Situation Awareness within a Network Centric Operations Construct

Situational Awareness for Network Centric Warfare requires the ability to access raw and exploited data and to be able to transform that data into information. Currently, battlefield intelligence data is provided by real-time sensors (GMTI, ELINT, TRAP/TRE), databases (MIDB, IPL, and AODB), finished intelligence products, plus exploited HUMINT, COMINT and UAV. These systems all provide their information in various formats such as streamed text, USMTF messages, PDF, HTML, Word documents and relational databases. Access methodologies vary from proprietary APIs to more standard methods such as JDBC, HTTP and Web Services. In phase I, R & D Software Systems proposes to design and develop a prototype distributed Intelligent Data and Information Collection system which will provide secure access to the both the structured and semi-structured data sources mentioned above plus the unstructured data available on the Web delivering the data in a single format such as XML. The proposed system has many dual use applications. For example, the commercial side may require access to both structured and unstructured data to perform both market and product research. Law Enforcement requires access to many structured and semi-structured data sources in order to perform a thorough money laundering or drug trafficking investigation.