Valiant Angel – A Perfect PED Application for Cloud Computing

Why the Cloud? Processing, Exploitation and Dissemination

By G C Network | October 23, 2008

So why is the intelligence community so interested in cloud computing? Three letters: PED (Processing, Exploitation, Dissemination). Take these two real life examples from the publishing industry. Jim Staten of…

World Summit of Cloud Computing: “Enterprise Cloud Computing” work group

By G C Network | October 22, 2008

To leverage attendees of the World Summit of Cloud Computing, a kick-off meeting of the “Enterprise Cloud Computing” work group will be held near Tel Aviv, Israel on December 3,…

Cloud Package Management

By G C Network | October 21, 2008

In his post “Missing in the Cloud: package management“, Dave Rosenberg highlights a critical issue in the adoption of cloud computing by government agencies. “I dare say that a standard…

PlugIntoTheCloud.com

By G C Network | October 20, 2008

Information Week has just launched PlugIntoTheCloud.com as their cloud computing destination. In his Non Linear Thinking blog, Bill Martin calls it a movement aimed at “providing a source and forum…

Is the cloud computing hype bad?

By G C Network | October 17, 2008

From Gartner “Why a little cloud hype might be useful“: “It’s too simplistic to say cloud hype is bad . If we are technically expert is might irritate us with…

Stop the FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) !!

By G C Network | October 16, 2008

Dan Morrill! Count me in !! In his excellent article, “Cloud Computing is Scary – But the FUD Has to Stop“,  Dan makes some excellent points: It is time to…

IBM, Microsoft and Google

By G C Network | October 15, 2008

On October 6th, IBM launched their cloud services initiative. This is a:  “[C]ompany-wide initiative that extends its traditional software delivery model toward a mix of on-premise and cloud computing applications…

Government in the Cloud

By G C Network | October 13, 2008

Back in mid-September, there was quite a thread in the Google Cloud Computing Group on the use of cloud computing by the federal government.  Some of the interesting comments were:…

CloudCamp Partners With SOA-R !!

By G C Network | October 10, 2008

I’m proud to announce that the final SOA-R Cloud Computing Education Event will be held in collaboration with CloudCamp. Now dubbed CloudCamp:Federal, the event will be held as an “unconference” to help…

Federal Cloud Computing Wiki

By G C Network | October 9, 2008

With the fast growing interest in cloud computing, the Federal Government community has established a Federal Cloud Computing Wiki. This wiki is managed by Dr. Brand Niemann, Senior Enterprise Architect…

A few weeks ago in an article title “Why the Cloud? Processing, Exploitation and Dissemination“, I described two instances where the newspaper industry used cloud computing in order to process, exploit and disseminate information. In that article I postulated that this is one reason why the intelligence community is interested in cloud computing.

Well Signal Magazine has recently highlighted a specific program where the DoD could use a similar approach. In a project called Valiant Angel, the Joint Intelligence Laboratory, located at the U.S. Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia, is working on a way for commanders to handle massive amounts of full-motion video being provided from unmanned platforms.

In addition to storing, moving, communicating and accessing large amounts of data, Valiant Angel is also addressing full-motion video processing, exploitation and dissemination (PED). Col. Chuck Mehle II, USA, commander of the Joint Transformation Command for Intelligence (JTC-I), JFCOM, notes that this aspect of full-motion video management is important because currently different people have different meanings for PED.

“For some, PED might be sticking yellow stickies on a screen after the event happens, and then taking notes about it as the video is displayed to them. But Valiant Angel gives them the capability—the John Madden-type capability—to drop the icon onto that video frame. Let’s say there is an event such as an IED [improvised explosive device] placement or an IED detonation or defusing. Immediately across the Defense Department, intelligence enterprise alerts will go out to those people who subscribe to that type of event, that geographic region, that timeframe, you name it,” he explains.

Such a requirement is perfect for cloud computing. An ability to meet surge storage and computing requirements by securely scaling into a on-demand cloud computing infrastructure could actually make projects like Valiant Angel affordable. Since it would be costly and impractical to buy the equipment needed to meet all possible tactical situations, a platform with an inherent ability to expand into a commercially provided cloud infrastructure could be ideal. It’s very difficult to predict real-time tactical processing, exploitation and dissemination requirements. Cloud computing approaches could definitely provide a better option.

Follow me at https://Twitter.com/Kevin_Jackson

G C Network

5 Comments

  1. Anonymous on April 30, 2009 at 1:50 am

    ^^Thanks!!

    婚前徵信婚姻感情大陸抓姦外遇抓姦法律諮詢家暴婚前徵信尋人感情挽回大陸抓姦離婚工商徵信婚前徵信外遇抓姦感情挽回尋人大陸抓姦離婚家暴工商徵信法律諮詢跟蹤工商徵信婚前徵信感情挽回外遇抓姦法律諮詢家暴尋人大陸抓姦離婚大陸抓姦外遇尋人家暴工商徵信法律諮詢家暴感情挽回大陸抓姦外遇婚前徵信離婚尋人工商徵信外遇抓姦法律諮詢家暴婚前徵信大陸抓姦尋人感情挽回外遇抓姦婚前徵信感情挽回尋人大陸抓姦工商徵信法律諮詢離婚家暴工商徵信外遇抓姦法律諮詢家暴婚前徵信尋人感情挽回大陸抓姦離婚婚前徵信工商徵信外遇抓姦尋人離婚家暴大陸抓姦感情挽回法律諮詢離婚感情挽回婚前徵信外遇抓姦家暴尋人工商徵信外遇抓姦法律諮詢家暴婚前徵信尋人感情挽回">徵大陸抓姦離婚婚前徵信工商徵信外遇抓姦尋人離婚家暴大陸抓姦感情挽回法律諮詢



  2. Anonymous on May 8, 2009 at 12:49 pm

    But Valiant Angel doesn’t have this capability! It’s based on Isilon — at best it does fast ftp of files and has no distributed processing capability beyond what’s available at a single site.



  3. Kevin Jackson on May 8, 2009 at 12:54 pm

    That’s my point! Valiant Angel could probably does much more with a lot less cost if they would leverage a cloud computing infrastructure something like Animoto. See http://kevinljackson.blogspot.com/2008/12/animoto-automated-imagery-ped.html



  4. Anonymous on October 30, 2009 at 6:21 pm

    Do you have any idea how limited bandwidth is in a combat enviroment? How well does cloud computing work in a high latency, low bandwidth infrastructure?



  5. Kevin L. Jackson on October 30, 2009 at 6:35 pm

    During the US Navy Trident Warrior exercise, we've been testing the use of Amazon Web Services over simulated shipboard communications systems and have found the use of cloud computing technologies to be very feasible. These test simulated the high latency, low bandwidth environment found shipboard.