Intelligence

Intelligence technology research normally focused on electronics-related disciplines increasingly is being applied to improving human intelligence capabilities. These capabilities, which range from intelligence collection to distribution, define human intelligence activities in the war on terrorism.

Wartime demands and the greater likelihood of coalition operations are changing the way the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency conducts business. The agency is trending toward products that have lower classification levels to improve coalition interoperability, and it is laying the groundwork for its customers to tailor its products to suit specific needs.

The Defense Intelligence Agency is meeting the global threat head-on by moving from its traditional decentralized information technology framework to a consolidated, enterprise-centric environment. As part of a transformational effort called the Department of Defense Intelligence Information System Way Ahead, the agency is replacing its stovepiped environment with regional service centers that have global reach. The centers facilitate all-source data access and enable worldwide availability of information, and the consolidation will correct inefficiencies, decrease costs and improve user productivity.

The wealth of information available worldwide from open sources has impelled the U.S. intelligence community to establish a new center dedicated exclusively to exploitation and dissemination of valuable unclassified products. This center will scour the world's environment of readily available information for snippets of data that could complete a vital intelligence picture as well as for messages among enemies that travel in the open through the global village.

The U.S. military has deployed a command and control technology that allows warfighters to view, store and act on information provided by a variety of sources such as cameras, unattended ground sensors and unmanned aerial vehicles. The system can superimpose live video images onto a three-dimensional map to create a persistent surveillance capability in a specific area, and it allows users to issue alerts based on specific activities such as people or vehicles entering restricted areas.

Renowned mathematician George B. Dantzig died on May 13 at age 90, and the U.S. Strategic Command stood up a new component to focus on global intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance efforts on May 31. A mathematical model used to optimize resource allocation could tie Dantzig's work to the new group.

Where many sources of intelligence currently confound military analysts' efforts to build an accurate picture of the battlespace, a new joint Web-based system allows them to obtain information through a uniform query across the field of intelligence databases. Known as the Joint Intelligence Operations Capability-Iraq, or JIOC-I, the system gives analysts the ability to extract data faster and to spend more time on the analytical side of their tasking.

The U.S. Defense Department has designed a road map that plots the objectives

U.S. Air Force intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance is relinquishing its separate identity and becoming an integral part of air combat operations. Sensor advances and the advent of network-centric warfare have both increased the discipline's importance and compressed the time required to carry out its mission taskings.

Highly refined signal filters will open new vistas in applications ranging from complex intelligence gathering to cellular telephony. The advances emerge from high-temperature superconducting materials incorporated into semiconductor chips. Researchers at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency have moved some aspects of this technology to the private sector for production and commercialization.