2008 Defense Science Board Report on Integrating Sensor-Collected Intelligence

Defense Science Board, Military

There are five bottom-lines on remote sensors, this report addresses four of them:

1.  Managing sensors together adds value that cannot be achieved from advances in technology.

2.  Meta-tagging the data at source (something we recommended in 1988) enables a huge jump in both sensor processing and inter-sensor sense-making.

3.  All satellites are vulnerable to laser attacks generally, Chinese attacks specifically.

4.  Close-in matters more as hard targets get harder, deepeer, and more nuanced.

The report does not appear to address the complete lack of “full spectrum” processing.  We excel at “one of” multi-media integration efforts, we still cannot integrate all information in all mediums all the time, and especially not in near-real-time.

Sensor Data Integration
Sensor Data Integration

2004 Defense Science Board Report on Strategic Communication

Defense Science Board
DoD to World
DoD to World

Strategic Communications became the buzzword of the decade, along with Information Operations (IO), and it is still sorting itself out.  We have a problem: you cannot manipulate perceptions much out of whack with reality–reality has a way of being pervasive, intrusive, compelling, and inevitable.  Still, this report was very important in part because it demonstrated how very little we know about the human beings and the societies we are trying to influence.  There are other contradictions, one of them humourously depicted to the left here, from our Strategic Communicators in SWA.

DoD to World
DoD to World