Each year, C4ISR Journal scours the intelligence community for the projects, innovations and organizations that we believe are making the biggest difference in the world of intelligence. We call them our Big 25 Awards, and we divide them into five categories: Sensors — devices that gather ISR data; Innovations — technical breakthroughs that could pay off soon, if they are not already doing so; Organizations — government offices or groups addressing intelligence-related problems; Network Systems — networks or information systems that route ISR information or make sense of it; Platforms — the aircraft, ships or ground vehicles that carry sensors. We will announce a single winner in each category at our Oct. 19 awards banquet in Crystal City, Va. These are the finalists in each category, presented in alphabetical order:

SENSORS

Airborne Standoff Radar (Astor)

Who: Raytheon

What: An imaging and ground-moving-target indicator radar flown on British Sentinel aircraft.

Why: Intelligence analysts in Afghanistan are craving all-weather radar images and ground-moving target indicator data — the kind of information that can spot vehicles approaching supply convoys, find suspected Taliban insurgents on the move and trigger other ISR aircraft to take a closer look. By all accounts, the U.S. E-8 Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System aircraft can’t by themselves provide adequate coverage. Enter Astor. Though yet to be declared fully operational, the U.K. Ministry of Defence has been flying early versions over Afghanistan intermittently since late last year, beaming the radar to a ground station in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan. Analysts have used the data to alert commanders and troops to threats; British officials are incorporating real-world lessons into the Astor system.

AN/PSQ-20 Enhanced Night Vision Goggles

Who: ITT

What: A 2-pound, helmet-mounted display and battery pack that gives soldiers the ability to see at night by intensifying moonlight, starlight or city lights, and optically laying those images over infrared images.

Why: Until now, infantry leaders and special operators have had to wear separate image-intensifying night-vision goggles and thermal sights. This device is lighter than wearing those two devices, which improves comfort and reduces fatigue. ITT has delivered 1,700 goggles for Army infantry leaders and special operators, with another 3,600 recently ordered. The system includes a new mount for helmets and four AA batteries in a separate pack.

Highlighter

Who: General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and U.S. Army Aerial Common Sensor office

What: Electro-optical cameras and software flown on piloted planes since 2006. General Atomics flies these sensors ahead of convoys to spot evidence of IEDs.

Why: The U.S. is trying to defeat the cells that plant IEDs, but in the meantime, route clearance is crucial to saving U.S. and allied lives and equipment. This sensor is doing that by automatically “highlighting” changes in imagery, such as fresh dirt or wires, along roads. Intelligence analysts in the cabin of the aircraft examine the images and alert forces on the ground. The Army’s Task Force ODIN (Observe, Detect, Identify and Neutralize) has been using the service in Iraq since 2006. With Task Force ODIN now operating in Iraq and Afghanistan, Highlighter officials are waiting for the call to transfer to Afghanistan.

Lynx Block 30 Synthetic Aperture Radar

Who: General Atomics Aeronautical Systems

What: Lightweight radar carried aboard UAVs and piloted ISR planes.

Why: These all-weather radars are one of the tools the U.S. has provided to Iraqi forces to help them keep the peace as the U.S. withdraws forces. Iraq is flying them on manned King Air 350 planes. The radars could, for example, look under clouds to spot a suspicious vehicle approaching a crowd at a mosque. Full-motion video cameras can’t see under clouds. Lynx Block 30 radars are scheduled to start war-zone flights on the U.S. Army’s Sky Warrior 1 unmanned aircraft by the end of the year. The original Lynx radars were designed for General Atomics by the U.S. Energy Department’s Sandia National Laboratories.

MX15 HD

Who: L-3 Wescam

What: A family of high-definition full-motion-video cameras for piloted and unmanned aircraft.

Why: The MX15 HD is paving the way for what defense officials expect will be a bandwidth-taxing revolution toward high definition. During July’s Empire Challenge, officials installed an MX15 HDi on a C-12 turboprop plane as a surrogate for an unmanned aircraft to test the impact of its large files on the intelligence network. Most videos taken today by Predator UAVs are not high-definition, and they can appear grainy, complicating intelligence analysis.

Innovations

Advanced Responsive Tactically Effective Military Imaging Spectrometer (ARTEMIS)

Who: Raytheon

What: An experimental satellite camera capable of producing images in hundreds of detail-revealing spectral bands.

Why: Imagine sending a tasking order into the network and learning within minutes whether a patch of trees in a full-motion video clip is hiding a car or truck. That’s what ARTEMIS is attempting to do from low-Earth orbit. The Air Force launched it in May as an imaging payload on the TacSat-3 experimental satellite. ARTEMIS is known as a hyperspectral imager because it measures 400 spectral bands of reflected solar energy. All features on the ground have unique spectral signatures, and ARTEMIS can distinguish those with even subtle differences. Raytheon reports that in its first month of operation, ARTEMIS proved its tactical mode by collecting and processing hyperspectral imagery and downloading a tactical product within a single, 10-minute orbital pass. Air Force Research Laboratory is assessing the ARTEMIS sensor’s performance over a year long test mission.

Digital Close Air Support

Who: Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) Air Combat Electronics

What: An effort to develop a standardized system for transmitting airstrike coordinates from the ground to pilots digitally in the midst of close contact with the enemy.

Why: The way airstrikes are called in today is one factor in the risk of fratricide and civilian casualties. Typically, an Air Force sergeant acting as a Joint Terminal Attack Controller calls in a strike during a firefight through verbal radio contact with a pilot who might be from another military service or country. The pilot jots down the coordinates, verifying them verbally with the JTAC, and then entering them manually. Coordinates are difficult to send digitally because of variations in electronic communications standards among aircraft. Digital CAS is not yet an official “program of record” with a line-item in the defense budget, but Joint Forces Command nevertheless invited NAVAIR experts to demonstrate competing Digital CAS approaches in the 2009 Empire Challenge intelligence demonstration in California. NAVAIR officials hope to win funding for a formal Digital CAS program starting in 2012.

Fire Scout

Who: Northrop Grumman

What: An unmanned helicopter patterned after a Schwiezer helicopter. If Navy tests go as planned, two Fire Scouts would fly off the U.S. Navy McInerney to aid the ship’s crew on their next counternarcotics mission scheduled to begin shortly.

Why: Allowing an unmanned aircraft to take off and land directly from the deck of an operational ship would be major breakthrough in the UAV field. Other Navy unmanned aircraft, such as the winged Pioneer, landed in nets aside the ship. Boeing’s small ScanEagle UAV hooks itself on cables at the side of ships. Traditionally piloted helicopters are barred from landing using their autopilot systems. Fire Scouts are designed to land automatically using Sierra Nevada Corp.’s UAV Common Approach Radar System, which sends precise location information to the aircraft to guide it to a landing on a honeycomb grid on the ship’s deck. The Fire Scout fires a harpoon from its belly to snag the grid and hold it in place.

Gorgon Stare

Who: Sierra Nevada Corp. with ITT, AdamWorks, Mercury Computer Systems and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems

What: A system of five electro-optical still cameras and four infrared cameras to be installed on Reaper UAVs for day and night wide-area surveillance. The project is named for the mythical Greek beings whose gaze could turn enemies to stone. It is known among ISR officials as the Wide Area Airborne Surveillance pod — or WAAS pod.

Why: Squeezing multiple cameras inside a pod and installing it on an unmanned aircraft is a major innovation. The U.S. military’s existing wide-area surveillance planes, the piloted Constant Hawk and AngelFire aircraft, carry multiple cameras, but engineers had more room to work with in those planes. Engineers have integrated and tested hardware, and they report good progress toward delivering the first Gorgon Stare-equipped Reaper in early 2010. The aircraft will transmit imagery directly to soldiers, and when an IED explodes, forensic analysts will be able to roll back through the series of wide-area still images to identify suspicious vehicles or people in the area in the hopes of taking down the bomb-building cell. Gorgon Stare is part of the ISR surge ordered by U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates in 2008.

Zephyr

Who: QinetiQ North America

What: A 66-pound, human-launched, experimental solar-powered UAV

Why: Persistent airborne intelligence is typically defined in hours of flight, but with Zephyr, QinetiQ engineers hope to prove UAVs can fly for days and possibly someday for years by generating electricity from sunlight. The Navy awarded this year a $1 million contract to QinetiQ North America to begin training U.S. personnel to operate and maintain Zephyrs. The contract, which also covers flight trials, could be worth $44.9 million to the company if the Navy decides that the aircraft are rugged enough to operate in Afghanistan. The airplane is built of carbon-fiber for strength and lightness, with near-paper-thin solar panels on its wings. Last year, the company flew a Zephyr for 83 hours, 37 minutes at 60,000 feet over the Arizona desert to claim an unofficial endurance record.

ORGANIZATIONS

Commission on Cybersecurity for the 44th Presidency

Who: Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Technology and Public Policy Program

What: A bipartisan commission chaired by Reps. James Langevin, D-Rhode Island., and Michael McCaul, R-Texas, with Scott Charney of Microsoft and retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Harry Raduege of Deloitte. James A. Lewis of CSIS directed the commission.

Why: The commission’s report, “Securing Cyberspace for the 44th Presidency,” served as the starting point for the White House review of cybersecurity that concluded in May with a decision by President Barack Obama to create a cybercoordinator who would work in the White House and brief the president regularly about cybersecurity matters. Obama’s cyber-reviewers did not embrace all of the commission’s recommendation, but the reviewers did agree that protecting cyberspace should be a top national priority and called for private-public cooperation to secure it.

Empire Challenge Team

Who: Joint Forces Command

What: A multiagency team led by Joint Forces Command that runs an ISR demonstration involving forces from the U.S., Canada, Australia and the U.K.

Why: With the ISR surge, troops in Afghanistan can’t afford to discover gaps in their ability to share intelligence. The goal of July’s Empire Challenge was to ferret out hardware and networking problems by feeding information into the actual intelligence networks the U.S. and NATO rely on. For the first time, intelligence officials at a NATO facility in The Hague received full-motion video and other intelligence gathered over Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, Calif. U-2s, ScanEagles, and the Constant Hawk and AngelFire surveillance aircraft were among the aircraft that fed readings into the system. F/A-18s dropped mock bombs to demonstrate the sensor-to-shooter cycle.

Multi-sensor Aerospace-ground Joint ISR Interoperability Coalition (MAJIIC)

Who: NATO’s Consultation, Command and Control Agency (NC3A)

What: A coalition of information experts from nine NATO countries that began meeting in 2005 to define strategies for improving information sharing among the allies. NC3A is now coordinating the effort to bring the MAJIIC sharing technologies to the field in Afghanistan.

Why: U.S. officials cannot easily share intelligence from their databases, nor receive intelligence from the databases of their allies. This is largely because of the different technical standards and security rules of the member countries. NC3A is setting up a series of Coalition Shared Data servers that would be linked to national databases by a new type of digital security guard called a Coalition Data Broker. These brokers would determine whether a nation was cleared to receive a certain piece of intelligence, such as a satellite image or video stream. These capabilities are scheduled to be in place in Afghanistan by the end of 2009.

Underground Facility Analysis Center

Who: Office of the Director of National Intelligence

What: A consortium of intelligence experts and engineers from the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and the National Security Agency. These experts attempt to identify underground sites, assess which countries or groups are using them and for what purpose, and suggest how to attack them if necessary.

Why: Advancements in tunneling technology and equipment are enabling countries that support terrorism to hide weapons and technology programs underground and out of sight of traditional ISR sensors. This intelligence center located in the Virginia suburbs is coordinating the U.S. efforts to find these sites known by intelligence officers as “hard and deeply buried targets.” An intelligence officer assigned to the facility made news in 2009 by publicly suggesting that if the U.S. wants to be ready to defeat such sites, it’s going to need better tools for finding, characterizing and attacking the sites.

U.S. Department of Defense ISR Task Force

Who: Air Force Lt. Gen. Craig Koziol, director

What: A task force of intelligence experts based in the Pentagon who are rushing more than $5 billion of intelligence equipment, software and analytic capability to Iraq and Afghanistan. The task force, established in April 2008 by Defense Secretary Gates, consists of eight specialized “integrated process teams.”

Why: There is a shortage of ISR coverage in Iraq and especially Afghanistan, and it is this task force’s job to supplement it. The first equipment ordered by the task force is beginning to arrive in Afghanistan. In June, the Air Force delivered the first of 37 Project Liberty aircraft — C-12 turboprops equipped with Predator-UAV-style video cameras and eavesdropping equipment. Though most of the public attention has been on the Liberty planes, the task force has ordered a host of equipment, including communications nodes that have plugged a critical gap in an area of Afghanistan. The task force has performed the difficult task of balancing investments among collection systems like the Liberty planes against demands for better processing and communications.

NETWORK SYSTEMS

Network Operations Common Operating Picture (NetOps COP)

Who: Hewlett-Packard’s EDS Co.

What: A clickable network-status screen menu for personnel working on classified intelligence watchfloors linked to the Navy Marine Corps Internet.

Why: Everyone knows the importance of digital networks, but before NetOps COP, intelligence personnel had no easy way to track the statuses of those networks. Systems are taken offline for maintenance and improvements, and more and more often, they are being probed by potential enemies. EDS devised software to automatically tell personnel when a network will be unavailable because of maintenance or unexpected loss of service. Personnel on the watchfloor at Makalapa Compound in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, have been using NetOps COP since last year to get real-time status reports about the networks they rely on to monitor the Pacific Fleet’s area of responsibility, which runs from the Far East to Iraq. Navy officials have approved a plan to install the software servicewide.

ROVER 5

Who: L-3 Communications

What: A small computer capable of sending and receiving full-motion video for U.S. Air Force Joint Terminal Attack Controllers, the airmen who call in airstrikes. It is about the size of a loaf of bread.

Why: L-3 has managed to combine the antenna, radio and laptop computer from their previous version of ROVER into a single unit that weighs 4 pounds, a much lighter load for the mountains of Afghanistan. They’ve also given the ROVER the ability to transmit video for the first time, which means forces can set up an information sharing network. L-3 Communications has delivered about 100 units so far for real-world tests. They are rare in the field, but possibly the way of the future.

Tactical Ground Reporting System (TIGR)

Who: Ascend Intelligence and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)

What: A software running on Army-issued laptops that gives troops at the company level and below a way to share reports via the network about the events, people and places they encounter on their missions.

Why: Before TIGR, soldiers wrote down their ground-level intelligence in green notebooks and submitted paper reports up the chain. They rarely saw the impact of the information they gathered. In 2009, patrol leaders began relying on TIGR for premission “Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield,” which, in the current wars, means understanding the physical terrain and the human terrain. Who are the leaders? How active are insurgents? What are the religious sensitivities? The human terrain is not fixed — allegiances can shift. This tool keeps forces informed as one brigade transfers responsibility to another. The Pentagon’s DARPA began funding work on TIGR in 2004 based on feedback from troops returning from Iraq.

TerraSight

Who: Sarnoff Corp.

What: A system of software and computers that gathers video from the security network, such as live video from aircraft or security towers, and drapes them over three-dimensional terrain maps.

Why: Intelligence analysts and security officials sometimes lose track of subjects in complicated terrain because they can’t tell exactly where on that terrain they are looking. TerraSight is solving that problem as one piece of a two-year, $1.5 billion U.S. Central Command effort to improve security around U.S. and NATO outposts. The U.S. Army will receive 80 computers and displays loaded with the visualization software. The Army has purchased a license to disseminate the technology around the service, and Raytheon has licensed the software from Sarnoff for use in the U.S. military’s Persistent Surveillance and Dissemination System of Systems, a network that ties together multiple intelligence feeds.

VUIT-2 (Video from UAS for Interoperability Teaming Level 2)

Who: Lockheed Martin

What: A communications link installed on some Apache helicopters allowing Apache co-pilot/gunners to receive video feeds from unmanned aircraft and relay them to the ground.

Why: VUIT-2 has allowed Apache crews to see threatening vehicles or people from miles farther away, which vastly improves situational awareness and reduces the odds of targeting mistakes. Its success since the first installations in November has inspired the Army to test an even more sophisticated teaming system, called the Unmanned Aerial Systems Tactical Common Data Link Assembly (UTA), for possible installation on the forthcoming Block 3 Apaches. Through the UTA antenna and modem, an Apache co-pilot/gunner would be able to control the UAV, steer its sensors and order it to fire its weapons. The 2 in VUIT-2 refers to sophistication of the teaming with the UAV. The Army is working toward level 5 teaming, the control of takeoffs and landings.

PLATFORMS

Aegis Weapon System

Who: Lockheed Martin

What: A system of computers, displays and radars on U.S. Navy destroyers and cruisers that has been modified on some ships specifically to shoot down enemy ballistic missiles.

Why: Aegis operators have been on alert in 2009 to shoot down North Korean rockets that might threaten Hawaii. Even when they do not fire their Standard Missiles at the rockets, they gather intelligence that is critical for analysts who want information about the design and performance of the North Korean missiles. The Aegis system has performed well in tests. In March, the crew of the Aegis destroyer Benfold simultaneously tracked, targeted and destroyed a cruise missile and short-range ballistic missile, according to the Missile Defense Agency.

GeoEye-1

Who: GeoEye

What: A 4,300-pound commercially owned imaging satellite that supplies imagery for Google Earth and also the U.S. military, which requires broad-area maps.

Why: GeoEye-1, launched in September 2008, was declared fully operational in 2009 by GeoEye, making it the first commercial satellite capable of spotting objects as small as 0.41 meters across, and also in color. The U.S. government requires GeoEye to coarsen the satellite’s imagery slightly to 0.5 meters for commercial customers. The National Geospatial Intelligence Agency is now using its imagery to build high-definition digital maps for troops and commanders. GeoEye-1’s camera is a smaller version of those typically flown on U.S. government spy satellites. GeoEye-1 has reinvigorated its competition with rival DigitalGlobe, whose WorldView-1 satellite also sees details 0.5 meters across, though in black and white. The Pentagon has told GeoEye and DigitalGlobe that it intends to extend its imagery agreements with them through March 2010.

PackBot

Who: iRobot

What: A portable ground robot light enough for a single soldier to deploy. PackBot uses two sets of tracks to climb over rocks, curbs or other obstructions.

Why: The IED threat in Afghanistan is growing, and not every bomb or bomb maker can be spotted by Predators circling overhead at 15,000 feet or C-12 aircraft patrolling convoy routes. Therefore, soldiers are being trained to spot suspicious sites along roads and investigate them from a safe distance using PackBots. Engineers designed the robot so that soldiers can easily switch out various ISR sensor kits. One kit contains sensors for detecting vapors or particles emanating from IEDs, for example. Another is a manipulator designed for explosive ordnance disposal. PackBots have whetted the military’s appetite for smaller and more capable robots.

ScanEagle

Who: Boeing’s Insitu subsidiary

What: A 40-pound, catapult-launched UAV that can be equipped with an electro-optical video camera, an infrared video camera or a synthetic aperture radar.

Why: The rescue of a kidnapped ship captain off the coast of Somalia in April gave a rare public glimpse into the utility of this aircraft. A ScanEagle launched from the U.S. destroyer Bainbridge and operated by Insitu and Boeing field service representatives kept watch over the pirated lifeboat with its infrared video until Navy SEALs could shoot the pirates and rescue the captain. On land, ScanEagles are providing similarly valuable intelligence to Marines. The success of the ScanEagles has helped inspire the Navy and Marines to hold a multimillion-dollar Small Tactical Unmanned Air Systems (STUAS) competition under which the military would purchase a fleet of more-advanced successors to the ScanEagles.

Shadow

Who: Textron’s AAI Corp.

What: A catapult-launched UAV that can be equipped with a variety of ISR sensors and communications relays. Most are flown by the U.S. Army, which also supplies some to the Marine Corps and special operations forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Why: Flight hours prove that the 84 Shadow aircraft currently in Iraq and Afghanistan remain the workhorses of the Army’s unmanned aircraft fleet. Users have flown Shadows for more than 430,000 hours, including 100,000 hours over the last year. Shadows and the larger Sky Warriors the Army is starting to field are at the center of the service’s decision to give ground forces direct control over UAVs instead of relying on coverage by Air Force-operated Predators. The Army has begun making numerous improvements to the Shadow fleet, including adding larger wings to improve endurance and a more reliable fuel and engine system. The Shadows are smaller and less-expensive than the Sky Warriors, which means the Army can fly more of them. The Army is working toward a fleet of 460 Shadows, compared to a plan for 144 Sky Warriors.