Shift from War on Terror to Great Power Competition Moves Biometric Goals, Too
On the battlefield of the future, biometric data and the identity intel it provides offers new advantages.
BY SHAUN WATERMAN AUG 25, 2021
...On the battlefield of the future, where U.S. forces confront near-peer adversaries & not the rag-tag irregular forces it fought in Iraq & Afghanistan, biometric data & the identity intel it provides offers new advantages, explained Bob Cosgrove, a senior analyst supporting the U.S. Army Military Police School at Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri, & the Defense Forensics & Biometrics Agency (DFBA) in Washington, D.C.
Cosgrove is authoring a white paper for the DFBA titled “U.S. Army biometrics and multidomain operations in 2028,” which aims, he said, to outline future uses of biometric tech. “It describes how future Army forces can incorporate biometrics into multidomain operations [or MDO] to enable their ability to counter and defeat a near peer adversary during periods of competition and armed conflict,” he said.
That advantage stemmed from the ability of biometric-enabled identity intel to block off or countermand several strategies used by near-peer competitors in great power conflict:
-Threat anonymity: The use of “anonymous” or unidentified military personnel (like the “little green men” used by the Russian military in Ukraine 2013-14.)
-Threat impunity: When anonymous or irregular forces hide their true identity both individually and collectively, to avoid accountability for war crimes on the battlefield & other violations of intl. law.
-Threat collusion: When an adversary works with or through irregular or proxy forces, in order to conceal, or at least create plausible deniability for, its actions...
...“Let's say you're in a city, you're in a crowded area, & you've got your IVAS augmented reality goggles on. You could walk through the crowd. And as you're walking through the crowd, it's checking the faces (against a facial recognition watchlist) … almost in real time. So … if somebody in the crowd popped on the watchlist, it would show up in your goggles, as probably a red box around that individual’s face,” explained Graves. The hit could also alert other personnel, including perhaps snatch teams, nearby...
https://www.afcea.org/signal-media/shift-war-terror-great-power-competition-moves-biometric-goals-too