U.S.
Military Turns To TV For Surveillance
Technology
As it rapidly expands its drone
program over
Afghanistan, the U.S. military is
turning to
the technology that powers NFL
broadcasts,
ESPN and TV news to catalog a flood of
information coming from the cameras of
its
fleet of unmanned aircraft. U.S.
military
archives hold 24 million minutes of
video
collected by Predators and other
remotely
piloted aircraft that have become an
essential
tool for commanders. But the library
is
largely useless because analysts often
have no
way of knowing exactly what they have,
or any
way to search for information that is
particularly valuable. To help solve
that
problem, the Air Force and government
spy
satellite experts have begun working
with
industry experts to adapt the methods
that
enable the NFL and other broadcasters
to
quickly find and show replays, display
on-field first-down markers and jot
John
Madden-style notations on the screen.