Pentagon Struggles with Avalanche of Surveillance Data

The amount of data being collected by U.S. government satellites and aerial surveillance platforms is overwhelming the Pentagon’s ability to process it, a situation that cannot be corrected by hiring new analysts, the chief of U.S. Strategic Command said Oct. 19.

U.S. Air Force Gen. C. Robert Kehler said the storm of data is 1,500 percent heavier than it was just five years ago, while the U.S. government’s ability to process, exploit and disseminate it has increased by about 30 percent.

In an address to the Geoint 2011 symposium here, Kehler said it would take thousands more analysts to handle it all, a prospect he said is “not realistic.”

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