ESPN helps military tackle huge video cache

joint base langley-eustis, va.  Can SportsCenter teach the military something about combating terrorists?

After rapidly expanding the number of drones around the world, the Air Force is reaching out to ESPN and other experts in video analysis to keep up with the flood of footage the unmanned aircraft are transmitting.

"They're looking at anything and everything they can right now," said Air Force Col. Mike Shortsleeve, commander of a unit here that monitors drone videos.

The remote-controlled aircraft are mounted with cameras that transmit real-time video of terrorism suspects to military analysts in the USA.

The amount of drone video streaming into this base and other sites is immense: 327,384 hours last year, up from 4,806 in 2001.

Given the huge number of feeds, the Air Force is seeking technology or techniques to help process video without adding more people to stare at monitors. "We need to be careful we don't drown in the data," said David Deptula, a retired Air Force lieutenant general and a senior military scholar at the Air Force Academy.

Air Force officials met with ESPN to learn how it handles a huge volume of video feeds. The visit did not lead to any technological breakthroughs, but helped develop training and expertise, the Air Force said.

At Langley, video analysts sit for hours at a stretch in a vast room illuminated only by banks of monitors. The drones are piloted elsewhere, often at a base in Nevada, but the video arrives here. It is analyzed with other intelligence, such as still photos or communications intercepts.

Much of what drones do are "pattern of life" missions that involve staring down at a site for days. The information can help avoid civilian casualties, for example, by determining when children leave for school every day before a raid is launched.

It can also suggest when something seems amiss, perhaps signaling the arrival of a terrorist leader. It's time-consuming work that could be made more efficient with automated monitoring of videos for specific signs out of the ordinary.

"The real value added would be if I could have that tool go back and say, 'How many times has this vehicle appeared in this geographic area over the last 30 days?' and it automatically searches volumes of full-motion video," said Col. Jeffrey Kruse, commander of the 480th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Wing.

Video analysis was critical in the hunt for al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq. It took 6,000 hours of surveillance video to pinpoint his location as drones followed the movements of his associates. On June 7, 2006, two U.S. Air Force jets dropped two 500-pound bombs on the building in which he was located.