Surveillance has long been one of several ways of keeping track of an adversary. Once referred to simply as “spying” on an enemy, surveillance has grown in sophistication, enabled very much by advances in analog, digital, and mixed-signal electronics. Put simply, as electronic devices increase in performance and capability within smaller-sized packages, long-distance surveillance capabilities increase in direct proportion.
Electronic surveillance devices, which are largely linked to remote-controlled, robotic vehicles, have become the long-distance eyes and ears of the military, with the U.S. Air Force coordinating most surveillance efforts as part of its Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS), also known as the AN/GSQ-272-SENTINEL system. It is the Air Force’s main intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) system for the purpose of critical data collection, processing, exploitation, analysis, and dissemination (CPAD) of intelligence data throughout the branches of the armed forces and allies.