Gotcha Radar Dishing--or "Desching"--Up Meaningful ISR Published Dec. 11, 2009 By Ms. Beverley Thompson Sensors WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio -- The Air Force Gotcha radar program will leverage "Desch"--Air Force Research Laboratory's newest supercomputer and the 308th-fastest device in the world--to translate massive amounts of radar surveillance data into high-resolution, three-dimensional video images for observing activity over an entire city, any time of day or night and in any weather. Custom-built for Gotcha researchers by Silicon Graphics, Inc., the new supercomputer takes its name from Dayton, Ohio, codebreaker and computer pioneer Joe Desch, who was instrumental in cracking Nazi codes during World War II. Along with its incredible speed, Desch has enormous storage capacity; it would take upwards of 2 million home computers to equal Desch's ample cargo space. This feature offers Gotcha users a window to the past, meaning that if an incident occurs, they can access and review earlier imagery (perhaps a month's worth) to trace the problem to its origins. This boon to situational awareness is expected to prove invaluable for troops--particularly those on the ground in busy, cluttered urban areas. Gotcha is part of AFRL's portfolio of research efforts geared towards providing enhanced intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities to future joint warfighters. In development at AFRL for several years, the radar underwent its first test in 2006, looking at a 1-kilometer-sized city section with the help of a shared supercomputer for processing the real-time, 3-D video images. AFRL's newly acquired supercomputer, dedicated entirely to Gotcha researchers, will be able to scan a circle of about 5 kilometers, converting Gotcha's real-time radar data into a 400-megapixel image every second. Each Desch-processed image has about 100 times the resolution of an ordinary camera's results.