Arthur Ollett, Scott Robertson, David Baker, Fredric Lafon, Ben Giesbertz, Michael Liu, Nihal Fernando, and Alex Parkinson*
Deployed land operations across force, formation, and unit node levels typically require information systems that support multiple security domains. Each domain requires its own servers, switching, cabling, and user terminals. This infrastructure limits mobility and places significant demands on transportation, set-up time, engineering support, and field power generation systems. Thales has successfully deployed the Cross Domain Solution (CDS), from Raytheon’s Trusted Computer Solutions, aboard Royal Australian Navy (RAN) platforms and we are currently developing it for the strategic environment under the Chief Information Officer Group’s (CIOG) Next Generation Desktop (NGD) program. The CDS enables user terminals to access multiple security domains across a single distribution network, improving user efficiency and significantly reducing the infrastructure footprint. This paper introduces CDS, explains how it works and provides supporting analysis of the logistical and other benefits from adopting a CDS—compared to existing deployed LAN architectures. It also describes how CDS can be used to provide efficient access for users within the constraints of vehicle mounted C4I solutions. The reduced footprint has many benefits. These include lower overall power consumption—which in turn equates to lower generator loads and fuel consumption, reduced time to deploy with fewer devices and less cable roll out and simplified introduction of new network services to deployed users as deployment scale changes. The key benefit for Defence is that a CDS will enable essential multi-domain information systems to be deployed in the land environment in a manageable, efficient, and effective way.
Domenico Donisi, Marco Bonamente, Andrea Capitanelli, Jakub Radziulis, Rafał Dąbrowski, Witold Hołubowicz, Gyula Simon, Leonidas Perlepes, Georgios Mylonas, Ioannis Chatzigiannakis, Frank Benders, and Peter Beerens
Recent military operations in urban environments are changing the requirements imposed on sensing technologies. The final goal remains threat mapping within the area of operation, but the environmental constraints and the intrinsic nature of urban threats are radically novel. AUDIS (Acoustic Urban Threat Detector for Improved Surveillance Capabilities) consists of a novel cognitive sensor that offers flexibility and adaptivity to the encountered scenarios, while also ensuring an improvement in recognition and characterization of such ground threats. AUDIS specifically aims to increase the state-of-the-art capabilities in threat detection, localization, classification and identification, supporting urban situational awareness. To achieve this goal, the novelty also resides in the sensor concept and proposed logical architecture. AUDIS exploits the conceived sparse/arrayed antenna configuration by means of an innovative ensemble of digital processing stages that support a learning-based, fully adaptive approach to urban threat recognition and characterization. The “knowledge” on the scenario and the expected/actual threats will be collected, stored and managed, exploited and grown by AUDIS to form the “base” on which the expected capability improvements can be found.
Jean-François Gravel* and Jean Fortin*
This paper introduces the electro-optic (EO) multifunction sensor concept for military applications and describes why it would be advantageous to merge several EO functionalities, possibly not as performance-oriented as single task sensors, into a unique system to create performance synergies by acting together. The paper conveys the concept of several known capabilities merged into a single-aperture sensor to enhance threat detection (TD), situational awareness (SA), and targeting capabilities. Sensors with tremendous sensitivity and dynamic range are currently available, and when coupled with properly engineered optics and processing techniques, additional synergies can be developed in order to provide a key technological advantage when exploited in a military context. In this paper, the drivers, basic concepts, and challenges are introduced to grasp the essence of EO multifunction sensors. The research fields that may present breakthroughs are presented in conjunction with examples. Finally, current work from the industry and government agencies is briefly discussed.
Rowland E. Dickinson*
Studies have been made as to how to influence people during a conflict as well as trying to identify the shift in popular opinion with time. Using research in emotional contagion, this paper shows how allegiances in a population can be predicted over time including the changes of allegiances in response to different stimuli. For phenomena that involve a spreading process in which both the contact process and the change of state equations are extant and can be expressed mathematically the equations for the probability of occurrence of each of the possible states are presented. These equations demonstrate the occurrence of terminal states and how phenomena take off or die out unexpectedly. This approach is distinct from current processes in fields such as epidemiology which focus on the expected (average) behaviour with which to make predictions of the emergent behaviour but do not account for unexpected behaviours of relevant phenomena or predict the evolution of each of the possible population states. We apply this to a situation of two hostile forces competing for the sympathies of a local population, considering an evolving stratagem of one side as the factors affecting the outcome of a meeting of two individuals are altered.
D. Vijay Rao* and Pramod K. Mehra**
Combat potential evaluation and the relative effectiveness of military force against an adversary have been the focus of studies by analysts and defence planners for net assessment, military balance and formulating appropriate policies for acquisition. As the number and nature of variables and factors involved in the decision making process combine tangible and intangible measures and the criteria for defining success is predominantly scenario dependent, such analysis typically is classified under multi-criteria decision making methods. Existing methods of evaluations are classified as static or dynamic depending upon the approach taken by the analyst. Static approaches evaluate pre-combat force capability by simple arrays of numerical force elements at a given time or by index number aggregation of diverse force elements. Dynamic approaches employ a combat analysis model and input a value to each weapon system based upon its casualty producing / damage causing capability relative to that of other weapon systems, in a particular combat environment. In this paper, we propose a Multi-Attribute Utility Theory approach where the weights are given by Analytic Hierarchy Process method to evaluate the weapon system’s static combat potential and use a wargaming simulator to evaluate the dynamic combat potential. These values obtained for the army, navy and air force resources are then combined to obtain the joint force potentials for a given combat scenario.
Mike Ryan, University of New South Wales, Canberra
Marcus Thompson, University of New South Wales in Canberra
