Project Athena Promotes Actionable Intelligence

BACKGROUND

Project Athena is a multi-domain command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance system that integrates information from sensors, databases and intelligence sources to provide seamless situational awareness, data fusion and analysis, and knowledge management.

SCOPE

Raytheon operates the Project Athena Multi-Domain Awareness Testbed at its facility in Portsmouth, R.I. The program is currently managed by the Department of Defense Counter Narco-Terrorism Technology Program Office. Athena’s initial contract award was $6 million, and allows for $1-2 million in annual funding for spiral developments.

TIMELINE

Raytheon was awarded its initial Athena contract in August 2004. It was modified in October 2005 to require that the system provide wide-area surveillance for coastal and national defense. In December 2005, the Athena Fusion Center was opened. The system had its first operational demonstration in April 2006 to support U.S. Customs and Border Protection and its partners.

WHO’S IN CHARGE

Scott Spence is director of Multi-Domain Awareness Programs within the Joint Battlespace Business Area of Raytheon’s Integrated Defense Systems. Prior to joining the company, he spent 13 years in program management positions as a civilian working for the U.S. Air Force.

“Project Athena is used in a variety of operational deployments [including homeland security, maritime domain awareness and border protection]. The way the program works is we have a series of spirals where we sit down with our customer and walk through the new technologies and capabilities available that we can integrate.

We’ve gone through three of these spirals over the course of the last two-and-a-half years. We were just awarded our fourth spiral.

I see Project Athena leading the way into creating actionable intelligence for the operator. [The system] has the ability to not only fuse the common operating picture but to have all the information that is required to make a decision in real time.

In the future, I see the program crossing the boundaries between all the multiple mission domains within the joint battlespace by connecting them together.

All the domains — land, air and maritime — interact together. In drug trafficking, a speedboat will rush to shore and drop off contraband that is picked up by a jeep and run across a beach. There, an aircraft will throw contraband off its back that is then picked up by a go-fast boat. Relaying information [between authorities in the various domains] is very important to stop this cycle.”