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Unmanned Aircraft Operational Integration Using MITRE's Cursor on Target By Doug Robbins Unmanned aircraft flew missions on a daily basis during Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. However, due to technological limitations, their precise position and sensor readings were not shared widely in real time beyond the flight crews operating the aircraft. This problem with sharing information from the battlefield has also plagued other combat and surveillance systems. A few years ago, the armed forces asked MITRE to design a simple method to communicate the essentials of battlefield information—"What is it?" "Where is it?" and "When was it there?" MITRE's solution: Cursor on Target. Cursor on Target is a machine-to-machine language designed to communicate quickly and accurately the whats, wheres, and whens. It's especially well suited to unmanned aircraft systems, which are concerned with such time-sensitive issues as aircraft position and sensor data. Fully Demonstrate Value MITRE first demonstrated its effectiveness during a combined joint task force exercise in 2003. Using Cursor on Target, a Predator unmanned aircraft was able to operate safely around and in concert with manned aircraft. After this success, the Air Force and Joint Forces Command encouraged MITRE to broaden and deepen Cursor on Target's role as an underpinning for unmanned aircraft systems. The first order of business was to network unmanned aircraft with other combat systems so that the positions, sensor pointing locations, nominated targets, and spot reports of all units would be available in near real-time. Such information on unmanned aircraft has before only been available to the aircrafts' ground control stations. Since each control station communicated with a specific proprietary format, it made it nearly impossible to directly share unmanned aircraft data with other system control stations. MITRE demonstrated Cursor on Target's ability to integrate battlefield information during a live combat exercise. Thanks to Cursor on Target, the mission commander of the exercise was able to access the observational data of four different unmanned aircraft systems: ScanEagle, Predator, Shadow, and Silver Fox. This shared situation awareness gave the mission commander unprecedented ability to see and manage all of his airborne assets. The system became trusted to the point that the air traffic control for the exercise used a Cursor on Target data feed to manage the airspace for small unmanned aircraft. Build on Success The next step for the project was distributed control. Using the same approach, MITRE worked to develop seamless command and control and cross-sensor cueing. We demonstrated its progress during a 2005 combat exercise. With Cursor on Target, the mission commander enjoyed an amazing level of control in directing unmanned aircraft systems to gather surveillance products. Using just a few keystrokes, he could direct operations, gather information, and even allow for automated cueing from a ground-level gunshot detector to a camera-equipped unmanned aircraft. Within seconds of enemy gunfire, the mission commander could have an eagle eye's view of the shooter. Deploy Today, the Air Force, Marine Corps, and Special Operations Forces use Cursor on Target in live unmanned aircraft operations. The Shadow, Silver Fox, Predator, Pioneer, ScanEagle, BatCam, and Raven unmanned aircraft systems have Cursor on Target interfaces; several other unmanned aircraft systems have started development of their own such interfaces. More importantly, these interfaces will enable connections to hundreds of other systems that make use of Cursor on Target. MITRE's refinement of Cursor on Target continues. We are currently addressing such advanced concepts as automated multi-asset management, airspace deconfliction, image processing, and weather integration.
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| For more information, please contact Doug Robbins using the employee directory. Page last updated: August 22, 2007 | Top of page |
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