SAIC supporting Global Hawk deployment during Operation Enduring Freedom

Flying at extremely high altitudes, Global Hawk can survey large geographic areas with pinpoint accuracy and provide commanders near-real-time, high-resolution, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance imagery. According to the Air Force, Global Hawk has provided more than 15,000 images during dozens of combat missions over the past year.

SAIC is part of the Global Hawk Operation Enduring Freedom deployment team that recently received a top honor from the Air Force — the Aeronautical Systems Center Engineering Annual Award. The award recognized Dan Hinton, a senior communications engineer who represents SAIC on the team that comprises four contractors and a government agency.

With assistance from SAIC's Frank Shelby, Hinton developed the operational communications architecture in just 14 days after Global Hawk deployment efforts began on September 12, 2001. Hinton's contributions also included communications planning, design, implementation, and the determination of the optimal method of employing the communications infrastructure. His connectivity planning facilitated the secondary dissemination of Global Hawk imagery to key command and control centers by way of the SAIC-built Direct Dissemination Element.

Additionally, Hinton's efforts enabled the Air Force to deploy the Global Hawk communications system internationally and to conduct flight operations over an area the size of the United States.

"Dan Hinton has been extensively involved in the satellite communications planning for all Global Hawk deployments and long range missions — Alaska, Portugal, Australia, and most recently for Operation Enduring Freedom," said Clay Stewart, who manages SAIC's Reconnaissance Surveillance Operation. "It is gratifying to have Dan's accomplishments so acknowledged by the customer."

Intelligence information provided by unmanned aerial vehicles such as Global Hawk is extremely valuable to theater-level commanders, but only if it is received in a timely manner. SAIC developed the Direct Dissemination Element (DDE) to meet this need. DDE allows military analysts and strategists to request, receive, view, and forward intelligence information in near real-time. Jim Meagher is the SAIC program manager for DDE.

The DDE was the result of a requirement by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Air Force to field a low-cost imagery exploitation/dissemination platform for the Global Hawk, Stewart said.

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