Boger, Dan C.

Sensors are following Moore Law (cheaper and faster). As this trend continues, the Navy will acquire low cost and disposable sensors to broaden and improve ISR capabilities in support of US interests. How can C7F leverage these?

Assuming large numbers of low cost sensors can be acquired there are still many challenges to successfully deploying such capabilities. First, naval operations are inherently bandwidth limited. Second, classification is a thorny problem. By their nature, cheap sensors themselves will be unclassified, as well as the take from any single sensor. Yet the collective whole may produce aggregated and fused data that is very sensitive. This leads to another question: How can aggregation and fusion occur across distributed sensor fields? Finally, there are additional questions related to persistency, security, responsiveness, environmental impact, and areas of employment to consider.

Nascent examples of this concept do exist, such as space based commercial imagery and semi-submersible wave gliders to collect acoustic data.