As a follow-up to this post, I note this:
The Air Force has more drones and more sensors collecting more data than it has humans to interpret what the electronic tea leaves say. The glut of all that video and still imagery is “unsustainable,” says the Air Force’s top civilian — but it’ll be “years” before the Air Force digs its way out of it.
As the article points out, there are various levels of processing needed. There’s a need for an immediate triage of imagery for time-sensitive operations. If an American unit’s under attack, the imagery that might help them can’t go in the normal processing queue. But there’s also the general processing, that might yield information useful over the medium or long term.
More computers, please.
The Edge of the American West 
1 comment
April 8, 2012 at 6:06 am
Matt_L
Funny enough, the CIA had the same problem with regular intelligence gathering in Vietnam. They invented a unit of data measurement to describe the data surplus: the linear drawer foot (the amount of paper you can cram into one foot of filing cabinet space).
Even more interesting, the Stasi had a similar data glut from all of its informants. Vast quantities of reports from snitches piled up with nobody to read them. This should tell us two things about the future.
First, computers probably won’t help. In both cases, the information was only actionable when a human used it to make a decision. I suppose it could all be turned over to our Robot Overlords someday, but our human overlords like their power too much for that to happen.
Second, the information is really only useful when you know who you want to hurt. And ideology will play a big role in deciding who to bully or kill. So in a sense you don’t have to have intelligence, you just have to know who to smite and you can dig up the data to justify and coordinate the violence later.