Photo By Joseph Bullinger | 210713-N-GB257-001 Charleston, S.C.-- Rodney Rourk, project lead for the Naval...... read more read more
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In alignment with the Department of the Navy’s unmanned campaign plan, Naval Information Warfare Center (NIWC) Atlantic is assessing the latest in small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS) for potential force protection use at Naval and Marine Corps bases.
With the near-peer threat environment expanding to America’s military installations, the successful deployment of drone platforms and surveillance capabilities is critical in providing real-time visual imagery to physical security managers.
“NIWC Atlantic is a key player in this technology acceleration effort to develop, test and field unmanned platforms,” said Jason Aycock, lead of NIWC Atlantic’s Presidential and Joint Systems Applications (P&JSA) team.
The P&JSA team recently hosted members of one of the Department of Defense’s (DoD) premier research organizations, the Physical Security Enterprise & Analysis Group, to demonstrate how drones perform aerial physical security at military installations. The demonstration captured data and assessed the capabilities and limitations of the commercially available sUAS products.
“Our objective is to provide security forces an agile rapid response surveillance platform in the form of drones that are capable of operations over land and water to assess remote alarms or threat detections and events,” said Rodney Rourk, NIWC Atlantic project lead for the P&JSA team. “The drones used cases specific to physical security in the demonstrations, but they could also be used to support other missions such as emergency management operations and inspecting critical infrastructure.”
The event’s results, which are part of a joint Navy and Marine Corps research, development, test and evaluation project, have the potential to influence future deployment of sUAS, as well as, benefit other government agencies that could utilize aerial physical security, said Rourk.
“These drones are autonomous and semi-autonomous, so if an alarm triggers in a certain area, the device will automatically open and the drone will take off and go to that area,” said Aycock. “The drone will stream video back to an operator who will perform assessment duties. By clicking on the image of a vehicle or person, the operator will be able to automatically track that vehicle or person and use video analytics to assess the situation.”
Ed Layo, head of NIWC Atlantic’s Force Protection Solutions Division, anticipates the benefits realized from the use of sUAS to be endless.
“Using drones will decrease the time it takes base security to respond to remote land and water locations,” said Layo. “For instance, if an alarm goes off in a far corner of an installation, somewhere miles out, instead of sending the military police, who might take several minutes to get there, we can automatically deploy a drone that can be there much faster and provide visual assessment for better situational awareness to enable appropriate response from the security forces.”
There are several other benefits of deploying drones including broadening patrol capability, to areas such as rugged terrain or water, cost savings and agility.
“They can fly above off-road or rugged terrain not conducive or safe for humans or ground vehicles and they can cover larger areas, such as flight lines and waterside enclaves,” said Layo.
Two key advantages of using drones are their agility and anticipated cost savings, said Le’Ron Lawrence, deputy physical security branch chief, Office of the Deputy Under Secretary of the Navy (S&I).
“The use of drones has a high potential of reducing the wear and tear of security force ground vehicles and boats and reducing dependency on expensive fixed surveillance solutions that are not agile or adaptable and require costly infrastructure such as installation of towers, cable and cameras along miles of fence line,” said Lawrence.
The next steps after initial assessments and receiving program office approval, include deploying the technology at a Marine Corps installation and conducting formal operational test and evaluation within an operational environment.
“We will put the drones in the hands of the operators who will use them, monitor them and provide valuable feedback that we can integrate into the drones,” said Rourk.
Following operational test and evaluation, program offices expect the results will inform and aid their surveillance modernization decisions.
“Program offices will be able to assess if sUAS are a viable alternative to traditional fixed surveillance or if they may be used to augment both manned patrols and expensive surveillance cameras,” said Rourk.
As a part of Naval Information Warfare Systems Command, NIWC Atlantic provides systems engineering and acquisition to deliver information warfare capabilities to the naval, joint and national warfighter through the acquisition, development, integration, production, test, deployment, and sustainment of interoperable command, control, communications, computer, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, cyber and information technology capabilities.
| Date Taken: | 02.11.2022 |
| Date Posted: | 02.11.2022 13:48 |
| Story ID: | 414526 |
| Location: | CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA, US |
| Web Views: | 445 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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