Command Study 11, Chapter 3. Aerial Reconnaissance Page: 16
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tactical air targeting objectives as well. Examples of specific objective recon-
naissance may be routine daily or weekly coverage of airfields, railway yards,
or harbors, in order to maintain a check onenemy activity or movement; repet-
itive aerial photography of a city to determine the status of its industries; visual
reconnaissance of routes immediately in advance of armored thrusts; and weather
reconnaissance flights just prior to bombing operations.
By virtue of the inherent flexibility of the manned tactical reconnaissance
weapon system all of the above tasks may sometimes be carried out simultaneous-
ly, possibly with the intention of throwing the enemy off balance. Through the
tactical control system, the objectives of a tactical reconnaissance sortie may
even be changed while it is in progress, in order to accomplish another higher
priority task.
The Optimum System
Despite the advent of revolutionary weapons, for the immediate future manned
aircraft offer the most effective and efficient means with which to perform the
tactical reconnaissance mission. Literally thousands of electronic gadgets and
automatic systems have been investigated to improve the present reconnaissance
sensors or replace them altogether. The U. S. Army is conducting extensive
research on unmanned drone systems as an important part of its combat surveil-
lance projects. The Air Force is continually testing new and exotic means of
gathering intelligence. Two main important difficulties soon become evident
when attempting to rely on the automatic unmanned system: the complexity of
the problem of recovering the information quickly and in a form that is immedi-
ately usable; and the lack of ability in the automatic systems to discriminate,
i. e. , to sort out the vital information from the mass of unwanted or less impor-
tant data.
Since under any technique except pure visual reconnaissance a great deal of
sorting may in any event have to be done, one might presume that the sorting
could best be carried on in an air-conditioned bombproof shelter. But for the
automatic unmanned systems the problem of data transmission reduces "home
base" sorting to a doubtful value. The automatic unmanned system would be a
supersonic vehicle with a great variety of sensors, each contributing its bit to
the intelligence picture. This complex would gather more intelligence than could
be transmitted within the same time period. Certainly this is true of informa-
tion at the large scale or high degree of resolutionthat suits tactical intelligence
needs. Since the specific purpose of reconnaissance is to produce intelligence
of enemy plans and activities which is indicative of his ability and intention to
wage war, it is significance of content rather than quantity of output that deter-
mines the ultimate value of the system. A surfeit of information is not neces-
sarily intelligence, but merely additional information whose analysis might be
costly and inefficient.
For this reasonmost tactical reconnaissance authorities conclude that dur-
ing the next few years a great deal of dependence must be placed on a manned,
very high-performance aircraft that is capable of surviving during aerospace
conflict. Ideally this would be a two-place aircraft, with one of the crew serving
as a highly skilled airborne interpreter who operates and monitors the sensors
and sifts out for transmission only the information that is critically needed or is
of a highly perishable nature, such as data concerning mobile forces on the move.16
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Air University (U.S.). Command Study 11, Chapter 3. Aerial Reconnaissance, pamphlet, February 1964; Robins Airforce Base, Georgia. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1010521/m1/24/?rotate=270: accessed July 10, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting National WASP WWII Museum.