Provision of ZODIAC Alpha (DInfoCom/0190)

It is critical that the Army has an accurate, timely and predictive understanding of the environment it is operating in. This includes situations where sub-threshold and grey zone operations are the norm. Unless there is significant investment in the Army's Land Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance (ISTAR) capability it will not be capable of meeting this requirement.

The current Land ISTAR capability is unable to exploit Defence and National Intelligence capabilities which have an increasingly temporal and tactical fidelity. Poor connectivity also means that Land's contribution to the wider Single Intelligence Environment is low.

The current Land ISTAR capability privileges collection that focuses on the physical dimension, this must be balanced with an equal emphasis on the virtual and cognitive dimensions. This will potentially be met through StratCom projects, though there are serious concerns about the funding of these critical Land dependencies.

Project ZODIAC is the core of the Land ISTAR programme. This project will provide a system that integrates the individual ISTAR sensors into a coherent network and both speeds and improves our ISTAR cycle with Artificial Intelligence (AI) enabled automation including the following functions: Intelligence Requirements Management, ISTAR sensor planning, command and control of sensors (including x-cueing) and processing. ZODIAC will work closely in conjunction with HYDRA which will deliver a cloud-based, fusion and analytic capability that provides the storage, fusion and integrated big data-analytic aspects of the Intelligence process. The operation of this ZODIAC/HYDRA system will not be confined to operational field deployments but will stretch back to the home base and allow the Army's ISR operators to be persistently engaged in the development of intelligence. LE TacCIS provides the field network and connectivity upon which the future Land ISTAR systems will operate and the aim is for any significant battlefield sensor (including AJAX, BOXER, GBAD, APACHE and WILDCAT) to be able to interface with ZODIAC. They are also exploring integration of Air and Maritime sensors through bi-laterals with the other single Services. Enterprise IT (MODNET and NSoIT(D)) will provide the ISTAR connectivity and network support for the firm bases.