Program Summary
In a target-dense environment, the adversary has the advantage of using sophisticated decoys and background traffic to degrade the effectiveness of existing automatic target recognition (ATR) solutions. Airborne strike operations against relocatable targets require that pilots fly close enough to obtain confirmatory visual identification before weapon release, putting the manned platform at extreme risk. Radar provides a means for imaging ground targets at safer and far greater standoff distances; but the false-alarm rate of both human and machine-based radar image recognition is unacceptably high. Existing ATR algorithms also require impractically large computing resources for airborne applications. Hence, current approaches for inserting ATR into tactical applications either move the processing to remote ground stations or drastically reduce performance to fit legacy airborne platform computing capabilities.
The Target Recognition and Adaption in Contested Environments (TRACE) program seeks to develop an accurate, real-time, low-power target recognition system that can be co-located with the radar to provide responsive long-range targeting for tactical airborne surveillance and strike applications.