Foliage penetrating airborne ladar for surface situation awareness

A field test of an airborne foliage penetrating (FOPEN) ladar system was recently conducted in order to assess the utility of FOPEN ladar for surface situation awareness applications. The FOPEN ladar system was flown over staged targets embedded in a woodland area with vegetation typical of a forest environment. This paper presents data that demonstrates the ability to detect man-made objects such as trucks, tents, and tarps embedded in this vegetation through exploitation by human analysts, as well as an initial evaluation of automated 3D object detection, specifically through the sum of absolute difference (SAD) approach. Many governmental and aid agencies often requires actionable information in a rapid timeframe, we additionally consider two candidate CONOPS that might be employed by such an end user for both tactical and strategic use cases.