The proliferation of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) information is radically changing the landscape of the military and intelligence community. Countries are now following a strategy of information superiority to defend against a broad range of threats, whether they be asymmetrical, nuclear or mass armies. A herculean effort has been directed at collecting data through satellites, unmanned vehicles and the monitoring of social media and other information sources. The processing and analysis of this information mostly happens in a secure command and control operations center, often with joint forces (across branches as well as countries) working together. The number and size of these centers is growing exponentially throughout the world.
The current focus of the men and women who design and operate these command centers is “Instant Situational Awareness;” that is, “how can I use the ISR information sources available to me to give me a full and instant picture of the situation?” Typical mainstream IT and AV technologies are not designed for these types of applications and are not efficient in delivering multiple sources of information when they are at multiple classifications. Organizations would need to invest in, maintain, and manage multiple separate and parallel data infrastructures – one system for each classification – to accomplish this capability. A next-generation command and control infrastructure solution simplifies this multi-classification architecture and allows these defense and intelligence organizations to streamline their IT needs. This provides the ability to quickly share information among teams and be more flexible to address rapidly-changing mission requirements.