A RAND Analysis Tool for Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance

📖 The Scoop

This report is an introduction to the Collection Operations Model (COM), a stochastic, agent-based analysis tool for C3ISR written for the System Effectiveness Analysis Simulation (SEAS) modeling environment. SEAS is a multi-agent, theater-operations simulation environment sponsored by the Air Force Space Command, Space and Missile Systems Center, Directorate of Developmental Planning. The COM is designed to be a universal model that can be adapted to support almost any scenario. It can represent thousands of autonomous, interacting platforms on all sides of a conflict that employ a wide variety of sensor packages and communications devices and execute individual behaviors of arbitrary complexity. The COM can explore the capabilities of a wide range of ISR assets, including manned platforms, unmanned aerial vehicles, unattended ground sensors, special operations forces, and virtually any air, land, or sea system. The model accepts as input a wide array of sensor capabilities, target properties, terrain analysis, weather effects, resource limitations, communications delays, and command and control delays. Its final output is a minute-by-minute account of each agent's changing operational picture. The COM's sensor models are its most detailed components. The signals intelligence (SIGINT) model is the COM's most sophisticated individual model. Many aspects of emitters and receivers are represented: field of regard (FOR), including main and side lobes where appropriate; scan cycle, emission interval, or emission probability; frequency bands; relative angular size of main and side lobes; and the effective radiated power of each radiative lobe. The imagery intelligence model estimates the quality of electro-optical, infrared, and synthetic aperture radar images. For fiscal year 2008, RAND has invested in the addition of space-based assets to the COM, including relevant space weather and atmospheric effects.

Genre: History / Military / General (fancy, right?)