Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance

The Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) Department develops game-changing capabilities to provide warfighters with the situational awareness they need to make the best decisions on the battlefield.

We are a team of approximately 660 scientists, engineers, technicians, and operational support personnel with primary locations in San Diego, CA, Kings Bay, GA, and Bangor, WA.

Our team and the capabilities we provide the warfighter are central to being able to sense, and make sense, of the complexities of the battlefield to ensure an information warfare advantage. A majority of the projects and work we perform is part of the Tracking, Collecting, Processing, Exploitation, and Dissemination cycle. As part of integrated fires and non-kinetic warfare, we are a core part of information as warfare and, as such, central to the information warfare effort, which itself spans every warfare domain. Our team’s work focuses primarily on space, autonomy, artificial intelligence, data-collection and analysis, information generation, synthesis, and presentation.

This department covers an incredibly diverse spectrum of technical work, for an equally diverse set of sponsors and customers. From direct fleet support in efforts such as underwater, un-crewed vehicles, and the Marine Mammal Program, to future-looking efforts such as fully autonomous surface ships and remotely operated amphibious assault vehicles, nano-satellites, and advanced machine learning algorithms for data fusion. The ISR Department conducts a significant amount of dynamic work, including waterfront operations, at-sea prototype testing, and diving and swimming operations.

We are able to accomplish our mission by fostering a culture of collaboration and creativity, enabling our workforce to develop unique solutions to complex problems. The department does this by empowering our workforce to take the lead in various research, development, and test and evaluation areas. We also work to create an inclusive organizational environment that solicits ideas and solutions from a diverse workforce to meet the current and future needs of our warfighting customers.

The department manages and executes approximately 130 projects. Major sponsors include:

Naval Sea Systems Command
Navy Engineering Logistics Office
Office of Naval Research
Naval Air Systems Command
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
U.S. Air Force
Defense Threat Reduction Agency