RAF FAIRFORD, England — As military demand for data processing and distribution grows, General Atomics wants to provide users a one-stop shop for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance collection, analytics and tasking.
Andrew Majchrowicz, project manager for automation, autonomy and artificial intelligence at General Atomics, told C4ISRNET July 16 the technology development company is integrating two tools into its flagship ISR software platform and plans to deliver the system in October. Japan will be its first customer.
“As our platform continues to grow, we’re bringing in more and more data, and now it’s about how we’re utilizing that data,” he said during an interview at the Royal International Air Tattoo here.
“What good is it showing an end user 3,000 data points without telling them what it is that they’re seeing?” he added. “That’s where all of this is going is providing the analytics on those large-volume datasets, providing correlation services, giving you the information to seek out anomalous behaviors.”
The first of the two capabilities, Optix, can analyze large swaths of data drawn from multiple sources to assist decision-making for military or government users. General Atomics picked up Optix last year when it acquired Commonwealth Computer Research, a Charlottesville, Va.-based software engineering company.
C. Mark Brinkley, a spokesman for General Atomics, said U.S. government customers are using Optix today, but declined to identify which agencies. By bringing the capability into its baseline ISR software platform — called System for Tactical Archival, Retrieval and Exploitation, or STARE — the company can provide a more holistic service to its users, he said.
General Atomics is also integrating a mission-tasking tool called Metis, which Majchrowicz described as “Uber for ISR. ” Like a standard rideshare app, Metis can “drop a pin” at the site of an anomaly and then task various ISR services needed at that location.
Using a hypothetical military investigation into a ship that turned off its transponder, he demonstrated Metis’ ability to at the mark the location of the vessel, create a tasking and assign an aircraft to examine the situation.
The company is developing a third tool, Multi-Mission Control (MMC), that allows a user to manage multiple aerial systems in response to taskings from Metis. MMC can provide routes and control specific characteristics like altitude, speed and loiter type. Majchrowicz said there’s not a precise timeline for when General Atomics will integrate it with STARE.
Courtney Albon is C4ISRNET’s space and emerging technology reporter. She has covered the U.S. military since 2012, with a focus on the Air Force and Space Force. She has reported on some of the Defense Department’s most significant acquisition, budget and policy challenges.
