Samenvatting

Information dominance and information superiority are closely related terms. The US Army Field Manual 100-6 on Information Operations defines information dominance as: The degree of information superiority that allows the possessor to use information systems and capabilities to achieve an operational advantage in a conflict or to control the situation in operations short of war, while denying those capabilities to the adversary. In his well-known book 'Information Warfare, Principles and Operations' E. Waltz (1998) quotes the US DoD: Information superiority is the capability to collect, process and disseminate an uninterrupted flow of information while exploiting or denying an adversarys ability to dothe same. The objective of this flow of information is to provide " dominant battlespace awareness" (the understanding of the current situation based, primarily, on sensor observations and human sources) and " dominant battlespace knowledge ", (the understanding of the meaning of the current situation, gained from analysis). The benefits of information superiority are to be found in the following operational areas: intelligence preparation of the battlespace, battlespace surveillance and analysis, battlespace visualisation and battlespace awareness dissemination. A key step towards achieving information dominance is reached when one commanders level of battlespace visualisation is significantly greater than that of his opponents ( US Army Field Manual 100-6 , 1996 ).Depending on the source, the quality of the information and the contribution to information dominance can vary. Important quality assessment criteria are: - accuracy (does the information convey the true situation); - relevance (does the information apply to the mission, task or situation at hand); - timeliness (is the information available in time to make decisions); - usability (is the information in common, easily understood formats and displays); - completeness (does the decision maker require more information); - precision (does the information have the required level of detail). From the technical point of view, sensor systems are important sources of information. They can be mounted on different platforms, either space-based, airborne or ground-based. The accuracy, timeliness, completeness and precision of the information are highly dependent on the sensor/platform combination that is used. This is elaborated in the following sections where emphasis is placed on the large class of sensors that use electromagnetic radiation. After a brief description of the general properties of sensors and platforms, some selected topics will be treated. Intelligence Preparation of the Battlespace (IPB) is an ongoing activity, using existing databases and accurate (but not necessarily real-time) information. Reconnaissance and Surveillance (RS) produce actual information with a (near) real-time character. Some examples of both IPB and RS will be presented; it is clear that in practice these processes show mutual interference and overlap. The final topic is Vehicle Positioning Systems, using GPS, as a basic information system for a Battlefield Management System (BMS).