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Software tools produce lightning-fast intelligence analysis

U.S. Navy's experimental ship Stiletto

The U.S. Navy's experimental ship Stiletto off the coast of Virginia Beach, Virginia. Raytheon's Sentry intelligence app was demonstrated aboard the ship. U.S. Navy photo.

Ding. Ding. Ding. Intruder alert!

The three desktop chimes brought the intelligence analyst to full attention. These were no instant messages; they were alerts from the Intersect Sentry app, a software tool that boosts the power of human analysts to comb through dense, flowing data and pick out significant developments in real time.

The analyst was stationed in the forward operations center for the U.S. Navy experimental ship M80 Stiletto, a prototype stealth vessel built for coastal operations, during the Navy's Maritime Technology Demonstration exercise. Using Sentry, the analyst modeled the Stiletto, its maritime environment, and facilities and certain locations.  As Stiletto maneuvered, Sentry relied on optical sensors to identify potential threats that came within range, as unidentified ships or persons of interest on the shore. 

Raytheon's Sentry fits the U.S. Department of Defense goal under what is known as the Third Offset Strategy: technology breakthroughs that create battlefield advantages.

“Sentry identifies relevant data in less than a second that used to take an analyst hours or days to pick out,” said Stephen Handel, Raytheon Intersect Sentry deputy chief engineer. "A customer reported that Sentry would allow them to re-task analysts from 24/7 monitoring of vessel activity to higher-order analytic tasks."

The Third Offset Strategy aims to bolster the human-machine connection to create new and more powerful capabilities. That's what Sentry does; it works as an analyst's teammate, cherry-picking the right data and delivering that information through a customizable interface.  Analysts select preferences and data discriminators, and move onto other tasks. The app's algorithm deploys software agents in the background; they scan through hundreds of millions of events per day, delivering only the most relevant information via alerts.

Sentry can identify radar tracks, social media, ships and vehicles from imagery and signals data.

“Our mission is to integrate humans and the systems they use,” said Guy Swope, Raytheon Analytics Capability Center leader. “The Intersect suite is an answer to the call for a Third Offset Strategy in the fight against terror in the digital age. It’s a simple strategy — change the way we fight in the field and in cyberspace.”

This document does not contain technology or technical data controlled under either the U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations or the U.S. Export Administration. E16-VV69.

Last Updated: 01/26/2018