More Spy Drones, Less Information?

More Spy Drones, Less Information?

More Spy Drones, Less Information?


Defense Secretary Robert Gates has ordered the military to pour everything it's got into spy drones, to go hunt for foes in Iraq and Afghanistan. "But more eyes in the sky may not necessarily translate into better information on the ground, military officials and scientists tell *National Defense *magazine.

The problem is that no matter how many more dozens or hundreds of manned and unmanned aircraft hover over war zones, the data that they provide have limited value because they cannot be shared across the force. Another impediment is that the massive amounts of data being collected cannot be analyzed quickly enough to be useful.

Incompatibility between Air Force and Army databases often hinders the flow of information in Iraq and Afghanistan, officials said. Streaming video from the Air Force’s unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, is not always available to Army units in real time, nor is the Army’s UAV data automatically made available to Air Force commanders...

All services are to blame for this, said Brig. Gen. Stephen Mundt. Each service builds its own UAVs and sensors, all from different vendors. “You end up with stovepipe information channels,” which means the data have to be sorted out and disseminated, thus causing further delays.

It's one of the many, many reasons why there's been a 300% annual increase in requests for the drones' video. In response, Gates has called for more UAVs to be put into the skies above Iraq and Afghanistan. Recently, he ordered the Air Force to push nearly all of its drones into action. Pilots were pulled out of standard planes, and put into the Predators' remote cockpits, outside of Las Vegas. The Air Force, in response, complained that all those extra flight hours were turning the UAVs' remote pilots into virtual "prisoners." Gates then publicly chastised the service during the drone build-up, comparing it to "pulling teeth." * *

But even if the Air Force suddenly started being more cooperative, National Defense argues, "the military’s ability to gather useful intelligence from ISR [intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance] systems also faces a major obstacle: a data glut."

Analysts are not currently equipped to cope with gobs of data and parse them in real time. This problem only will worsen as more surveillance aircraft are deployed... said Roy F. Schwitters, a professor of physics at the University of Texas at Austin and chairman of the JASON Defense Advisory Group...

*The complications caused by a data glut are especially acute in Iraq as a result of efforts to detect roadside bombs and insurgents who plant them — all of which requires vast amounts of streaming video and high-resolution imagery. *

A single aerial reconnaissance system may use 100-megapixel cameras operating several frames a second, said Schwitters. Those sensors alone can generate 10 to 100 terabytes of data, he noted. “These systems generate tens to hundreds of terabytes in a day of observation....”

Schwitters said the situation is reminiscent of the “hilarious TV episode of ‘I Love Lucy’ where Lucy and Ethel are at the chocolate factory and the chocolate just gets out of control, and you never get back in gear.”

*[Photo: Defense Department] *