Deploying a world wide force that is strategically responsive and dominant at every point on the spectrum of conflict involves the cooperative system development and use of advanced technologies that yield revolutionary capabilities to support the war-fighters needs. One of the advanced concepts being developed and deployed to our Future Forces is the ability to remotely locate, track and predict the movement of enemy targets on the battlefield using unmanned sensor systems and advanced tracking algorithms. This research proposes to advance these technologies and take them one step further by automating the hand-off of these tracked targets to the Unit of Action (UA) that provides fire support for the unit. Future Forces will possess a wide range of organic and highly deployable fire support systems than can deliver advanced and fused fire support effects out to operational distances. Capabilities outlined in this proposed work will allow our Forces to harness the balance of these Fire Support Assets. This will ensure mission success, improve Situational Awareness, and greatly increase the Soldiers lethality and survivability. These capabilities will support the unitÂ’s success of early entry, forced entry, shaping decisive offense/defense, and SASO operations.
Benefits: For this project, we see a number of exciting commercialization possibilities. In both military and commercial arenas there exists a need to monitor urban and remote areas. However, several times there are barriers to patrolling these areas such as rough or hostile terrain, large and distance patrol areas, or even heavily occupied areas (civilians or hostiles). Having a remote aerial surveillance capability would assist boarder patrol, FEMA, fire and rescue and Homeland Security efforts. Search and rescue initiatives, crowd monitoring and predicted movement or obstacles to their control at large venues or events, target tracking (both human and vehicle), and disaster relief efforts, would all benefit from having multiple remote aerial sensors, under single operator control, with advanced tracking and prediction models. These capabilities can then translate into movement monitoring, searching, planning, and deployment tasks assistance. Coupling these capabilities with techniques that query the location, type, and amount of resources available to support the mission or task will significantly increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the operator and his ability to perform his duties. Allocating and distributing food and water resources for disaster relief efforts, and monitoring crowd movements at large social or sporting events looking for trouble spots, bottlenecks, or security hazards, and commanding traffic control or police personnel to the appropriate areas, are seen as potential applications.
Keywords: Target Handoff, Target Monitoring and Prediction, Video Target Tracking, Distributed Interactive Fires, Sensor to Shooter, Fires and Effects, Unmanned Robotic Platform Sensors, Acquisition to Firer Solution
