Artificial Intelligence to Sort Through ISR Data Glut

Inundated with more data than humans can analyze, the U.S. military and intelligence community are banking on machine learning and advanced computing technologies to separate the wheat from the chaff. The Defense Department operates more than 11,000 drones that collect hundreds of thousands of hours of video footage every year. "When it comes to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, or ISR, we have more platforms and sensors than at any time in Department of Defense history," said Air Force Lt. Gen. John N.T. "Jack" Shanahan, director for defense intelligence (warfighter support) in the office of the undersecretary of defense for intelligence. "It's an avalanche of data that we are not capable of fully exploiting," he said at a technology conference in Washington, D.C., hosted by Nvidia, a Santa Clara, California-based artificial intelligence computing company. For example, the Pentagon has deployed a wide-area motion imagery sensor that can look at an entire city.