Actionable Intelligence at the Speed of Light

Nations around the world - from the Pacific Ocean to the Baltic Sea - are facing increasingly aggressive actions from adversarial superpowers and terrorist organizations alike, from shows of force to direct attacks.

In current and future combat operations, success requires decision advantage over the enemy - the ability to gather information from multiple assets and domains, synthesize it to actionable intelligence and send it to the appropriate personnel so they can quickly counter threats and defend assets.

For example, if the only buffer between a nation and an adversary is a 100-kilometer stretch of water, improvised explosives via unmanned surface or marine vessels is a serious concern; a strong Joint All-Domain Command-and-Control (JADC2) infrastructure facilitates the identification of threats from multiple sources in a timely manner with robust and easily understandable intelligence. This reduces margins of uncertainty, giving operators increased confidence in decision making and achieving the desired operational effects, according to Greg Zoughbi, L3Harris Technologies Business Development director.

Countries large and small are monitoring escalating conflicts in their immediate and broader areas of interest and are reflecting on their readiness to protect their own borders.

We are already witnessing trailers of future conflicts, said Indian Army chief Gen. Manoj Mukund Naravne when Speaking at Pragyan Conclave at the Centre for Land Warfare Studies in Delhi earlier this year. They are being enacted daily on the information battlefield, in the networks and cyber space. They are also being played along our yet unsettled and active borders.

The science fiction of yesterday is the reality of today, the general continued, emphasizing the need for militaries to leap-frog technology to meet the requirements of future wars.

L3Harris delivers state-of-the-art C5ISR capabilities, which are scalable to need and modular for future growth, by leveraging decades of designing mission-critical solutions and integrating end-to-end systems based on strong customer engagement and collaboration.

Knowledge is power, and it is critical that the right information gets to the right person as quickly as possible when seconds count, said Chris Aebli, president of L3Harris Tactical Communications business. Our strength is fusing domain-centric information into a single command system, so personnel receive intelligence that is relevant to their role, and in time to act on it.

When integrating systems for customers, quality of intelligence and information, ease-of-use and the ability to deploy at a moment's notice are foremost concerns, according to Zoughbi. When - or where - the next conflict will erupt cannot be accurately predicted, so user information overload, and the ability to automatically generate intelligence from this information, is a paramount concern at any time.

Further, while decision advantage is a priority for every nation, no two countries' needs or budgets are the same. As such, L3Harris tailors its offerings to meet the unique requirements of specific customers - from less-complex, message-only command-and-control systems to larger, full-fledged C5ISR systems. This enables L3Harris to ensure that its solutions are tailored for specific country mission needs, and therefore best value.

Modular development is a key contributing factor to feasible C5ISR advancement, said Lisa Davidson, L3Harris senior Software Engineering specialist. You don't have to do everything at once, but if you have a modular product that's interoperable with other systems, then you can upgrade in stages, making it more affordable, testable and deployable.

C5ISR networks are very complex and continuously evolving, and L3Harris' strategy recognizes that customers will need to replace and enhance various components throughout the years, added Zoughbi; this open-architecture flexible solution approach facilitates seamless subsystem integration at any time.

Customer-driven ecosystems The key to a robust and effective C5ISR ecosystem is how the disparate technologies interoperate to push data - where it needs to be - to form actionable intelligence and enable informed decision making - not the individual products themselves.

We look at what customers have and what their requirements are, and we develop a way forward for them to create a C5ISR system from what they have, with the ability to incrementally update and take advantage of new technologies moving forward, said Aebli.

L3Harris makes a concerted effort to facilitate customization into its system integration designs. The baseline capability inherently provides modularity and interoperability to connect all the customer's data-gathering systems together, even when creating new schemas and mapping to legacy information is required, according to Davidson.

This allows the customer to pick the best suite of products to include in this system of systems without the dependency of having one product not being able to communicate with another, said Davidson. Technology changes quickly - there's always a better radio, a better Electronic Warfare system, better everything, coming out. When there is a modular system-of-systems architecture, it becomes a lot easier to upgrade to the newer generation of solutions, enabling you to always stay up to date.

The experience L3Harris brings in system integration well positions the company to leverage and share information amongst disparate solutions - be they third-party or commercial-off-the-shelf - and present them on one display, according to Davidson; it's about getting all the pieces together and leveraging their best-of-breed capabilities.

LINK:	https://www.l3harris.com/newsroom/editorial/2022/05/actionable-intelli...
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