A pilot and sensor operator man the controls of a MQ-1 Predator Unmanned Aerial Vehicle from the control room at Balad Air Base, Iraq (Wikipedia)WNU Editor: The Belmont Club examines this possibility. I provide some more information and analysis at the bottom of this post.
The Database War -- Belmont Club
Ever since Bob Woodward hinted at the existence of a ‘Manhattan project’ type secret weapon which was largely responsible for an increase in US military effectiveness in Iraq, the press has been casting around eagerly for clues as to its nature. Woodward said, “If you were an al Qaeda leader or part of the insurgency in Iraq, or one of these renegade militias, and you knew about what they were able to do, you’d get your ass outta town.” The LA Times is focusing attention on a kind of surveillance device that allows UAVs to identify and track suspects from a distance, in a manner not unlike a giant supermarket barcode scanner looking down from the sky at objects parading miles beneath.
American officials requested that details of the new technology not be disclosed out of concern that doing so might enable militants to evade U.S. detection. But officials said the previously unacknowledged devices have become a powerful part of the American arsenal, allowing the tracking of human targets even when they are inside buildings or otherwise hidden from Predator surveillance cameras.
Equally important, officials said, the systems have significantly speeded up decisions on when to strike. The technology gives remote pilots a means beyond images from the Predator’s lens of confirming a target’s identity and precise location.
Leaving aside the question of whether this remote scanning capability is the ’secret weapon’ referred to by Bob Woodward, two conjectures about it can be safely made. One is that the secret weapon — whatever it is — relies on a database which stores at least two fields, one containing a physical identifier against which the person can be identified and the second containing an his wanted status. For example, a hypothetical record for “Osama bin Laden” may contain a value for his physical identifier (more on this later) and another field will contain the entry “Wanted, Dead or Alive”. Thus, if Osama bin Laden comes within range of the ’secret weapon’, a database lookup will show him to be within the field of view.
Read more ....
My Comment: The introduction of the Predator into the Iraq and Afghanistan war theater has clearly changed the effectiveness of U.S. counter insurgency operations. It has evolved from a surveillance drone, to a drone that can now not only survey the terrain and pinpoint targets, but to quickly fire a missile to destroy and kill the target.
I suspect that it is this ability to pinpoint and ascertain targets from far distances that makes this system the lethal weapon that it is. While a considerable amount of this information is classified, a considerable amount of info is still out there that can give a person like myself some pause on what this system can do.
For example ..... an article from Defense Update illustrates the power of the Predator's cameras:
All Lynx models are offering several operating modes including STRIP, SPOT and MTI. STRIP mode is used for large area coverage. Flying at a speed of 70 knots, Lynx II can cover an area of 25 km2 per minute at a resolution of 1 meter. Lynx ER is designed for faster platforms (Predator B flying at 250 knots) at higher altitude (45,000 feet vs. 25,000 ft. for RQ-1) will be able to double the rate to a coverage of about 60 km2 per minute. When a closer look is required, the radar can be pointed at specific locations or targets utilizing the SPOT mode. In SPOT, Lynx can deliver a detailed image of a 300x170 meter target area, showing objects with details as small as 10cm, from a distance of 40 kilometers.
And this is the information that is publicly known .....
High resolution cameras tied in with data bases that have detailed pictures and info on the physical characteristics of known insurgent leaders can become an effective killing machine. By simply taking multiple high resolution pictures of people on the ground and scanning them through a computer filter of known insurgents .... the operators of the Predator UAV can be notified within seconds if they have a high value target. Just as phone conversations are scanned by NSA computers for voice patterns that are known to belong to high value targets, I can easily see how this same type of thinking can be applied for visual recognition using Predator UAV's as your instrument for obtaining pictures, having the results quickly scanned by a computer with a database of pictures and physical information, and then using the UAV to act on this intelligence.
Does such a system exist? Is it in the field? I do not know the answer. But if I was a defense researcher who was responsible to think of the incredible .... this is a weapon system that I would love to have in my arsenal.
Update #1: If you click on the above picture with the two operators in front of their consoles, you can easily see the high resolution quality of their video screens. It is not too much of a stretch to realize that those operators can probably zoom in and get an excellent picture of a person's face, license plate number, etc..
Update #2: The more that I think about this, the more I wonder if this is the reason why Muqtada al-Sadr, leader of the Mahdi Army, fled to Iraq. Did he realize that he was a target, and did he realize that if the U.S. wanted to take him out it would be the easiest thing for them to do.
Also .... is this the reason why Osama Bin Laden looks so pale. It appears that he is not getting enough sunlight. I guess the jokes about him always being in a cave are true because he of all people would know that a 6'6" man would be the easiest thing to detect if such surveillance equipment was out there.