Entry Point Control

                                                             This term doesn’t mean your grandfathers “Checkpoint Charlie”. In today’s conflict it has become increasingly important to maintain a much more relevant Entry Point Control model to all types of critical infrastructure in both CONOS & OCONUS operations. Cameras, motion sensors, X-Ray machines, and a variety of devices are playing an increasing role in providing security    for airports, harbors, borders, and facilities deemed a target of opportunity. Much has been made of license plate detection in the past. Looked on at one time as just a way for law enforcement to generate extra income from red light violators and other traffic offences it has now become a weapon in the war on terror. With the ability to backend the capabilities to read license plates now comes the concept of adding biometric analysis to identify facial characteristics and determine make, model and color of vehicle. In countering today’s adversarial threat dominated world it’s important to know who the actors are, where they came from and what affiliations with other groups they have.  The utilization of biometrics can accomplish this when coupled with HSCB (Human Cultural Social Behavior) techniques and a robust RTOS that could manage multiple applications and offers an easy methodology for debugging the development of applications. Multiple initiatives are now in play by the government to develop smart phone applications for today’s military.                                             

               See http: www.rowebots.com   for a review of an environment that would provide maximum capability to a developer wanting to leverage a variety of silicon architectures to this end. Consider the following scenario as to how these themes could play out in a real scenario of today.

                     A vehicle parks in a crowded urban area close to a Forward Operating Base occupied by coalition forces. The vehicles occupants are there to observe the tempo of traffic in and out of the base and gauge weaknesses they can exploit to latter place and IED in egress/ingress points, crash the gate to cause maximum fatalities or simply blow up their vehicle outside the base.  While the occupants of the vehicle review all these strategies inside the vehicle occasionally taking pictures and chatting to affiliates on their cell phones they are being observed from the base via cameras. While the high power cameras record their activity the information is being analyzed in real time.  Biometric software can determine the identity of the occupants by matching the incoming video to a data base of known bad actors. In addition lips can be read to determine intent and timeline all within the appropriate laws for invasion of privacy.  Using the combination of information collected on vehicle type, license plate number, and color plus identity of its occupants HSCB tools can then drill deeper constructing a situational awareness picture that determines where the vehicles occupants came from, whose funding them, who they are affiliated with, how they fit into the organization (how big is the organization),is it a local organization or from out of the region and trying to expand its footprint and credibility by conducting an incident of note.  We need to keep in mind that our adversaries have become extremely skilled at using the internet and cell phone infrastructure as their communications network. While our government entities work with the environments of expensive closed communications systems our adversaries are communicating with each other in the open.  Being able to work with cameras, sensors of all types and today’s and future cellular infrastructures using a robust RTOS as defined earlier will allow applications developers the opportunity to bring forward new modules that will assist in countering the asymmetrical threats that will continue to exist for many years. If you think that the role of “guard duty “has changed then you are right.  In order to facilitate the security of key infrastructure both home and abroad in this new world multiple government contracts that focus on various types of force protection have been developed by the government. These contracts are called IDIQ for indefinite delivery indefinite quantity .Usually sent with a dollar volume ceiling and lasting for four to five years they allow the government to issue task orders defining what they want to order and when they want it. The believe is that by making a number of these awards the government will achieve a bidding process on the need and those gain the overall lowest price. This is a huge paradigm shift from the era of cold war or star wars types of DOD contracts and today’s shrunken military industrial establishment is having a hard time coping with its reality.  Winners and losers will be defined by those contractors who understand how price conscious today’s world is in this community and adjust accordingly. This means tight lean designs with well constructed applications that can scale up and add new content is generated.