New Eye in the Sky
Written by MARTY KAUCHAK
U.S. ARMY’S BUCKEYE SYSTEM HELPS DEFEAT TACTICAL THREATS, AND BOLSTERS ISR AND URBAN MAPPING EFFORTS.
In the summer of 2004, former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz created the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Task Force to come up with solutions to reduce the effect of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) on service members in Iraq. The task force’s menu of solutions to defeat the IEDs includes new technology.
One early technology solution was BuckEye—a system under the oversight of the Alexandria, Va.-based U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Engineer Research and Development Center, Topographic Engineer Center (TEC). The center answered the call for solutions by fielding changes to the existing BuckEye prototype and deploying it to Iraq in November 2004.
The BuckEye is a remote sensing digital camera that is manufactured by Flight Landata Inc. of North Andover, Mass. The 30-pound system can operate on fixed-wing and rotary aircraft.
Three existing military prototype units have high-resolution, electrooptical (EO) sensing capability, and one operates in conjunction with light detection and ranging imagery (LIDAR).
BuckEye is a deployed service field expedient system that meets the urgent joint warfighters’ requirement initiated by the Joint IED Task Force. The system is not a program of record. Based on the BuckEye’s demonstrated potential, “there is quite a bit of discussion, now, about transitioning it to a program that is institutionalized,” revealed Army Captain James Richards, Research and Development Coordinator, TEC.
While service personnel remain tight-lipped about some operational aspects of the system, it is clear that BuckEye provides the warfighter with a state-of-the-art change detection system, improved intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) prowess and a fortified highresolution urban-mapping capability.
CHANGE DETECTION
BuckEye has earned its stripes as a change detection system, which “takes an orthorectified, highly geo-referenced image at one time, and compares it to another point in time,” said Richards.
The 3-D images produced from photos obtained during flyovers of the same territory are compared pixel-to-pixel to see what changes have occurred during the intervening time.
The BuckEye camera has “up to 39 million pixels,” said Xiuhong Sun, chief scientist and vice president, Flight Landata Inc. In comparison, Flight Landata “was able to collect a 0.5-inch resolution aerial image with a 22-million pixel camera in 1995,” recalled Sun.
Time differences between the two images of a change detection system are created by aircraft availability, enemy disposition, and other tactical and operational constraints.
The optimum change detection rate for BuckEye “has been hours—that’s the framework, that’s the key, to making Buck- Eye a good, an important, system, since it helps us shorten that timeframe,” pointed out Richards.
Indeed, BuckEye is designed “for fast change detection applications,” observed Sun.
“‘Fast’ here is compared to traditional change detection that would take days, weeks or even months to perform temporal image registration, and then use non-optimized statistics to detect changes between the involved temporal images,” said Sun.
Fast data delivery is a typical advantage of an airborne system, such as BuckEye, when compared to a satellite system. “If you need BuckEye real-time data, just send an aerial vehicle there, and the data will be immediately available after the aerial vehicle lands,” noted Sun. Whether the region of interest “is a corridor—a road or pipeline, for example—or a block area, BuckEye works. A satellite system simply could not meet this kind of requirement. This is especially true if a BuckEye mission is for visual reconnaissance, for which only the geo-referenced, high resolution imagery—a typical BuckEye raw image product—is needed, and image processing requirement is generally minimized,” added Sun.
These capabilities have enabled information gleaned from the system’s photos to be used in a counter-IED role, to locate sniper lairs and defeat other tactical threats.
CWO4 Michael Harper, Army Senior Terrain Warrant, working with a Stryker Brigade Combat Team deployed to Operation Iraqi Freedom, shared one insight on how BuckEye supports current counter- IED missions.
After an area is designated a targeted area of interest, a BuckEye-supported mission establishes a base layer. “A day or so later, we’ll fly a change layer, to compare and look for changes,” said Harper. He noted that when a change layer is provided up to several days later, “that may also equate to a little more trash on the road,” complicating the comparison process.
ISR ROLE
One of three deployed BuckEye units operates in conjunction with LIDAR. The BuckEye’s color photos can be correlated to LIDAR imagery data to provide highresolution 3-dimensional maps of cities. These products provide the in-theater commanders with ISR for mission planning and rehearsal, reconnoitering a site and other tasks.
“As an ISR sensor, it goes after division targets. The beauty in that, is that it provides the warfighter on the ground, with probably the best resolution of any sensor we have in the Army’s inventory,” Harper said.
“The success there is that this is something that we can tie to the ground and we can establish a grid,” continued Harper. CWO4 Harper compared the quality of the BuckEye’s products with those supplied from some unmanned aerial vehicles, “which are flying around and most [photos] are high oblique or low oblique and are not mapping-quality imagery.”
High oblique photos show the horizon, low oblique photos do not show the horizon.
He continued, “We can place a grid on and actually tell somebody: ‘Go to this building in the district.’”
Previous OIF Stryker Brigade Combat Teams which used BuckEye in an ISR role were the 1/25th Infantry Division and the 172nd. “They really attributed BuckEye to the high successes of their cordon searches,” recalled Harper.
HIGH-RESOLUTION URBAN MAPPING
Extremely high-resolution 3-D maps of urban areas produced with BuckEye’s color photos, “supplement all of the other imaged city map data that is out there,” Richards stated. “This is an order of magnitude better than what is out there. Commercial satellites will give you .6 meter resolution, and we are an order of magnitude better than that,” he elaborated.
The currently configured BuckEye sensor is capable of collecting images “of a normal, smaller city in a day—about 25-square kilometers an hour,” remarked Richards.
OTHER ATTRIBUTES
BuckEye data are Unclassified, For Official Use Only (FOUO) or may be raised to a higher classification. The unclassified and FOUO monikers make it easier to provide the products to allies—an important consideration given there are 26 members of the Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) coalition. Other individuals on the battlefield who may not have a higher-level security clearance, if any clearance at all, include non-governmental or interagency members and other servicemen or women.
The data are available to the services via the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network at www.tec.army.smil.mil, or by using a Department of Defense common access card at www.tec.army.mil. During a demonstration of the unclassified portal in a conference room at TEC’s main building, data from in-country Iraq were tagged to identify when they were shot, the point of contact for the imagery and other information.
These Web sites “help us to get the information out very quickly, and share and use data as we obtain it,” said Richards.
In-theater BuckEye images have been used by another successful TEC product, the Urban Tactical Planner (UTP). The UTP presently combines advanced computer software tools with high-resolution, commercial satellite imagery to create computerized image mosaics of an urban environment. The higher-resolution Buck- Eye imagery enhances the current effectiveness of UTP as a mission-planning or mission-rehearsal tool.
BuckEye information has also been used by the Air Force’s Falcon View system. Similar to the UTP, it also superimposes data on digital images. Falcon View provides information that pilots need, like details about no-strike zones, airport locations or possible surface-to-air missile sites.
The quality of the BuckEye product and the ability to rapidly distribute it has been observed by the warfighter. “BuckEye has been the single most helpful product that we, as a Brigade S2 shop, have been able to push down to the battalions,” said Captain Jessica Chapman, 101st Airborne Division.
Attempts to use BuckEye information in command and control systems is a “work in progress,” said Richards.
AHEAD FOR 2006
BuckEyes are fully functional in Iraq today with another system deploying to Afghanistan during 2006. A number of upgrades will be made to the systems. Questions currently being staffed by the TEC staff include: How many BuckEyes need to be EO and LIDAR capable? And what other capabilities need to be added to the prototype units? ♦