Hanscom unit expedites deployment of ISR information tool Published April 17, 2007 By Monica Morales Electronic Systems Center Public Affairs HANSCOM AIR FORCE BASE, Mass. -- In late April Ramstein Air Base, Germany, will be the last of five core Air Force sites to get the Distributed Common Ground System Integrated Backbone, or DIB, upgrade. The DIB is a joint-service project that uses a Web application similar to an Internet search engine and an open architecture to combine data into a database accessible by the entire intelligence community. Deployment of DIB is taking place one full year ahead of schedule thanks in part to the efforts of the 950th Electronic Systems Group here. The 950th ELSG developed the DIB as part of the Air Force Distributed Common Ground System modernization efforts. This system supports a range of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems such as national and commercial satellite systems, the U-2, unmanned aerial vehicles, and F-16 Theater Airborne Reconnaissance Systems. The Hanscom unit is the Air Force's lead agency for DIB, which is part of the Air Force's Distributed Common Ground System Block 10.2 program. The DIB also is a joint project led by the Air Force, which chairs the Distributed Common Ground System Multiservice Execution Team. Each service is developing a portion of the Distributed Common Ground System family of systems, which consist of global sites capable of receiving, processing, storing, correlating, exploiting and disseminating intelligence feeds from multiple sources. Those sources can be based on the ground, in the air or at sea. The 950th ELSG's DIB enables the sharing of data between sites and carries with it the capacity to change how data workflow is processed. A metadata catalog linked to the DIB allows users to access information via a search engine like those on the Web. Using a key word, target, interest type or geographic area, users can search through libraries of information. With the introduction of DIB to the legacy imaging capabilities of the five sites, new images entering the system are identified, categorically tagged and incorporated into the database. The imagery itself, along with specifics like location and target information, can then be searched immediately by users. Another feature of the DIB allows users to customize alerts that meet specified criteria. This capability allows for incoming data, once tagged, to be sent directly to users via e-mail, thus eliminating the time and effort ordinarily needed to search for the data. "Instead of having to go find something, we're letting the machinery work for us to tell us that the information is now available," said Col. Alan Tucker, 950th ELSG commander. "If I'm seeking out information about Korea or what's going on in Iraq, I'm now immediately notified that an image has come in." The integration of this type of common technology, said DIB Program Manager Maj. Guy Mathewson, is one that translates easily for operators. "If you ask the operators, they will tell you that they have these types of capabilities at home," he said. "They get these with news services and business information. The DIB technology builds off of this to bring an added edge to the way and the speed at which the warfighter works." By eliminating the need to hunt for information or request special permissions to view data, the added collaboration benefits the service intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance communities. At the national level, it benefits organizations like the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency. "I think you will see increases in speed, in terms of collecting that intelligence information, and then in lethality, in our ability to engage time-sensitive targets," Colonel Tucker said. "Our whole goal, at the end of the day, is to go after these time-critical targets and make sure that the powerful resources of the ISR community are focused on the most urgent problems." The DIB currently is in place at Langley AFB, Va., Beale AFB, Calif., Hickam AFB, Hawaii and Osan AB, Korea.