Charles River Analytics, a developer of intelligent systems solutions, announces three contract awards to support intelligence personnel at the US Army’s Brigade and Combat Team (BCT) and below. These contracts focus on the different stages of the intelligence cycle, which is the process of converting information into intelligence through planning, collection, identification, and analysis. CORSICA focuses on planning, while TACT-V and ABACUS focus on analysis. All three contracts were sponsored the by US Army Research, Development and Engineering Command (RDECOM).
Mr. Sam Mahoney, Senior Scientist at Charles River, said, “We’re collaborating directly with active duty analysts early in the design stage to develop and refine requirements for these systems so they’re both usable to novice analysts and useful to experts.”
The Collaborative Online Repository and Search Engine for ISR Capabilities Awareness (CORSICA) is an effort aimed at providing lower echelon soldiers with a searchable inventory of available collection assets. CORSICA supports complex Army intelligence planning tasks aimed at answering Priority Intelligence Requirements (PIRs). It enables analysts to understand the advantages and disadvantages of particular collection scenarios based on operational circumstances and desired types of information by providing a web-based application for searching and comparing collection assets.
Charles River is also supporting analysts in interpreting intelligence reports through its Tool for Assessing and Conveying Testimony Veracity (TACT-V), which helps assess the reliability of information gathered while interviewing sources. Using probabilistic computational reasoning, TACT-V allows collectors to detect gaps and misinformation during an interview and alert soldiers to false, inconsistent, and unreliable assertions. As a result, TACT-V can resolve overlapping assertions, identify inconsistencies within these overlaps, and generalize source reliability based on these inconsistencies.
Finally, Charles River is designing an Adversary Behavior Acquisition, Collection, Understanding, and Summarization (ABACUS) tool to uncover an adversary’s hostile intent. Despite sophisticated technology, US forces must still rely on subjective judgment and dangerous searches to identify individuals who aim to harm them. Through information extraction and probabilistic reasoning, ABACUS exploits existing intelligence sources to aid in threat identification.
Mr. Mahoney explained, “ABACUS is really about piecing together information that BCTs already collect, and using that information to continually test hypotheses about who in an area of operations has the capability, opportunity, and intent to attack our forces.”
Dr. Jonathan Pfautz, Vice President, Cognitive Systems, said, “These programs aid analysts in planning and analysis. We are delighted to be able to support the intelligence community through these programs.”
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