Fall 2006 - Air & Space Power Chronicle - Air Force Link

38 AIR & SPACE POWER JOURNAL FALL 2006ments, conduits, and lines of communications.Home to millions of people, each individualmotivated by an intricate combinationof beliefs and desires, the urban environmentis also psychologically complex. These people,influenced by personal conviction, devotionto family, or the norms of a subculture, willreact uniquely to events. Understanding thesemotivations presents significant challengesto the war fighter. Finally, the urban environmentis characterized by spatial and temporaldensity. That is, an event of interest may involveonly 10 people and last just a few minutesin a prolonged occupation of a city. Theability to discern and understand importantevents and to react appropriately representsyet another daunting task for the urban operator.The combination of complex structure,human interaction, and density ofinformation magnifies the importance ofunderstanding this environment.Proposed SolutionOn the one hand, the Air Force’s abilityto hold the ultimate high ground, potentiallyprovide a bird’s-eye view, move unimpededto any location, and project massivefirepower with unprecedented accuracy allowsurban operators to improve their understanding.On the other hand, the Air Forcecannot provide sufficiently precise intelligencecollection, cannot always operate unimpededdue to the threat of man-portableair defense systems, and cannot always projectmassive firepower in the close quartersof urban terrain. Although significant improvementsin sensor technology and systemswill not solve all of these problems, they willprovide the war fighter with the tools tograsp the complexities of this environment.To promote, fund, and field these capabilities,the research community—led by the AirForce Research Laboratory (AFRL)—mustfundamentally change the direction of currentand future programs. The followingrecommendations will help the AFRL providejoint and coalition forces with the capabilitiesthey need for urban operations.Think UrbanThinking urban will permit AFRL scientistsand engineers to view their programs fromthe proper perspective and will require eachprogram—from basic research through engineering,manufacturing, and development—to consider the contribution it makes to theurban effort. Scientists need to develop systemswith sufficient precision to detect itemsof interest and the persistence to observe on anear-continual basis; however, sensors are notthe only element of thinking urban. Due tothe complexity and multilevel nature of theurban environment, three-dimensional presentationtools, such as perspective viewing,walk-/fly-through, and layered data with fusioncapabilities, are a must to facilitate understanding.This precision, persistence, andthree-dimensional perspective will provide urbanoperators not only with situational awarenessbut also with situational understanding.To encourage urban thinking, the AFRLshould require each sensor or system to providean assessment of its capability in the urbanenvironment. To complement this assessment,the lab should also make availableconcise metrics (such as resolution, range,transit time, coverage, etc.) for evaluating programs.The development of standard metricswill facilitate the funding and evaluation ofproposed programs by means of realistic measuresof comparison. Urban capabilities willarise from this process. To modify a line fromthe movie Field of Dreams, “If we measure it, itwill come.”Think IntegrationThinking integration will make possible anetwork-centric enterprise solution acrossboth sensor platforms and the military services.Because no single sensor can produce acomprehensive urban-operating picture, wemust conceptualize, design, and test urbansensor systems with intrinsic network-centricwarfare capabilities. The latter include transmittingdata in a timely fashion via communicationlinks in machine-to-machine formatand providing tools to augment data fusion.To facilitate thinking integration, each sensor