Lockheed Martin and Raytheon both said Tuesday they successfully debuted new Air Force-related technology at the recent US Joint Forces Command-sponsored Empire Challenge intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance demonstration. Lockheed said it sent signals intelligence data from a targeting pod on an F-16 fighter directly to a distributed common ground system node at Langley AFB, Va., via a developmental data link. DCGS then posted the Sigint in seconds, thereby providing enhanced situational awareness to warfighters at tactical and strategic levels. Among its accomplishments, Raytheon said it demonstrated a scalable DCGS system with enhanced flexibility for mobile and small units and showcased a system called the multi-intelligence exploitation tool, or MIETool, that allows intelligence analysts to overlay electronic intelligence data on images produced by the sensors of RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicles. Empire Challenge ’09 took place in late July at locations across the US. (Lockheed release; Raytheon release)
After months of debate and sometimes public tension, the Space Force and Intelligence Community are making progress on establishing ways to work together, officials said this week—to the point where one predicted there will soon be “a sharing of data like we've never seen before.”