Eagle Vision lands at Peterson

Published Nov. 18, 2008
By Master Sgt. Kate Rust
Air Force Space Command Public Affairs

PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. -- A Department of Defense Eagle Vision team demonstrated its capability here Nov. 9-14.

Eagle Vision is a family of deployable, commercial satellite ground stations that down link unclassified commercial imagery data from Earth-orbiting satellites. Eagle Vision ground system operators - teams that usually run about 12-15 people - can rapidly process that data into a variety of formats within 2-4 hours of collection.

James "Snake" Clark is Eagle Vision's creator. His full title is Director of Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Innovations and Unmanned Aerial Systems Task Force, Deputy Chief of Staff, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, Headquarters Air Force. In a nutshell, he runs the Eagle Vision program, the Predator, Reaper and Global Hawk task force, among other innovative programs. Day to day management of Eagle Vision is done by Jerry Brooks, who's been the Eagle Vision Director since 2000.

The system is operated by four Air National Guard units and one active-duty unit, and has provided planning and mission support to combat operations since 1994, including most recently Operations Allied Force, Enduring Freedom, Iraqi Freedom as well as disaster relief support during Hurricane Katrina and the Pacific Tsunami in 2005, to name a few.

Mr. Clark's Directorate functions as the Air Staff's innovation arm -- much like the Space Innovation and Development Center does for Air Force Space Command. Col. Robert Wright, SIDC commander, hosted EV's demonstration at Peterson AFB.

Eagle Vision utilizes FalconView, a Windows-based mapping system software that displays various types of maps and geographically referenced overlays. This makes the Eagle Vision imagery available in a relational database, much like Google Earth.

"You click on an area on the map and get imagery related to that area," said Mr. Clark. "FalconView adds dimension to the imagery Eagle Vision provides." And that kind of data is critical to quickly assess battle damage and rapidly changing environmental conditions.

Military satellites such as those owned and operated by AFSPC are prioritized to the warfighter and national agencies and often provide classified data to their customers. In contrast, Eagle Vision mainly supports disadvantaged user -- those forward area warfighters and first responders who do not have immediate access to imagery servers, especially during rapidly developing contingencies when timely, unclassified imagery is required. Military and National system priorities and classification may prohibit such use. But that doesn't mean that AFSPC is at odds with Eagle Vision - quite the opposite.

"AFSPC applications are numerous," said Colonel Wright, "especially as the command pursues (potential) acquisition of its own family of commercial satellites for military utility," he said. "Eagle Vision already provides direct down link capability for various types of commercial satellite sensors, and it would be a natural progression to integrate any DoD/AFSPC-owned commercial satellites to its inventory. Even if a permanent ground station were acquired as part of a Theater Overhead Radar or BASIC-like architecture, by enabling Eagle Vision to down link the imagery as well, you'd essentially be expanding the ground architecture by five times since there are five operational Eagle Vision units."

Eagle Vision commercial imagery is unclassified, making it readily shareable/releasable to allies, coalition partners, emergency and first responders, non-DoD disaster response agencies, etc., unlike national (classified) assets.

"Since we fight in a joint, combined and coalition environment," said Colonel Wright, "this shareability allows us to fight as one team. Acquiring commercial imagery is much cheaper and more affordable than building an exclusive military system from the ground up to support our service needs. By leveraging existing systems that are 'good enough' to meet warfighter requirements, we can save billions of dollars."

The Eagle Vision crew deployed to Peterson is from the California Air National Guard and is commanded by Lt. Col. Doug Hire. The California Air National Guard received the system in 2007 and quickly became immersed in providing imagery for numerous and persistent wild fires. This is their first deployment. "Part of the reason we deployed here (to Peterson) was to show what we're doing - to see if this is a tool that Air Force Space Command wants to develop," said Mr. Clark.