Digitized Maps Helped Troops Find and Destroy Targets in Iraq
By GAIL KAUFMAN
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Scott Mahaskey, Defense News Media Group
James G. “Snake” Clark is director of Air Force Combat Support in the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Air and Space Operations.
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Using commercially available external hard drives, the U.S. Air Force managed to deploy detailed digitized maps to troops in the desert, allowing them to monitor targets in real time, according to James G. “Snake” Clark, director of the Air Force Combat Support Office for the Deputy Chief of Staff for Air and Space Operations.
The detailed maps were provided by the National Imagery and Mapping Agency and commercial satellites on CD-ROMS and sent to forward bases in Iraq.
The external “Fire Wire” hard drives — which Clark’s staff bought from Best Buy for $350 apiece — not only have helped the U.S. military mark off targets on the digitized maps, they also can be used to designate areas where the United States seeks to avoid collateral damage.
“We can’t make the systems so difficult that the war fighter can’t use it,” Clark said Nov. 17 at the Defense News Media Group conference ISR Integration 2003: The Net-Centric Vision, in Arlington, Va. “As ISR customers, what is critical to them is a quick and simple process.”
For example, Predators, illuminating targets with their laser designators, were able to cut down the time it took to find and destroy a target to less than one minute.
This was done by using two systems — Falcon View, a complete mapping and imagery database, and Raindrop, which can transfer geo-spatial coordinates to those maps — to provide highly accurate targeting information.
Clark manages a 30-person staff charged with rapidly deploying advanced technological solutions in areas of mission planning, geo-spatial services, and computer modeling and simulation for Air Force operations.
The ISR Integration conference continues Nov. 18.
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