Towards a safer world
STRATEGIC SITUATION CENTRE
In a global world, the security challenge takes on multiple, different forms.
There are numerous risks, both old and new, both foreseeable and unexpected. They range from terrorism to natural disasters, there in comprising security in large cities and along borders as well as the security of critical infrastructures. Political and institutional authorities must be prepared for these events in order to protect their territories and the people living in them. Finmeccanica's Strategic Situation Centre governs the activities of the Group's products in the operating environment, thereby demonstrating their ability to respond to a variety of complex needs in an integrated manner.
Specifically, it was decided to show the centre in action in the following areas of intervention.
Three control rooms are connected via a network to the Strategic Situation Centre at the Paris Air Show. They are located at three of the Group's industrial sites, in Rome, London and Washington, and are the link between the Le Bourget exhibition and the real world, in which Finmeccanica operates daily. The role of each room is to demonstrate capabilities in an operational context which can be observed and directed from within the Strategic Situation Centre
MANAGING A MULTIPLE THREAT
Multi-agency crisis response a vast range of systems. In addressing a national crisis, the first requirement is to gain situational awareness
and the key is to fuse information to establish a common operational picture. Those in command need decision support tools to allow assessment of a
variety of courses of action and to initiate a response based on harmonised action which is coherent and co-ordinated across all agencies. A crisis response system must also provide the information required to exercise risk management so that the consequences of all actions are fully understood and the impact of the emergency can be rapidly contained.
COUNTER INSURGENCY AND SUSTAINABLE SECURITY
The threat from adaptive and agile enemies is continually changing.
The requirements of commanders at all levels to ensure situational understanding, force protection, command support and particularly for assured
information makes new demands on their sensors and decision support systems. The ability to earn the confidence of the local population is at the
heart of successful operations. Commanders and their staffs should work with and through local administrators, civil leaders and indigenous security forces.Against a determined and aggressive enemy, commanders need to be able to rely on the ability to bring direct and indirect fire to bear with precision, to achieve the levels of security in which stabilization is then possible.
In order to do this, commanders at all levels should be able to develop options for the most indirect and least intrusive form of intervention that will
achieve the necessary effect. This requires the highest possible degree of situational understanding, which in turn unlocks the full potential of national and international investment in defence capabilities.
CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE PROTECTION
Although a national crisis would arise only rarely, the need for states and major infrastructure operators to exercise vigilance is continuous.
National security and resilience calls for the need to guarantee the integrity of airspace, territorial waters and land borders and critical infrastructure nodes such as energy sources or transportation systems. This leads to the requirement for complete
coverage of the areas of interest with appropriate sensors, whether on land, at sea or in the air. Sensor fusion allows the resulting data to be transformed into knowledge to give a real-time operational picture on which decisions can be based.
Nations need an ability to work closely with infrastructure operators to respond by deploying interceptor aircraft, military ships, land forces or other national asset to react to any incursion or emergency.
MARITIME DOMAIN AWARENESS
One element of maintaining a state's national integrity is the ability to conduct border surveillance. Protecting and policing not only land borders, but also the maritime Economic Exclusion Zone (EEZ) is increasingly important. The EEZ represents a nation's outer layer of security as well as the domicile of many shipping lanes which are vital for trade and economic growth. Sensors must give continuous coverage both in time and space and be able to detect and track multiple, potential threats, the vast majority of which are actually just people going about their everyday lives. Whilst a border surveillance system must be sufficiently robust, it must equally be able to provide accurate information on the subject of surveillance so that an appropriate and proportionate response can be carried out in the event of suspected criminal activity, for example, the ability to distinguish between a fisherman returning with his catch and a vessel looking to engage in a criminal act such as piracy or illegal immigration. The associated command and control process needs to be highly responsive and to facilitate rapid decision-making.
LARGE EVENTS MANAGEMENT
An emergency situation in an urban environment often means there are significant numbers of people potentially in harm's way. This situation can
be compounded by damage to infrastructure such as transportation and communications, thus requiring a complex emergency response. Whilst
communications are being restored, assistance, such as first responder teams or search and rescue helicopters can be despatched. Conditions are often variable and hazardous so robust communications are required to co-ordinate a number of agencies. Often one of the key infrastructure elements required will be transport: protecting and keeping the public safe is the highest priority, so moving them away from the crisis area and to safety is critical. Rapid response and reliability are key requirements in both the command systems and the units on the ground. Incidents in this environment take on an added level of complexity where there is a need to evacuate people away from a particular incident.
To cope with the wide range of unpredictable scenarios, a response system has to be a flexible capability with both redundancy and resilience.
SIMULATION RIG
Through the Finmeccanica MindSh@re Simulation Community, combined expertise from across the Finmeccanica companies brings together a variety of synthetic environments, enabling them to communicate with each other over a common, distributed, simulation network.