Ground stations for analysis of electronic surveillance imagery

Since World War I, people have been taking photographs of the ground beneath an aircraft in an effort to find out what is going on in places that they may not have direct access to. In modern terms, this is known as ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance). However, photographs, in themselves, can often be of little value and it is only after the images have been exploited by highly trained and experienced imagery analysts that their full worth, in terms of intelligence information, is realised. Today, the tasks and techniques used in ISR remain very similar, the main differences being the quantity of data to be processed, the quality of the intelligence that it is possible to gain, and the advanced technologies used to collect, analyse and disseminate the information. This paper outlines the general formal approach which is now being adopted by the research community at DERA in support of ISR systems projects for all three UK armed services