of-sight of Task 34 FOB Eye surveillance nodes.
The effectiveness of such analytical capabilities can be found in the use of drone strikes in Pakistan's border regions where the CIA's expanded authority, approved two years ago by the Bush administration and continued by President Obama, permits the agency to rely on what officials describe as ‘pattern of life' analysis, using evidence collected by surveillance cameras on the unmanned aircraft and from other sources about individuals and locations.
The information then is used to target suspected militants, even when their full identities are not known, officials have said according to newspaper reports in the US.
A recent article* in the US Armed Forces Journal suggests that the tactical use of a new set of intelligence collection systems known as persistent surveillance (PS) is well-known, the primary beneficiaries being US armed forces waging counterinsurgency warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan, where long-duration tracking of individuals has enabled many capture/kill operations.
But the authors say few have sought to analyze the strategic implications of PS technologies, pointing out that new surveillance systems combining PS with large-scale data retention and advanced algorithms, have strong potential for social disruption.
New algorithms have the potential to revolutionize surveillance technologies in several key ways.
The first is the aforementioned discrimination between objects of interest and the surrounding environment.
A closely related capability, and one already demonstrated with reasonable levels of success, is the ability to identify unique targets within a large viewing frame.
In particular, algorithms have been written that can draw on video footage to identify individuals by their face or gait.
Second, algorithms may be used to develop models of social behavior at a level of complexity (referring to the number of variables and interactions) beyond the capability of the human brain.
Third, advanced algorithms can make surveillance systems "smarter" by coordinating various sensor inputs.
To those skeptical of the ability of behavioral scientists to capture the many variables that make up a social system, the authors say these technologies are already being applied to national security problems.
In a recent article in the journal Joint Force Quarterly, for example, three US military officers described the use of PS technologies to establish "pattern of life analysis" against enemy targets; these officers wrote that 24/7 multisensor observation had led to "hundreds of examples of successful raids."
Similarly, in an interview with Air and Space Power Journal, a retired British Royal Air Force officer noted the ability to manipulate opponent behavior through constant surveillance by overhead assets.
* Timothy Juno and Jonathon Protz: ‘Unblinking eyes - managing the strategic consequences of persistent surveillance', Armed Forces Journal, April 2010