How to Put It All Together So It Makes Sense—Quickly: The Air Force plans to test a system to corral all the data from myriad sensor sources in near-real-time and turn it into useable data for warfighters—now not a week from now. Much of the voluminous amounts of data collected by various sensors is not reviewed immediately but stored—often until no longer relevant. The Global Net Centric Surveillance and Targeting system—called Gun Coast—might change that. USAF plans to test it during June’s Northern Edge exercise in Alaska. Maj. Gen. Gregory Power, Air Staff director of operations and support integration, says the system would “digest and disseminate very quickly and very accurately” data fused from various platforms and capabilities to reveal, for instance, the target coordinates of a surface-to-air missile site.
A new report from the Government Accountability Office calls for the Pentagon’s Chief Technology Officer to have budget certification authority over the military services’ research and development accounts—a move the services say would add a burdensome and unnecessary layer of bureaucracy.
