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Launch of the ISR roadmap
Volume 50, No. 17, September 20, 2007 |
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The Defence Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) Roadmap 2007-2017 was launched at the recent Defence and Industry Conference in Adelaide.
Originally produced at a classified level, the public version still sets out the key issues to be addressed in the development of an integrated capability that aims to serve commanders with improved understanding of what is happening in the battlespace.
ISR Director General CDRE Peter Law said the classified roadmap endorsed in March by the Defence Capability Investment Committee aimed to inform senior leaders and capability managers about how the evolution of Defence ISR would progress.
“Given that ISR is such a core activity in the conduct of ADF operations, it was important that we got the message out to the most influential component of the ISR community: the many ADF personnel who are involved in the collection and processing of operational information every day of the week,” CDRE Law said.
“A classified document wasn’t going to achieve that, so we put together an abridged version that still lays out the plan and starts to build the broader understanding of where things are headed.”
ISR brings together a wide range of information gathering and processing activities to give decision makers at all levels the information needed to make more informed and more timely decisions. ISR is a key function within the network-centric warfare model, but it is also something already undertaken routinely within the ADF.
“Our near-term challenge is to take the effective ISR practices employed in each of the services and to combine their output at the joint level so that the command and control of operations across a theatre is performed with the best picture of what’s going on,” CDRE Law said.
“At the same time, we’re looking at how to get information that’s used by the intelligence agencies to be accessible to commanders closer to the action.”
During the next 10 years, Defence will introduce a range of new sensors and platforms capable of producing massive amounts of ISR data. This means the integration challenge is going to get more complex, but the rewards will be immense.
By bringing these capabilities together in an integrated way and by allowing the information gathered to be shared and diversely applied, we can ensure that decision makers at all levels will have access to the information they need to achieve their mission.
For a copy of the Defence ISR Roadmap 2007–2017 go to http://www.defence.gov.au/publications/ISR_Roadmap_2007_2017.pdf |
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