Building fusion systems

Information and data fusion is a discipline that provides the methods and techniques to build observe-orient-decide-act (OODA) capabilities for various applications. There are many ways in which these methods and techniques can be chosen to provide capabilities in each phase of the OODA decision-making cycle, and there are different fusion architectures, i.e., ways these methods and techniques can be applied, grouped and integrated. How one chooses the most appropriate set of methods, techniques and fusion architecture depends on a number of factors. This paper discusses the compromises and trade-offs of combining the methods and techniques and selecting the architecture for a specific system for each of the four phases of the OODA decision-making cycle. This is done based on the actual experiences of development fusion systems at Lockheed Martin (LM) Canada over the last ten years.