USJFCOM | Shepherd's Pi

DCGS Worldwide Conference 2009 is next week

Posted on October 22, 2009 by lewisshepherd

US Joint Forces Command is sponsoring next week’s third annual DCGS Worldwide Conference in Virginia Beach, and I’m looking forward to participating on a great panel. If you don’t know much about the world of the “Distributed Common Ground/Surface System,” you can find some slightly dated background information at http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/systems/dcgs.htm. DCGS is in many ways all about ISR, or intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance – as well as their integration throughout the defense intelligence enterprise through the network of JIOCs (Joint Intelligence Operations Centers) and elsewhere.

There aren’t a lot of unclassified guides to the DCGS and ISR world for me to point to out on the web as background, although an anti-war group has posted a draft version of Army Intelligence Field Manual (FM) 2-01, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance, which you can read in html format here.

For up-to-date information, why not register at the conference website and attend?

The conference’s overall goal is “bringing together program offices, developers, and users to focus on establishing a fully integrated and seamless Enterprise in support of the warfighter.” Quoting more specifically from the conference material, “The conference objectives are to:

Improve knowledge of DCGS and JIOC capabilities for security, engagement and relief and reconstruction activities
Increase the utility and value DCGS provides to Irregular Warfare and General Purpose Forces operating independently, and through increasingly lower echelons
Markedly improve the ability to integrate with U.S. agencies, coalition forces, and other partners across the ISR enterprise
Inspire new thinking in areas of acquisition of ISR services, DCGS capability metrics, and the rapid delivery of intelligence solutions to the warfighter.”

The panel I’m participating on is titled “Amplifying ISR: Bringing Proven Advanced Video Processing Technologies to the Warfighter Now,” led by my good friend John Marshall. Below is the line up of the panel, which will focus primarily on the key topic of how to exploit and manage the waves of information coming off the profusion of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV’s) around the world.