Data fusion for regionally aligned forces

Abstract

Today the U.S. Army is increasingly deploying regionally aligned brigades to new areas of interest while simultaneously placing greater emphasis on engagement, recently adding it to the Warfighting Functions. These regionally aligned forces often conduct engagement in unstable and austere environments with limited understanding of the primary actors. Traditional intelligence collection is often focused at the national level on the primary state and non-state actors in a region; but may not be complete at the granularity required to support these small-scale deployments. The open-source internet provides a wealth of information, but is often time-intensive to search and analogous to finding a “needle in a haystack” Our research will use Network Centrality metrics applied to the Global Knowledge Graph (GKG) to provide tactical commanders with a tool that identifies influential individuals at the sub-national level. This information will allow tactical leaders to make more informed in their operating environment.