Posted by Courtney E. Howard

DENVER, 14 Sept. 2010. A flying ISR laboratory developed by Lockheed Martin has demonstrated advanced capabilities to disseminate real-time intelligence data, including streaming video, imagery, and communications feeds to a ground station. Lockheed Martin's Airborne Multi-INT Laboratory (AML) flew several flights using previously collected data to demonstrate intelligence collection, analysis, processing, and dissemination.

"The AML has proved itself as a test platform for next-generation intelligence sensors," says Jim Quinn, vice president with Lockheed Martin's Information Systems & Global Solutions-Defense. "Customers are concerned with the speed of solution delivery, reducing the risk of those solutions and delivering differentiated capability affordably. The AML offers customers a highly capable, flexible system that can be used to meet immediate needs and respond to critical challenges."

During the flight experiments, the AML relayed streaming video and previously collected communications and electronic intelligence to a ground station at the corporation's SWIFT laboratory in Farnborough, U.K. Almost immediately, staff members at the SWIFT Lab were able to view and analyze the data, and update mission plans and tasks, says a representative. The multi-INT data sent to the SWIFT laboratory was then linked with the Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS) Integration Backbone (DIB) at another Lockheed Martin facility in Colorado.

DCGS is the Department of Defense enterprise that collects and processes intelligence and imagery from manned and unmanned reconnaissance sources.

The exercise demonstrated the AML's ability to transfer intelligence between coalition forces, and also reinforced that, with minimal development time, customers can use the AML to determine the optimum mix of sensors and systems to fill existing capability gaps. For customers faced with capability shortfalls or looking to fill an immediate operational need, the reconfigurable flying laboratory is available for lease.