Dr. Duane Brown and Daniel Searle
It is with great pleasure that the Precision Strike Association presents the Richard H. Johnson Award and the Johnson Trophy to both Dr. Duane Brown and Daniel Searle. The Johnson Award recognizes outstanding personal technical achievement resulting in significant contribution to precision strike systems.
Dr. Duane Brown
Dr. Duane Brown is a NAVAIR Associate Fellow and is a nationally recognized expert in target coordinate mensuration techniques, processing, analysis and validation.
Duane serves as the DoD Technical Lead for the Common Geopositioning Services Project and is responsible for reviewing and assessing all technical approaches that address current and future processing changes.
Duane pretty much wrote the book on understanding and assessing mensuration error for both processing and exploiting nodes. Using basic statistical techniques, Duane wrote an algorithm to estimate the actual mensuration error. He also instructs the targeting community on how to interpret and apply these assessments. Every exploitation system currently uses either this algorithm or a variant of it.
The volume of data being processed is monumentally large, and Duane developed techniques to maximize the productivity of data used in analyses. For example, Duane produces 150 times the amount of data in 1/9 of the time compared to another group.
Duane also develops techniques to assess sensor model performance and sensor data quality. These techniques generate data that helps to make recommendations on uncertainties changes to these models.
Duane serves as the Subject Matter Expert on multiple Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance and Targeting (ISR&T) research projects including the Autonomous Targeting Acquisition Weapon System (ATAWS), which increases the success rate and streamlines the mission planning for some feature seeking weapons. Also, Duane developed a new format called Portable Reference Imagery (PRI) which received a patent and provides situational awareness for handheld devices and improves the usefulness of various tactical video feeds. Duane serves as the SME for Distributed Targeting System (DTS) program developing an automatic registration algorithm to support onboard targeting capability.
Today, Duane leads a diverse group of scientists and engineers providing targeting support, data analysis, and mission planning support to multiple air platforms and weapon programs. He is a targeting mentor supporting other analysts within the group by teaching them how to conduct either regression or validation analysis, helping them come up with their data collection plan, interpret results of their findings, how to summarize their results, and finally reviewing their final product for errors before delivery it to our customers.
Dr. Brown has been recognized with a number of awards and honors, including the L.T.E. Thompson Award, and Michelson Laboratory Award and patents.
Daniel Searle
For over 30 years, Daniel Searle has been a leader in the development, sustainment, and innovation of precision targeting and advanced planning tools for the Naval Weapons community. During the mid-1990s, Danny’s team pioneered Responsive Targeting (RT) and Real Time Information in the Cockpit (RTIC) technologies for the advancement of dynamic weapon solutions. Those early prototypes enabled multiple, rapid deployment solutions that enhanced our mission effectiveness, survivability, and operational flexibility for air combat operations and provided efficient sensor-to-shooter acquisition, processing, coordination, fusion, display, and utilization of offboard data for aircrew, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), and weapon operations.
These innovative solutions were pathfinders for many of today’s operational tools. Danny’s team delivered the Navy and NRO’s first Joint Targeting Workstation (JTW). This system was the legacy of the Navy’s Precision Targeting Workstation (PTW) and today’s Common Geopostioning Service (CGS) and now the Common Geopostioning Services Web (CGSWeb/iSPY) tool, which supports over 10,000 unique users monthly.
As a core member of the Rapid Precision Targeting System (RPTS), in 1998 Danny’s team broke ground on new message formats and standards, which became the major contributor to Net Enabled Weapons (NEW) technology efforts. Danny and the RPTS team were critical to the standup of the first Flex Targeting cell in an operational environment.
Danny’s leadership has provided a foundation for precision targeting and advanced planning technology solutions. He is continuing to facilitate a cross-SYSCOM and Joint Service environment for mission planning, precision targeting, and Joint Fires Programs and Initiatives. Since 1988, Danny has served in various roles including the Head of the Sensor-to-Shooter Technology Office, Head for the Weapons Engagement Office, and Head of the NAVAIR Mission Architecture Team for ISR and Targeting. He has been responsible for merging Intel exploitation and communications technologies to provide information warfare solutions for rapid and dynamic targeting. His primary message to the community is focused on ‘closing the gap’ between the left side and right side of the killchain. In response to this problem, Danny serves as the principal investigator for the Office of Naval Research’s Dynamic Integrated Operations (DINO) Future Naval Capability (FNC). DINO is developing a decision engagement environment for continuous over-the-horizon (OTH) weapon employment to include workflow management tools bridging the Operational Level of War (OLW) and Tactical Level of War (TLW) enabled by advanced Machine Intelligent (MI) suite of technologies.
This year, in response to a CNO request for Anti-Surface Warfare (ASuW) weapons support technologies, Danny delivered the Surface Target Attack Monitor (STAM) quick reaction capability to the Fleet. STAM is a prototype OTH Offensive ASuW targeting capability to support employment of long-range Net Enabled Weapons.
Danny has been recognized with a number of awards and honors, including the L.T.E. Thompson Award and the Michelson Laboratory Award for his work in precision targeting support to the weapon system.