Dr. Tim J. Nohara of Accipiter Radar, a solution provider at the marcus evans Aerospace & Defense Manufacturing Summit 2013, on the new surveillance requirements in the defense and security sector.
Interview with: Dr. Tim J. Nohara, President & Chief Executive Officer, Accipiter Radar
There is a need to detect and analyze security threats in a much wider area than ever before, according to Dr. Tim J. Nohara, President & Chief Executive Officer, Accipiter Radar. As the threat on the homeland front requires surveillance that has no time or space boundaries, sensors must be abstracted and their information integrated together so that various agencies can respond in a coordinated fashion, he adds.
Accipiter Radar will be present at the marcus evans Aerospace & Defense Manufacturing Summit 2013, in Las Vegas, Nevada, October 20-21, as a solution provider.
How has the surveillance environment changed in recent years?
In the 20th century, radar technology was the gold standard surveillance tool, as it could detect uncooperative targets of interest. In the military context, you could move your assets and people overseas to a military operation and survey a specific geography, where targets were either friend or foe.
Today, in the homeland environment, the area of interest is the entire homeland. The threats on safety and security can occur anywhere, anytime, and must be distinguished from the much more numerous innocent civilian traffic. Multiple agencies have responsibility. Users are not sensor experts so threat awareness must be user-centric and easy to understand. These are new requirements in the defense and security sector.
What surveillance solutions could address this issue?
The solution sets of the 21st century will involve a large number of surveillance sensors that are inexpensive, spatially distributed, located across the areas of interest, but abstracted and integrated together to provide real-time target information and historical behavior patterns in support of intelligence-led operations.
Sensors need to be deployed on a much wider scale for threat mitigation today, and they need to plug and play into a target information system that allows any number of users and agencies to interact with the data in the way each user’s mission requires.
Why should different departments share surveillance information? How would it address the cost element?
Technologies that act like “force multipliers” are similar to adding more security personnel. Governments today typically have a number of different agencies and departments surveying movement of people and goods across borders or within the country, but at present, they do not readily share information primarily to protect the privacy of their citizens. The defense sector needs to be much smarter. We need to distinguish between personal information and non-sensitive target information. The information to detect and avert a threat is often available, but we lack connectivity between the dots. If we shared non-sensitive target information across departments, we would get a much higher yield on our security budgets. Countries could even share target information or sensor resources with friendly neighbors, such as the US and Canada, without impinging on the privacy of citizens.
Most movement that is observed is friendly and good, but it is critical to deter the small percentage that are not. By sampling target patterns, agencies could focus their resources on suspicious activities. This would be much more cost effective in this environment of austerity.
Any final thoughts?
This is a new way of thinking about homeland security. We are in the information age today, and radar information networks will leave behind the old ways of protecting citizens.
Contact: Sarin Kouyoumdjian-Gurunlian, Press Manager, marcus evans, Summits Division
About the Aerospace & Defense Manufacturing Summit 2013
This unique forum will take place at the Red Rock Casino, Resort & Spa, Las Vegas, Nevada, October 20-21, 2013. Offering much more than any conference, exhibition or trade show, this exclusive meeting will bring together esteemed industry thought leaders and solution providers to a highly focused and interactive networking event.
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About Accipiter Radar
Accipiter Radar develops, sells and operates high-performance radar and sensor information networks engineered to detect, track and characterize uncooperative targets such as small vessels, low-flying aircraft, and birds. The result is enhanced, wide-area security through unprecedented domain awareness for 21st Century applications including domestic security, law enforcement, critical infrastructure protection, bird strike prevention and environmental protection.
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