SGI Holds Defense Summit

It's a sign of the times that the public's interest in technology has made a shift from "gee whiz" apps like the making of animated movies for kiddies to tech advances that can keep us all safe and sound while we go about our daily pursuit of happiness. Last week, government and defense officials and defense integrators met at the SGI Defense Summit in Crystal City, Va., to discuss technologies being used for digital defense. The Summit showcased graphics and visualization applications ranging from one-meter high-resolution satellite imagery to flight simulation and mission rehearsal programs that are currently being used. The Summit had been planned since last summer, when many of the developments were just a tad less urgent. Despite how useful they are, it's a little disheartening to think that, for many companies, war equates to more business. The graphics and visualization apps shown at the Summit were run on SGI systems and included F-16 flight simulators used by the Air Force to enable training in a virtual environment that moves from low-altitude, on-the-deck, air-to-ground missions to high-altitude air-to-air combat. SGI just received approval for $5 million in funding from the House Appropriations Committee as part of the Defense Appropriations bill. The funding will be used for F-16 flight simulators powered by the company's gear.

Other developments demonstrated include TOPSCENE, a mission-planning rehearsal system developed by Lockheed Martin for the U.S. Navy that converts imagery from satellites and other sources to create 3D fly-throughs of real-world terrain in staged battlefield scenarios, and Space-to-Face, an app developed by Space Imaging that captures high-resolution imagery data transmitted from space by its IKONOS satellite that can then be resolved to one-meter commercial high-resolution imagery on the ground. This app is called Space-to-Face because it can detect objects like individual trees, boats, cars, roads and even people from more than 400 miles above the Earth. InReality and RealSite are security visualization tools for urban security planning and monitoring and their developer, Harris Corp., has already constructed databases of many metropolitan areas in the U.S. SGI also lets us know that its systems are being used to tie together a number of air-based weapons systems into a single command and control architecture to drive network-centric warfare capabilities. SGI Federal and the Air Force Space Warfare Center have entered into a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) for the development, test and evaluation of selected command and control technologies, decision support systems, and display technologies. And, if you happen to be in an anti-war mood, rest assured that all of these applications probably have less aggressive uses that we're sure to see in less interesting times.