Virtual Reality for Multi-INT Deep Learning (VR-MDL)

A key goal stated in the United States Air Force Science and Technology Strategy for 2030 and Beyond is to “Increase the speed of battlespace understanding and decision-making to act faster than any adversary.” In this project, ISL and Ohio University (ISL-OU) will build on the success of Phase I and deliver a new game-changing capability for reliably performing complex radio frequency, multi-INT functions including ELINT, SIGINT, and MASINT. The proposed solution has low timing latency and requires extremely low power consumption. More importantly, our approach adaptively improves performance over time and can be developed without expensive flight tests. It leverages ISL’s state-of-the-art M&S tools including RFView® and the real-time hardware-in-the-loop companion tool RTEMES. These high-fidelity radio-frequency M&S and HWIL tools were recently highlighted as a DoD AFRL SBIR Success Story for their ability to dramatically reduce the need for expensive flight testing (www.sbir.gov/node/1526807 ). The proverbial multi-INT “firehose” is well documented. There is simply too much data for any team of human analysts to effectively digest and process in real (actionable) time. Consequently, for many years now, there have been numerous attempts to “automate” multi-sensor exploitation techniques so as to reduce operator(s) workload. Results have been mixed at best. This, of course, is not unexpected as mining massive amounts of data for ephemeral key intelligence nuggets is as much an art as a science. Recent advances have rekindled interest in developing automated multi-INT fusion based on these new emerging techniques. A complete re-work of the multi-INT architecture is warranted to jointly optimize data collection and exploitation. The ISL team has the qualifications, personnel and tools to successfully develop, demonstrate and transition the proposed novel Multi-INT solutions. ISL is a leader in advanced sensor signal processing and possesses a wealth of domain knowledge across a wide range of sensor types including radar (active/passive), ELINT, SIGINT, MASINT, and EO/IR. ISL has existing data that can be used to demonstrate the signal processing and data fusion concepts. ISL’s approach to achieving the project objectives is to leverage decades of advanced RF technology development experience for some of the most challenging missions for the DoD/IC, apply time-tested analytical and systems engineering methodologies, and exploit world-class RF modeling, simulation and hardware-in-the-loop tools that dramatically burndown development risk. ISL’s personnel are internationally recognized leaders in advanced RF technology development with 100’s of peer reviewed publications, numerous books, patents, and successful technology transition.