Overview#
A ground surveillance radar covering the main avenues of approach around a forward operating base generates hundreds of tracks per hour during peak activity. When the feed goes stale, nobody should need to dig through log files to notice: the operational picture just goes quiet, and the risk of missing a real-world movement increases with every minute the feed is down. GMTI Radar Monitoring gives ISR operators the immediate status indicators they need to make that detection in seconds.
The module provides a live operational view of Ground Moving Target Indicator activity for teams supervising surveillance feeds and mission tracking. It shows current target volume, active mission count, highest active classification, and the freshness of the latest feed data so ISR users can judge whether the radar picture is live, stale, or offline at a glance.
Open Standards#
- STANAG 4607 Ed 3.0 (NATO Ground Moving Target Indicator Format): The primary wire format for all radar feed ingest; binary packets are parsed at the Mission and Dwell segment level, including per-target position, velocity line-of-sight, classification, SNR, and slant range fields.
- WGS 84 (World Geodetic System 1984): All sensor and target positions decoded from STANAG 4607 DRI and SA32 encodings are expressed in WGS 84 decimal-degree coordinates, with altitude referenced to the WGS 84 ellipsoid.
- MGRS (Military Grid Reference System, NGA.STND.0037): Coordinate utilities expose bidirectional MGRS to WGS 84 conversion so that track positions can be reported in NATO grid format alongside decimal-degree coordinates.
- STANAG 4676 Ed 1 (Track and Track Management): Parsed GMTI tracks are forwarded into the ISR sensor-fusion pipeline using STANAG 4676 JSON and XML TrackMessage structures for track identity and environment classification.
- STANAG 4774 Ed 1 / STANAG 4778 Ed 1 (Confidentiality Metadata Label Syntax and Binding): The classification-ceiling indicator and feed governance controls apply STANAG 4774 security labels cryptographically bound per STANAG 4778, governing which users can access or share the active radar picture.
- STANAG 4559 Ed 3 (NATO ISR Library Interface Standard, NSILI): The companion ISR product catalog syncs products from NSILI-compliant catalogue endpoints, enabling the monitoring dashboard to cross-reference track volume against catalogued ISR collections.
- Cursor on Target (CoT) v2.0: Derived track entities can be serialised as CoT XML events for forwarding to NATO C2 systems and TAK clients, using the MIL-STD-2525C event-envelope schema.
- GraphQL (June 2018 Specification): All GMTI monitoring data, including live track queries and packet ingest mutations, is exposed to front-end consumers through a typed Strawberry GraphQL API.
Last Reviewed: 2026-03-25 Last Updated: 2026-04-14
Key Features#
- Recent Target Volume: Shows how many tracks have been received within the current monitoring window so operators can distinguish an active surveillance period from a quiet one.
- Active Mission Awareness: Tracks how many missions are represented in the recent GMTI picture, giving context to raw track counts.
- Classification Visibility: Surfaces the highest active classification level in the current feed set, supporting governance decisions about who can access the live picture.
- Feed Freshness Indicator: Distinguishes live, stale, and offline radar posture using the age of the most recent data, enabling rapid fault detection without log analysis.
- ISR Workflow Support: Serves as a quick operational entry point for deeper sensor and track analysis via the ISR Sensor Fusion Workbench.
Use Cases#
- Watch-Floor Feed Monitoring: ISR operators confirm whether the GMTI feed is healthy before depending on it for decisions or tasking other assets based on its output.
- Mission Surveillance Oversight: Teams monitor how much active radar activity is associated with current missions, identifying collection gaps early.
- Classified Sensor Governance: Supervisors check the security posture of the active feed before sharing or correlating results with lower-clearance users.
- Sensor Outage Detection: Analysts spot stale or offline conditions quickly and escalate feed issues before operational awareness degrades.
Integration#
- GMTI feed and mission-tracking services (STANAG 4607)
- ISR sensor-fusion workflows
- Track-correlation and geospatial analysis workbenches
- Shared operational dashboards and briefings