Vol. 4 Issue 6 NOV – dec 2014

RNI NO. UPENG/2011/37063 `100 US$ 10ISSN 2277 – 3126

EMERGINGTECHNOLOGIES

THE GXP ENTERPRISE SOLUTION. MAXIMIZE YOUR PRODUCTIVITY – FROM DISCOVERY, TO EXPLOITATION,TO PRODUCT GENERATION.

Streamline your intelligence planning from beginning to end with unparalleled search functionality, exploitation capabilities, and product creation for the GEOINT community. Discover your data and reference materials with GXP Xplorer®. Search multiple data stores across the enterprise with a single query to locate imagery, terrain, text documents, and video. View data in any format in a Web browser with GXP WebView. Exploit data with SOCET GXP® to create geospatial intelligence products for planning, analysis, and publication using advanced feature extraction tools, annotations, and 3-D visualization. Deliver actionable intelligence when it counts with the GXP enterprise solution.

www.baesystems.com/gxp

Imagery courtesyof DigitalGlobe

CLIENT BAE Systems GXP BLEED .2" / 8.4" x 11.4"

DESCRIPTION 2013 GXP Enterprise Solution TRIM Full page / 8"x11"

PUBLICATION SAFETY

DATE May 2014 FORMAT PDF/X1a

CONTACT Brittany Tomlinson, brittany.tomlinson@baesystems.com COLOR CMYK

ART DIRECTOR Justin Panlasigui, (858) 675-2935, justin.panlasigui@baesystems.com

Leveraging Lasers in Counter StealthLt Gen VK Saxena, DG & Sr Col Comdt, Army AD

As a counter stealth mechanism, LiDAR has rapidly emerged as a viable means to defeat the contemporary stealth technologies.

Pg 35

INTERVIEW

David J Alexander, Director, Geospatial Management Office, Office of the Chief InformationOfficer, US Department of Homeland Security.

Pg 38

Chairman MP Narayanan

Publisher Sanjay Kumar

Managing Editor Lt Gen (Dr) AKS Chandele (Retd)

Executive Editor Bhanu Rekha

Product Manager Harsha Vardhan Madiraju

Sub Editor Sanskriti Shukla

Senior Designer Debjyoti Mukherjee

Circulation Manager Ashish Batra

Circulation Executive Vijay Kumar Singh

Owner, Publisher & Printer Sanjay Kumar

Printed at HT Media Limited, B-2, Sector-63,

Noida (U.P.) 201307

Publication Address A - 92, Sector - 52,

Gautam Budh Nagar, Noida, India

Editor Sanjay Kumar

Price `100, US$ 10

Geospatial Media and Communications Pvt. Ltd.

A - 145, Sector - 63, Noida, India

Tel + 91 120 4612500 Fax + 91 120 4612555/666

Geospatial Media and Communications Pvt.

Ltd. does not necessarily subscribe to the views

expressed in the publication. All views expressed

in this issue are those of the contributors. The

publication is not responsible for any loss to anyone

due to the information provided.

EMERGING TECHNOLOGIESIn

side

REGULAR SECTIONSEditorial........................................05

News..............................................06

Events............................................41

Image Intelligence .....................42

Theme

GUEST ARTICLES

Cloud for GIS SystemsLt Gen AKS Chandele, PVSM, AVSM (Retd) Managing Editor

GIS Cloud is seen as a perfect tool to upgrade conventional GIS applications and provide a broad spectrum of services to users across the globe.

Pg 17

Warship Sensors as Elements of Geo IntelligenceRear Admiral Dr S Kulshrestha, (Retd)Senior Fellow New Westminster College, Canada

The evolution of network-centric warfare, which enables enhanced situational awareness, rapid target assessment, and distributed weapon assignment, is dependent upon the geospatial information collated from warship sensors.

Pg 25

UAVs: Flying into the FutureLt Gen PC Katoch, PVSM, UYSM, AVSM

Successful use of UAVs and their invaluable contribution to battlefield surveillance have made them an important part of military services. Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles (UCAVs) are rapidly becoming the weapon of choice for military forces, thereby revolutionising the face of warfare.

Pg 30

3 |

GE

OIN

TE

LL

IGE

NC

E N

OV

EM

BE

R -

DE

CE

MB

ER

20

14

Other Exciting Offers No. of Issues You Pay

2 Years 12 1200

3 Years 18 1800

5 Years 30 3000

600*FOR 1 Year

Subscribe Online at www.geospatialworld.net

Great Subscription

Offer

subscription@geointworld.netto continue receiving

the magazines regularly

Want to update your

communication details? Reach us at

subscription ad.indd 3 16-09-2014 16:07:44

Technological superiority will be the decisive battle winning factor in future warfare. It is, therefore, imperative to build indigenous technology capabilities relevant to the needs of our armed forces, both for conventional and sub conventional conflict. Experience has shown beyond doubt that availability of desired defence technologies

from other countries cannot be relied upon. Even friendly nations would be reluctant to part with the latest emerging and critical defence technologies. These would necessarily have to be developed through indigenous Research & Development(R&D).

Investment in defence R&D by Indian industry is very low. That there are very few defence related patents filed in India is an obvious manifestation of this malaise. Our Defence Research and Development Organisation(DRDO) established over five decades ago, with more than 50 labs catering to various defence related technologies, has virtual monopoly in the field of defence R&D. However, it has very few successes to show for its relatively high level of staffing and funding, with most projects having huge cost and time overruns. India’s space, missile and nuclear scientists have no doubt demonstrated their capability to innovate and indigenise in the face of technology control regimes, but this unfortunately does not apply to most other critical defence technologies.

India’s ordnance factories and defence public sector undertakings have so far been satisfied with manufacturing under licence, weapons and equipment of foreign origin, without the transfer of critical technologies. With the recent emphasis on indigenisation and the ‘Make in India’ initiative, Indian defence industry is being encouraged to partner with foreign design and manufacturing organisations and obtain transfer of critical technologies. The liberalisation of FDI limit in defence sector to 49% is another step in this direction. DRDO, which has the responsibility of defence technology forecasting, has issued a list of the critical technologies it requires and an elaborate offset policy has been promulgated to ensure this. A Technology Perspective and Capability Roadmap (TPCR) has been issued by the Ministry of Defence, based on our Long Term Integrated Perspective Plan (LTIPP), with a view to channelising indigenous R&D in defence technologies, both in the public and private sector, with the active participation of academia.

Emerging technologies are bound to revolutionise warfare in the years ahead. Nations that can create sustainable eco systems for nurturing indigenous emerging defence technologies, synergising the same with innovative operational doctrines, ensuring organisational adoption and raising the technical threshold of users, will achieve much higher levels of relative military effectiveness. For a country like India to be able to exercise its own independent foreign policy in the interest of its national security, it should achieve self reliance in critical defence technologies, enabling it to pursue an independent military strategy while providing the nation with vital techno-economic strength. Self reliance in emerging defence technologies should be a ‘National Mission’.

Edit

oria

l Need to ensure self reliance in emerging defence technologies

Lt Gen (Dr) AKS Chandele PVSM, AVSM (Retd) Managing Editor

ajay@geospatialmedia.net

5 |

GE

OIN

TE

LL

IGE

NC

E N

OV

EM

BE

R -

DE

CE

MB

ER

20

14

NEWS6

| GE

OIN

TE

LL

IGE

NC

E N

OV

EM

BE

R -

DE

CE

MB

ER

20

14

DNI Unveils the 2014 National Intelligence StrategyJames R Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, US, has unveiled the 2014 National Intelligence Strategy — the blueprint that will drive the priorities for the nation’s 17 Intelligence Communi-ty components over the next four years. The National Intelligence Strategy (NIS) is one of the most important documents for the Intelligence Community (IC) as it sets forth the strategic environment, sets priorities and objectives, and focuses re-sources on current and future budgets, ac-quisitions and operations decisions. Most importantly, the strategy builds on the success achieved with integrating intelli-gence since the previous NIS, as demon-strated by both high-profile operational achievements and significant enterprise improvements.

The National Intelligence Strategy lays out the strategic environment and identi-fies pervasive and emerging threats. While key nation states such as China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran will continue to challenge US interests, global power is also becoming more diffused. New align-ments and informal networks, outside of traditional power blocs and national gov-ernments, will increasingly have signifi-cant impact on global affairs.

Northrop Grumman to Supply AHRS System for Airbus CoptersNorthrop Grumman Corporation has been selected by Airbus Helicopters to certify

and deliver its new LCR-350 Attitude and Heading Reference System (AHRS) for several helicopter platforms. The LCR-350 AHRS can be used in military applications on rotary and fixed-wing platforms, pro-viding critical flight control data regard-ing an aircraft’s attitude and heading. The LCR-350 will be certified for various Airbus Helicopters platforms. Production of the LCR-350 is expected to begin in 2016.

According to a company spokesperson, LCR-350 AHRS features a high-perfor-mance, micro-electro-mechanical system inertial measurement unit and is based on the standard LCR-300 AHRS. Additionally, the system enables directional gyro mode operation, which minimises magnetic compass errors.

Rockwell Collins, Elbit Systems Unveil Digital EyePiece NVCD Rockwell Collins and Elbit Systems of America Vision Systems (RCEVS) has introduced a new enhanced night vision solution for fixed wing aircraft. The Digital Eye Piece (DEP) Night Vision Cueing Display (NVCD) is fully qualified and available to fit all fielded Joint Hel-met-Mounted Cueing System (JHMCS) helmet mounted displays. The new solu-tion allows pilots to fly and train at night just as they do with the JHMCS in the day.

The easily integrated capability combines the near zero latency tracking of JHMCS with a modern digital eye piece for a sim-ple, but very effective plug in design.

Wearable Computers for Battlefield IntelligenceRaytheon Company unveiled its wearable computing Intel-Ops solution at the AUSA 2014 Exposition. The new technology merges with wearable computer system with situational awareness capabilities to create an enhanced real-time view of the battlefield for commanders and their troops. The new intelligence and operations convergence solution provides a near-term, affordable way for warfighters to overcome challenges in delivery of relevant intelli-gence and operational information at the battlefield’s tactical edge by integrating existing Programmes of Record.

According to a company spokesper-son, Raytheon’s innovative solution lev-erages investments already made in its deployed Air Warrior wearable comput-ing technologies and couples that with the DCGS-A Lite capability that enables troops to receive intelligence and gener-ate new intelligence as they perform mis-sions in bandwidth-challenged areas. The combination offers customers cost and time efficiencies as they address their In-tel-Ops convergence requirements.

NGA Publishes Gamification Software to GitHubThe National Geospatial-Intelligence Agen-cy (NGA) unveiled gamification software code earlier this month on its organisational account on GitHub, an open-source, collab-orative software development environment. The software gives awards or badges to users and operates as a standalone application or can be integrated with other Web-based ap-plications to increase learning, processing and output.

Airbus Helicopter

Cre

dit:

Nor

thro

p G

rum

man

7 |

GE

OIN

TE

LL

IGE

NC

E N

OV

EM

BE

R -

DE

CE

MB

ER

20

14

NEWSAccording to Ray Bauer, an NGA informa-tion technology innovation lead, NGA’s gamification software also provides a cus-tomisable Web interface for displaying badges and a configurable rules engine that translates actions performed by users into awards. NGA launched its GitHub account in April 2014 and has released eight open source software packages on the platform, including GeoQ, an open-source geographic tasking system that allows teams to collect geographic structured observations across a large area, but manage the work in smaller geographic regions.

iRobot Develops Universal Control SystemiRobot has developed a new universal con-trol system for its unmanned vehicles, which are used by armed forces, first responders and industrial customers worldwide. Made up of an android-based controller and the uPoint Robot Radio, the uPoint multi-robot control (MRC) system is designed to simpli-fy robot operations, including driving, ma-nipulation and inspection, enabling opera-tors to focus more on the mission.

Compatible with a range of consumer Android-based touchscreen tablets, the system features a virtual joystick, which al-lows users to touch and drag anywhere on the main video feed to steer the robot, and predictive drive lines to guide operators through tight spots. Integrated with autono-mous driving modes, including vector drive to hold a desired heading, and video record-ing capability, the system simplifies manip-ulation with direct control of the arm on a virtual model, and allows for data sharing from the operator’s controller to other team members or remote observers.

The system is capable of consulting reference materials, checking email and using other non-robot related mission apps from the Android device, and has enhanced sustainment due to remote

Lockheed Martin Unveils First Geostationary Lightning Mapper InstrumentLockheed Martin has delivered the first Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) instrument that will provide early alerts of developing severe storms and contribute to more accurate tornado warnings. The sensor will fly on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) next-generation Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) missions, known as the GOES-R Series. The team is preparing integration with the first GOES-R spacecraft as the satellite is expected to be launched in early 2016.

According to a company spokesperson, GLM pro-vides a new capability to track lightning flashes from geostationary orbit, with continuous coverage of the United States and most of the Western Hemisphere. The heart of the GLM in-strument is a high-speed (500 frames per second), 1.8 megapixel focal plane, integrated with low-noise electronics and specialised optics to detect weak lightning signals, even against bright, sunlit cloud backgrounds.

software updates, embedded training tutorials and built-in maintenance func-tions.

Leidos to Provide Ocean Sensors to DARPALeidos has won a prime contract by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to provide research and development along with production of an initial fixed number of new deep ocean sensors. This award, with a two-year pe-riod of performance valued at approxi-mately USD 14 million, is the fourth phase of a cost-plus-fixed-fee contract. DARPA awarded the contract under its Distribut-ed Agile Submarine Hunter (DASH) pro-

gramme to Leidos’s Maritime Operations Division for the agency’s Transformation-al Reliable Acoustic Path System (TRAPS).

Leidos will implement procedures for the manufacturing of TRAPS nodes so that the Navy can utilise these systems without modification after Phase 4 to support a broad range of acoustic surveillance mis-sions. According to a company spokes-person, TRAPS offers major benefits to the Navy’s Distributed Network System (DNS) forward deployed acoustic surveil-lance mission. TRAPS gives operational mobility through rapid deployment of a battery-operated system, which has been demonstrated through multiple sea tests in operationally-relevant areas.

Lockheed’s geostationary lightning mapper instrument

Cre

dit:

Lock

heed

Mar

tin

NEWS8

| GE

OIN

TE

LL

IGE

NC

E N

OV

EM

BE

R -

DE

CE

MB

ER

20

14

Sikorsky Introduces S-97 Raider HelicopterSikorsky Aircraft has un-veiled the first of two S-97 Raider helicopter proto-types, which are being offered for the US Army’s Armed Aerial Scout (AAS) programme, at its facility in Florida, US. According to a company spokes-person, the launch sig-nals the start of activities in the programme’s test flight phase, and marks a significant step towards demonstrating the new and first armed reconnaissance ro-torcraft featuring X2 technology, which is designed for military missions.

Based on Sikorsky’s X2 rotor coaxial design, the S-97 Raider features next-generation technologies in a multi-mission configuration, including armed aerial scout or light assault. Powered by a single engine, the helicopter features a composite airframe and a maximum gross weight of slightly more than 11,000 lbs, and can carry an array of weapons and sensors. The helicopter’s cockpit will seat two pilots, while the flexible cabin space will carry up to six combat-equipped troops, or additional fuel and ammunition for extended missions. Sikorsky’s coaxial coun-ter-rotating main rotors and pusher propeller can provide cruise speeds up to 220 knots, which is more than double the speed of legacy helicopters.

Raytheon Awarded Contract to Build New US Air Force RadarThe US Air Force has recently awarded Raytheon Company a USD 19.5 million contract for engineering and manufac-turing development of new expeditionary radar that will detect, identify and track drones, missiles and aircraft. The total con-tract, including all options, is currently es-timated at USD 71.8 million and includes the procurement of an additional three ra-dar systems, for a total of six radar systems and product support. The radar, called the Three Dimensional Expeditionary Long Range Radar, or 3DELRR, is one of the first programmes under the DoD’s Better Buy-ing Power initiative to be designed for ex-portability, enabling US forces, allies and security partners to benefit from the sys-tem. According to David Gulla, Vice Presi-dent, Global Integrated Sensors at Raythe-on Integrated Defense Systems, Raytheon’s 3DELRR system is a gallium nitride (GaN)-based radar that operates in the C-band of the radio frequency spectrum. By using GaN, Raytheon was able to affordably in-crease the radar’s range, sensitivity and search capabilities.

US DoD Signs Space Opera-tions Agreement With AlliesOfficials from the US Defense Department,

US Strategic Command and three allied nations signed a memorandum of under-standing on combined space operations to strengthen deterrence, enhance resilience and optimise resources.

Officials from DoD, STRATCOM, Australia, Canada, and the UK signed the Combined Space Operations (CSpO), In-itiative memorandum of understanding. According to the DoD officials, the ini-tiative will give participating nations an understanding of the current and future space environment, an awareness of space capability to support global operations and military-to-military relationships to address challenges and ensure the peaceful use of space. Focus areas for combined space op-erations include space situational aware-ness, force support, launch and reentry as-sessment, and contingency operations.

TELDAT and Raytheon Partner to Develop New Patriot RouterRaytheon Company is partnering with TELDAT to develop and produce advanced militarised routers for the Patriot Air and Missile Defense system. TELDAT engineers and technicians will design, integrate and qualify the key communications network-ing technology for Patriot.

The company’s offer for WISLA includes the development with Polish industry of a

next generation Patriot solution, which in-corporates: a new Common Command and Control (CC2) system that offers open ar-chitecture and multi-role capability, which builds on and preserves the combat-prov-en functionality of Patriot and its inherent US/NATO interoperability; introduction of a 360-degree multi-function radar us-ing the latest advanced radar technology to provide unmatched performance, un-precedented operational readiness and the lowest maintenance cost and; the potential for integration of a new advanced Low Cost Interceptor (LCI) to further expand Patri-ot’s ability to simultaneously fire multiple missile types to address the continuously evolving threat spectrum.

Lockheed Martin Unveils DAGIR CapabilityLockheed Martin has enabled the US Army to conduct more realistic live fire training and accelerate learning with the delivery of the Digital Air Ground Integration Range (DAGIR). DAGIR is the first range in US Army history to integrate air and ground as-sets across a digitally powered range, provid-ing higher-fidelity performance data so that soldiers receive more comprehensive feed-back during training. Delivered to the US Army Program Executive Office Simulation, Training and Instrumentation (PEO STRI), DAGIR allows ground manoeuvre units and attack aviation to coordinate, synchronise and engage targets in the same battle space for maximum weapons training effective-ness. During the government acceptance test, Lockheed Martin demonstrated range capabilities including a Combined Arms Live Fire Exercise.

According to a company spokesperson, DRTS ranges are low-risk, mature and flex-ible systems. From crew-level to platoons, soldiers are immersed in realistic live fire training exercises with threat, neutral and friendly simulations. Earlier this year, the company inserted new technologies into DRTS enabling after-action reviews with almost movie-like visuals, ensuring vehicle crew evaluators have top-calibre visual, au-dio and virtual feedback to help crews learn from their training experience.

General Dynamics to Develop Mission ComputersGeneral Dynamics Advanced Information Systems has won a USD 16.2 million contract by the US Navy to produce Type-3 Advanced Mission Computers

Credit:Army Technology

S-97 Raider Helicopter

9 |

GE

OIN

TE

LL

IGE

NC

E N

OV

EM

BE

R -

DE

CE

MB

ER

20

14

General Dynamics Demonstrates MUOS SATCOM CapabilityGeneral Dynamics C4 Systems has completed a Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) satellite communications (SATCOM) demonstration by connecting a US Air Force C-17 mobility aircraft, flying over the Pacific Ocean, with a simulated airlift op-erations center at Scott Air Force Base, Illinois. Using MUOS-equipped AN/PRC-155 radios located in the aircraft and on the ground, Air Force observers at Scott Air Force Base were able to talk with the airborne C-17 aircrew, exchange data and monitor the flight status of the aircraft using the MUOS satellite communications system. Over the course of the four-day demonstration, the MUOS-Manpack PRC-155 two-channel radios aboard the aircraft consistently sent and received secure voice and data communications, including in-flight position and location information, from the aircraft to the operations center at Scott Air Force Base. The MUOS Manpack PRC-155 radio also used a loosely cou-pled airborne net-working suite to route flight-path changes from the command center directly to the pilot and aircrew, dis-playing the infor-mation on portable cockpit mission dis-plays. Data from the aircraft’s flight computers traveled securely from the PRC-155 radio, over the MUOS satellite and down to the PRC-155 radio in the operations center allowing Air Force personnel to watch the aircraft’s flight on their mission tracking/status workstation displays. According to a press release from the company, the MUOS satellite commu-nications system offers smartphone-quality voice communications and more than ten times the data capacity of the legacy UHF satellite communications system that is more than 20 years old.

(AMC) for the F/A-18 E/A-18G Super Hornet aircraft. Since 2002 General Dy-namics has produced, tested and delivered the F/A-18 AMC, which serves as the nerve center of the Super Hornet and provides the Navy with situational awareness and combat systems control.

Under the contract, General Dynamics will produce, build, test and deliver the Type-3 AMCs to the US Navy and Australia. Designed to operate in ex-treme environmental conditions, the ruggedised, high-performance AMC processes high-speed data rates from air-craft sensors. The integrated information processing system also performs general purpose, input/output, video, voice and graphics processing, and is configurable to any operating environment, revealed a company spokesperson.

Boeing Displays High Energy Laser in Maritime EnvironmentsBoeing and the US Army have proven the capabilities of the High Energy Laser

Mobile Demonstrator (HELMD) in mar-itime conditions, successfully targeting a variety of aerial targets at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. According to Dave DeYoung, Director, Boeing Directed Ener-gy Systems, HELMD is reliable and capa-ble of consistently acquiring, tracking and engaging a variety of targets in different environments, demonstrating the po-tential military utility of directed energy systems. In the recent demonstrations, HEL MD used a 10-kilowatt, high energy laser installed on an Oshkosh tactical military vehicle. The demonstrator is the first mobile, high-energy laser, counter rocket, artillery and mortar (C-RAM) platform to be built and demonstrated by the US Army.

With capabilities like HELMD, Boe-ing is demonstrating that directed energy technologies can augment existing kinetic strike weapons and offer a significant re-duction in cost per engagement. With only the cost of diesel fuel, the laser system can fire repeatedly without expending valu-

able munitions or additional manpower, explained DeYoung.

Lockheed Martin Delivers Payload for GEO SatelliteLockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman have delivered the payload for the fourth Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (GEO) satellite of the US Air Force’s Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS). The payload, delivered on September 30, will now be integrated with the SBIRS GEO-4 satellite bus in final as-sembly, integration and test. The SBIRS pro-gram delivers timely, reliable and accurate missile warning and infrared surveillance information to the President of the United States, the Secretary of Defense, combatant commanders, the intelligence community and other key decision makers. The system enhances global missile launch detection capability, supports the nation’s ballistic missile defense system, expands the coun-try’s technical intelligence gathering capac-ity and bolsters situational awareness for warfighters on the battlefield. According to a press release by the company, the SBIRS GEO-4 payload includes highly sophisticat-ed scanning and staring sensors, which will provide the satellite with improved infrared sensitivity and a reduction in area revis-it times over the legacy constellation. The scanning sensor will provide a wide area surveillance of missile launches and natural phenomena across the earth, while the star-ing sensor will be used to observe smaller areas of interest with superior sensitivity.

Sotera Bags USD 5 Billion INSCOM GISS ContractSotera Defense Solutions (Sotera) has won a prime position on the Global Intelligence Support Services (GISS) Indefinite Deliv-ery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ)–Unrestrict-ed Pool. GISS is a Multiple-Award IDIQ contract administered by the US Army Intelligence and Security Command (IN-SCOM). It supports a breadth and depth of various missions including but not limited to: intelligence analysis, electron-ic systems, Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) systems, security systems, Quick Reaction Capability (QRC) systems, prototype intelligence hardware/software suites, facilities that are developed, deployed, maintained and repaired at the highest state of readiness, and business functions consistent with Army directives and standards. The support services un-der the GISS contract include the following

MUOS Satellite Communications

Credit:General Dynamics

NEWS10

| G

EO

INT

EL

LIG

EN

CE

NO

VE

MB

ER

- D

EC

EM

BE

R 2

014

areas: intelligence and security operations; information operations; mission support for facilities management, logistics, training, and intelligence systems support; and sus-tainment services — including programme management, strategic planning, adminis-trative and requirements analysis services.

New Patent Extends RF/Microwave IP for GPS TrackingAPI Technologies has been awarded a new patent for antenna technology for GPS and asset tracking applications. US Patent Num-ber 8810474, titled ‘Antenna with High K Backing Material,’ features an API-designed topology designed to boost antenna perfor-mance. According to the company, API’s unique design reduces weight and delivers consistent performance, even when sur-rounded by a metallic structure, such as the body of a UAV/UAS or missile casing. Given its low-profile, surface mount design, the antenna is easily disguisable and well-suited for covert applications.

PlanetiQ to Provide Hosted Payload Solution to the USPlanetiQ has received a contract from the US Air Force for the provision of an ad-aptable on-orbit platform for hosting US

government payloads as a subcontractor to Millennium Engineering and Integra-tion Company. PlanetiQ, which plans to launch the first commercial constellation of weather and climate satellites, and the Millennium are partnering under a con-tract awarded by the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) through its Hosted Payload Solutions programme. The multi-award contract is worth up to USD 495 million.

PlanetiQ’s initial constellation of 12 Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites is ex-pected to be fully deployed by 2017, with six more satellites planned for launch by 2019, providing the US government with flexible payload and launch opportuni-ties at a much lower cost than traditional LEO missions. The PlanetiQ constella-tion will collect over eight million ob-servations per day for greatly enhanced weather forecasting, climate monitor-ing and space weather prediction. The primary technology onboard will be the fourth-generation radio occultation sensor, licensed exclusively by PlanetiQ and based on the gold standard for radio occultation sensors currently on orbit. The fourth-generation sensor is smaller, lighter, and requires less power than pre-

vious versions, leaving plenty of capacity to host additional payloads.

The PlanetiQ radio occultation sen-sor will receive signals from all four major Global Navigation Satellite Systems—GPS, GLONASS, Galileo and Beidou—allowing the constellation to collect over 30,000 oc-cultations per day. Data will be delivered to customers in less than three minutes from being collected via the Inmarsat communications satellite network. This near real-time delivery is critical to the weather and space weather forecasting re-quirements of meteorological agencies, mil-itaries and numerous industries worldwide.

Lockheed Martin Receives EW Contract by the US NavyThe US Navy has awarded Lockheed Martin a USD 147 million contract to up-grade the fleet’s electronic warfare de-fenses against evolving threats, such as anti-ship missiles. Under this low-rate initial production contract for Block 2 of the Navy’s Surface Electronic Warfare Im-provement Program (SEWIP), Lockheed Martin will provide 14 systems to upgrade the AN/SLQ-32(V)2 system on all US air-craft carriers, cruisers, destroyers and oth-er warships with key capabilities to deter-mine if the electronic sensors of potential foes are tracking the ship.

According to Joe Ottaviano, SEWIP Programme Director for Lockheed Martin Mission Systems and Training, the con-tract allows Lockheed Martin to continue providing much needed technological ad-vances that will help outpace adversaries and protect warfighters.

Harris Corporation Bags USD 19 Million Tactical Radio ContractHarris Corporation has been awarded a USD 19 million IDIQ contract to provide the Air Force Special Operations Com-mand (AFSOC) with up to 1,500 Falcon III AN/PRC-152A wideband radios and accessories. The AN/PRC-152A is a key

US Air Force Expands RQ-4 Global Hawk FleetThe US Air Force has awarded Northrop Grumman Corporation a USD 354 million pri-marily firm-fixed-price contract to expand their RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned aircraft system (UAS) fleet by three aircraft. Global Hawk oper-ates multiple sensors simultaneously to gather intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) data. The new aircraft are Multi-INT mod-els that carry sophisticated imaging and elec-tronic signals sensors capable of collecting mul-tiple types of intelligence from high altitudes for up to 32 hours. The contract also includes retrofit kits to add Airborne Signals Intelligence Payload (ASIP) sensors into two of the existing RQ-4, providing them with Multi-INT ca-pability. ASIP is an advanced ISR collection sensor also built by Northrop Grumman.

The aircraft will bring the Air Force RQ-4 fleet size to 37 in 2017. The ASIP retrofit kits are scheduled for delivery in late 2016 and in 2017. All RQ-4 UAS fuselages are built at Northrop Grumman facilities in Moss Point, Mississippi, with final assembly and acceptance testing is conducted in Palmdale. The different variants of Global Hawk have flown more than 126,000 flight hours supporting diverse global missions. Carrying a variety of ISR sensor and communications gateway payloads, According to the company, Global Hawk supports antiterrorism, antipiracy, humanitarian as-sistance, disaster relief, airborne communications relay, information-sharing and the full range of operational combat missions.

Global Hawk

Falcon III AN/PRC-152A wideband radios

Credit:AUVSI

Cre

dit:

Sat

elli

te T

oday

11

| G

EO

INT

EL

LIG

EN

CE

NO

VE

MB

ER

- D

EC

EM

BE

R 2

014

component of AFSOC’s communication system, providing mission critical ground-to-air communications and enhanced situational awareness of the battlefield. The wideband tactical radios meet current and emerging mission requirements us-ing a full suite of integrated line-of-sight, beyond-line-of-sight and wideband com-munications. Harris Falcon III wideband tactical radios provide unprecedented situational awareness on the battlefield by delivering critical real-time tactical infor-mation to warfighters on the move. Falcon III® is the next generation of radios sup-porting the US military’s Joint Tactical Ra-dio System (JTRS) requirements, as well as network-centric operations worldwide.

Raytheon AI3 Missile Intercepts First Cruise Missile TargetRaytheon Company and the US Army achieved the first intercept of a cruise mis-sile by the Accelerated Improved Inter-cept Initiative missile. An AI3 missile also destroyed an unmanned aerial system (UAS). Fired from the Avenger launcher, AI3 missiles intercepted both targets at low altitude over water and in a high-clut-ter marine environment — capabilities

Iran Successfully Tests New Long-range Radar SystemIran has successfully tested a new domes-tically produced long-range radar system, known as the Sepehr (Sky). The Sepehr radar system covers a range of over 2,500 km (1550 miles) and can detect stealth tar-gets and micro UAVs at low, medium and high altitudes while it can also very easi-ly identify and detect ballistic, semi-bal-listic and cruise missiles, revealed Brig

US Army Boosts Terrain Awareness with G-tech ToolsThe US Army has developed a new geospatial analysis tool to help combatant command-ers better plan their routes in unfamiliar locations. Developed by the US Army Engi-neer Research and Development Center’s Geospatial Research Laboratory, the sit-uational awareness geospatially enabled (SAGE) tool is designed to help increase the commanders’ understanding and knowl-edge of the impact of terrain and weather, leading to informed decisions. Using four types of data, including elevation, terrain categorisation, roads and map imagery, the tool aids intelligence analysts in rapid identification of the landscape and environments such as estimates of how quickly the enemy can march through a designated area due to the terrain.

SAGE enables geospatial engineers, GEOINT professionals and analysts at various echelons, to create tactical decision aids in support of the military decision making pro-cess, intelligence preparation of the battlefield and soldier-leading procedures. Currently used within the Distributed Common Ground System-Army (DCGS-A) worldwide, the tool successfully completed user-evaluation and validation surveys at the 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry), 82nd Airborne Divison, US Marine Corps in Thailand, and the US military academy. Also undertaken at US Army, Fort Dix, New Jersey readiness and training facility, as well as the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, Louisiana, US, it has been indicated that users are giving a positive response to the SAGE programme, verifying its efficacy as a legitimate combat multiplier and solution to the legacy capabil-ity gap of taxing terrain analysis.

Situational awareness geospatially enabled (SAGE) tool

made possible by upgrades to the missile’s semi-active seeker and radar. The ability to defeat UAS and cruise missile threats is the key requirement of the US Army’s Indirect Fire Protection Capability (IFPC) Block 1. IFPC is a mobile, ground-based weapon system designed to acquire, track, engage and defeat UAS, cruise missiles, rockets, artillery and mortars.

Gen Shahrokh Shahram, Lieutenant Commander of Khatam ol-Anbia Air De-fense Base.

According to Shahram, the informa-tion gathered by the radar during its last assessment test was fed into the country’s integrated radar and air defense network for the first time.

Iraq Seeks Precision-kill Weapon Systems from USThe US Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) has recently a potential foreign military sale (FMS) of advanced precision kill weapon systems (APKWS) and associated equipment to Iraq. Under the estimated USD 97 million sale, Iraq has requested 2,000 APKWS, weapon and test support equipment, spare and re-pair parts, personnel training and training equipment, technical and logistics sup-port services, as well as other related el-ements of logistical and programme sup-port. The sale is expected to improve Iraq’s capacity to maintain security operations and strengthen its internal and external defence capabilities.

It is believed that the sale of APK-WS will increase the Iraqi Army Aviation Command’s ability to conduct operations against terrorist forces, while significantly reducing the risk to civilians.

Russia to Build Air-Launched Hypersonic Missiles by 2020Russia is planning to build the first air-launched hypersonic missiles in the coming years. Boris Obnosov, Director General of Tactical Missiles Corporation, has recently revealed that the Russian hy-personic missiles will be air-launched at first, and will use the carrier aircraft’s early velocity to reach speeds as high as eight times the speed of sound. The country’s army will modernise most of its arsenal by 2020, added Obnosov.According to Maj Gen Eduard Cherkasov, the Head of Radiological, Chemical and Biological Defense (RChBD) troops, Rus-sia is also developing special ammunition that would be capable of targeting highly secure defense constructions.

Indian Government Takes Call on Key Defence Deals The Indian Defence Acquisition Council (DAC), chaired by Arun Jaitley has giv-en the green signal to long-term projects like new stealth submarines with foreign

NEWS12

| G

EO

INT

EL

LIG

EN

CE

NO

VE

MB

ER

- D

EC

EM

BE

R 2

014

capable of detecting capable of detecting launches of existing and test missiles.

The creation of an integrated space sys-tem is one of the key directions in which Russian nuclear deterrent forces will be developed. As a result, armies will be able to detect sea and ground launches of var-ious types of ballistic missiles, including prototypes, explained Shoigu. According to Shoigu, the system will replace Sovi-et-made ballistic missile early warning systems. The integrated space system will comprise next-generation space vehicles and modernised space centers that would ensure control over the satellites and al-low for automatic information processing.

Thales to Supply SATCOM System to QatarThales has bagged a contract to provide Qatar Armed Forces with a military satellite communications system. The ground seg-ment supplied by Thales will provide Qatari ground and naval forces with long-range communications capability to enhance na-tional security and protect vital interests. Thales will supply the systems needed to transmit and receive communications via satellite, and to process data on the ground. According to a company spokesperson, the solution is built around Thales’s high-per-formance System 21 technology to provide secure, high-data-rate transmissions.

Thales will also provide a network oper-ations centre that will be used for planning and managing the complete system, which

will be operated by the Qatari armed forces. The solution will be interoperable with the other communications systems in service within the Qatar Armed Forces, including combat radios and fixed networks.

India Test-Fires Nuclear Capable Agni-I MissileThe Indian Army’s Strategic Forces Com-mand (SFC) has test-fired the indigenous-ly built short-range Agni-1 missile from Wheeler’s Island, off the Odisha Coast. Pro-pelled by solid rocket propellant system, the nuclear capable surface-to-surface missile was tested for its full strike range of 700km and was carrying a total payload mass of 1,100kg. SFC carried out the launch as part of a periodic training exercise to fur-ther consolidate operational readiness.

Sophisticated radars, telemetry obser-vation stations, electro-optic instruments and naval ships tracked the trajectory of the missile until it hit the target area with pin-point accuracy. Agni-1 features a spe-cialised navigation system, which helps the missile to reach target with a high degree of accuracy and precision. Agni-I is designed to bridge the gap between the indigenously built short-range Prithvi and medium-range Agni-II. Powered by both solid and liquid propellants, the 15m-long missile weighs around 12t and is capable of carrying a com-bined conventional and nuclear payload of nearly one tonne. The missile is capable of carrying both conventional and nuclear payloads at a speed of 2.5 km/s.

India’s DRDO to Develop Nirbhay VariantsBuoyed by the successful flight testing of indig-enously developed cruise missile Nirbhay from a land based launching platform off the Odisha coast, DRDO has embarked on a mission to de-velop the weapon’s other variants making it an all-weather and all-terrain system.Initially built as a land attack weapon system, Nir-bhay will have ship, air and submarine launched variants in the near future. While the Army version of the missile is expected to go for production in the next three years, DRDO is planning to make its Naval and Air Force variants ready in the next five years. According to DRDO Chief Avinash Chander, the country has proved its capability of developing long range cruise missiles. The missile’s other versions would be developed in a phased manner and integrated with the terminal guidance system, making the missile more lethal. While Nirbhay’s ship and submarine launched ver-sions are being planned to have a strike range of nearly 1,500 km, the range of its Air Force version may vary from 250 km to 1,500 km. The size of the air version, which can be fired from fighter aircrafts like Sukhoi-30MKI, would also be less compared to the land variant as it will have no booster.

collaboration in India, deals for anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs), midget subma-rines for special covert operations, Dorn-ier aircraft and Russian Uran missiles for warships. The DAC has decided to come up with a committee that will identify the public and private Indian shipyards that have the potential to indigenously build the six submarines in line with Modi’s ‘Make in India’ policy. The request for pro-posal will then be issued to the compliant shipyards, which in turn will tie up with a foreign collaborator, to submit their bids.

According to Jaitley, National security is of paramount concern for the govern-ment. All hurdles and bottlenecks in the procurement process are being addressed expeditiously so that the pace of acquisi-tions is not stymied.

Advanced Weather Radar in Kashmir by ToshibaIndian Meteorological Department (IMD) has been making several efforts to bring in the best of world technologies in weather radar, in order to avoid the mishaps that occurred in Uttarakhand and Kashmir. According to a recent press release by Toshiba, the company has been awarded a contract to implement the ad-vanced weather radar system in Kashmir.

Toshiba has partnered with Electronics Corporation of India (ECIL) to handle the IMD project. ECIL, with several superi-or technologies like antenna and several branches and service centres across the nation, will maintain the weather radars after being installed. Weather radars emit electric waves towards the sky and ob-serve rain and wind by receiving electric waves that is reflected upon raindrops. Conventionally, the technology used is called Klystron Transmitter but Toshiba has put this functional it in a small semi-conductor chip which is called Solid-state Transmitter. Traditional weather radar provides data about every 10 minutes, but solid-state weather radar gets the data in more detail in lesser time and spatially also. By analysing the particles in a spe-cial technology, one can also identify rain, snow, hailstone and measure the wind.

Russia to Create Space-Based Ballistic Missile Warning SystemAccording to an announcement made by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, Russia is planning to a create a space-based ballistic missile warning system

Nirbhay missile

Cre

dit:

ND

TV

Saab Launches Newly Developed Carl Gustaf M4Saab has unveiled newly-developed next generation Carl-Gustaf M4 at the 2014 Asso-ciation of the US Army exhibition in Wash-ington D.C. The Carl-Gustaf M4, known in the US as M3A1 MAAWS, is the latest man-portable shoulder-launched mul-ti-role weapon system from Saab designed to provide users with flexible capability and help troops to remain agile in any scenario.

According to a company spokesper-son, the new light-weight Carl Gustaf M4, weighing approximately 15 pounds, offers significant weight savings to the soldier. It is also compatible with future battlefield technology such as intelli-gent sighting systems for programmable ammunition. With a wide variety of mu-nitions available, it is a weapon system capable of handling multiple tactical situations, bridging the gap between full scale operations and low intensity con-flicts, and providing the modern warf-ighter with unprecedented flexibility and capability on the battlefield.

Lockheed Martin Wins Contract for Pilotage SystemsLockheed Martin has won a USD 90.6 mil-lion foreign military sale contract from the US Army to provide Modernised Target Acquisition Designation Sight/Pilot Night Vision Sensor (M-TADS/PNVS) systems to the Qatar Emiri Air Force. Fielded in 2005, M-TADS/PNVS provides Apache pilots with long-range, precision engagement and pilotage capabilities for safe flight during

day, night and adverse weather missions. The Qatar sale is an option under the US Army’s Lot 9 contract, awarded to Lock-heed Martin earlier this year. The option includes production of M-TADS/PNVS targeting and pilotage systems and spares for the Qatar Emiri Air Force’s new fleet of AH-64E Apache attack helicopters.

Rockwell to Supply Training Solutions to Indian MilitaryRockwell Collins and Zen Technologies have signed a memorandum of under-

Tata Power SED Sign Landmark Agreement for India’s Defense IndustryHoneywell Aerospace has signed a licens-ing agreement with Tata Power’s Strategic Engineering Division (SED), enabling it to produce Honeywell’s Tactical Advanced Land Inertial Navigator (TALIN) in India. The Honeywell-patented technology ena-bles vehicles and artillery to navigate very precisely, even where GPS satellite guid-ance is not available, to increase troop safety and maximise mission success.

According to Arijit Ghosh, President India, Honeywell Aerospace, TALIN repre-sents the latest in GPS-free navigation and positioning technology, designed to im-prove asset safety and ultimately mission success. By partnering with Tata Power SED on the production of TALIN the company is aligning with the Government’s aim of increasing locally manufactured technologies for India’s defense industry and giving the Indian Armed Forces an easy-to-justify option for navigation on the 21st Century battlefield.

standing to combine their strengths in simulation and training to offer indus-try-leading, high fidelity solutions to Indi-an military customers.

Jim Walker, Vice President and Man-aging Director of Asia Pacific for Rockwell Collins, believes that India is a very prom-ising market for the aerospace and defense sectors and the company wants to work closely with the industry to ensure they have easy access to innovative solutions. The company also plans to establish a long-term partnership to provide advanced solutions and services in India. The mem-orandum of understanding marks the first time that a global simulator original equip-ment manufacturer has partnered with an Indian simulator manufacturing company to cater to the Indian defense market.

China Test-fires 10,000 km-Range Dongfeng MissileChina has successfully tested a new variant of its 10,000km-range Dongfeng missile, which can reportedly reach most US and European cities. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) launched the missile from the Wuzhai missile and space test centre, which is also known as the Taiyuan satellite launch centre, in Shanxi province.

According to the South China Morning Post, the test of the mobile intercontinen-tal ballistic missile (ICBM) demonstrates to the world that China is reinforcing its

Mars Orbiter Spacecraft Inserted into Mars OrbitIndia’s Mars Orbiter Spacecraft successfully entered into an orbit around planet Mars by firing its 440 Newton Liquid Apogee Motor (LAM) along with eight smaller liq-uid engines. The Mars orbiter was launched into parking orbit around the Earth on November 5, 2013, aboard the workhorse launch vehicle PSLV of India. It escaped orbit on December 1, 2013 and reached Mars on Sep-tember 24, almost a year later. ISRO’s mission has made the organisation the fourth space agency to send a spacecraft to orbit Mars successfully. The Mars Or-biter Mission (MOM) also released its very first 3D image of the Red Planet re-cently. According to ISRO, the anaglyph 3D image of Mars was generated using multiple pictures acquired by Mars Color Camera.

Tactical Advanced Land Inertial Navigator (TALIN)

3D picture of the red planet

Credit: Honeywell Aerospace

Cre

dit:

ISR

O

NEWS14

| G

EO

INT

EL

LIG

EN

CE

NO

VE

MB

ER

- D

EC

EM

BE

R 2

014

nuclear deterrent. The launch of the DF-31B missile follows tests on the DF-31A, an earlier version of the missile. This was the second time that the PLA’s second ar-tillery corps had tested a DF-31 missile in the past three months. The DF-31 system’s range is capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to the capitals of Europe or the west coast of the US. The missiles are be-ing developed for use over rugged terrain and in difficult road conditions.

Surface-to-Air Akash Missile Test Fired SuccessfullyIndia has successfully test-fired the in-digenously developed surface-to-air Akash missile from the Integrated Test Range in Chandipur, India.

The test firing was part of the user trial by the Indian Air Force (IAF). “The missile hit the para-barrel target. It was successful,” said MVKV Prasad, Director, Chandipur ITR.

The Akash missile, developed by the Defence Research and Development Or-ganisation (DRDO), is a medium-range surface-to-air anti-aircraft defence sys-tem with a strike range of 25 km. It can carry a warhead of 60 kg, has the capabil-ity to target aircraft up to 30 km away and is packed with a battery that can track and attack several targets simultaneously. With its capability to neutralise aerial tar-gets like fighter jets, cruise missiles and air-to-surface missiles, defence experts compare ‘Akash’ to the similar weapons of many other advanced countries.

India Launches its Third Navigation Satellite IRNSS-1CISRO’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, PSLV-C26, successfully launched IRNSS-1C, the third satellite in the Indian Region-al Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) from Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota. The initial launch was postponed due to technical reasons. After injection, the solar panels of IRNSS-1C were deployed auto-matically. ISRO’s Master Control Facility (at Hassan, Karnataka) assumed the control of the satellite. As part of its aspirations to build a regional navigational system equiv-alent to the Global Positioning System of the US, ISRO plans to send seven satellites to put its Indian Regional Navigational Sat-ellite System (IRNSS) in place.

India is expected to have its own satel-lite navigation system by the first quarter of 2015 with four of its satellites in space.

The second navigational satellite in the se-ries, IRNSS 1-B, was launched on 4 April. ISRO needs to launch at least four of the seven satellites to start operations of the IRNSS, ISRO officials said. IRNSS-1C is the third of the seven satellites constitut-ing the space segment of the Indian Re-gional Navigation Satellite System. IRNSS is an independent regional navigation

Laser-Guided Rocket Highlights Precision Strike CapabilityThe Australian Defence Forces recently conclud-ed a highly successful trial of BAE Systems’ Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (APKWS) laser-guided rocket for use on its Army and Navy heli-copters. The ground trial marks the first time the

APKWS technology, which transforms a standard unguided 2.75-inch (70-millimeter) rocket into a precision laser-guided weapon, has been demonstrated on a Forges de Zeebrugge (FZ) rocket.During the ground-based live fire event, the APKWS laser-guided technology was on target with all seven shots fired while integrated with the FZ90 rocket motor and war-head. There was no modification required to the guidance kit to integrate with the FZ rocket. Conducted by the Australian Aerospace Operational Support Group, the trial was designed to qualify the APKWS rocket for use by the Australian military to bridge the cur-rent capability gap between unguided small-diameter rockets and larger-diameter an-ti-armor munitions. According to a spokesperson from the company, the flexibility of the APKWS technology allowed the Australian Defence Force to move from concept to live fire trial in a matter of months while using its current rocket inventory and equipment.

satellite system designed to provide po-sition information in the Indian region and 1500 km around the Indian mainland. IRNSS would provide two types of servic-es, namely, Standard Positioning Services (SPS) — provided to all users — and Re-stricted Services (RS), provided to author-ised users.

India Buys Missiles from Israel, Rejecting Rival US OfferIndia has chosen the Israeli-built SPIKE missile to meet its anti-tank guided weap-on (ATGW) system requirement. New Delhi selected SPIKE over a rival US offer of Javelin missiles. The US had lobbied hard to win this contract. SPIKE is a manportable fire-and-forget anti-armor missile produced by Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defence Systems. It is believed that India wasn’t content with the Javelin’s Technology Transfer details. Also, the cost of the Israeli missiles was less than the US rival. India will procure at least 8,000 SPIKE missiles and more than 300 launchers. This deal is worth INR 3200 crores (USD 525 million).

Analysts estimate that India, the world’s largest arms buyer, will invest as much as USD 250 billion in upgrading its

APKWS laser guided rocket

Cre

dit:

Arm

y Te

chn

olog

y

IRNSS -1C

Cre

dit:

ISR

O

15

| G

EO

INT

EL

LIG

EN

CE

NO

VE

MB

ER

- D

EC

EM

BE

R 2

014

Soviet-era military hardware and close the gap on strategic rival China, which spends three times as much a year on defence. The government has raised the foreign invest-ment cap on India’s defence industries to speed up the military’s modernisation.

GD Awarded Contract for Submarine ModernisationGeneral Dynamics (GD) has been awarded two contract modifications totaling USD 50 million to continue sup-porting the AN/BYG-1 combat control system aboard US Navy and Royal Aus-tralian Navy submarines, as part of the AN/BYG-1 modernisation programme for the tactical control systems (TCS) and weapons control systems (WCS). The open architecture framework facilitates the rapid integration of advanced capa-bilities developed by commercial, defense and academic entities on an annual or bi-annual basis. The common processing baseline across all submarines also helps ensure the independent, yet parallel, de-velopment and certification of the TCS and WCS.

Thales Upgrades Australian Army’s Helicopter SimulatorThales Australia has successfully com-pleted a modernisation of the Australian Army Tiger armed reconnaissance hel-icopter’s full flight mission simulator (FFMS). Working in collaboration with prime contractor Airbus Group Australia Pacific and Australian Army Aviation, the company upgraded the simulator’s visual display system (VDS). According to Thales, the upgrade ensures that the dual-dome simulator has the highest lev-els of ‘out of the window’ realism of any Tiger FFMS in the world, and was com-pleted ahead of schedule to help mini-mise simulator downtime.

The latest generation BARCO F35 pro-jectors and a new PC-based Image Gener-ators were both added and seamlessly in-tegrated into the existing host computers and visual display platform, providing the crews with 240-degrees vertical by 85-de-

General Dynamics to Deliver SCOUT SV Platforms to the British ArmyGeneral Dynamics UK has been awarded a contract by the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD), to deliver 589 SCOUT Specialist Ve-hicle (SV) platforms to the British Army to provide essential capability to the Armoured Cavalry within Army 2020. The plat-forms, consisting of six variants, will be delivered to the British Army between 2017 and 2024, alongside the provision of initial in-service support and training, and will serve at the heart of the Armoured Infantry Brigade structure. According to a press release by the company, SCOUT SV represents the future of Armoured Fighting Vehi-cles (AFV) for the British Army, providing best-in-class protection and survivability, reliability and mobility and all-weather intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and recognition (ISTAR) capabilities. Its range of variants will allow the British Army to conduct sustained, expeditionary, full-spectrum and network-enabled operations with a reduced logistics footprint. SCOUT SV can operate in combined-arms and multinational situations across a wide-range of future operating environments.

grees horizontal field of view. In the final stage of the upgrade, the FFMS passed its Recurrent Fidelity Check, which is re-quired to maintain CASA FSD-1 Level 5 (Level D equivalent) accreditation.

BAE and Patria Join Forces for ADF’s Land 400 Phase IIBAE Systems and Patria have teamed up to pursue a major Australian combat vehicle programme. The two companies will work together to secure the anticipat-ed Land 400 Phase 2 Defence programme for the acquisition and support of a Com-bat Reconnaissance Vehicle (CRV), with BAE Systems as prime contractor.

According to the company, Patria is the market leader of modern 8x8 wheeled armoured vehicles and is an ideal partner for BAE Systems. The team will work together to deliver a Patria 8x8 Armoured Modular Vehicle (AMV) solution to meet the needs of the Australian Defence Force (ADF). According to Markku Bollmann, Senior Vice President, Land Business Unit, Patria AMV combines high payload capacity and excellent mobility with the latest technology. It is believed that the versatility of the modular design enables it to be tailored and continually developed to meet the needs of modern defence forc-es around the world.

ASIA PACIFIC

SCOUT SV platform

Cre

dit:

Gen

eral

Dyn

amic

s

Astronics Wins UK MoD Bowman Radio Support ContractAstronics Corporation has won two five-year contracts by General Dynamics Unit-ed Kingdom Limited, to support the UK Ministry of Defense (MoD) Bowman tac-tical communications system test equip-ment modernisation, logistics, supply and support.Astronics will provide full logistical sup-port for Bowman Radio Test solutions (RTS), including necessary repair and calibration, spares provisioning, obso-lescence management and logistics sup-port analysis required to maintain the 80 systems currently fielded. Astronics will also provide engineering design services and management support of the Bow-man RTS equipment, which was originally supplied by Astronics as part of the Gen-eral Dynamics UK led Bowman program. “Astronics’ Bowman RTS is a critical test system used to verify and certify opera-tional tactical radios and communications

NEWS16

| G

EO

INT

EL

LIG

EN

CE

NO

VE

MB

ER

- D

EC

EM

BE

R 2

014

equipment for the UK MoD’s current tac-tical radio fleet. We originally supplied the equipment to this program over 10 years ago. With these wins, we will continue to support the MoD’s strategy to ensure con-tinuous capability for voice and data com-munication,” said Peter J Gundermann, President and CEO of Astronics.

Poland’s PIT-RADWAR Signs Letter of Intent with Raytheon

Raytheon Company has signed a Letter of Intent with Poland’s PIT-RADWAR to cooperate in mutually beneficial business opportunities related to Poland’s air defense architecture, as well as significant exports to global markets. The companies will examine areas for partnership in categories like radar equipment and subsystems design, fabrication and integration; common C2 equipment, sub-systems and software; mission planning architecture, simulation and software and,

MEADS Fire Control Radar Proves Capabilities The Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS) programme has completed a six-week performance test of its 360-degree Multifunction Fire Control Radar (MFCR) at Pratica di Mare Air Base near Rome, Italy, and at MBDA Germany’s air defense center in Freinhausen in the presence of representatives from the German Air Force and guests from MEADS partner nations.

MEADS radars are designed to protect troops and assets on today’s 360-degree battlefield, where missile attacks are omnidirectional. Using plug-and-fight capa-bility, the MFCR acts as a node on the MEADS network, and like all other MEADS major end items, can be dynamically added or removed as missions dictate, without

shutting down the system. The X-band MFCR employs active phased array technology using transmit/receive components developed in Germany. It pro-vides precision tracking and wideband discrimination and classification capabilities. An advanced Mode 5 Identifica-tion Friend or Foe subsystem allows for improved threat identification.

systems level integration, verification and validation testing.

UK Dstl Awards Contracts for Defence SimulationsThe UK Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) De-fence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) has awarded a contract to an XPI Simulation-led team to improve simulated technology. Awarded under the synthet-ic environments (SE) tower of excellence project, the EURO 3.6 million contract re-quires the team, which includes QinetiQ, Cranfield University and Thales UK, to investigate future cost-effective methods and technologies to improve force and environmental representation in simu-lations and synthetic environments. The XPI-led team will focus on force and en-vironmental representations in support of training, concept development and exper-imentation, as well as acquisition, evalua-tion and mission preparation.

Specific areas to be addressed include representations of the outside world envi-ronment such as terrain, features, weath-er and electromagnetic waves, as well as force behaviour, including systems, equipment and people. The agreement will enable integration between the joint, land, sea and air simulated forces and en-vironments, and between NATO nations and other coalition partners, leading to cost-effective national and multi-national defence exercises and experimentation.

Saab Provides Next Generation Vehicle Simulators to NorwaySaab has been awarded a contract from the Norwegian Army for development and seri-al deliveries of the new generation GAMER vehicle simulators (a dual-simulator train-ing system). The total order amounts to SEK 142 million. Norway is an important mar-ket for Saab. The company will deliver an advanced military training system for vehi-cles that will have the best training effect, ex-plained Henrik Höjer, Head of Saab Training & Simulation. The BT46 two-way simulator can be adapted to meet a huge variation of needs. A two-way simulator has the ability to simulate the ballistics and time of flight of a projectile in real time, with a high level of precision and simultaneously give immedi-ate and realistic feedback to the gunner and the target.

US to Supply Javelin Missiles to Estonia

The US Defense Security Cooperation Agency has notified Congress of a potential foreign military sale of Javelin missiles and associated equipment to Estonia. Under the estimated USD 55 million sale, Estonia has requested 350 Javelin guided missiles, along with 120 command launch units with integrated day/thermal sight, 102 battery coolant units, 16 enhanced performance basic skills trainers and missile simulation rounds.

Approved by the US State Department, the sale is expected to improve Estonia’s capability to address existing and future threats, and also provide greater security for its critical infrastructure. The enhanced ca-pability will be used by Estonia to strength-en its homeland defence. Equipped with an automatic self-guidance system, the FGM-148 Javelin is a portable, shoulder-fired anti-tank guided missile, suitable for op-erations against existing and future threats from armoured combat vehicles, in all environments.

MEADS Multifunction Fire Control Radar

Credit: MEADS AMD

Javelin missile

Cre

dit:

Mu

rdoc

olin

e

PIT-RADWAR signs Letter of Intent with Raytheon

Cre

dit:

Ray

theo

n

17

| G

EO

INT

EL

LIG

EN

CE

NO

VE

MB

ER

- D

EC

EM

BE

R 2

014

Cloud forGIS Systems

Cre

dit:

ww

w.b

uil

dyou

rbes

tclo

ud.

com

Cloud computing is similar to the concept of a utility in which an organisation can “plug-in” to a virtual

environment and use the computing resources available on an as-required basis. Applications running on such a platform can be accessed via Web clients, while the application software and data are kept at the (virtual) serv-er side. A scenario is that component of an application, which is dynami-cally selected from a pool of services and the coordination and computa-tion carried out at the client side, in the cloud, or both. Cloud computing has five key characteristics (on-de-mand self-service; rapid elasticity; location-independent resource pool-

ing; ubiquitous network access; and pay-per-use), three delivery models (SaaS — software as a service, PaaS — platform as a service, and IaaS — infrastructure as a service) and four deployment models (private, public, community, and hybrid).

Cloud computing has a global approach and encompasses the en-tire computing stack. It provides a variety of services, ranging from the end-users hosting their personal data on the Internet to enterprises out-sourcing their entire IT infrastructure to external data centres. Service Level Agreements (SLAs), which include Quality of Service (QoS) requirements, are set up between customers and cloud providers. An SLA lays down

the details of the service deliverables agreed upon by all parties, and penal-ties for defaults. SLAs serve as a war-ranty for users, who are open to the idea of moving their business to the cloud. Enterprises can considerably cut down maintenance and adminis-trative costs and effort by hiring their IT infrastructure from cloud vendors. Users leverage the cloud not only for acquiring their personal data from any part of the world, but also for carrying out activities without buying exorbi-tant software and hardware.

Cloud computing unveils chal-lenges for system and application developers, engineers, system ad-ministrators, and service providers. Virtualisation enables consolidation

GIS Cloud is seen as a perfect tool to upgrade conventional GIS applications and provide a broad spectrum of services to users across the globe.

18 |

GE

OIN

TE

LL

IGE

NC

E N

OV

EM

BE

R -

DE

CE

MB

ER

20

14COVER STORY

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud

(EC2)Google Microsoft Live Mesh

Sun Network.com (Sun Grid)

Solaris OS Java, C, C++ FORTRAN

Focus Infrastructure Platform Infrastructure Infrastructure Compute

Service TypeCompute, Storage

(Amazon S3)Web Application Storage Compute

Resource Manager and Scheduler

VirtualisationOS Level running a

Xen hypervisorApplication container OS Level

Job management system (Sun grid

engineer)

SLA-based resource Reservation on Aneka

side

Dynamic Negotiations of QoS

ParametersNone None None None

Workbench, Web-based portal

User Access Interface

Amazon EC2 Command-line

Tools

Web-based administration console

Web-based Live Desktop and any

devices with Live Mesh Installed

Job submission scripts, Sun Grid Web

portalYes

Web APIs Yes Yes Unknown Yes No

Value-added Service Providers

Yes No No Yes

API’s supporting different programming

models in C# and other. Net supported

languages

Programming Framework

Customizable Linux-bbased Amazon Machine Image (AMI)

Python Not applicableSolaris OS Java, C,

C++ FORTRAN

API’s supporting different programming

models in C# and other. Net supported

languages

A broad overview of the scenario envisioned by Cloud computing (Figure 1)

of servers for hosting one or more ser-vices. A major concern when moving to a cloud is ensuring security, priva-cy and trust. Security in particular af-fects the entire cloud computing stack. Cloud computing involves use of third party services and infrastructures to host important data or to perform critical operations. Therefore, the trust towards providers is fundamental to ensure the desired level of privacy for data and applications hosted.

Cloud as a platformThe computing industry is leaning towards providing cloud platform as PaaS and SaaS for consumers and en-terprises to access on demand, regard-less of time and location. There will be an increase in the number of cloud platforms available. Recently, several academic and industrial organisations

have started investigating and refin-ing technologies and infrastructure for cloud computing. Academic efforts include Virtual Workspaces and Open Nebula. The leading six representative cloud platforms with industrial linkag-es are given in Figure 1.

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) (Figure 1) delivers a virtual com-puting environment that helps user to run Linux-based applications. Users have the liberty to create a new Amazon Machine Image (AMI) that contains the applications, data, libraries and asso-ciated configuration settings, or select from a library of globally available AMIs. The user are then required to upload the created or selected AMIs to Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), before they can start, stop, and monitor instances of the uploaded AMIs. Amazon EC2 charges the user for the time when

the instance is alive while Amazon S3 charges for any data transfer.

Google App Engine allows a user to run web applications written using the Python programming language. Oth-er than supporting the Python stand-ard library, Google App Engine also supports Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for the datastore, Google Accounts, URL fetch, image manipulation, and email services. The Google App Engine also provides a Web-based Administration Console for the user to easily manage web applications. Presently, the Google App Engine offers up to 500MB of storage and around 5 million page views per month. Microsoft Live Mesh focuses on providing a cen-tralised location for a user to store data that can be accessed across required devices (such as computers and mobile phones) from anywhere in the world.

Property

System

19

| G

EO

INT

EL

LIG

EN

CE

NO

VE

MB

ER

- D

EC

EM

BE

R 2

014

The user is able to access uploaded applications and data through a Web-based Live Desktop or his own devices with Live Mesh software. Each user’s Live Mesh is protected by a pass code and authenticated via his Windows Live Login, while all file transfers are protect-ed using Secure Socket Layers (SSL).

Sun network.com permits the user to run Java, C, C++, Solaris OS, and FORTRAN based applications. The user has to build and debug his appli-cations and runtime scripts in a local development environment that is de-signed to be similar to that on the Sun Grid. The user then needs to create a bundled zip archive (including all the related scripts, libraries, executable bi-naries and input data) and upload it to Sun Grid. Finally, he can execute and monitor the application using the Sun Grid Web portal or API. Once the user

has completed the application, he will be required to download the execu-tion results to his local development environment for reviewing.

GRIDS lab Aneka, which is being commercialised through Manjrasoft, is a .NET-based service-oriented platform for constructing enterprise Grids. It is designed to help numer-ous application models, ingenuity and security arrangements such that the favored selection can be changed whenever without influencing a cur-rent Aneka environment. To create an enterprise gGrid, the service provider only needs to start an instance of the configurable Aneka container host-ing required services on each selected desktop computer. The purpose of the Aneka container is to initialise services and it acts as a single point of interac-tion with the rest of the enterprise Grid.

Aneka provides SLA support so that the user can specify QoS requirements such as deadline (maximum time pe-riod which the application needs to be completed in) and budget (maximum cost that the user is willing to pay for meeting the deadline). The user can ac-cess the Aneka Enterprise Grid remote-ly through the Gridbus Broker. The Gridbus Broker additionally empowers the client to arrange and concur upon the Qos necessities to be given by the administration supplier.

Cloud computing reference model This scenario (Figure 2) identifies a reference model into which all the key components are organised and classified. The most reduced level of the stack is portrayed by the physical assets, which constitute the establish-

Cloud ApplicationsCloud Programming & Tools

QoS, SLA Mgmt, Monitoring, Billing, Execution

VM Management & Deployment

Apps Housing Platforms

Cloud Resources

System Level

Core Middleware

User Level Middleware

User Level Adaptive Mgt

Cloud Economy

Cloud Computing Reference Model (Figure 2)

COVER STORY20

| G

EO

INT

EL

LIG

EN

CE

NO

VE

MB

ER

- D

EC

EM

BE

R 2

014

GIS cloud is a suggestive approach to

upgrade conventional GIS applications

in order to provide a broad spectrum of

services to users across the globe

ments of the cloud. These assets can be of diverse nature — groups, serv-er farms, and desktop machines. On top of these, the IT infrastructure is deployed and managed. Commercial cloud deployments are more likely to be constituted by data centres hosting hundreds or thousands of machines, while private clouds can provide a more heterogeneous environment, in which even the idle CPU cycles of desktop computers are used to lever-age the compute workload.

The physical base is overseen by the centre middleware whose destinations are to give a suitable runtime envi-ronment to applications and to use the physical assets. Virtualisation technologies provide features such as application isolation, QoS, and sand-boxing. Among the different solutions for virtualisation, hardware-level vir-tualisation and programming lan-guage-level virtualisation are the most popular. Hardware-level virtualisation guarantees complete isolation of appli-cations and a partitioning of the phys-ical resources, such as memory and CPU, by means of virtual machines. Programming-level virtualisation gives sandboxing and managed executions to applications created with a program-ming dialect or particular engineering.

Virtualisation technologies help in creating an environment in which expert and business services are inte-grated. These include negotiation of the QoS, admission control, execution management and monitoring, ac-counting, and billing. Physical infra-structure and core middleware repre-sent the platform where applications are deployed. This platform is made available through a user-level middle- ware, which provides environments and tools simplifying the development and the deployment of applications in the cloud. They are Web 2.0 interfac-es, command line tools, libraries, and programming languages. The user-lev-el middleware constitutes the access point of applications to the cloud. At the top level, different types of appli-cations take advantage of the offerings provided by the cloud computing ref-erence model. Independent Software

Vendors (ISV) can depend on the cloud to oversee new applications and ad-ministrations. Enterprises can leverage the cloud for providing services to their customers. Other opportunities can be found in the education sector, social computing, scientific computing, and Content Delivery Networks.

Emerging trends in cloud computingCloud computing developments which would be of importance in the future are as under:• Hybrid Clouds: The debate over

public cloud versus private cloud architecture in enterprise IT may finally end with the creation of hy-brid clouds — architectures that combines the security of private clouds with the powerful, scala-ble, and cost-effective benefits of public clouds. This should encour-age many businesses to adopt a cloud-based infrastructure. Hybrid clouds open up a range of customis-able provisions for IT leaders, while keeping both security and big data advocates happy.

• The industrial Internet takes off: The Industrial Internet (a.k.a. the Internet of Things) should start transforming operations in 2014, as solutions combining intelligent machines, Big Data analytics and end-user applications begin to roll out across major industries. Cloud computing platforms will play a big role in creating the next genera-tion of intelligent, software-defined machines that are operable and controllable entirely from central-ised, remote locations.

• Web-Powered Apps: If scalability and efficiency are among the key benefits of cloud computing, then

developing cloud-based applications that are platform-agnostic is essential. With efforts like famo.us giving new life to HTML5 through JavaScript, the web will become a major platform for cloud-based applications.

• BYOD and the personal cloud in enterprise IT: The BYOD movement is already hitting enterprise envi-ronments and is expected to expand in 2014. As end-users put more of their own data into personal cloud services for syncing, streaming, and storage, IT executives are finding ways to incorporate personal cloud services in the enterprise environ-ment through techniques such as mobile device management.

• PaaS continue to Grow: More com-panies will be looking to adopt PaaS solutions in the upcoming years. PaaS allows businesses to lower IT costs while speeding up application development through more efficient testing and deployment. According to analyst firm IDC, the PaaS market is expected to grow from USD 3.8 billion to USD 14 billion by 2017.

• Graphics as a Service: Running high-end graphics applications typ-ically requires massive hardware infrastructure, but cloud comput-ing is changing that. With emerg-ing cloud-based graphics technol-ogies by companies like AMD and NVIDIA, end-users will run graph-ically intensive applications using nothing more than an HTML5 Web browser.

• Identity Management in the Cloud: Cloud services offer accessibility, convenience, high-power, and re-dundancy, but with cloud-based applications taking over businesses, there is a need to rethink security policies. Look for identity

21

| G

EO

INT

EL

LIG

EN

CE

NO

VE

MB

ER

- D

EC

EM

BE

R 2

014

GIS cloud provides authoritative tools

which can help many businesses,

especially when optimisation and cost

cutting become critical means

management solutions to bring new paradigms of security to the cloud in 2014.

GIS cloud as a conceptGIS is an integrated system of computer hardware, software and spatial data (topographic, demographic, tabular, graphic image, digitally summarised), which performs manipulative and analytical operations on this data to produce reports, graphics and statis-tics and controls geographic data pro-cessing workflows. GIS cloud has been a suggestive approach to upgrade the conventional GIS applications in order to provide a broad spectrum of servic-es to users across the globe. The exten-sive use of GIS over the decades has been put to a question mark whether to shift it to more superior alternative i.e., cloud computing paradigm. GIS applications have been moving into the cloud with increased drive; global organisations like Esri, GIS Cloud Ltd etc have already taken the quantum leap and taken a technological shift to Cloud Computing Paradigm and are committed to provide on-demand services to their users. World’s largest GIS Cloud infrastructure providers are Amazon (Amazon EC2 & S3), Micro-soft (Microsoft Windows Azure, Win-dows Server Hyper-V), and IBM (IBM Cloud) which provide reliable and secure cloud IT infrastructure to the customers on-demand.

The need for GIS cloudGIS cloud provides authoritative tools which can help many businesses, es-pecially, when optimisation and cost reduction are critical. Some basic prin-ciples which characterise GIS cloud to be accepted as the serious contender

for next generation GIS computing paradigm are: • Giving Application Infrastructure:

GIS cloud provides the dedicated framework for geo-enabling busi-ness data and systems. For organisa-tions previously invested in GIS, GIS cloud resources can be exploited to increase the assistance, making the organisations, business and geo-graphic data easier to be analysed, authored, and managed. GIS cloud provides Web-services and applica-tion hosting for the organisations to make the organisational geograph-ic data to be easily accessed, pub-lished and consumed.

• Help Technology Infrastructure: GIS cloud as a computing paradigm for geographical data enables sub-scribers’ to leverage virtual sophis-ticated hardware and software re-sources and provides full access to data creation, analysis, editing and visualisation. Simple collabo-rative utilities further enhance the spread of GIS across an office or across the globe.

• Plummeting Support and Maintenance: Implementation of in-house GIS within an organisa-tion requires people with special-ised skills and elevated technical capabilities. GIS cloud eliminates the need for in-house GIS potential for basic geo-information access capabilities. For organisations that already have GIS capability, it will be complementary for highly skilled in-house staff from having to take care of basic information require-ments, and letting them deal with more complex responsibilities and services. For customers, this means no bigger straight implementation

investments and significant ongo-ing reductions in their in-house IT support and maintenance burden.

• Diminishing usage cost: GIS cloud has tremendous capability of pro-viding its consumers the advanced geo-technology infrastructure, the services and the geospatial data. There is no huge initial investment in time and cost, or partial mainte-nance. This is most significant be-cause the cost to fan enterprise GIS can be quite large, which is one of the main reasons why many organ-isations don’t provide any GIS solu-tions to customers. With GIS cloud, that threshold to entry is eliminated to a large extent.

• Leveraging Data Command: The essence of GIS is to provide image-ry and topographic mapping, which acts as a foundation against which other spatial data are encrusted. For GIS application providers it costs a considerable amount of money to obtain and process from a spatial data vendor. The GIS cloud has capabili-ties to provide the underlying data as component of the core services made available through standard Inter-net-enabled devices. The rapid elastic nature of GIS cloud makes it sure that users can increase or decrease capac-ity at will. GIS cloud provides the us-ers capabilities to input, analyse and manipulate spatial information. In addition to that GIS cloud advanced services for storage and management of spatial information prove to be supportive for users.

• Location Independent Resource Pooling: GIS cloud has the tremen-dous capability of providing loca-tion-independent resource pooling. Processing and storage demands are balanced across a common in-frastructure with no particular re-source assigned to any individual user. The pay-per-use property of GIS cloud ensures that consumers are charged based on their usage of a combination of computing power, bandwidth use and/or storage.

• Data Conversion and Presentation: A data conversion service implies the transformation and importing

COVER STORY22

| G

EO

INT

EL

LIG

EN

CE

NO

VE

MB

ER

- D

EC

EM

BE

R 2

014

from one format into a new data-base. For any GIS it is of utmost importance and requires dedicated in-house technical resources which include infrastructure, software services and skilled manpower. GIS cloud provides spatial data conver-sion services without any require-ment of in-house resource capabil-ities. The advanced features like 3D presentation of spatial information in GIS cloud eliminates the tradi-tional “pancake perspective” that flatten all of the interesting facts into force-fitted plane geometry.

Cloud architecture for GISSome providers look at cloud com-puting as way to provide compute or storage capacity as a service, provi-sioned from a parallel, on-demand processing platform that leverag-es economies of scale. Others may equate cloud computing with soft-ware as a service, a delivery model for making applications available over the Internet. IT pioneers view cloud computing from the perspective of variable pricing without long-term commitments and massive elastic scaling of services. IT leaders view cloud as an infrastructure architec-

ture alternative that can reduce costs. End users, the media and financial analysts have still other perspectives on what cloud computing represents. For GIS applications, the GIS cloud can prove to be an approach to pro-vide compute or storage capacity as a service, provisioned from a parallel, on-demand processing platform that leverages economies of scale to var-ied shade of users and organisations requiring GIS application services.

Having said much about the GIS cloud capabilities, it is crucial to under-stand the different layers of GIS cloud system. Figure 3 shows proposed GIS cloud architecture which can be fol-lowed to develop a consolidated, elas-tic pool of compute and storage system to gather, manipulate, analyse, and display spatial data. We have followed a multi-tiered architecture approach which separates different logical com-ponents of GIS cloud system to exploit the capabilities of each component at its best. The given system will be capa-ble of providing flexible solution, het-erogeneous platform, scalable (hori-zontally and vertically) infrastructure, secure and personalised environment, extensive business intelligent system and elastic platform to the GIS users.

The proposed GIS cloud architecture can be broadly divided into two parts which are GIS Cloud Web Interface & GIS Server.GIS cloud Web interface: The idea behind GIS cloud Web interface is to give adaptable, robust and cost-effec-tive web-based interface to the clients by taking the help of Web 2.0 and re-lated technologies. The GIS cloud web interface will be one of the vital com-ponents of GIS cloud which will be actually a zero downtime web-appli-cation with real-time content updates. The main aim will be to provide users a better experience by downloading it in less than 10 seconds. ▶ Allow user personalisation and

complete interactivity. ▶ Make content available using varied

technologies like broadband, mobile, RSS etc. and enhance employee pro-ductivity by creating a CMS which ex-ecutes the workflow (from accessing raw content and delivering the pro-cessed copy) for publishing content in 3-5 minutes in routine situations and have exceptions to the process to take care of emergency scenarios.

▶ Allow the GIS team to analyse user behavior and all online properties like online map production to chart out a

Cloud architecture for GIS (Figure 3)

23

| G

EO

INT

EL

LIG

EN

CE

NO

VE

MB

ER

- D

EC

EM

BE

R 2

014

more robust future growth roadmap and allow users to view, edit and inte-grate maps in the system.

▶ Integrate all elements, which allows interlinking of geospatial informa-tion in terms of text /audio /video/maps etc. with each other across the spectrum.

GIS server: The idea behind the GIS server is to have scalable computing resources for GIS cloud that manages shared resources such as, configura-tion, server logic, server side utilities, communication interfaces, data-bases and high powered processing infrastructure. The proposed GIS cloud server will comprise of follow-ing five tiers:• GIS Cloud Communication Layer:

GIS cloud communication layer will be a communication interface of the GIS server composed of log-ical components {Module 1, Mod-ule 2 … Module (n) and Service 1, Service 2 … Service (n)}. This layer will be responsible for managing and controlling all the communi-cation processes within the GIS Cloud System (Inter-Layer Com-munication) and communication between GIS cloud system and the outside world. Figure 3 shows that the in-house computer systems lo-cated at the GIS-service provider organisations will communicate with the GIS cloud system via GIS cloud communication layer. There will be dedicated logical modules ranging from {Module1-Module (n)} which will serve for all the requirements for GIS service pro-vider organisations, mainly for paradigm shift (adoption of cloud technology). The dedicated logical modules will be responsible for providing enhanced capabilities to the GIS service provider organisa-tions like creating and importing spatial, non-spatial and temporal (the evolution of both spatial and non-spatial data over time) data into the GIS cloud system. The authentication and authorisation mechanisms will also be handled at the same level to enforce data secu-rity and privacy constraints. There

will also be present a standardised XML service oriented messaging system for manageable approach to distributed computing, broad interoperability, and direct support for service orientation in the form of Web-Services {Sevice1-Service (n)} at the GIS cloud communica-tion layer. The GIS cloud Web in-terface will consume these services based upon the user requirements so that enterprises can integrate spatial, non-spatial and temporal data and business processes with the GIS cloud system utilising GIS cloud Web interface.

• GIS Cloud Utilities Layer: This lay-er will be a collection of software utilities to support the optimisation and seamless functioning of the GIS cloud system as a whole. The util-ities will include system profilers, schedulers, system logging, data conversion, data compression and other focused GIS utilities for ad-dress lookup, mapping, routing, re-verse geocoding, and navigation.

• GIS Cloud Logic Layer: This layer will act as the ‘Heart’ of GIS cloud system and will contain all the logic forming the basis of the system. This layer will contain logic for complex

processing tasks, presentation logic, business logic and data access logic of GIS cloud system.

• GIS Cloud Repository Layer: This layer will be an API based data repos-itory layer which unify the commu-nication between a GIS cloud system and the spatial DBMS used for the system such as DB2, PostGIS, Oracle Spatial, SQL Server etc for maintain-ing spatial databases in the system. This will govern all the processes, mechanisms and procedures used to store and access of spatial, non-spa-tial data in the GIS cloud system. This layer will also hold spatial metadata which should be stored as part of the spatial databases, and treated as deci-sion aid to assist data users.

• GIS Cloud Configuration Layer: This will be a system configuration management and storage compo-nent of the GIS cloud system. Any change in the GIS cloud framework will result to a change in the config-uration of the system as a whole and the GIS cloud configuration layer will maintain the system configura-tion in terms of its consistency and performance. There will be thread-based logical modules which will be monitoring the system perfor-

Online Server SaaS

Map servicesTask servicesCommunity maps

ArcGIS Server on Amazon EC2

ArcLogisticsBusiness Analyst OnlineCommunity analyst

Arcpad*

Mobile

Cre

dit

: Esr

i

* Coming soon

ArcGIS in the cloud (Figure 4)

COVER STORY24

| G

EO

INT

EL

LIG

EN

CE

NO

VE

MB

ER

- D

EC

EM

BE

R 2

014

mance, consistency and change of state. The above discussed GIS cloud system can be placed on any of the reliable and secure cloud in-frastructure like Amazon EC2 & S3, Microsoft Windows Azure, Windows Server Hyper-V and IBM Cloud etc. Since one of the major attributes of cloud computing is universal system access i.e., accessing cloud services through standard Internet-enabled devices eliminating the bottlenecks for information access, the GIS cloud system will be accessed either by GIS cloud Web interface or by the in-house computer systems located at the GIS service provider organi-sations.

• ArcGIS in the Cloud: The basics of cloud engineering (Figure 4) are not hard to understand. Yet independent from anyone else, this technology has no use — the worth originates from how it is utilised. GIS servic-es are available in the cloud so that ArcGIS users and developers can access ready-to-use maps includ-ing imagery, topography maps, and street base maps as well as task ser-vices such as routing and geocoding. The ArcGIS Server in the cloud. Esri uses the cloud today in several differ-ent ways. ArcGIS Server can be de-ployed in the cloud via the Amazon EC2 so that organisations and devel-opers can publish and quickly deploy custom GIS mapping applications within minutes.

• ArcLogistics, Business Analyst Online (BAO), or Community Analyst: GIS Software as a Service provides focused, cloud-based cli-ents and applications that easily solve complex business problems using GIS tools and data but don’t require GIS expertise to use.

• ArcGIS Mobile: More mobile GIS services are coming to the cloud soon so that an organisation’s field staff, business professionals, and consumers can access GIS capabil-ities and data using nearly any mo-bile device. With ArcPad, users can send edits back to the enterprise geodatabase directly from the field. Edits from ArcPad can be enabled

on top of the ArcGIS Server on Am-azon EC2.Esri has been providing Software

plus Services (S+S) for some time, allowing customers to leverage their on-premises solutions with on-demand services. Esri’s ArcGIS Online map and GIS services provide S+S users with immediate access to cartographically designed, seamless basemaps to which they can easily add their own data in an Esri on-premises product. As a community cloud, the ArcGIS Online Content Sharing Pro-gram enables users and organisations to contribute geographic data content. Leveraging Amazon’s EC2 and Sim-ple Storage Service (S3) compute and storage services allows Esri to host the content and provide access 24/7. ArcGIS Explorer users can consume ready-to-use basemaps and layers from ArcGIS Online services in the S+S model. Arclogistics allocates soft-ware and access to online services that help you make ideal vehicle courses and schedules

ConclusionThe 21st century demands better data computing speeds, support for ongo-ing IT applications and techniques, deal with access spikes, and provide more reliable and scalable services. The emergence of cloud computing provides potential for solutions with an elastic on demand computing. It has become a platform to integrate observation systems, data processing, analytical visualisation and decision support. Somehow, GIS applications are suitable for the cloud in light of the fact that they depend on voluminous changing information sets, putting both the information and apparatuses to work in the cloud.

References a) Market-Oriented Cloud Computing:

Vision, Hype, and Reality for Delivering IT

Services as Computing Utilities Rajkumar

Buyya, Chee Shin Yeo, and Srikumar Venu-

gopal Grid Computing and Distributed

Systems (GRIDS) Laboratory Department

of Computer Science and Software Engi-

neering The University of Melbourne, Future

Generation computer Systems vol 25 issue

6 June2009

b) Muzafar Ahmad Bhat , Razeef Mohd

Shah ,and Bashir Ahmad ,Feb 2011 “Cloud

Computing: A solution to Geographical

Information Systems (GIS )” international

journal on computerscience and Engineer-

ing Vol3No2,Feb2011

c) Muzafar Ahmad Bhat, Razeef Mohd

Shah, Bashir Ahmad and Inayat Rasool

Bhat, December 2010, “Cloud Computing:

A Solution to Information Support Systems

(ISS),” International Journal of Computer

Applications 11(5), 5–9. 2010.

d) Rajkumar Buyya, Chee Shin Yeo, and Sri-

kumar Venugopal, “Market-Oriented Cloud

Computing: Vision, Hype, and Reality for

Delivering IT Services as Computing Utili-

ties,” Keynote Paper, Proceedings of the 10th

IEEE International Conference on High Per-

formance Computing and Communications

(HPCC 2008, IEEE CS Press, Los Alamitos,

CA, USA), Sept. 25-27, 2008, Dalian, China.

e) Spatial Cloud Computing (SC2) White

Paper 2009: “A New Paradigm for Geo-

graphic Information Services,” Presented by:

HughWilliams, SKE Inc. August 2009

f) Victoria kouyoumjian,”The New Age of

Cloud Computing and GIS” Esri IT strategy

architecture, Esri Arc Watch Jan2010

g) Suhas Sreedhar “Seven Cloud computing

Trends 2014” sungard ASvoice”www.forbes.

com

h) Executives Guide to Cloud computing a

book by Eric A Marks and Bob Lozano

i) VOGELS, W., 2008, “A Head in the Clouds

– The Power of Infrastructure as a Service,”

In First workshop on Cloud Computing and

in Applications (CCA ‘08) (October 2008).

j) Large Scale Network-Centric Distributed

Systems, edited by Hamid Sarbazi-Azad, Al-

bert Y. Zomaya

k) Cloud Computing, Nariman Mirzaei,

Fall 2008

l) Medical Instrument Design and Develop-

ment: From Requirements to Market (book)

by Claudio Becchetti, Alessandro Neri

m) IBM Global Technology Servic-

es, “Defining a framework for cloud

adoption,”Thought Leadership White Paper

May 2010..

Lt Gen (Dr) AKS Chandele PVSM, AVSM (Retd) Managing Editorajay@geospatialmedia.net

25

| G

EO

INT

EL

LIG

EN

CE

NO

VE

MB

ER

- D

EC

EM

BE

R 2

014

Warships at sea are humming with inputs from a multitude of sensors. Sensors en-sure the survivability of a warship at sea during peace time as well as war. A warship

has basic sensors, implying thereby that their outputs are required for practically all operations at sea. These include meteorological sensors, conductivity, temperature and density sensors, ship’s speed sensors or logs, depth sensors or echo sounders and satellite signal receivers. Apart from these, a ship utilises radar, sonar, and communication sen-sors for its operations.

Basic sensorsMeteorological sensors: A warship requires accurate measurement of wind speed and direction, temperature, pressure, humidity and other local environmental parameters. This is required for various tasks including flight operations, gunnery, rocket and missile firings, etc. AGIMET is one of the manufacturers for such systems.▶ Speed Log: For measurement of a ship’s transversal and

longitudinal speed, single and dual axis speed logs as well as dual axis doppler logs, are available. The speed logs provide ship’s speed, drift speed and angle at all

The evolution of network-centric warfare, which enables enhanced situational awareness, rapid target assessment, and distributed weapon assignment, is dependent upon the geospatial information collated from warship sensors

of Geo IntelligenceWarship Sensors as Elements

Credit:Indian Navy

WARSHIP SENSORS

WARSHIP SENSORS26

| G

EO

INT

EL

LIG

EN

CE

NO

VE

MB

ER

- D

EC

EM

BE

R 2

014

times and in any depth. Raytheon Anshutz manufactures some of the popular ship logs. Conductivity, temperature and density (CTD) are used extensively for the measurement of temperature and salinity, and also for deriving pa-rameters of density and speed of sound. Teledyne RDI Citadel CTDs fall under this category.

▶ Expendable Bathythermograph: It is used by a warship to ob-tain an ocean temperature ver-sus depth profile. It is useful for anti-submarine warfare (ASW) by warships and for anti ship warfare by submarines. Lockheed Martin Sippican has manufactured over 5 million XBTs since the 1960s.

▶ Echo Sounder: Data consisting of the immediate depth and a record of soundings are required for nav-igation. Kongsberg’s EN 250 is one such navigation echo sounder.

▶ Satellite Signal Receivers for Communication and Navigation: As far as communication systems are concerned, use of satellites is fairly well understood and is com-mon knowledge with deep inroads made by mobile telephony and the Internet. Methods of navigation have changed throughout history. New methods often enhance the mari-ner’s ability to complete his voyage safely and expeditiously, and make his job easier. Commonly recognised types of navigation methods which involve ‘sensors’ are:

• Piloting: Involves navigating in re-stricted waters with frequent or constant determination of position relative to nearby geographic and hydrographic features.

• Radio Navigation: Using radio waves to determine position through a va-riety of electronic devices.

• Radar Navigation: Using radar to determine the distance from or bearing of objects whose position is known.

• Satellite Navigation: Using radio sig-nals from satellites for determining position.

Modern integrated systems take inputs from various ship sensors, elec-

tronically and automatically chart the position, and provide control signals required to maintain a vessel on a preset course. With the advent of au-tomated position fixing and electronic charts, modern navigation is almost completely an electronic process. The mariner is constantly tempted to rely solely on electronic systems. But elec-tronic navigation systems are always subject to failures, like user mistakes, multipath interference, satellite and receiver clock errors, orbit errors, sat-ellite geometry, atmospheric inter-ference and “selective availability by intentional degradation” (limits ac-curacy of satellite signals) of the GPS system by the nation operating the satellites.

Thus, with convergence of sensors on board through integration we see that geospatial information has now become the cornerstone of not only navigation but also a host of other op-erations such as precision weapon fir-ings and weather predictions, etc. For better appreciation of major sensors, a brief description of radar, sonar and communication systems is provided in succeeding paragraphs.

RadarRadar is used in a range of diverse appli-cations in the civil and military field. The applications include, weather sensing, air traffic control, navigation, target de-

tection, acquisition and tracking, missile and gun direction, airborne systems, research and so on. Military radars can be classified in many ways. They can for instance be based upon the type of platform, i.e. land-based, ship-borne or air/space-borne; or be mission-based for example, early warning, tracking, fire control, weather, etc; or they may be classified based upon radar characteris-tics like wave form, frequency used, type of antenna, etc. Most prevalent clas-sification is according to frequency or waveform utilised.

Radar technology has largely kept pace with the miniaturisation as well as digitisation of electronic compo-nents. It has also been possible for the radar designers to meet the changing multi-mission requirements of mod-ern naval warfare post the cold war. Today, by using single multi-func-tion radar, a ship can track and attack emerging fast cruise missile and air-craft threats, ballistic missile attacks, swamp attacks by fast small craft in littorals and carry out various missile and gunfire surface warfare functions. The versatility and adaptability of the radar technology has thus ensured its continued relevance to the naval de-signers and war fighters.

Specific types of radarsStealth Radars or low probabil-ity of intercept (LPI) radars: LPI

With the advent of automated position fixing and electronic

charts, modern navigation is almost completely an electronic process.

Credit: Jelly

Expendable Bathythermograph

27

| G

EO

INT

EL

LIG

EN

CE

NO

VE

MB

ER

- D

EC

EM

BE

R 2

014

radars transmit weak signals, which are difficult to detect by an enemy intercept receiver. The LPI radars are continuous wave, wide bandwidth ra-dars emitting low power signals. This makes LPI radars difficult to detect by passive radar detection systems. Such radar is used in Super Hornet aircraft of the US Navy.2D, 3D, and 4D Radars: A 2D radar provides range and azimuth infor-mation about the target. 3D radar, in addition provides the elevation in-formation. An example is AN/SPY-1 phased array radar on Ticonderoga class of guided missile cruisers. 4D radar is Pulse-Doppler radar: Capable of 3D functions and deter-mines a target’s radial velocity as well. This type of radar has great applicability in defence, since it can detect targets by removing hostile environmental influ-ences such as electronic interference, birds, reflections due to weather phe-nomenon etc. TRS-4D surveillance ra-dar with Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) technology is in use by the German Navy.

An example of good radar is Raytheon’s AN/SPY-5, which is an X-band multi-tracking, target-illumi-nating system for surface combatants

that can simultaneously search, detect, and precisely track multiple surface and air threats. A single radar system consists of three 120-degree beam fac-es providing full 360-degree azimuth coverage. The mission capabilities in-clude low-altitude horizon search; fo-cused volume search; surface search; missile and surface gunfire control; simultaneous threat illumination; and missile midcourse guidance and terminal homing. SPY-5’s size, weight, and overall self-defense capabilities make it equally well suited for large-deck aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships as well as corvettes.

Radars in Indian NavyThe Indian Navy has various types of in-digenous and imported radars. Among the indigenous radars, it has L Band surveillance radar RAWL MK II &III; F Band combined warning and target indication radar RAWS 03 Upgrade, 3D surveillance radar Revathi and navi-gation radar APARNA. Among the im-ported radars, it has a mix of radars from both the east and the west. Some of the imported radars are MF-Star 3D phased array, MR-760 Fregat M2EM 3-D, MR-90 Orekh fire control, Signaal D Band, MR-310U Angara air surveil-

lance, MR-775 Fregat MAE air surveil-lance, Garpun-Bal fire control, MR-352 search etc. The P8i Maritime patrol aircraft, which was recently delivered to India, will be operating AN/APY-10 multi function, long-range surveillance radar capable of operating day and night under all weather conditions. It pro-vides mission support for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), anti-surface and anti-submarine war-fare. It has both synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and inverse SAR capability. The Inverse SAR can detect, image and clas-sify surface targets at long ranges.

SonarSonar can be passive or active type de-pending upon whether it only listens to sound signals or it sends and receives the reflected echo and processes it for information. Active sonar is similar to radar in that while it allows detection of targets at a certain range, it also en-ables the emitter to be detected at a far greater range, which is undesirable. Use of active sonar is generally limited to surface ships, aircrafts, helicopters, since it compromises the location of the host platform. Passive sonar has the advantage of longer target detec-tion range and anonymity.

Sonar systems have benefited enormously with the advances in digital electronics, and signal process-ing. Many a algorithms applicable to radar systems have been adapted in sonar. Use of synthetic aperture meth-ods in sonar has increased the quality of image and robustness of the system. Use of multiple transducer sensors and sophisticated beam forming tech-niques adapted from improvements in target detection in radar has yielded similar benefits in sonar.

Thales Underwater Systems has de-veloped and produced Sonar 2087. It has been designed to be a variable depth, towed active and passive sonar system that performs in conjunction with Sonar 2050 bow-mounted active sonar on UK’s Type 23 frigates. Digital technology in signal processing and COTS hardware has been used extensively. It is claimed that S2087 will be suitable for both, litto-ral environments and deep ocean.

Ground-based mobile radar systems

Cop

yrig

ht ©

: Lo

ckhe

ed M

arti

n

WARSHIP SENSORS28

| G

EO

INT

EL

LIG

EN

CE

NO

VE

MB

ER

- D

EC

EM

BE

R 2

014

Raytheon has developed the AN/SQQ-90 tactical sonar suite for the US Navy’s DDG 1000-class multi-mission destroyer. It compris-es the AN/SQS-61 hull-mounted high-frequency sonar, AN/SQS-60 hull-mounted mid-frequency sonar, and the AN/SQR-20 multi-function towed array sonar and handling system.

Atlas Elektronik will supply Active Towed Array Sonar (ATAS) to the Indian Navy, which will equip the Delhi and Talwar class ships. ATAS would be subsequently manufactured in India under cooperation with BEL.

EdgeTech, has delivered 12 advanced side scan sonar systems (mine warfare) for the Indian Navy.

Indigenous Sonars with Indian NavyIndigenous sonars held by the Indian Navy are manufactured by Bharat Electronics (BEL). Two important sonars manufactured by BEL are the Advanced Active cum Passive Integrat-ed Sonar System (HUMSA-NG) and the Integrated Submarine Sonar (USHUS).

HUMSA-NG is an advanced active cum passive integrated sonar system to be fitted on a wide variety of Indian Navy platforms such as the Project 17, Project 15A and Project 28 class ships. HUMSA-NG is an advanced version of the HUMSA sonar presently fitted on P16, P15, Ranjit, and Talwar Class of ships. It is designed for enhancing the system performance, reliability, and maintainability. It is capable of detect-ing, localising, classifying, and track-ing sub-surface targets in both active and passive modes. The system pro-vides simultaneous long-range detec-tion in active and passive modes. The sonar is capable of localisation and automatic tracking of up to eight tar-gets in both active and passive modes. The sonar integrates the operation of the UWT and XBT systems. The system is integrated with FCS systems such as IAC MOD ‘C and CAIO for exchange of relevant information.

Integrated Submarine Sonar (USHUS) is used to detect, localise, and classify underwater submerged and sur-

face targets through passive listening, interception of signals and active trans-missions of acoustics signals. It has both analogue and digital external system interface. It is modular and rugged in design with upgradeable performance features. The underwater communica-tion system has multiple mode acous-tic communication in dual frequency to meet NATO and other requirements, voice, telegraph, data, and message modes of operation. Its obstacle avoid-ance sonar is a high frequency short range sonar with rectangular transducer array and its transmission covers three sectors of 30° each.

CommunicationsNavies use visual, sound, and electrical means for communications. Telecom-munication includes in its ambit trans-mission, reception, signals, images, sounds, and intelligence information by visual, oral, wire, radio, or other elec-tronic systems. Ships use radiotelepho-ny because of its ease of operation, di-rectness, and convenience. In navy, it is used for communication between ship-to-ship, ship-to-shore, shore-to-ship, air-to-ship, ship-to-air, air-to-ground, and ground-to-air. The most important use of radiotelephone is in short-range tactical communication.

Radio communication has become a specialised field of electronics. Naval communication systems vary in complexity depending upon their role, compatibility, and flexibility. Due to scarcity of space on board a ship, the communication equipment is spread across the ship’s compart-ments; however, it is ensured that the sets are capable of operating sepa-rately as well as concurrently. Com-

plex interconnections provide the ability of selectively switching differ-ent configurations.

Communication technology devel-opments to provide ever-increasing requirements of multiple bands and bandwidths, foresee a need for large rotating antennas. These pose sever-al problems on board warships like space availability, electromagnetic in-terference and increase in ships radar signature. The trend is tilting towards development of single unit consolidat-ing antennas and sensors.

US Navy has begun the deployment of wireless link interface technology on board 97 of its ships for maritime inter-ception operations. The wireless sys-tem will allow communication direct-ly with boarding teams several miles away. Interdiction units will be able to transmit biometrics data, scanned documents, digital photos, and emails, back to the ship using the data link. The US Navy has successfully tested micro-wave-based wireless wide-area net-work (WWAN) between ships to enable incorporation of Long-Term Evolution (LTE) standard, generally referred to as 4G LTE. The LTE network would let sailors on ships receive real-time video streaming from air nodes mounted on helicopters, which in turn would per-mit officers to make accurate decisions. Oceus Networks is the likely provider of the systems.

Vitavox has been providing the world’s largest navies with military com-munications equipment since 1933. The audio equipment provided by Vitavox can be used in a variety of applications, both above and below deck as well as above and below surface.

Rohde & Schwarz in Europe was

Radio communication has become a specialised field of electronics.

Naval communication systems vary in complexity depending upon their

role, compatibility, and flexibility.

29

| G

EO

INT

EL

LIG

EN

CE

NO

VE

MB

ER

- D

EC

EM

BE

R 2

014

commissioned to design and build a navy-wide communications network encompassing shore stations, cor-vettes, patrol boats, landing craft of many sizes and with diverse applica-tions, coastal mine hunters, and mar-itime patrol aircraft (MPA). Tailored voice and data communications solu-tions have been defined for shipboard internal communications and external line-of-sight (LOS) and beyond-line-of-sight (BLOS) radio communications. A navy-wide military message handling system (MMHS) covers both strategic and tactical communications.

DCNS has developed SySmart, a commercial wireless communica-tions and tracking system. It enables exchange of video, voice, and data wirelessly from anywhere on board a ship using handheld devices. Internet linked video and infrared cameras and other shipboard sensors can be accessed by the sailors. The system is built around existing Ethernet sys-tems and other proprietary wireless networks. It has been successfully tested on French naval ships and is to be incorporated in the next gener-ation of French submarines in 2017.

Communication Systems in Indian NavyThe Indian Navy is using indigenous systems extensively on its warships. Some noteworthy systems already on

board warships and scheduled for fit-ment on ships under production are manufactured by BEL.• Synchronous Transfer Mode (ATM)

Based Integrated Shipboard Data Network (AISDN): It is a multi-ser-vices shipboard network designed to converge all voice traffic, real time video and traditional data commu-nications onto a single broadband infrastructure. It integrates various equipment and systems on board namely EW Systems, Radars, Sonars, CAIO (Computer Aided Information Organization), Fire Control Systems, and a number of other equipment for Ship’s Household Data (SHHD). It integrates all sensors, weapons, and communication services onto one single broadband network.

• Composite Communication System (CCS) Mk III: It is a new generation ATM based communication system that provides ship-to-ship, ship-to-shore and ship-to-air communica-tion. It is designed as a voice and data integrated network providing connectivity between radio equip-ment and remote user onboard for accessing and monitoring and con-trol of radio equipment.

• Versatile Communication System (VCS) Mk III: It is a versatile system designed to provide internal com-munication facilities and display of status of various equipment and systems onboard naval ships. The system is highly flexible and re-con-figurable and can be configured for all classes of ships.

Future Trend — Consolidated Antennas and SensorsA warship requires concurrent functioning of various navigation and combat systems. Thus, infor-mation flow is necessitated between various systems and equipments, for example, a warship’s navigation and combat systems require information of ship’s course, speed, water depth, and geographical position. The sen-sors have to feed different systems simultaneously in an integrated manner. This implies an in-tandem functioning of different systems in a

coordinated and unified manner. This is a formidable task since systems are highly complex, diverse electronic units sourced from multiple sources with different standards. The integra-tion unit should be able to compre-hend the language of different units, extract relevant information, and feed it to systems in the acceptable format. It should have flexibility to integrate upgrades and new equipment.

Thales Netherlands is developing its integrated sensor and communications suite, which will house radio and da-ta-link communication systems, radar and electro-optical subsystems and IFF in a single unit. The US Navy has award-ed 18 contracts to develop integration and management technology for radio frequency radar and communications functions. The objective of the advanced multifunction radio frequency concept is the integration of radar, electronic warfare and communications into a common set of apparatus with signal and data processing, signal generation and display hardware.

The profound impact of geospatial technology can be witnessed in mari-time domain awareness, command and control elements, operations, telecom-munication systems, navigation, and precision targeting. Geospatial tech-nology today is at the core of network centric warfare and warships sensors constitute its elements. In future, with India’s own Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS), fusion with integrated functioning of the national spatial data infrastructure, space-based surveillance, information from un-manned vehicles, sensors from services, would provide unprecedented battle space transparency enabling bearing of tremendous force on the adversary.

Rear Admiral Dr S Kulshrestha, Retd. Senior Fellow, New Westminster College, Canadadaddykuls@gmail.com

IRNSS-1C

Cre

dit:

ND

TV

TECHNOLOGY30

| G

EO

INT

EL

LIG

EN

CE

NO

VE

MB

ER

- D

EC

EM

BE

R 2

014

Successful use of UAVs and their invaluable contribution to battlefield surveillance have made them an important part of military services. Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles (UCAVs) are rapidly becoming the weapon of choice for military forces, thereby revolutionising the face of warfare

The history of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) goes back many decades. Their first prominent use in

conflict perhaps was 71 years ago, in World War II during the Gran Sasso raid in September 1943 when gliders were used for Mussolini’s rescue. Since the rescue troops resorted to firing from the air, perhaps it was the very basic form of the Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles (UCAVs) as well.

But then just 14 years later, the unmanned missions went for Space — Sputnik I and Sputnik II of USSR in October and November 1957, re-spectively, followed by Explorer I of USA in January 1958. And the race had begun. UAVs have come a long way since then for tasks encompassing communications, surveillance and as weapon platforms. Today, research-ers are exploiting wind power to en-hance the capabilities of unmanned

aircraft, especially small drones so that these gliders can stay aloft for weeks, deployed for communications, surveillance, tracking movement including in the ocean.

The US Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California is developing a hand-launched Tactical Long En-durance Unmanned Aerial System (TALEUAS) that needs an electric propeller to get airborne, but having reached a reasonable altitude, it can

UAVs: Flying into the Future

Cre

dit

: ww

w.w

allp

aper

up.

com

31

| G

EO

INT

EL

LIG

EN

CE

NO

VE

MB

ER

- D

EC

EM

BE

R 2

014

fly all day just by riding rising currents of warm air thermals. When TALEUAS encounters a thermal, it senses the lift and spirals around to take advan-tage of it using the same technique that vultures and eagles use. In fact, vultures and eagles have been ob-served accompanying the TALEUS during flights, acknowledging it as their brood. Interestingly, on some oc-casions, the birds found that the ther-mals they were attempting to join it in were too weak for their weight, as the

drone is more efficient than they are at gliding.

At present, the endurance of TALEUAS is limited by the power re-quirements of its electronics and pay-load, these being battery powered. However, plans are afoot to cover the craft’s wings with solar cells that will generate power during the day, and replace its lithium-polymer battery with a lithium-ion one capable of stor-ing enough energy to last the night. With this, the TALEUAS is expected

to stay aloft indefinitely, albeit it still has to depend on locating and rid-ing thermals. To eliminate even that element of chance, researchers are allowing TALEAUS actively seek rising air in places where the hunt is most likely to be propitious in addition to thermals; orographic lift produced by wind blowing over a ridge, and lee waves caused by wind striking moun-tains. Their software combines sever-al approaches to the search for rising air. It analyses the local landscape for

large flat areas that are likely to pro-duce thermals, and for ridges that might generate orographic lift. It also employs cameras to spot cumulus clouds formed by rapidly rising hot air. Such software replicates the behaviour of a skilled sailplane pilot or a vulture/eagle in knowing where to find rising air and where to avoid downdraughts.

Concurrent to the Taleaus is the ‘robot glider’, virtually an artificial albatross whose development is being looked at by the Woods Hole Ocean-

ographic Institution, Massachusetts, USA. Like its natural counterpart, this artificial bird harnesses wind shear, which is the difference in wind speed at different heights, using a technique called dynamic soaring. The air is quite still near the surface of the sea even when it is blowing powerfully just a few metres above. So an albatross can rise up and face into the wind, gaining height like a kite in a breeze, then turn to glide down in any direction. By re-peating this manoeuvre, it can fly thou-

sands of kilometers without flapping its wings, and by tacking it can travel any-where, regardless of the wind direction, with an average speed six times that of the wind. The ‘Robot Bird’ plans to rep-licate this. The UCAV is a UAV designed to deliver weapons (attack targets) without an onboard pilot.

Towards autonomous operationCurrently operational UCAVs are un-der real-time human control, but

TECHNOLOGY32

| G

EO

INT

EL

LIG

EN

CE

NO

VE

MB

ER

- D

EC

EM

BE

R 2

014

future versions may enable autono-mous operation. US and NATO forces have used UAVs/UCAVs extensively in Afghanistan and Iraq, as also there have been numerous Predator UCAV attacks inside Pakistan. At present, Predators are seeking out targets in the Iraq-Syria occupied Islamic Caliphate.

US had developed the reusable space plane X-37B by 2012, but in July 2013, the US Navy made aviation his-tory by successfully landing a highly autonomous drone on an aircraft car-rier at sea. The batwing-shaped X-47B (developing and funding having cost an incredible USD 1.4 billion over eight years) executed one of the hard-est manoeuvres in aviation, catching the arrested-landing gear on the deck of the USS George HW Bush. Never be-fore had a robot performed such a feat executable only by the best of naval pi-lots world over. The drone, followed by manned aircraft, flew from a Maryland airstrip on a pre-programmed flight path, once cleared by the landing put its hook down, caught the wire, writing a new chapter in naval history.

Some 70 nations have UAVs/UCAVs of varied sophistication and military applicability, but only US has one the size of an F/A-18 Super Hornet and powered by a jet engine able to take

off and land on the deck of a ship. In an earlier flight, the X-47B had taken off from an aircraft carrier and landed on ground. The X-47B is different from the US Predator and Reaper drones. The latter two are not actually pilotless but are remotely controlled through instruments resembling those of a tra-ditional aircraft cockpit. Conversely, the X-47B is pilotless. Its operations oc-cur because of onboard software code that the computer system executes with flight paths pre-programmed. However, in case of malfunction, take-over by human control is possible. Having successfully completed the test, US Navy is looking at developing the successor of the X-47B successor; the Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike robot (UClass) for use in missions considered dangerous for human pilots but firing of onboard weapons with human con-currence.

America’s Prompt Global Hawke is designed to travel halfway around the world from launch to target in less than 30 minutes. While the weapon is launched by the Minuteman Missile, the missile release hypersonic ‘gliders’ that are satellite guided and the gliders in turn release the 1000 pound deep penetration bomb.

Elimination of onboard human crew in a combat aircraft that may be shot down over enemy territory has obvious advantages. In addition do-ing away of a cockpit, flight controls, ejection seat, oxygen, etc., results in decrease of weight, allowing greater payloads (armament, ammunition, cameras etc), plus increased range and manoeuvrability. Interesting-ly, Thales is assisting Qatar Armed Forces in developing an Optionally Pilot Vehicle — Aircraft (OPV-A); a high performance Intelligence, Sur-veillance, target Acquisition and Re-connaissance (ISTAR) system with full end-to-end training solution. The OPV-A airframe selected by Qatar will be integrated with a mission system capability to enable the optionally pi-loted capability as a hybrid between a conventional aircraft and an Unarmed Aircraft System (UAS). It will be able to fly with or without a pilot on board the aircraft.

These days UCAVs are being mounted with lasers and ordnance with better precision. MBDA has suc-cessfully demonstrated its Dual Mode BRIMSTONE missile on an MQ-9 REAPER remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) in January 2014, scoring nine direct hits against a range of targets including very high speed and manoeuvring ve-hicles in high collateral risk and urban environments. These trials are another step in the ongoing spiral development of weapon systems for UCAVs, broad-ening its application to deliver a true multi-role and multi-platform land and maritime attack capability.

Concurrent to development of drones is the ongoing research to bring down enemy drones. The world, espe-cially superpower US, was astounded when Iran downed the US Stealth Drone RQ-170 in December 2011. Hitherto, the downing of drones was only through chance direct hits. Advanced countries have developed laser weapons to down drones that are increasingly the weap-on of choice. However, this particular downing evoked massive interests be-cause Iran claimed that the drone had been brought down ‘intact’ using its ra-dio electronic warfare skills and vulner-

US and NATO forces have used UAVs/UCAVs extensively in Afghanistan and Iraq

Dual Mode BRIMSTONE Missile

Credit: brimstonemissile.com

33

| G

EO

INT

EL

LIG

EN

CE

NO

VE

MB

ER

- D

EC

EM

BE

R 2

014

abilities in the Sentinel’s GPS receiver, to trick it into landing on Iranian territory instead of its designated military base. The claim is considered plausible by many, since the drone did not sustain any visible damage during its alleged crash-landing.

Early this year, Iran surprised the world again by showcasing the repli-ca of CIA’s RQ-170 Sentinel drone, the original having been developed by American firm Lockheed Martin. Inter-estingly, Iran showcased the duplicate alongside the original downed one at the IRGC’s Aerospace Exhibition. The US Sentinel RQ-170 stealth drone has been deployed for covert operations in Afghanistan. Since 2011, Iran has also hunted down two more types of US drones; 2 x RQ-11 and 1 x ScanEagle that entered Iran from the Persian Gulf. Last year Iran announced it had completed decoding the software and extracted CIA’s surveillance data from the downed US Sentinel RQ-170 stealth drone. Si-multaneously, in February 2013, Iran released images of a ScanEagle drone production line and in October 2013, presented a functional copycat model of the US ScanEagle to a visiting Rus-sian military delegation. The fact is that Iran has made significant achievements in its defence sector, producing its own tanks, armored personnel carriers, mis-siles, drones and fighter jets. Even if the copycat RQ-170 stealth drone is some-what lower in capability compared to the original, it is no mean feat and there may be no reason to suppose so in the first place. China and her protégés (Pa-kistan and North Korea) have similarly been resorting to leapfrogging technol-ogy particularly through reverse engi-neering. In May 2014, the US indicted five Chinese military officials with cyber espionage charges for allegedly hacking into US companies. US officials have long been concerned about hacking from abroad, especially China.

How China does itIndia needs to take serious congni-sance of China’s considerable drone capability especially since China re-portedly already has 24x7 surveillance cover along the LAC through her ex-

tensive satellite network. The Chinese military envisions its drone swarms scouting battlefields, guiding missile strikes and overwhelming the enemy defences through sheer numbers. Chi-na’s military-industrial complex has established wide array of indigenous drones to accomplish these goals. One aim of such large drone fleets would be to expand China’s military reach into the Pacific and swarming US carrier groups in the event of con-flict. China could possibly be having the largest drone fleets after the US. According to a report in Guardian in 2012 which quoted the International Institute of Strategic Studies, the US was then operating 6,709 drones com-pared to 280 by China PLA but that difference in numbers could have nar-rowed considering the modernisation pace of the PLA and her feverish pitch to bridge asymmetry vis-à-vis the US.

Interestingly, the Chinese ‘Wing Loong’ drone reportedly costs around USD 1 million, compared to the US ‘Reaper’ drone that is in the USD 30 million range. Admittedly, technolo-gies and capabilities may vary but the point to note is that you can perhaps buy 25-30 Wing Loong drones for the price of one Reaper, however what is more significant is that the Wing Loong has the same endurance as the Reaper (20 hours), has a range of 4,000 km and packs four hard points for mount-ing variety of lasers, precision guided bombs. It is also important to note that China successfully flight-tested a hy-personic vehicle in January 2014 trav-elling at a speed five times the speed

of sound, aiming eventually to attack targets at the speed of Mach 10.

While technology has empowered the terrorist, availability of drones can make terrorist attacks much more dead-ly. The Sarin Gas attack on the Tokyo Subway on 20 March, 1995 was an act of extremism perpetrated by members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult. In five coordi-nated attacks, Sarin was released on sev-eral lines of the Tokyo Metro, killing 13, severely injuring 50 and causing tempo-rary loss of vision to some 1000 people. The cult actually had two remote-con-trolled helicopters which had luckily crashed during trial runs and they had even smuggled in a Russian Mi-8 heli-copter part by part. Had they used aerial spraying, they had enough Sarin to kill one million people, which would have been catastrophic.

Small-sized drones already are in use for private filming, some instanc-es of doing this without any authority have been reported in the Indian me-dia. Many may have gone unnoticed. Terrorists can use these for undertak-ing physical reconnaissance which has danger of getting caught. LTTE had owned aircraft, the USWA has its own helicopters, and 9/11 terrorists commandeered US commercial air-craft. The threat from air has mul-tiplied greatly with proliferation of UAVs. Commandeering of civil and military drones are also being worked upon by terrorist organisations. If amazon.com can use autonomous winged robots to deliver your orders on your doorstep, so can terrorists de-liver bombs and chemicals. Then there

Intelligence, Surveillance, target Acquisition and Reconnaissance (ISTAR) system

TECHNOLOGY34

| G

EO

INT

EL

LIG

EN

CE

NO

VE

MB

ER

- D

EC

EM

BE

R 2

014

are mosquito-sized drones that can be used for surveillance and for dropping short flying-cum-crawling cockroach bombs that control the biology of in-sects and turns them into insectoid bombs. The US Government Account-ability Office (GAO) unmanned air-craft update of 2013 shows continued network, software challenges. Com-munications and effective system con-trol are still big challenges unmanned aircraft developers are facing if they want unfettered access to US airspace. The bottom line for now seems to be that while research and development efforts are under way to mitigate ob-stacles to safe and routine integration of unmanned aircraft into the national airspace, these efforts cannot be com-pleted and validated without safety, reliability, and performance stand-ards, which have not yet been devel-oped because of data limitations. This is something that India must stream-line with likely proliferation of civil drones, both big and small, which is bound to happen with India’s techno-logical and economic rise.

The Indian scenarioIn the Indian context, the DRDO is de-veloping the Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) UAV as a forerun-ner to the High Altitude Long Endur-

ance UAV. The MALE concept calls for aircraft which can operate virtual-ly autonomously, programmed with route and target details to undertake the mission without help from human controllers; missions like suppression of enemy AD, electronic warfare, sur-veillance, precision strike and associ-ated operations. MALE’s surveillance version is expected to have an endur-ance of 24 hours, operational ceiling up to 35,000 feet, autonomous take-off and landing, wheeled undercarriage and a single (Rotax) piston engine. We certainly need to pick up pace con-sidering the Chinese capability in this sphere. MoD’s 2010 Technology Per-spective & Capability Roadmap iden-tifies DEWs and ASAT (anti-satellite) weapons as thrust areas over the next 15 years, but the UAV and MAV pro-grams of DRDO must be not only ac-celerated, but integrate foreign tech-nology to improve their quality.

We have procured UAVs from Israel and indigenously developed the Nis-hant and Lakshya for the military but the latter two are far below expecta-tions. As for lasers, only the Laser Daz-zler that impairs vision temporarily to control unruly crowds is being oper-ationalised. DRDO’s Laser Science & Tech Centre (LASTEC) is developing ADITYA — a vehicle-mounted gas dynamic laser-based DEW system as a technology demonstrator and a 25-KW laser system is under devel-opment to hit a missile in terminal phase at a distance of 5-7 km. In terms of technology, we need riposte ability to paralyse enemy C4I2 infrastruc-ture, stand-off weapons to pre-empt enemy attack, adequate mix of DEW, PGMs, ASATs etc, ability to disrupt enemy logistics etc. Space combat, cyber space combat, radiation com-bat, robotic combat, nano-technology combat will add to existing forms of combat, zombie war being the latest addition — in all of which drones will play an essential role including round the clock surveillance and keeping the communications through.

The expanding terror threat from our volatile neighbourhood requires 24x7 surveillance; not only along our borders

but also within the country to monitor internal threats. We must be prepared to win all types of conflict situations. UAVs are the weapons of the future and there is pressing need for India to think seriously about their use. The numbers should match the threat environment, including surveillance and pinpoint tar-geting of fleeting terrorist targets. Leap-frogging technology requires special emphasis and the India government’s call to foreign firms to ‘Make in India, Sell Anywhere’ should facilitate joint ventures (JVs) with advanced countries like the US and Israel. EU firms like Dassault of France and Saab of Sweden who have developed have advanced combat drones too need to be cashed upon. However, such JVs would only be possible given the right level of FDI and streamlining the Defence Procurement Policy (DPP) in a manner that both make the Indian Defence Sector un-ambiguously lucrative to foreign firms. The Department of Industrial Policy and Planning (DIPP) of the Indian Ministry of Commerce and Industry, based on thorough research, has been batting for 74% FDI in case of transfer of technolo-gy (ToT) and 100% FDI in case of state-of-the-art technology for a long time, which needs to seriously considered. The DPP too needs to be dispassionately reviewed by an independent body rather than cosmetic changes within the MoD. Permitting the asymmetry vis-à-vis the PLA to widen will be to our grave disad-vantage. This needs to be bridged and overtaken. We have to leapfrog technol-ogy if we are to overcome our asymmet-ric infirmities and tilt them to in India’s favour. Finally, to reiterate, drones will play a vital role in future. They are much cheaper compared to manned aircraft and have multiple uses. We must have them in right numbers and of the right quality as early as possible

Communications and effective system control are still big challenges UAV developers are facing if they want unfettered access to US airspace

Lt Gen PC Katoch, PVSM, UYSM, AVSMprakashkatoch7@gmail.com

35

| G

EO

INT

EL

LIG

EN

CE

NO

VE

MB

ER

- D

EC

EM

BE

R 2

014

Leveraging Lasers inCounter Stealth

As a counter stealth mechanism, LiDAR has rapidly emerged as a viable means to defeat the contemporary stealth technologies

The eternal duel between the prosecutors of the air threat and the defenders continues unabated. In the stealth domain, the same reflects in the two sides building rival technologies. While the attackers are revamp-

ing their stealthy platforms by exploiting the enabling wings of the cutting-edge technologies, the humble air defence warriors are taking solace in the fact that the technologies in the field of counter-stealth are also growing exponen-tially. Of course, the added joy of the defender resides in the fact that in the race of dollars vs. cents, he will have the last laugh because it would invariably be possible to field a cutting-edge counter-stealth shield at fractional costs com-pared to the costs of fielding stealthy offensive platforms.

It is no wonder, therefore, that multiple technologies are at play in the defender’s domain to detect the threat that is fast revamping towards total opacity.

While the baby steps in fielding the counter-stealth muscle saw the conventional sensors move towards bi-static

and then on to the multi-static solutions for detecting the stealthy targets, the stealth threat, using state-of-the-art solutions in the form of latest RAMs (Radar Absorbent Ma-terials) and radar energy deflectors, complete with their di-electric composites, metal fibres and nano-materials, acquired the capability of near complete absorption of the incident radar energy or deflection of the same in multiple directions, randomly and unpredictably.

As the problem to detect stealth became more and more demanding, the counter stealth arsenal moved on from the bi-static or multi-static sensor architecture towards embracing more enabling technologies. The first technology to surface was the PCL or the ‘Passive Coherent Locators’. In this, the pas-sive radars endeavoured to detect stealth by exploiting mul-ti-bands, namely FM, Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) and Digital Video Broadcasting-Terrestrial (DVB-T). The visible products in the PCL domain were Lockheed Martin’s ‘Silent Sentry’, which debuted with this technology in the 1990s. There has been no looking back ever since, as PCL-based

Cre

dit

:Lid

ar-u

s.co

m

LIDAR36

| G

EO

INT

EL

LIG

EN

CE

NO

VE

MB

ER

- D

EC

EM

BE

R 2

014

A large number of

technologically-enabled advantages,

essentially precipitating out of the

beam signatures of LIDAR make them

a good fit to defeat the contemporary

stealth technologies.

sensors with dual-mode functions could be prominently seen in the 2014 Paris Air Show, EADS Cassidian being the frontrunner. Cutting-edge research in this field is now focused on the en-hancement of range, minimal RCS and locational accuracy, as also, to rope in the TV and the FM radio transmissions in the PCL fold. This is largely due to the near vertical climb of the mobile tele-communication technologies over the last decade.

While the PCL may be growing in its own vertical, the real front-run-ners in the counter-stealth domain are the laser-based technologies. Coun-ter-stealth radars based on laser tech-

nology are called the LiDAR, which stands for Light Detection and Ranging as extrapolated from RADAR (Radio Detection and Ranging). Some Sub-ject Matter Experts (SMEs) also refer to them as Laser Infrared RaDar or Laser Integrated Detection and Ranging.

What makes LiDAR a good fitMany technologically-enabled advan-tages, essentially precipitating out of the beam signatures of LiDAR make them a good fit to defeat the contem-porary stealth technologies. The ob-jective of this article is to highlight the nuances of this good fit.

While most of the stealthy plat-forms are either designed to attenuate through absorption (using a variety of RAMs) or deflect the incident radar energy lying in the electromagnet-ic (EM) radio frequency (RF)range, these are not so optimised for the light waves lying in the laser range. Typical laser waves have extremely short wavelengths. For example, while a Nd: YAG laser normally lases at 1.06 μm to 1.4 μm, there are lasers which can operate in the Deep Ultra Vio-let (DUV) region of < 250 nm to long wave IR (11μm). On an average, the familiar laser wavelength bands lie between 0.532 μm through 1.064 μm to 10.6 μm. At such low wavelengths and hence very high frequencies or extremely high frequencies, the typical stealthy aerial threat vehicles which are optimised for opaqueness or near opaqueness to RFEM waves, give away their location owing to higher reflectivity.

While most of the contemporary stealth platforms have a low/very low reflectivity with respect to RF EM waves, the same gets highly enhanced against the light (laser) waves. Typical aircraft materials like the aluminium

LiDAR, thermal and imagery system

Credit: Bluesky

37

| G

EO

INT

EL

LIG

EN

CE

NO

VE

MB

ER

- D

EC

EM

BE

R 2

014

alloys have a reflectivity of 55% and titanium alloy has 47-48% with refer-ence to a laser wave, lasing at 1.064 μm. In order to further increase detection, contemporary LIDAR systems employ multi-band lasers covering the entire laser-DUV spectrum. Against these la-ser based systems, most of the current stealthy platforms are likely to become visible in varying degrees.

The Concept of LRCSConnected with the above, the game of stealth is based on the reduction of the Radar Cross Section (RCS). This RCS has different values for both RFEM waves and lasing waves. In the context of the latter, the RCS is called LRCS (Laser RCS), which is the measure of the laser scattering ability of the target. It is the ratio of the incident power in the unit area of the target to the scattered pow-er per unit area when the target is iso-tropic scattering. Since the lasing waves impinging on the targets at tremendous

frequency have very high beam qual-ity, strong direction ability and very high measuring accuracy, the LRCS signatures (for lasing waves between 0.532 μm to 10.6 μm) are invariably higher than the RCS, making detection of stealth possible. Experiments have shown that regardless of the shape, a stealth type of an aerial vehicle cannot effectively scatter EM energy lying at the smaller wavelengths of light emitted by LiDAR systems.

In order to increase detection prob-ability of stealthy platforms, typical LiDAR systems employ plurality of laser

transmitters mounted on the support in sets of different angles. Each of the la-ser transmitters is adapted to transmit a coherent beam of light along an axis. The transmitters are so paired and ori-ented so as to achieve a grid of parallel coherent beams in the atmosphere. This plurality has two advantages. Firstly, it amounts to ‘many eyes’ capable of being trained on one target, each returning its own signal hence enhancing detection.Secondly, in cases where laser-kill is in-tended and not only mere detection, a target passing through the array of co-herent laser beams will suffer the same effect as one laser targeted directly on to it for a longer period of time. Even, if the cumulative beam energy is not sufficient to defeat the target, the same is likely to become manoeuvrable because of the likely blinding/dazzling of the pilot/cockpit. This is something to which a stealthy UAV platform will probably be immune to.

Wake signature as a key advantage Based on its high beam coherence, strong direction ability, high measuring accuracy, laser beams have been used traditionally (right from the 90s) to de-tect atmospheric turbulence. This has been achieved through the measure-ment of Doppler Shift in the frequen-cy of laser-emitted energy scattered from the natural aerosols present in the atmosphere, such as dust particles and water vapours, etc. Pulse Doppler LiDAR having wavelengths below 10 μm have typically being used as turbu-lent detectors. Since the wind speed is relatively small in the atmosphere, the corresponding Doppler Shift is also very minimal. This is made detectable by us-ing heterodyne detection technology, in which, the weak return signal is mixed with a stronger signal close to that of the return signal, thus making the Doppler Shift measurable. The measure of this quantity in an ambient situation and a clear atmosphere is referred to as CAT or Clear Air Turbulence. This becomes a reference signature.

Wave turbulence is the turbulence that forms behind an aircraft as it passes through the air. This turbulence

includes various components of the aircraft such as the wingtip, vortices and jet wash. Irrespective of the stealth signature of an aerial threat vehicle, it is impossible for it to conceal its wake signature.

Besides this, two other advantages also accrue. First, since the turbulence detection system is not illuminating the aircraft but its turbulence wake which is tracking well behind the aircraft, the on-board Radar Warning Receivers (RWRs) are unlikely to detect the fact of being tracked. Second, a turbulent-sen-sor system would also be less likely to be defeated by the ‘Doppler Notch’, a tactic being used by the attacking aircrafts to defeat the early warning/fire control ra-dars operating on the Doppler Shift.

Going further, since every aerial platform will have specific wake signatures with respect to a given CAT, this quantum of measurement can be built up as a threat library to detect a friend from a foe, thus assisting in solving the abiding riddle of the IFF. SMEs refer to this threat library as TWDD (Turbulent Wave Detection Database). Experiments have shown that such capability can detect aerial threat vehicles in terms of range, altitude, heading and air speed. Also, open source unclassified data on experiments have shown the TWDD capability to distinguish platform such as F-15, F-16, F-18 and B-52.

The use of LiDAR in anti-stealth do-main offers higher accuracy, weather independence and unparalleled flexi-bility both in terms of offense and de-fence. Research and technology devel-opment in this area will surely unfold new advances in the future.

Lt Gen VK Saxena DG & Sr Col Comdt, Army AD

Radar warning receivers

Credit: Astronautics

INTERVIEW38

| G

EO

INT

EL

LIG

EN

CE

NO

VE

MB

ER

- D

EC

EM

BE

R 2

014

How does geospatial information play an important role in homeland security?

Nearly all homeland security mis-sions from back office functions such as facilities management, benefits ad-ministration and human capital plan-ning to front line operations in disaster response, border protection, customs enforcement, critical infrastructure and threat reduction rely on geospa-tial capabilities to conduct their oper-ations.

There is a geospatial component to nearly everything that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does — whether it is a discreet latitude/longitude or address or an indiscreet

geographic area such as a debris line, disaster zone, incident location, etc. DHS uses geographic data and image-ry to assess risk, monitor infrastruc-ture, secure the border, to expedite assistance to disaster survivors and to accelerate community recovery, and rebuild after a catastrophic event.

Our human existence is a very visual experience. We understand our environment and our relationships in spatial terms. We react to our changing landscape based on our ability to com-prehend and interpret what we under-stand is happening around us. Geo-spatial capabilities enable us to link disparate information coming in from multiple channels and stitch it togeth-er to reveal the necessary context and

Geospatial technology has moved beyond its niche towards a level of ubiquity. David J. Alexander, Director, Geospatial Management Office, Office of the Chief Information Officer, US Department of Homeland Security, explains how this technology is enmeshed in the fabric of the organisation.

‘Geospatial Community Needs to Adapt the First Responder Mindset’

understanding required to generate the actionable information that deci-sion makers need and facilitate unity of effort across the whole community.

What is the scope and mandate of the Geospatial Management Office (GMO)? The GMO resides within the Office of the Chief Information Officer, a divi-sion of the DHS Management Directo-rate. In addition to directing the GMO, the GIO serves as the chief represent-ative for geospatial information and technology for the Homeland Security Enterprise and coordinates the strate-gic roadmap for the Department’s ge-ospatial architecture.

The primary objective of the GMO

39

| G

EO

INT

EL

LIG

EN

CE

NO

VE

MB

ER

- D

EC

EM

BE

R 2

014

is to establish clear and concise policy direction for geospatial information and technology efforts. The desire is that all department have interoperable geospatial system(s) to facilitate coor-dinated support for DHS’ missions. Further, the scope of the DHS GMO also includes standardising geospa-tial information technology policies across the department to ensure geo-spatial IT functional excellence.

In a nutshell, the GMO focuses on areas that cover the core elements of the geospatial information, technolo-gy, policy and practice. This structure helps the GIO with shared GIT govern-ance and helps the GMO to manage the geospatial investment portfolio of the department.

Part of the overall homeland se-curity geospatial strategy is to deliver geospatial capabilities based on mis-sion requirements. The Geospatial Concept of Operations (GeoCONOPS) is a seminal piece of this strategy. It provides a mission blueprint to help DHS understand who, what, when, and how key activities across all ech-elons (federal, state, local, private sec-tor, non-governmental, and citizens) support different missions for our nation’s homeland security including natural disasters, law enforcement, infrastructure protection, and other security events. Homeland securi-ty is a very fluid enterprise and the GeoCONOPS is moving from a static document to an online resource that can adapt and respond to its evolving landscape. The most important bene-fit which the GeoCONOPS provides is

Geospatial needs to be fast, reliable, interoperable, easy to use, and integrated with the mission. It must focus on delivering the right technology at the right time to the right people

a catalogue of support missions, best practices, technical resources, and geospatial data sources available to the geospatial community. As it ma-tures, the GeoCONOPS will be able to provide a point of entry for geospatial practitioners and programmers to as-sess their capabilities and readiness as well as drive collaboration across pro-grammes.

The GMO has been partnering with the National Alliance for Public Safety GIS on the Capabilities and Readiness Assessment Tool (CARAT) and Na-tional States Geographic Information Council to advance geospatial pre-paredness and practice with standard operating guidelines. A future expec-tation of the GMO is that by making the GeoCONOPS and other online resources, innovators will further take the advantage of the open catalogue to develop applications and services for the community which will be similar to the apps available on Google Play-Store and Apple iTunes for disaster readiness.

The GMO is also involved in ad-vancing geospatial interoperability through the Open Geospatial stand-ards and leadership with the ODNI PM-ISE on the geospatial interopera-bility reference architecture.

In an emergency, responders must quickly and easily access relevant, reliable, and up-to-date information from multiple partners. Virtual USA (vUSA) and Geospatial Location Accountability and Navigation System for Emergency Responders

(GLANSER) are two such projects that aim to speed up the process. Can you elaborate how GMO has been helping in these initiatives?The GMO has been a huge proponent of geospatial preparedness mentality. Geospatial needs to be fast, reliable, interoperable, easy to use, and inte-grated with the mission and must fo-cus on delivering the right technology at the right time to the right people. Geospatial community needs to adapt the first responder mindset. This can be accomplished by conducting reg-ular exercises to assess our geospatial capabilities and readiness in partner-ship with the DHS \ FEMA National Exercise Program.

The geospatial community must also recognise that geospatial has moved beyond a niche technology to a level of ubiquity. Everyone expects to have mapping capabilities at their fin-ger tips — in their car, in their smart-phone, and so forth. The GMO has supported this trend by fostering initi-atives that integrate across and among partners (federal, state, local, tribal, private, and citizen sectors). The GMO has a strong partnership with DHS Sci-ence and Technology and its First Re-sponder Group. This partnership in-cludes support for public safety broad band and GLANSER that are enabled by location aware technology which leverages the lessons learned and suc-cesses of legacy E911 and data sharing pilots such as vUSA that demonstrate the feasibility of sharing near real-time critical information.

What led to the development of Geospatial Information Infrastructure and can you elaborate how GII has strengthened the existing system?The homeland security Geographic Information Infrastructure (GII) was created based on the recommenda-tions from several internal studies and assessments on geospatial infor-mation and technology capabilities of the Department which were com-pleted between 2004 and 2008. These studies identified data dissonance, ac-cess, dissemination, and duplication

INTERVIEW4

0 |

GE

OIN

TE

LL

IGE

NC

E N

OV

EM

BE

R -

DE

CE

MB

ER

20

14

of products and systems as key issues plaguing the homeland security geo-spatial community. Users were creat-ing maps based on different, multiple sources of the same data. They were not able to distribute these products in a GIS-ready consumable format, and therefore, many map products were duplicated. The GII was engi-neered to be agile to the evolving re-quirements of the homeland security enterprise by offering core services for hosting common geospatial data services in a secure, virtual comput-ing environment. It also provided collaboration tools which helped GIS analysts to upload, manage, publish, and share their products directly with mission operators and systems. The

GII is providing a common operating platform for numerous DHS internal and external partners.

What are the major challenges that you faced in creating a common architecture for various agencies to share the geospatial information that you provide?There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ technical architecture or solution. Competition in the market place is an important driver of innovation. The major issues faced in achieving a national geospatial infor-mation technology ecosystem were: en-suring open standards that enable com-petition and innovation while ensuring the whole community is accessing the most authoritative and trusted informa-tion, and providing identity and access management (ICAM) that ensures ac-cess to the right data at the right time.

On May 23, 2012 President Oba-ma issued a Presidential Memo-randum: Building a 21st Century Digital Government. The CIO also released the strategy entitled “Digital Government Building a 21st Century Platform to Better Serve the American People”, which provides agencies with a 12-month roadmap that focuses on priority areas enabling a more efficient and coordinated digital service delivery.

This was recently updated on July 14, 2014. What are the geospatial aspects of this updated digital strategy?The President’s Management Agenda has been very supportive of place-based initiatives. This includes the geospatial platform that provides support to the opendata.gov initiative which is a key facet of the digital government strategy. Geospatial is inherent in the digital government strategy as it will help the government better target its ser-vices, aid citizens in discovering ser-vices, and provide government data in a more consumable and efficient manner. For example, the national public alerts, warnings, and notifi-cation and the AMBER alert systems leverage geospatial capabilities to disseminate important messages to subscribers and the community on disaster and law enforcement. Cli-mate scientists and risk managers are using government data to better assess the risks and costs associated with changes in sea level or local ge-omorphology. These are the types of innovations and advancements that I expect to grow exponential-ly as geospatial information and technology rapidly expands into our government data systems and across the fabric of our lives.

Geospatial is

inherent in the

digital government

strategy as it

will help the

government better

target its services

The Sea, Lake and Overland Surges from Hurricanes (SLOSH) model is run by the National Hurricane Center (NHC). SLOSH estimates storm surge heights and winds resulting from historical, hypothetical, or predicted hurricanes.

Credit: NOAA

EVENTS

NOVEMBER

4th Annual Qatar Defence Logistics and Support ForumNovember 25 – 27, 2014Doha, Qatarwww.qatardefencelogistics.com

DECEMBER

Exponaval December 2-5, 2014Valparaíso, Chile Valparaíso, Chile

Special Operations Summit December 15 - 18, 2014Tampa, Florida, USwww.specialoperationssummit.com

FEBRUARY

Avalon 2015February 27- 1 March 2015Geelong, Victoria, Australiawww.airshow.com.au/airshow2015

MARCH

Airborne ISR and C2 Battle Management March 10 - 12, 2015 London, UKwww.airborneisrandbmc2.com

GeoIntelligenceMarch 14-15, 2015Kuala Lumpur, Malaysiahttp://geointasia.com

APRIL

Sea Air Space 2015April 13-15, 2015National Harbour, MD, USwww.seaairspace.org

LAAD Defence & Security 2015 April 14-17, 2015Rio de Janeiro, Brazilwww.laadexpo.com.br/?lang=en Counter Terror

Expo 2015April 21-22, 2015Olympia, Londonwww.counterterrorexpo.com

ITEC 2015April 28-30, 2015Prague, Czech Republicwww.itec.co.uk

MAY

LANPAC Symposium and Exposition 2015May 19-21, 2015 Honolulu, Hawaii, USausameetings.org/lanpac

IMDEX Asia 2015May 19 to 21, 2015Singaporewww.imdexasia.com

JUNE

GeoIntelligence IndiaJune 11-12, 2015New DelhiIndiawww.geointelligenceindia.org

Geoint 2015June 21-24, 2015Washington D.C., USgeoint2013.com

JULY

Land Forces Africa 2015July 5-8, 2015Midrand GautengSouth Africawww.landforcesafrica.com

SEPTEMBER

DSEI 2015September 15-18, 2015London, UKwww.dsei.co.uk

NCT eXplosive EuropeSeptember 22-24, 2015Belgrade, Serbiawww.explosiveeurope.com

Maritime Reconnaissance and Surveillance 2015September 23-24, 2015London, UKwww.maritimerecon.com

41

| G

EO

INT

EL

LIG

EN

CE

NO

VE

MB

ER

- D

EC

EM

BE

R 2

014

IMAGE INTELLIGENCE

42

| GE

OIN

TE

LL

IGE

NC

E N

OV

EM

BE

R -

DE

CE

MB

ER

20

14

October 15: The images above show a portion of the northern part of the town of Kobane where several buildings were destroyed or severely damaged (blue arrows), possibly by airstrikes. A large crater is also visible next to the damaged structures (red arrow). Images copyright 2014 DigitalGlobe, processed by UNOSAT.

AFTER

BEFORE

Credit: WFP/Abeer Etefa

The Battle for Kobane

The city of Kobane has been at the epicentre of a battle between ISIS militants and Syrian Kurds (aided by foreign airstrikes). Satellite images captured by DigitalGlobe and analysed by UNOSAT, show several buildings in the Kobane region have been severely damaged and vehicle traffic is almost absent throughout the city. Residential buildings have been reportedly destroyed by air strikes carried out by US against ISIS positions in town.

More than 1000 people have been killed since the ISIS jihadists launched an offensive on the Syrian town in September. Refugees, who fled the fighting have set up camps on the Turkish side of the border and abandoned their vehicles on the roads. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group, has revealed that US strikes have killed around 750 ISIS fighters in the country, of which hundreds are known to have been involved in the fighting around Kobane. According to The Straits Tmes, UN chief Ban Ki Moon has urged action to prevent a massacre of civilians in the city as jihadists continue to fight Kurdish defenders. Turkey has repeatedly appealed for a no-fly zone to enable the establishment of safe havens inside Syria for the many families still fleeing the violence. The influx of some 200,000 refugees from Kobane has pushed Turkey’s Syrian refugee population to 2 million, according to Ahmet Davutoglu, Prime Minister of Turkey.

Source: UNOSAT, Independent UK

CONFERENCES

14-15 March 2015Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

11-12 June 2015New Delhi, India

PUBLICATIONS

OUR OFFERINGS FOR THE

HOMELAND SECURITYCOMMUNITIES

DEFENCE AND

www.geointworld.net

TM

Advt. 8 x 11 Inch Geointelligence _IBC.indd 1 19-11-2014 12:09:42

• GEOINTELLIGENCE FOR MODERN WARFARE• MARITIME AND COASTAL SECURITY • INTERNAL SECURITY & THREATS

PLENARY SESSIONS

• BORDER SECURITY • DISASTER MANAGEMENT• UAVs • BIG DATA ANALYTICS• LIDAR • CLOUD • SENSORS • DATA FUSION • REMOTE SENSING & IMAGING • INTELLIGENT LOGISTICS

TECHNICAL SESSIONS

THE DATESAVE

14 -15 April 2015Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

GeoIntelligence: An Indispensable Tool for Defence & Internal Security

THEME

ORGANISER

ADVT _ OBC_ GEOINT_ NOV-DEC2014_ opt2.indd 2 24-11-2014 12:56:01