Intelligent Fusion and Asset Management Processor

Owing to continual advances in sensor capabilities, avionics, and inter-service C/sup 4/I, the volume of battlefield intelligence data to which the modern-day military intelligence analyst has access is increasing at an exponential rate. This has created the need for more intelligent systems capable of scanning and extracting the tactically most useful information for presentation to the human analyst. The presence of a more extensive and flexible sensor asset infrastructure also mandates more intelligent and accountable asset deployment and management. Accordingly, we describe an effort to develop for the Air Force Research Laboratory's Information Directorate an Intelligent Fusion and Asset Management Processor (IFAMP) for enhancing tactical situation awareness and for providing needs-based sensor asset planning and scheduling information to assist the C/sup 2/ staff. The IFAMP architecture incorporates three distinct modules: a fuzzy logic-based level one fusion module responsible for low-level event detection, unit/echelon type discrimination, observation-to-track gating and assignment, and track database management; a belief network-based level two situation assessment module responsible for generating probabilistic hypotheses for high-level situational state descriptors; and a fuzzy logic-based level four collection management expert system responsible for mapping informational requirements and current state information into asset resource requests.