IARPA has announced the functional Map of the World (fMoW) challenge, which officially kicks off in August.
Intelligence Blog
Cyborg Dragonfly Takes Flight
June 1, 2016
The DragonflEye, a cyborg insect intended for a variety of missions, including intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, has liftoff.
U.S. Defense Department Revises Intelligence Budget Request
May 9, 2017
The Department of Defense released today the revised Military Intelligence Program top line budget request for fiscal 2017 that was disclosed to the public on February 9, 2016. The $16.8 billion is now updated to include additional funding above the initial president's budget request. The total, which includes both the base budget and overseas contingency operations funding, is $18.5 billion.
IARPA Announces Publication of Forecasting Data
April 28, 2017
Forecasting data collected during IARPA’s Aggregative Contingent Estimation (ACE) program by team Good Judgment is now available for use by the public and the research community.
A Founding Father of the CIA Served His Nation for More Than Six Decades
4/7/17
SIGNAL Magazine honors the service of longtime intelligence officer and diplomat Hugh Montgomery, who died April 6 at age 93.
Help Wanted: Machines Capable of Translating Foreign Language Data Into English
January 24, 2017
U.S. intelligence community researchers need technology capable of retrieving information from a multilingual repository and converting the data into English.
ODNI Says Classic Russian Influence Campaign Targeted U.S. Presidential Election
January 6, 2017
Russian agents, acting on direct orders from President Vladimir Putin, ran an organized media campaign to discredit Secretary Hillary Clinton in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, according to a declassified U.S. intelligence community report. However, the effort stopped short of directly affecting vote tallies.
Taking Advantage of Machine Learning to Securely Share Data
December 9, 2016
Right at this moment, hundreds of U.S. government analysts are trying to solve the exact same problem. Without easy, trusted data sharing, these analysts, who the nation relies on to solve the most challenging of worries, cannot benefit from shared knowledge—a hurdle that adds to inefficiencies fostered by redundancies, reinforcing the public’s perception of ineffective federal bureaucracy.
IARPA Announces Winners of its 3-D Mapping Challenge
December 1, 2016
The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, or IARPA, has selected its winners from its crowd-sourced Multi-View Stereo 3-D Mapping Challenge—a contest to see who could best convert satellite photos into 3-D models to create more accurate maps.
Face of Terrorism Has a New, Frightening Look, INSS Panel Expresses
September 7, 2016
European governments are contending with the challenges of penetrable borders, an influx of refugees and the radicalization of some of its youth, complicating intelligence efforts to combat terror, said Michael Leiter, chief operations officer at Leidos, at the third annual Intelligence & National Security Summit in Washington, D.C.
Marking a Decade of Safeguarding the World
August 23, 2016
The world of intelligence sharing has gone from on a need-to-know basis between federal agencies to one in which those key players must, by necessity, combine disparate pieces of intel to ascertain a complete picture of potential threats. Though actions by the government following the terrorist attacks 15 years ago make intel sharing easier, a class of technologies that greatly enhanced the government’s ability to accomplish this already existed: cross domain solutions.
U.S. Navy Tests Puma Unmanned System Aboard Missile Destroyer
August 11, 2016
The United States Navy has tested and deployed the RQ-20B Puma small unmanned aircraft system (UAS) aboard a Flight I Guided Missile Destroyer (DDG Class), according to an AeroVironment Inc. announcement. Some of these exercises included the use of the company’s fully autonomous system to recover the aircraft aboard a ship.
DOD Can Harness Industry ISR Technology to Modernize Frameworks
August 5, 2016
To meet the needs of the nation’s combatant commands and National Command Authority, government and industry must evolve the current intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) platforms, sensors and ground systems into a truly global ISR enterprise. An incremental approach must be combined with overarching actions to migrate to common ISR information technology infrastructures, orchestrated toward the larger goal of an integrated ISR enterprise.
U.S. Air Force, Industry Demonstrate Improved Satellite Services for ISR
July 27, 2016
The U.S. Air Force and industry partners are developing a unique phased array for high-throughput ISR services for X-band satellite services. During a recent display at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, Ball Aerospace and XTAR demonstrated that Ball’s Airlink X-1 antenna configured for the C-130 hatch was able to transmit 4.5 megabits of data per second over the XTAR-LANT satellite, a marked throughput increase over existing terminals.
IARPA Launches its Multi-View Stereo 3D Mapping Challenge
July 6, 2016
IARPA has launched its Multi-View Stereo 3D Mapping Challenge, inviting the broader research community of industry and academia, with or without experience in multiview satellite imagery, to participate in a competition to produce a solution to accurately produce 3-D mapping from satellite photos.
NATO Needs a Wake Up Call, Estonian General Shares at NITEC 2016
June 7, 2016
Europe is asleep at the wheel and needs an awakening before it crashes, warned Lt. Gen. Riho Terras, commander of Estonian Defense Forces. The reactionary nature of the continent’s militaries has caught leaders unawares far too many times already, and forces no longer can afford to leave proactive measures to someone else, Gen. Terras shared at of NITEC 2016.
Counterterrorism Organization Evaluates Tether Eye UAS
May 23, 2016
AeroVironment Inc. has announced the U.S. Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office (CTTSO) is evaluating the company’s new tethered unmanned aircraft system, named Tether Eye, for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and security applications.
Vast Social Media Data Not Fair Game for Intelligence
May 13, 2016
People subjected to the U.S. government clearance process cannot be forced to give up their private social media information, according to a new directive issued by the director of national intelligence.
Harnessing the Power of Open Data and Today’s Analytics
April 29, 2016
The majority of federal, state and local governments continue to pour manpower and operations and maintenance money into “high maintenance” legacy and often proprietary architectures, rather than thoughtfully and pragmatically transitioning to next generation IT infrastructure and software.
IARPA-Funded Project Advances Biometrics Intelligence
April 29, 2016
A group of University of Maryland researchers has developed an algorithm that can not only detect a face, but also simultaneously determine the gender and pose, and extract fiducial, or reference, points.