Military Communications and Information Technology: A Trusted ...

266 Military Communications and Information Technology...
and analysis. In the course of the intelligence process, collected raw data must be
processed to extract and analyze relevant information [2], [3]. In order to do this,
in current operations, military analysts must read the source data and process its
content. Only then can the results of the evaluation be incorporated into the command
and control process.
Due to capacity issues, information overload represents a serious intelligence
problem, which not only applies to OSINT but often is also true for every kind
of data, e.g., HUMINT data. This means that we have access to various sources
of potentially relevant data but may miss critical information as we are not able to
process it. Processing capacities become further limited if we deal with texts
in foreign languages that need to be translated. In particular, with respect to less
common languages not enough or no human translators might be available. For
example, in the case of the Afghanistan mission, Dari is one such language that
causes our forces different kinds of translation problems. In any case, it is clear that
intelligence tools for efficient processing of data are required.
The science of natural language processing (NLP) provides technology to assist
military intelligence. There are different NLP applications to support the intelligence
process on different levels, i.e., finding relevant documents, document classification,
extraction of document content or specific information and even sentiment
analysis. To meet the challenge of multilingual document processing, machine
translation (MT) can be used. In our research project ISAF-MT [4] we have created
a machine translation system for Dari to German. We proved that the approach
of statistical machine translation (SMT) makes it possible to rapidly construct new
translation systems. We argue that the generated output of such a system, a rough
translation, even if usually not of high quality, can be used to assist military intelligence
at different levels. Therefore, SMT can be applied for intelligence purposes
to efficiently process large amounts of data.
II. The significance of web information
The modern connected world has significant impact on open source intelligence.
Nowadays, global news sites as well as social media provide us with live information
of different kinds, i.e., about events, public opinion, etc. As web technologies
develop rapidly they become integrated into our lives. Therefore, the information
content of the web will become increasingly relevant, also for military applications.
An example for this is the role that social media played in the revolutions
of the Arab world starting on December 18, 2010 in Tunisia. Here, social networks
played as a critical function in sharing information and organizing protests [5].
Statistics mirror the importance of the internet in our world (visualized by
Figure 1): with a world population of 7 billion, more than 2 billion people use
the internet. Due to the recent development of mobile devices, i.e., smart phones
and tablets, the use of the internet is no longer restricted to access locations. Over