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THE ROLE OF GIS IN THE MILITARY SYSTEMS- SOME FACTS AND ISSUES

Kliment Naydenov

Abstract

In modern society, in most areas of activity, information technologies are actively being introduced, which has been facilitated by their powerful development over the past decades. The development of the technical equipment of the modern army, the increasing preponderance towards information wars, led to the fact that the defense sphere was no exception. Most of the important information technologies used by the military are based on means of processing digital information about the terrain and methods for collecting various data about the enemy. According to military experts, in the mid-twentieth century, the amount of information needed to manage individual units and units increased by 20 times. Manual cards, a long and painstaking change of terrain data, receded into the background, which significantly increased the time for making major decisions by the command of the troops. Geographic information systems (hereinafter - GIS) in the modern army are actively used in the defense of countries to control troops and military equipment, support decision-making by the command, plan combat operations and various types of support. Under the state defense system is meant a complex of political, economic, military, social, legal and other measures and measures for the preparation, as well as the implementation of armed defense of the state, its integrity and inviolability. Almost every major country pays great attention to the level of readiness of its armed forces to repel any potential threats. That is why a huge share of state funding for scientific and technical development goes through the military departments. A variety of GIS technologies, the development of which is actively financed from the military budget, are no exception. Of the entire spectrum of technologies directly related to GIS and explicitly generated by military needs, we can mention satellite navigation and space imagery. Satellite navigation systems were originally created only for military purposes (primarily for guiding missiles). Space imagery, however, had a dual purpose: mapping of locality and highly detailed reconnaissance surveys of individual objects. Currently, satellite navigation has become widely available for civilian purposes without restrictions. A similar situation is with space photography. Initially, satellites worked exclusively for the needs of the defense departments, but now satellite imagery is widely available for civilian applications. The current state of other elements of the GIS infrastructure of military departments of various countries of the world is somewhat more difficult to determine, but it is quite possible, since many leading global manufacturers of GIS technologies offer software products that are explicitly designed to automate various aspects of command and control of the armed forces

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