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Insights from the Edge
July 28, 2018

Cognitive and AI Services for Image Recognition to the Palm of your Hand

by Michael Helfrich
in autonomous agents, Azure, Cognitive Services, Distributed Sensing, Edge, Interoperability, IoT, ISR, Mobility, Sensors, Situational Awareness, Surveillance

Announcing BlueforceEDGE Image Recognition Plugin for superior decision support in time stressed and contested environments The increasing speed of unpredictable and chaotic events collapses the tactical decision space for military commanders and first responders. Forward sensor fusion with edge-based processing accelerates recognitional decision making by widening the decision-maker’s aperture to a greater number of sensor inputs and a wider array of sensor types. Cognitive computing tools...

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July 22, 2018

BlueforceTACTICAL Companion App for Samsung GEAR S3

by Michael Helfrich
in autonomous agents, Cognitive Services, Distributed Sensing, Edge, Fire, Interoperability, IoT, ISR, Law Enforcement, Mobility, Police, Sensors, Situational Awareness, Wearables

Blueforce, like most companies, works to attract a Board of Advisors. These are folks that have served in tactical and leadership positions in the markets we want to pursue. One of our most important mentors was a former Marine who was a senior executive in Donald Rumsfeld's (SecDef) Pentagon. He insisted that for Blueforce to really understand the challenges, we had to "spend a week...

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June 28, 2018

Enabling The Intelligent EDGE: Part 1

by Michael Helfrich
in autonomous agents, Azure, Azure IoT, CBRN, Common Operating Picture, Dashboard, Distributed Sensing

By Bill Gellman, Blueforce Development Corporation Blueforce was founded with the mission to enable organizations to make better decisions faster at what we refer to as the “tactical edge”. The tactical edge is where the rubber meets the road and might be simply defined as the area or areas where the action is happening. With roots in national security, we often think of this in terms...

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April 29, 2018

The Fourth Imperative for Superior Situational Awareness Dashboards

by Michael Helfrich
in Common Operating Picture, Dashboard, Distributed Sensing, Fire, Interoperability, IoT, ISR, Law Enforcement, Sensors, Situational Awareness, Surveillance

John Boyd, a Korean War U.S. Air Force pilot and subsequent military strategist, has been front and center in how we at Blueforce have thought about and designed software for use by our national security and public safety decision makers. During the Korean War, Boyd wanted to understand why the F-86 Sabre was so dominant in shooting down the Russian MiG-15. He quickly discovered that...

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March 30, 2018

Leveraging the Power of the Intelligent Edge and Intelligent Cloud for First Responder Occupational Health and Safety

by Michael Helfrich
in autonomous agents, Azure, Azure IoT, CBRN, Distributed Sensing, Fire, HAZLOC, IoT, Law Enforcement, Occupational Safety, Sensors, Situational Awareness, Wearables

You and almost everyone you know carry a smart device. By 2020, some reports estimate that globally there will be approximately 20 billion smart devices in use. What’s the connection? Must be the voice communications, right? Or perhaps it’s the real-time internet access that we crave. Many of us already rely on smart devices for social interaction, connectivity, and business intelligence. These days, you and...

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March 22, 2018

Blueforce Adds Location Services API for GPS Denied Environments

by Michael Helfrich
in Distributed Sensing, GPS Denied, Interoperability, IoT, ISR, Location, Mobility, Sensors, Situational Awareness

Not a week goes by without someone asking us if we are the "Blue Force Tracker" people. We are not. We named the company as Blueforce Development Corporation because all of the folks on our team share a common purpose in building rapidly adaptable technology for all blue force (the good guys) in all national security and public safety sectors. Yet, we do understand the...

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March 20, 2018

Microsoft Selects Blueforce for Connected Military Command Vehicle

by Michael Helfrich
in CBRN, Distributed Sensing, Fusion, Interoperability, IoT, ISR, Mobility, Radar, Sensors, Situational Awareness, Wearables

General Stanley A. McChrystal (RET) will likely go down in history as a fundamental change agent in how we think about and organize to counter a very different 21st century threat model. His success in the US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) was rooted in seeing our enemies as decentralized and autonomous fighting forces. They are not bound by treaty nor institutional rules of engagement, but...

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March 18, 2018

The Benefits of Real-time Stream Analytics for Tactical Operations

by Michael Helfrich
in autonomous agents, CBRN, Fusion, Hybrid Life Support, Interoperability, IoT, K9, Mobility, Recovery, Sensors, Situational Awareness, Wearables

Blueforce Announces General Availability of BlueforceEDGE Azure IoT Plugin for Real-Time Stream Analytics Our industry talks a lot about the importance of information, but what often goes missing is any consideration of the PERISHABILITY of information. That is, some bits of data have a shelf life measured in minutes and hours, where other bits hold value for days, months, and even years. Blueforce chose to innovate...

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March 5, 2018

Blueforce for CBRN Sensitive Site Exploitation

by Michael Helfrich
in autonomous agents, CBRN, Distributed Sensing, Fusion, HAZLOC, Hybrid Life Support, IoT, Sensors, Situational Awareness, Surveillance

Sensitive Site Exploitation (SSE) has become a core focus given the potential for executing special operations missions in or near sites suspected of manufacturing, storing, or supporting weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to include chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN). A generation ago, regimes with access to these munitions were limited to developed and relatively stable nation states. However, the operating environment has drastically changed,...

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February 26, 2018

Mobile Command Essentials: Shared and Secure Live Streaming Video

by Michael Helfrich
in Uncategorized

Verbal descriptions of what is happening at an incident scene via land mobile radio (LMR) is valuable, but the ability to see what is happening in real-time is priceless to a commander tasked with making high-stakes decisions on-scene. These same video streams are equally valuable to the operators executing the tactical action. Blueforce Mobile Command & Control solutions makes live video streams available to commander...

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February 22, 2018

The REAL face of Sensor Fusion for Counter-Terrorism Operations

by Michael Helfrich
in autonomous agents, CBRN, Distributed Sensing, Fusion, HAZLOC, Interoperability, IoT, ISR, M2M, Mobility, Radar, Sensors, Situational Awareness, Surveillance

Counter-terrorism operations take so many shapes across the national security landscape.  We have been there first hand, from Iraq to the African continent, to New York City.  Our heros in New York City present one way, while our friends who jump into new found tunnels on the border present another.  Our participation in Military Working Dog programs and how they leverage our technology never ceases...

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February 3, 2018

Mobile Command Essentials: Shared Situational Awareness

by Michael Helfrich
in CBRN, Distributed Sensing, Fusion, HAZLOC, Interoperability, IoT, ISR, Law Enforcement, Mobility, Police, Sensors, Situational Awareness, Surveillance

Recent terrorist attacks and active shooter incidents have shared a common similarity: 100's of armed responders from many agencies descending on the scene to help neutralize the situation. With that comes not only a radio interoperability problem, but a command interoperability problem. Blueforce products were specifically designed to enable secure “small unit swarming”, an ability for responders from diverse agencies, to rapidly form responder networks...

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