Vanguard Magazine

18 AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2023 www.vanguardcanada.com ISR DEVELOPMENT IN THE RCAF ISR - Simple in concept but challenging in execution Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnais- sance (ISR) for the layman is a confusing series of acronyms like C4ISR, ISTAR, JISR, MAISR, HUMINT, SIGINT, etc., etc. While the precise execution of ISR functions is now a complicated fusion of technologies, the basic premise of ISR is to leverage the synergy and interconnection of personnel, technologies, and processes to provide a commander with accurate and timely information so that he or she can make equally timely and accurate decisions. In order to better understand ISR, it is useful to analyze its separate components, while keeping in mind that ISR is only ef- fective when all the various components are working tightly together. The "I" stands for Intelligence; the process of analyzing collected data to make deductions and in- terpretations resulting in information made available to a commander to enable the decision-making process. Finally, "S" and "R" entail the activities of surveillance and reconnaissance of enemy forces to gather B Y T E R RY L E V E R S E D G E data and observe its actions. "Reconnais- sance" implies a wide "search for data and information about a target or area of inter- est," while "Surveillance" translates into a more persistent monitoring function, akin to a "police stakeout". ISR is therefore the all-encompassing group of systems that must work seamlessly to enable decision superiority by providing the right informa- tion, at the right time, to the right person. Manned and unmanned aircraft can obvi- ously provide a key role in this function. The Problems with ISR Before the advent of modern computers, the collection of information and its trans- formation into an intelligence product was necessarily a slow, methodical process. Un- til recently, the intelligence environment was also a very exclusive domain with very specialized resources, such as the U-2 re- connaissance aircraft, being used to col- lect specific information about an area or a designated target. As computing power in- creased and sensors miniaturized, howev- er, new systems were developed that could be used on a variety of non-traditional in- telligence platforms and that could relay their information to a commander in real- time or near real-time (NRT). As those capabilities were fielded, various militaries and services within them acquired their own unique systems to suit their individ- ual needs. These myriad of of disparate systems were further complicated by all of the different sensors installed on these various platforms. Additionally, informa- tion collected by the myriad of sensors was not always formatted in a way that could be easily distributed and used across a net- worked architecture. The communication information systems (CIS) network itself also had to be robust enough to handle a constantly growing amount of data, re- quiring a tremendous bandwidth capacity to cope with multiple sources of imagery and other data intensive products. The CP-140 Aurora's Development into an ISR Platform Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) histori- I S R The Block IV modernized CP-140M Aurora as seen here represents a significant step forward in ISR capability for the RCAF. Photo: DND

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