High Speed Data Return for Tactical Environments

The massive expansion in data volume delivered by modern military sensor systems introduces a paradox.  More data, by definition, means lower probability of missing important information which can be exploited to ensure optimal mission planning.  But too much data also means that the available manpower is insufficient to sift through it all and important information will still be missed. Thus, investments in next-generation sensor systems also require corresponding investment and deployment of automation to sufficiently handle the growth in data volume. This challenge already exists in today’s fielded airborne ISR platforms – such as the EA-18G – which collect massive volumes of electronic support (ES) data while also delivering electronic attack (EA) capabilities to the fight. But much of the actionable intelligence that is derived from that ES data is incredibly slow to develop and rarely informs the pilot and co-pilot (an Electronic Warfare Officer (EWO)) in their next mission. The reason is that data exploitation is an arduous process that currently requires significant manual work by expert human analysts on the ground. The result is lost opportunity to adapt to the battlespace and optimize mission plans in subsequent sorties. In this project, Toyon is performing research and development of multiple autonomous capabilities to accelerate the EA-18G mission planning process. During the Phase I Base Effort, Toyon engaged multiple subject-matter experts (SMEs) for EA-18G mission planning and worked with them to understand the current mission planning process. Together we identified three key solutions to accelerate the mission planning process. These were Automatic I-File Generation - acceleration gained through the development of AI to auto-generate mission data from the EWDS dataset using an optimized policy function; Multi-Platform Fusion - acceleration gained through automatic correlation and fusion of ALQ-218 measurements across all platforms of a mission to develop a concise set of emitter tracks; and Anomalous Emitter Detection - acceleration gained through automated analysis of the emitter tracks developed across multiple-missions to capture “normal” patterns in the AOR and to detect outliers for further assessment by the human analyst. Toyon successfully demonstrated the feasibility of these key solutions. In Phase II, Toyon will mature and prototype these techniques to develop an integrated software solution for automating EA-18G mission planning and mission data post-processing.  The Phase II Base Effort will focus on the research and development efforts of the core techniques – including validation with real EA-18G mission data.  The Phase II Option Effort will focus on an end user experience for EA-18G cryptologic technician technical (CTT) personnel and the installation of the prototype software solution in a Government lab