Intelligence , Surveillance And Reconnaissance Research Articles

Implementing Small Commercial Drones in Land Forces Operations: Considerations for Optimizing ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance)

Implementing Small Commercial Drones in Land Forces Operations: Considerations for Optimizing ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance)

Counterintelligence and escalation from hybrid to total war in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict 2014–2024

ABSTRACT This article examines certain counterintelligence (CI) aspects of the on-going conflict between Russia and Ukraine since 2014 in terms of key problems in current western CI concepts, doctrine and processes. It examines not only the CI threat to Ukraine during the Donbas ‘frozen war’ and 2022 invasion from the traditional CI triad of espionage, sabotage and subversion but also from Russian intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities and activities supporting both irregular and regular combatants. The article concludes that a UK and allied approach to CI shaped by a two-decade security focus on counterterrorism and counterinsurgency may not be fit for purpose in a contemporary strategic environment characterized by a persistent and escalating threat from strategic peers engaged in state-supported hybrid conflict.

A Study on Sensor Collection Planning based on Target Scheduling and Deviation Correction for Strategic UAV Surveillance and Reconnaissance

The strategic UAV for theater level ISR(Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance) mission typically has numerous ground targets over area of responsibility(AOR) or area of operation(AO). It is necessary to automatically incorporate these multitude of ground targets into mission planning process in order to collect ISR images before actual flight mission. In addition, weather information such as wind direction and/or velocity may have significant impacts on the qualities of collected sensor images, especially in SAR(Synthetic Aperture Radar) images. Thus weather factors in the operation altitude should also be considered in the mission planning stage. In this study, we propose a novel mission planning scheme based on target scheduling and deviation correction method incorporating weather factors.

Cyber Preparedness of the Indian Armed Forces

The Indian armed forces today face a significant threat of cyberattacks, particularly from hostile neighbouring states like China and Pakistan. Cyberattacks could potentially damage or cripple critical weapons platforms, major communications and ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) systems, and vital infrastructure, undermining the military’s preparedness and war-fighting capabilities. How prepared is the Indian military to neutralise cyberattacks from adversaries such as China and Pakistan? This is the central question that this article attempts to address. The article contends that the delayed development of technical, policy, and organisational measures in the cyber domain indicates vulnerabilities in the Indian military’s current state of cyber preparedness, leaving room for enemy cyberattacks. It emphasises the need for immediate actions to address the critical gaps in India’s cybersecurity strategy. In particular, the Indian military must focus on drastically strengthening its defensive cyber capabilities to neutralise potential enemy cyberattacks on weapons platforms, communication and ISR systems, and critical infrastructure. The article concludes that without enhanced defensive cyber capabilities, India’s military modernisation may fall short of responding adequately to technology-driven warfare threats from the hostile states in the neighbourhood.

Aircraft Recognition in Remote Sensing Images Based on Artificial Neural Networks

Computer Vision (CV) is a field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) that enables computers and systems to obtain data from images, recordings and other visual information sources. Image Recognition, a subcategory of Computer Vision, addresses a bunch of strategies for perceiving and taking apart pictures to engage the automation of a specific task. It is fit for perceiving places, people, objects and various types of parts inside an image, and reaching deductions from them by analyzing them. With these kinds of utilities it is a no-brainer that Computer Vision has its use cases in the military world. Computer Vision can be immensely useful for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) work. This paper provides on how Computer Vision might be used in ISR work. This paper utilises Artificial Neural Network (ANN) such as Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) and Residual Neural Network (ResNet) for demonstration purposes. In the end, the ResNet model managed to edge out the CNN model with a final validation accuracy of 90.9% compared to a validation accuracy of 86% on the CNN model. With this, Computer Vision can help enhance the efficiency of human operators in image and video data related work.

확장현실(XR) 및 디지털 트윈(Digital Twin)을 활용한 한국형 3축체계 정보감시정찰(ISR) 능력 향상방안

확장현실(XR) 및 디지털 트윈(Digital Twin)을 활용한 한국형 3축체계 정보감시정찰(ISR) 능력 향상방안

Heuristics for Multi-Vehicle Routing Problem Considering Human-Robot Interactions

Autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) are being used extensively in civilian and military applications for applications such as underground mining, nuclear plant operations, planetary exploration, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) missions and manned-unmanned teaming. We consider a multi-objective, multiple-vehicle routing problem in which teams of manned ground vehicles (MGVs) and AMRs are deployed respectively in a leader-follower framework to execute missions with differing requirements for MGVs and AMRs while considering human-robot interactions (HRI). HRI studies highlight the costs of managing a team of follower AMRs by a leader MGV. This paper aims to compute feasible visit sequences, replenishments, team compositions and number of MGV-AMR teams deployed such that the requirements for MGVs and AMRs for the missions are met and the routing, replenishment, HRI and team deployment costs are at minimum. The problem is first modeled as a a mixed-integer linear program (MILP) that can be solved to optimality by off-the-shelf commercial solvers for small-sized instances. For larger instances, a variable neighborhood search algorithm is offered to compute near optimal solutions and address the challenges that arise when solving the combinatorial multi-objective routing optimization problem. Finally, computational experiments that corroborate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms are presented.

Deterrence under Surveillance: Indian Space-based ISR Capabilities and Pakistan’s Nuclear Deterrence

India is rapidly building up its space-based Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities. Although Indian military assets in space are in contention to Chinese space program, they are expected to make Pakistan apprehensive about the future of its nuclear deterrence. Pakistan acquired nuclear weapons to deter its much larger and stronger archnemesis India from violating its territorial integrity. Pakistan’s nuclear deterrence and strategy is aligned with the Perfect Deterrence Theory, a diversion from Classical Deterrence Theory used in the understanding of deterrence relationship between the USA and USSR during the Cold War. The study addresses the impact of India’s space-based ISR capabilities on Pakistan nuclear deterrence and posture. The growth of Indian military space program along with its great interest and investment in supersonic cruise missiles and ballistic missile defense program indicates that India is building up its First Strike potential against Pakistan’s strategic assets and installations. The developments will have a tremendous impact on deterrence stability in South Asia as it will increase the likelihood of a nuclear escalation in future.

Teammates Instead of Tools: The Impacts of Level of Autonomy on Mission Performance and Human-Agent Teaming Dynamics in Multi-Agent Distributed Teams.

Human–agent teaming (HAT) is becoming more commonplace across industry, military, and consumer settings. Agents are becoming more advanced, more integrated, and more responsible for tasks previously assigned to humans. In addition, the dyadic human–agent teaming nature is evolving from a one–one pair to one–many, in which the human is working with numerous agents to accomplish a task. As capabilities become more advanced and humanlike, the best method for humans and agents to effectively coordinate is still unknown. Therefore, current research must start diverting focus from how many agents can a human manage to how can agents and humans work together effectively. Levels of autonomy (LOAs), or varying levels of responsibility given to the agents, implemented specifically in the decision-making process could potentially address some of the issues related to workload, stress, performance, and trust. This study sought to explore the effects of different LOAs on human–machine team coordination, performance, trust, and decision making in hand with assessments of operator workload and stress in a simulated multi-unmanned aircraft vehicle (UAV) intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) task. The results of the study can be used to identify human factor roadblocks to effective HAT and provide guidance for future designs of HAT. Additionally, the unique impacts of LOA and autonomous decision making by agents on trust are explored.

Impact of India’s ISR Capabilities on South Asian Security Dynamics

Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities have grown exponentially over the past two decades. Almost all major powers are building their ISR potential for commercial and military purposes which has provided incentive for the other emerging powers such as India to follow suit and develop its own cross-domain ISR network. This is likely to adversely impact South Asian security environment where India and Pakistan, the two nuclear armed states, remain embroiled in a military competition and have experienced several serious military crises over the past many years. Acquisition of new ISR technologies could also provide incentive to India to exploit its apparent conventional military advantage against Pakistan and venture into a limited armed conflict in pursuit of its political objectives under a nuclear overhang. Owing to a long history of distrust such an attempt could quickly escalate conflict with the possibility of an all-out war including the potential for a nuclear exchange. This paper aims to discuss India’s ambitious plan to upgrade its ISR capabilities in all the four domains of warfare, i.e. space, land, sea and air; the evolving India-US cooperation in sharing of data and its implications for Pakistan.

Ground Moving Target Imaging via SDAP-ISAR Processing: Review and New Trends.

Ground moving target imaging finds its main applications in both military and homeland security applications, with examples in operations of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) as well as border surveillance. When such an operation is performed from the air looking down towards the ground, the clutter return may be comparable or even stronger than the target’s, making the latter hard to be detected and imaged. In order to solve this problem, multichannel radar systems are used that are able to remove the ground clutter and effectively detect and image moving targets. In this feature paper, the latest findings in the area of Ground Moving Target Imaging are revisited that see the joint application of Space-Time Adaptive Processing and Inverse Synthetic Aperture Radar Imaging. The theoretical aspects analysed in this paper are supported by practical evidence and followed by application-oriented discussions.

Assembling Israeli drone warfare: Loitering surveillance and operational sustainability

This article examines how unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones as they are more popularly known, have changed practices of Israeli warfare. In order to do so, the article proceeds in three steps. First, it traces the emergence and development of the Israeli UAV programme. Second, it examines the main factors that have enabled its expansion. Third, it turns to some of the main implications of UAVs for the way in which the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) wages war. The article argues that the combined tactical use of UAVs employed for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) tasks has amounted to a strategic effect: by dramatically enhancing the field of perception, UAVs have enabled the IDF to better control the battle rhythm. UAVs in the Israeli context have enhanced the IDF’s operational sustainability, since one’s own casualties have been virtually eliminated and civilian casualties have been stretched out over, rather than concentrated in, time. Throughout the article, the changing character of the UAV is emphasized. To capture this change and to unravel the interactions among technology, warfare and broader societal forces, the article draws on actor-network theory.

Fish-like shaped robot for underwater surveillance and reconnaissance – Hull design and study of drag and noise

Undulating propulsion is promising solution for underwater vehicles used in subsea security systems, especially due to its low noise, better energetic efficiency, low water turbulence and living animals mimicry. The design of the biomimetic autonomous underwater vehicle (BAUV) for intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), built in the SABUVIS project, is presented in the paper. The shape of the vehicle hull was inspired by living fish. Key aspects of the design and construction of BAUV needed to achieve tasks required to be performed by the robot are described. Two research questions are stated in the paper: how big drag forces act on a biomimetic underwater vehicle and how mechanical design influences the noise level generated by the vehicle. To answer these questions vehicle forward velocity, hull drag, added mass and generated noise were investigated. Forces acting on the BAUV hull while being pulled forward and sideways were measured. Noise generated by the vehicle was also measured for two types of propulsors’ drives in order to select those with the lower sound pressure level. Quantitative results of drag and noise obtained in the research are important for designers of mechanical structures of useful, full scale biomimetic underwater robots and their control subsystems.

XUAVs: Towards Efficient Approximate Computing for UAVs—Low Power Approximate Adders With Single LUT Delay for FPGA-Based Aerial Imaging Optimization

High Definition (HD) image processing and real-time analytics over live video feeds have always been the key requirements for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) applications. With the evolution of optics and image enhancement techniques, computational loads of HD ISR systems are also rising exponentially. On the contrary, the slow-down of Moore's Law has recently posed challenging bounds over the level of achievable miniaturization for emerging processing and storage units. Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) offer a popular choice of implementing ISR algorithms over resource-constrained platforms, such as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), due to favorable features of reconfigurability and rapid prototyping. A promising solution to bridge the gap between resource-constrained host platforms and computation-intensive FPGA applications is the paradigm of Approximate Computing. It compromises on the accuracy of processed results to offer significant performance gains for error-tolerant applications, such as video and image processing. In this paper, we present a novel approximate adder design methodology, for FPGA-based systems with improved SWaP performance, besides preserving the accuracy requirements within acceptable thresholds. The design methodology proposed in this paper focuses on the FPGA-specific Look-Up Table (LUT) architecture to introduce approximations while splitting the carry chain into LUT-based sub-adders, with flexible overlap to tune the adder's accuracy and achieve the overall latency of a single LUT. The paper presents several variants of the proposed design and offers application-oriented flexibility to adjust for optimal SWaP vs accuracy trade-off. We have further devised a comprehensive assessment approach to verify functional viability of the proposed atomic arithmetic blocks at system level, through their implementation into dense computational imaging applications, such as 2-dimensional Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT), airborne self-localization and moving object tracking algorithms, in comparison with other state-of-the-art adders. Our most accurate design performs at least 9.9% better in power consumption when compared with existing approximate adders, which proves that the proposed methodology holds promising potential to improve SWaP-index for computation-intensive UAV applications.

Vision-Based Target Tracking for Unmanned Surface Vehicle Considering Its Motion Features

Target tracking is a key task for maintenance of maritime rights and interests in the coastal countries, which mainly depends on the cruises of large official ships, and their deficiencies are high cost and less stealth. USVs (Unmanned Surface Vehicles) have been gradually employed in maritime ISR(Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance) due to autonomy, safety and flexibility. In this paper, a target tracking algorithm for USV's vision is proposed, which considers motion features of the USV, such as velocity, pitch and heading. Firstly, a CM(Centroid Matching) method for the target detection is proposed based on FT(Frequency-Tuned) saliency method, which can remove environment disturbances. Secondly, a fDSST(fast Discriminative Scale Space Tracker) is improved for target tracking by considering motion information of the USV from aboard GPS and IMU(Inertial Measurement Unit), where the learning rates of the correlation filters are adjusted adaptively according to variety of the velocity, pitch and heading of the USV. Lastly, the modified target detection and tracking are integrated to acquire a robust tracking result. Based on our USV called as `Jiuhang 490', sea tracking trials for rubber boat in four encountering scenes are executed at Nanjiang port in Qingdao city, China in July 2018. The favorable performance of the proposed algorithm is quantitatively validated comparing to the original fDSST algorithm in the accuracy of position, scale of the target and the tracking speed.

Remotely Monitoring Driver Activity using Distributed Ground Sensors

An autonomous ground Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) sys- tem comprising of multiple distributed, wirelessly communicating smart sensors. Hence remotely monitor the driver’s activity a portable is fixed in the vehicle and a finger print sensor is used as a key .Fingerprint is given and it get activated then also the ground sensors (acoustic, magnetic, accelerometer) get activated. If any circumstance situations happen like theft (or) enemies attacked the sensors get activated and the signals and information gets central office. It is used to detect metals and gives alert messages during critical level these alert messages and tracking is done through ubidots app, it is license free app used for this project.

Review of Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS)

Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) is an emerging technology with a tremendous potential to revolutionize warfare and to enable new civilian applications. It is integral part of future urban civil and military applications. It technologically matures enough to be integrated into civil society. The importance of UAS in scientific applications has been thoroughly demonstrated in recent years (DoD, 2010). Whatever missions are chosen for the UAS, their number and use will significantly increase in the future. UAS today play an increasing role in many public missions such as border surveillance, wildlife surveys, military training, weather monitoring, and local law enforcement. Challenges such as the lack of an on-board pilot to see and avoid other aircraft and the wide variation in unmanned aircraft missions and capabilities must be addressed in order to fully integrate UAS operations in the NAS in the Next Gen time frame. UAVs are better suited for dull, dirty, or dangerous missions than manned aircraft. UAS are mainly used for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), border security, counter insurgency, attack and strike, target identification and designation, communications relay, electronic attack, law enforcement and security applications, environmental monitoring and agriculture, remote sensing, aerial mapping and meteorology. Although armed forces around the world continue to strongly invest in researching and developing technologies with the potential to advance the capabilities of UAS.

Static and dynamic characterization of a flexible scaledjoined-wing flight test demonstrator

High Altitude and Long Endurance (HALE) aircraft are capable of providing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities over vast geographic areas when equipped with advanced sensor packages. As their use becomes more widespread, the demand for additional range, endurance and payload capability will increase and designers are exploring non-conventional configurations to meet the increasing demands. One such configuration is the joined-wing concept. A joined-wing aircraft is one that typically connects a front and aft wings in a diamond shaped planform. One such example is the Boeing SensorCraft configuration. While the joined-wing configuration offers potential benefits regarding aerodynamic efficiency, structural weight, and sensing capabilities, structural design requires careful consideration of elastic buckling resulting from the aft wing supporting, in compression, part of the forward wing structural loading. It has been shown already that this is a nonlinear phenomenon, involving geometric nonlinearities and follower forces that tend to flatten the entire configuration, leading to structural overload due to the loss of the aft wing\'s ability to support the forward wing load. Severe gusts are likely to be the critical design condition, with flight control system interaction in the form of Gust Load Alleviation (GLA) playing a key role in minimizing the structural loads. The University of Victoria Center for Aerospace Research (UVic-CfAR) has built a 3-meter span scaled and flexible wing UAV based on the Boeing SensorCraft design. The goal is to validate the nonlinear structural behavior in flight. The main objective of this research work is to perform Ground Vibration Tests (GVT) to characterize the dynamic properties of the scaled flight vehicle. Results from the experimental tests are used to characterize the modal dynamics of the aircraft, and to validate the numerical models. The GVT results are an important step towards a safe flight test program.

An Algorithm for Mining Simultaneous Appearance Patterns of Military Reconnaissance Targets

The simultaneous appearance patterns of reconnaissance targets (for short ‘SAPoRT’ latter) which are hided in large history data of the existing military intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) system have significant merits on such situations as difficultly target identifying and joint reconnaissance warning. A new algorithm named FTAP-mine for mining SAPoRT was proposed in this paper, which is based on a novel data structure named FTAP-tree and a scheme of conditional search. The FTAP-tree can efficiently store large number of original target information to benefit the following mining process. The method of conditional search can efficiently narrow search space and improve efficiency of the presented algorithm. FTAP-mine employed the idea of pattern growth to recursively fetch frequent prefix patterns from the conditional pattern bases directly, and jointed the suffix to make a pattern growing. Simulation results show that FTAP-mine can efficiently discover frequent SAPoRT in reconnaissance data set and decrease its time complexity and space complexity simultaneously.

The Challenges of Digitisation and Data Analysis in the Maritime Domain

ABSTRACTThe volume of collected and synthesised data available to governmental leaders assessing the maritime domain has increased rapidly over recent years. Analogue data has given way to digital data, which provides an opportunity for better storage, analysis and transfer. Data infusion and management has become the key constraint in respect of data collection. Using data to make decisions requires the appropriate tools and processes to assess and transfer data to near real-time user domains. In the maritime environment, there is a constantly growing demand for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) data for both national security and commercial purposes, including data sharing among partner nations. However, an increase in available data does not automatically equate to an increase in decision-ready information. Rather, the increase in data can overwhelm sensors, databases and analysts. The concept and use of “big data” exacerbate the already overwhelming flow of data in terms of the volume, variety, and velocity of the data being received. This paper will explore the digitisation of the maritime domain, and the prospect of performing data analysis in a world of rapidly growing data.Abbreviations: BAMS: Broad area maritime surveillance; DAMA-DMBOK: Data Management Association Guide to the Data Management Body of Knowledge; ECDIS: Electronic chart display and information system; EDM: Enterprise data management; ELT: Extract, load, transform; ETL: Extract, transform, load; ISR: Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; MDA: Maritime domain awareness; PWC: PriceWaterhouseCoopers; ROI: Return on investment; SDLC: Systems development life cycle; TCPED: Tasking, collection, processing, exploitation and dissemination; WGS: Wideband global satellite