An assessment of the technology of automatic speech recognition for military applications

The objective of this paper is to provide a summary of the state-of-the-art of automatic speech recognition (ASR) and its relevance to military applications. Until recently, speech recognition had its widest application in the development of vocoders for narrow-band speech communications. Presently, research in ASR has been accelerated for military tasks such as command and control, secure voice systems, surveillance of communication channels, and others. Research in voice control technology and digital narrow-band systems are of special interest. Much of the emphasis of today´s military-supported research is to reduce to practice the current state of knowledge of ASR, as well as directing research in such a way as to have future military relevance. In coordination with the above-mentioned emphasis in military-supported research, this paper is divided into two major sections. The first section presents discussion of the state-of-the-art and problems in the various subareas of the ASR field. The second section presents a number of unsolved problems and techniques which need to be perfected before the solutions to a number of military applications of the ASR field are possible.