Sentient (intelligence analysis system)

Sentient is an automated (artificial intelligence) intelligence analysis system developed and operated by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) of the United States federal government. A principle purpose of the Sentient system is described by the NRO as compiling at machine, versus human speed, synthesis of complex distributed data sources for rapid analysis faster than humans can manage.

Official NRO documents from 2012, declassified in 2019, describe it as "an on-going Research and Development (R&D) program, which is managed and operates out of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO)". NRO documents detail the Sentient program was in some form of initial development from 2013 through 2016. Another NRO document also released in 2019 detailed that stakeholders involved in Sentient include the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, Central Intelligence Agency, and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

The program architecture was developed to demonstrate advanced technologies and techniques to revolutionize the current Tasking, Collection, Processing, Exploitation, and Dissemination (TCPED) cycle across the Intelligence Community (IC). The Sentient methodology represents a fully integrated intelligence approach consisting of three fundamentals: problem-centric intelligence multi-INT end-to-end and trusted machine automation. Sentient utilizes "tipping and queueing", described as a method to coordinate multiple discrete sensor systems to optimize real-time monitoring over large areas from multiple systems; coordinating in effect multiple satellites to hand off and coordinate tracking of targets as the target leaves the area of one set of satellites and enters new areas.

NRO official descriptions of Sentient

In 2019, a declassified National Reconnaissance Office document detailed Sentient as:

(S/TK/REL) The Sentient program being developed in the Advanced Systems and Technology Directorate (AS&T) is the power of Information Technology (IT) to bring new capabilities to tasking and analysis. Sentient is a fusion of leading-edge Multi-INT technologies joined into an automated, end-to-end, integrated capability. Sentient collects vast amounts of complex information, buried in noisy data, and the relevant What once teams of now uses automation to the information flow, enabling quicker, well-informed decisions. Analysts can focus on situational understanding instead of through data-working smarter, not harder.

      

(U) Sentient will continue to investigate various alerting schemes and tasking methodologies for improving overall employment of NTM imaging capabilities. Through and machine learning, Sentient will increase the efficiency and effectiveness of NTM collections. By incorporating diverse situations,technologies, and collection Sentient will substantially improve the intelligence value of the NRO constellation, providing the analytical community with timely, relevant intelligence.

The NRO describe Sentient in declassified 2022 collateral as:

Sentient is an AS&T research and development framework that enhances the GED operational framework. Sentient emulates key elements of the NRO's existing and future ground architecture. The framework is anchored around a problem-centric overhead system tasking and collection process that employs      to support an adaptive closed-loop cycle.

• Faster identification, characterization and behavior predictions of targets and activities
• Data-driven decisions for future ground architecture
• Improved tasking, collection, processing, exploiting and dissemination efficiency through correlation of larger and disparate data sets
• Perspective and buy-in    closed-loop ground solutions

The NRO lists among the advantages and challenges of Sentient as:

"Sentient's activity-based collection provides significant advantages over schedule-driven collection. Sentient tradecraft and culture must also be acknowledged as being significantly different from the norm by the IC in that it is shifting toward activity-based collection versus being primarily schedule driven."

Other governmental and media summaries of Sentient

Betty J. Sapp, former Director of the National Reconnaissance Office, described the Sentient program to the United States House Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces as:

"Our Sentient program--a 'thinking' system that allows automated, multi-intelligence tipping and cueing at machine speeds-has been focused against many of our most challenging mission sets, resulting in new intelligence information that human-in-the-loop systems would have missed. Our Future Ground Architecture will leverage Sentient, and create an integrated cloud-based enterprise that will share tasking and intelligence products quickly across each of our ground sites, increasing both performance and resilience.

According to Robert Cardillo, former Director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the system is intended to use "automated inferencing" to aid intelligence collection. Cardillo summarized Sentient in 2017 as:

"The Sentient program is a research and development effort, conducted jointly with NRO, to experiment with automation that ingests data, makes sense of it in the context of an intelligence problem, and then infers likely future intelligence and collection needs... The approach is to continue to introduce automation in the processing arena that will support automated inferencing, and therefore, faster tasking for future collections."

The Verge described Sentient as “an omnivorous analysis tool, capable of devouring data of all sorts, making sense of the past and present, anticipating the future, and pointing satellites toward what it determines will be the most interesting parts of that future.” Quoted in the Verge, Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists and the Project on Government Secrecy, said of Sentient, "It could include electronic intercepts of international communications; it could include prior imagery; it could include human sources." In the same report, retired CIA analyst Allen Thomson stated, "As I understand it, the intended — and aspirational — answer is ‘everything,’" and said that in 'addition to images, that could include financial data, weather information, shipping stats, information from Google searches, records of pharmaceutical purchases, and more.'

Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) involvement

Declassified NRO emails from June 21, 2021, dicslosed that the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) was involved with the NRO and the Sentient program, as stated:

From:  

Sent: Tuesday, June 29, 2021 8:41 AM
To:  
Subject: RE: Sentient R&D support to UAPTF

Classification: SECRET//NOFORN

Good morning,  

NRO's Sentient R&D as a UAP Model to look for UAP   in imagery, but we need an external customer to ask for it to be turned on.

And you are our primary customer.

So would you mind assisting us.

v/r

 

Declassified Sentient NRO UAP reports

In June 2022, the NRO declassified and released two unique and redacted reports on Sentient activities. Both documents detail an incident involving Sentient detection activites at "0038:17Z" ("Zulu time", equivalent to UTC). The "Recent Sentient Highlights" report details on page 2:

(U) BLUF

(S/REL) At 0038:17Z 6 May 2021, Sentient   image processing detected a possible airborne object ~78km southeast of  

(S/REL) The object was small (<10m), and did not match the visual signature of typical aircraft detections

• The object did, however, vaguely resemble similar detections of airborne objects by US Navy aircraft and surface vessels in the   Operating Areas ("Unidentified Aerial Phenomena")
• There is a rough similarity to the previously-reported "tic tac" shape
• The object was likely not a sensor artifact or focal plane anomaly (although more in-depth imagery analysis is warranted)

(TS//SI//TK//REL) There were no correlating tracks present in   reporting, nor was there any correlating ELINT/SIGINT in   reporting, despite time-coincident   access/collection

• Sentient detections did, however, detect the presence of the prob    in the same imagery ~25km to the west
• In recent reporting¹, the   has been associated with command-and-control (C2) activities, as well as more traditional telemetry and space functions -- the simultaeneous presence of this high-interest vessel is notable, although possible merely coincidental

(TS//SI//TK//REL) Confidence is relatively low in this detection, but the potential linkage to similar phenemenon off of    may warrant further investigation

See also

• All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office
• Automatic identification system
• Space Development Agency
• Space-X