"AIMing" to Improve ISR Data Availability

  • Published
  • By David Canestrare
  • Information
ROME, New York --  With successful testing of Air Force Research Laboratory's Advanced Information Management System comes a powerful new capability for high-speed recording, cataloguing, and brokering--and near-real-time dissemination--of critical intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance information for tactical-edge warfighter use. The server-based AIMS employs a publish/subscribe/query architecture that leverages a combination of technologies for improving situational awareness, command and control, and targeting capabilities.

The experimental test network consisted of two primary nodes: a ground-based client node and an airborne server node flying aboard an F-16. The ground node uses an in-house-developed FalconView plug-in, incorporated both for its inherent mapping utility and for its interoperability with the Battlefield Air Operations Toolkit. The server node flies as a LITENING targeting pod component.

Using a direct interface to high-resolution forward-looking infrared and shortwave infrared sensors, the airborne AIMS recorded both still frames and video at a real-time rate of 20 frames per second. Concurrent to this activity, AIMS created and stored FLIR cursor-on-target (CoT) thumbnail image messages every 2 seconds. Each message specified the position of the respective thumbnail's four corners and included a hyperlink to the full-size image (hosted by the AIMS Web server on the LITENING targeting pod). This approach enabled efficient ground-user consumption of data from the LITENING pod-based FLIR sensors, while providing access to higher-resolution imagery if required.

Ground-based [client] users can subscribe to CoT FLIR thumbnails or georeferenced video. Further, they can query AIMS' XML database for historical CoT data and/or request that video archived on the LITENING pod be sent to the ground for review. Users employ FalconView to display the CoT image positions they receive. Thumbnails are also rendered in a separate window, the VCR-like controls of which enable back-and-forth movement through time to accommodate user searches for specific imagery. After locating a thumbnail of interest, the user can download a full-size image in the desired format (e.g., NITF, GeoTIF, RAW, JPEG) from the airborne AIMS server. During testing, users subsequently imported their downloaded NITF and GeoTIF images into FalconView in order to leverage its enhanced mapping and targeting capabilities.