Perspectives on the progress of data fusion for soldiers

Data fusion is becoming increasingly important for soldiers as we information becomes the advantage that leads to victory. Moreover soldiers are facing uncertain and varying situations in which they have to rely on multiple sources of diverse information, which needs to be integrated. A status of the current state of the data fusion research is given and research needs are identified to support soldiers in the future. The research is crucial for applications such as target tracking and battlefield surveillance but also for non-defense applications such as industrial process monitoring and medical diagnosis.