Geophysical MASINT

Geophysical MASINT is a branch of Measurement and Signature Intelligence (MASINT) that involves phenomena transmitted through the earth (ground, water, atmosphere) and manmade structures including emitted or reflected sounds, pressure waves, vibrations, and magnetic field or ionosphere disturbances.

According to the United States Department of Defense, MASINT is technically derived intelligence (excluding traditional imagery IMINT and signals intelligence SIGINT) that – when collected, processed, and analyzed by dedicated MASINT systems – results in intelligence that detects, tracks, identifies, or describes the signatures (distinctive characteristics) of fixed or dynamic target sources. MASINT was recognized as a formal intelligence discipline in 1986. Another way to describe MASINT is a "non-literal" discipline. It feeds on a target's unintended emissive by-products, the "trails" - the spectral, chemical or RF that an object leaves behind. These trails form distinct signatures, which can be exploited as reliable discriminators to characterize specific events or disclose hidden targets."

As with many branches of MASINT, specific techniques may overlap with the six major conceptual disciplines of MASINT defined by the Center for MASINT Studies and Research, which divides MASINT into Electro-optical, Nuclear, Geophysical, Radar, Materials, and Radiofrequency disciplines.

Geophysical sensors have a long history in conventional military and commercial applications, from weather prediction for sailing, to fish finding for commercial fisheries, to nuclear test ban verification. New challenges, however, keep emerging.

For first-world military forces opposing other conventional militaries, there is an assumption that if a target can be located, it can be destroyed. As a result, concealment and deception have taken on new criticality. "Stealth" low-observability aircraft have gotten much attention, and new surface ship designs feature observability reduction. Operating in the confusing littoral environment produces a great deal of concealing interference.

Of course, submariners feel they invented low observability, and others are simply learning from them. They know that going deep or at least ultraquiet, and hiding among natural features, makes them very hard to detect.

Two families of military applications, among many, represent new challenges against which geophysical MASINT can be tried. Also, see Unattended Ground Sensors.

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