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A recent publication entitled, “The US Army in Multi-Domain Operations 2028”1 stated that the current strategic environment is characterized by continuous competition involving “great powers”, particularly China and Russia, which challenge in all domains and leverage the “competition” space to achieve operational and strategic objectives. For example, diplomatic, economic actions, information warfare, unconventional and conventional operations are being integrated to fracture alliances (e.g., NATO) and partnerships. In the transition from “competition” to conflict, space, cyber, electromagnetic and information would be integrated to create standoff in order to separate friendly forces over time, space and function. In response to the realization that information has significant impacts on national security (e.g., foreign manipulation of elections), Information was declared the 7th joint warfighting function. Information Operations is a subset of the Information function focused on the employment of military capabilities to change adversary behavior. Operating successfully requires the ability to characterize and assess the impact of various actions, messages, events on actors, communities and a mastery of the tools, techniques and activities to affect the dimension of the information environment (individuals, organizations and systems that collect, process, disseminate or act on information).2 This paper will introduce a Playbook concept to enable successful operations in the Information Environment (IE) based on the characterization of multiple domain information using the BEND framework3, extended beyond Social Media to encompass Information Domains or Information Related Capabilities (IRC). An example of Playbooks based on a historical scenario will be provided. Exemplars of analytics to support IE characterization will be included, along with a discussion of remaining research gaps.

A recent report on Hostile Social Manipulation stated that the tools and techniques being employed in targeted social media campaigns, sophisticated forgeries, cyberbullying and harassment of individuals, and distribution of rumors and conspiracy theories pose a “potentially significant threat to U.S. and allied national interests”. This creates a challenge for an Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) force comprised of platforms, sensors, networks and personnel that have been focused on overseas contingency operations for nearly 20 years. Recent defense strategy emphatically stated, “Inter-state strategic competition, not terrorism, is now the primary concern in U.S. national security.” Joint guidance on Operations in the Information Environment (OIE) emphasized the need for a better characterization and assessment of the informational as well as physical, and human aspects of the security environment in order to identify and leverage interdependencies between them. Carley and Beskow wrote, “Social cybersecurity is an emerging subdomain of national security that will affect all levels of future warfare, both conventional and unconventional, with strategic consequences”4 and characterized a set of 16 socio-cyber security forms of maneuver in the BEND model. This paper will introduce the BEND model, providing real-world examples of maneuvers, and highlight emerging multi-source analytics for discernment of threat.

Traditionally, information fusion approaches to meaning making have been integrative or aggregative in nature, creating meaning “containers” in which to put content (e.g., attributes) about object classes. In a large part, this was due to the limits in technology/tools for supporting information fusion (e.g., computers). A different synthesis based approach for meaning making is described which takes advantage of computing advances. The approach is not focused on the events/behaviors being observed/sensed; instead, it is human work centric. The former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency once wrote, “Context is king. Achieving an understanding of what is happening – or will happen – comes from a truly integrated picture of an area, the situation and the various personalities in it…a layered approach over time that builds depth of understanding.”1 The synthesis based meaning making framework enables this understanding. It is holistic (both the sum and the parts, the proverbial forest and the trees), multi-perspective and emulative (as opposed to representational). The two approaches are complementary, with the synthesis based meaning making framework as a wrapper. The integrative approach would be dominant at level 0,1 fusion: data fusion, track formation and the synthesis based meaning making becomes dominant at higher fusion levels (levels 2 and 3), although both may be in play. A synthesis based approach to information fusion is thus well suited for “gray zone” challenges in which there is aggression and ambiguity and which are inherently perspective dependent (e.g., recent events in Ukraine).

United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM) recently published a white paper describing the “Gray Zone”, security challenges characterized by “ambiguity about the nature of the conflict, opacity of the parties involved…competitive interactions among and within state and non-state actors that fall between the traditional war and peace duality.”1 Ambiguity and related uncertainty about actors, situations, relationships, and intent require new approaches to information collection, processing and fusion. General Votel, the current SOCOM commander, during a recent speech on “Operating in the Gray Zone” emphasized that it would be important to get left of the next crises and stated emphatically, “to do that we must understand the Human Domain.”2 This understanding of the human domain must come from making meaning based on different perspectives, including the “emic” or first person/participant and “etic” or third person/observer perspectives. Much of the information currently collected and processed is etic. Incorporation and fusion with the emic perspective enables forecasting of behaviors/events and provides context for etic information (e.g., video).3 Gray zone challenges are perspective-dependent; for example, the conflict in Ukraine is interpreted quite differently by Russia, the US and Ukraine. Russia views it as war, necessitating aggressive action, the US views it as a security issue best dealt with by economic sanctions and diplomacy and the Ukraine views it as a threat to its sovereignty.4 General Otto in the Air Force ISR 2023 vision document stated that Air Force ISR is needed to anticipate strategic surprise.5 Anticipatory analysis enabling getting left of a crisis inherently requires a greater focus on information sources that elucidate the human environment as well as new methods that elucidate not only the “who’s” and “what’s”, but the “how’s and “why’s,” extracting features and/or patterns and subtle cues useful for forecasting behaviors and events; for example discourse patterns related to social identity and integrative complexity.6 AFRL has been conducting research to enable analysts to understand the “emic” perspective based on discourse analysis methods and/or text analytics.7 Previous results demonstrated the value of fusion of emic and etic information in terms of improved accuracy (from 39% to 86%) in forecasting violent events.8 This paper will describe new work to extend this to anticipatory analysis in the gray zone.

During the 2015 SPIE DSS conference, nine panelists were invited to highlight the trends and use of context for information fusion. This paper highlights the common issues and trends presented from the panel discussion. The different panelists highlighted methods of filtering methods, data aggregation, and the importance of context for realtime analytics. Using the panelist perspectives, the review organizes the common issues and themes as well areas of future analysis of content and context enrichment from information fusion.

Aptima, 12 Gill Street, Woburn, MA, 01801 .ABSTRACT With the plethora of information, there are many aspects to contested environments such as the protection of information, network privacy, and restricted observational and entry access. In this paper, we review and contrast the perspectives of challenges and opportunities for future developm ents in contested environments. The ability to operate in a contested environment would aid societal operations for highly congeste d areas with limited bandwidth such as transportation, the lack of communication and observations after a natural disaster, or planning for situations in which freedom of movement is restricted. Differ ent perspectives were presented, but common themes incl uded (1) Domain: targets and sensors, (2) network: communications, control, and social networks, and (3) user: human interaction and analytics. The paper serves as a summary and organization of the panel discussion as towards future concerns for research n eeds in contested environments. Keywords

Today’s operators face a “double whammy” – the need to process increasing amounts of information, including “Twitter-INT” 1 (social information such as Facebook, You-Tube videos, blogs, Twitter) as well as the need to discern threat signatures in new security environments, including those in which the airspace is contested. To do this will require the Air Force to “fuse and leverage its vast capabilities in new ways.” 2 For starters, the integration of quantitative and qualitative information must be done in a way that preserves important contextual information since the goal increasingly is to identify and mitigate violence before it occurs. To do so requires a more nuanced understanding of the environment being sensed, including the human environment, ideally from the “emic” perspective; that is, from the perspective of that individual or group. This requires not only data and information that informs the understanding of how the individuals and/or groups see themselves and others (social identity) but also information on how that identity filters information in their environment which, in turn, shapes their behaviors. 3 The goal is to piece together the individual and/or collective narratives regarding threat, the threat narrative, from various sources of information. Is there a threat? If so, what is it? What is motivating the threat? What is the intent of those who pose the threat and what are their capabilities and their vulnerabilities? 4 This paper will describe preliminary investigations regarding the application of prototype hybrid information fusion method based on the threat narrative framework.

During the SPIE 2012 conference, panelists convened to discuss “Real world issues and challenges in Human Social/Cultural/Behavioral modeling with Applications to Information Fusion.” Each panelist presented their current trends and issues. The panel had agreement on advanced situation modeling, working with users for situation awareness and sense-making, and HSCB context modeling in focusing research activities. Each panelist added different perspectives based on the domain of interest such as physical, cyber, and social attacks from which estimates and projections can be forecasted. Also, additional techniques were addressed such as interest graphs, network modeling, and variable length Markov Models. This paper summarizes the panelists discussions to highlight the common themes and the related contrasting approaches to the domains in which HSCB applies to information fusion applications.