Target Assessment Technologies

Abstract

For some Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) targets and hard and deeply buried targets (HDBTs), physical destruction may not be possible, practical, or desirable with current conventional weapons and employment techniques. It may be possible or preferable, to achieve operational objectives by denying or disrupting the mission or function of the target facility. Functional defeat, however, requires extensive and highly detailed analysis of the target. The functional defeat process includes finding and identifying a facility, characterizing its function and physical layout, determining its vulnerabilities to available defeat mechanisms, planning and executing an attack, assessing damage, and if necessary, suppressing reconstitution efforts and re-attacking the facility. Target Assessment Technologies develops for the Combatant Commands (COCOMs) and the Intelligence Community (IC), the analytical tools and processes required to find and characterize WMD targets and HDBTs and then, in near-real-time, assess the results of attacks against those targets. Overall objectives are to develop new methodologies, processes and technologies for detecting, locating, identifying, physically and functionally characterizing, modeling, and assessing new and existing hard and deeply buried targets to support physical or functional defeat. Applying these processes to WMD time-dependent target characterization and threat analysis presents a further technical challenge. The Target Assessment Technologies project is meeting this challenge through three subordinate and related activities: (1) Targeting and Intelligence Community Technologies Development; (2) Find, Characterize, Assess Technologies Development; and (3) Counter-WMD Analysis Cell (C-WAC) Technologies Development. This program supports the National Strategy for Countering Biological Threat priority/focus areas 3) Capability Expansion and 4) Leveraging Science. The Counter WMD Analysis Cell (C-WAC) Technologies Development program has cooperative Research and Development projects with the United Kingdom and Commonwealth nations. The C-WAC project is also developing the Bio Dual-Use Analytical Tool as an aid in discriminating the employment of dual use technologies in the disguised development of bio warfare capabilities. The increase from FY 2013 to FY 2014 is predominately due to the relative impact of Congressional reductions in FY 2013 impacting the Counter-WMD Analysis Cell (C-WAC). The increase from FY 2014 to FY2015 is due to increased investment in the development and integration of high-priority find, characterize and assess sensor technologies and supporting algorithms and software. This project has the only identified solution capable of meeting a time sensitive mission critical technology gap.

Document Details

• Document Type: Project
• Publication Date: Oct 01, 2015
• Source ID: RT_0603160BR_3_0400_PB_2015

Tags

Readers

• Joint Military Operations and Doctrine.
• Military Science and Technology Research and Modernization.
• Sensor Fusion and Tracking Systems.