SAIC's Predator Operations Support
Fall/Winter 2006
On July 27, 2006, Taliban extremists gathered inside a building in Kandahar, Afghanistan, possibly to plot a terror strategy against U.S. forces. In Iraq, enemy forces traveled in a vehicle near Ramadi, the southwest tip of the Sunni Triangle.
Both targets were spotted by Predator unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) flying above. More than 7,000 miles away at the Predator Operations Center in Nevada, Air Force pilots launched the Predators' Hellfire missiles — destroying the building in Kandahar and the vehicle near Ramadi, according to a U.S. Central Command Air Forces airpower summary.
Both the pilots flying the Predators and the military analysts who identify threats rely on SAIC for 24-hour/7-day-a-week technical support at the Nellis Air Force Base Predator Operations Center. SAIC helps ensure that analysts have current intelligence to identify, select, track and evaluate enemy targets. In fact, Predator has been credited with dramatically shortening the sensor-to-shooter cycle — the time between target identification and attack — from hours to minutes.
SAIC also helps ensure that analysts have current threat tracks to protect the Predator from possible enemy retaliation.
Clearly, near real-time delivery of Predator's live video, multiple other intelligence products, and command and control data is essential. SAIC works to help ensure that the network circuits delivering all of these operate with little interference. For example, our technical professionals architected a solution (redundant automated failover and alert mechanism) that allows administrators to immediately notify remote sites of equipment failures while the system continues to operate on secondary circuits.
Predator is also known for its highly accurate targeting. SAIC experts helped by writing software that extracts the Predator's telemetry data and places it on maps for the air defense and route planning functions.
In addition, SAIC created chat-room robots to monitor mission-relevant conversations and record them in time-stamped sequence to establish the decision timeline for post-mission analysis. According to an SAIC white paper, U.S. senior decision makers have used these logs to ascertain "ground truth" for vital missions.
SAIC has provided important technical support for Predator operations since 2003. Our Predator support recently expanded with the award of a major follow-on contract and the opening of a second Predator Operations Center, which SAIC designed, developed, installed and operates.
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