Israeli firm develops visual intel system that can track multiple rocket launch sites

The system, known as the ImiLite Center, allows ground controllers to monitor dozens of zones in hostile territory, while integrating intelligence data from other sources.

By YAAKOV LAPPIN
Updated: APRIL 25, 2016 01:13
Rafael's ImiLite Center (photo credit: RAFAEL ADVANCED DEFENSE SYSTEMS)
Rafael's ImiLite Center
(photo credit: RAFAEL ADVANCED DEFENSE SYSTEMS)
State-owned defense corporation Rafael has developed a command and control system that can monitor multiple areas for rocket launch activities.
The system, known as the ImiLite Center, is in use in the IDF. It allows ground controllers to monitor dozens of zones in hostile territory, while integrating intelligence data from other sources.
An aircraft equipped with an advanced visual intelligence pod can fly more than 50 km. away from its target areas, and send back data to ground controllers, whose screens divide into multiple tracking zones, a senior source from Rafael said recently, describing the system.
The technology would enable the IDF to preemptively strike areas used by terrorists to fire on the home front in any future conflict.
ImiLite also fuses data from other sources, such as cameras and SAR (radar) sensors that are on spy satellites in space, and drone cameras, the Rafael executive added.
“All of the data is organized in a very precise manner,” he said, adding that a “powerful search engine” allows instant access to relevant intelligence by users.
Multi-sensor intelligence deciphering stations serve “all levels” of IDF command, the source said, from general staff to command chiefs and downwards.
Israel receives millions of intelligence bits every hour, the source said.
“In the past, it would take months to decipher this. We have shortened the process down to seconds, through an automated process, and through advanced algorithms, which sift through the intelligence automatically,” he said.
ImiLite can serve “a thousand end users,” the source said, and as it does so, it “learns, in real time” about how to adapt its intelligence-processing techniques.
This enables the system to remain flexible, and keep up with an enemy that frequently changes its methods of operating.
On its official website, Rafael described ImiLite as a system “designed to receive, process, and display video and imagery form multiple sensors, in a unified and streamlined process.”
Its capabilities include processing and displaying “video, imagery, targets, threats, mission status, force locations, signal intelligence detection, and others,” Rafael said.
Automated image processing algorithms and motion detectors are central aspects of the system, enabling it to “disseminate operational data, tactical mission reports, targets, and threats to other forces.”