Program Overview
The Scientific Research Group has extensive technical expertise in the field of biometrics, having provided biometrics subject matter expertise, technical leadership, and testing services to the Department of Defense (DoD), United States Army Biometrics Task Force (BTF), and Biometrics Fusion Center (BFC) for over five years. SRG engineers have played key roles in a variety of biometrics initiatives for the DoD, including the US Army, US Navy, US Air Force, USSOCOM, National Security Agency (NSA), US Marine Corps Office of Military Commissions, and other DoD entities.

SRG’s Biometrics program has been particularly active in adapting cutting-edge law enforcement biometric techniques and systems for DOD use. Foundation engineers studied the Chicago Police Department’s Citizen Law Enforcement Analysis and Reporting (CLEAR) system, and have led experiments within the DoD intended to determine whether the system could be adapted for use in Iraq.

• SRG staff at the BFC worked with the Technical Support Working Group to utilize a commercial Face Recognition system, similar to one in operation at the Pinellas County (FL) Police Department, to analyze over 30,000 photos of enemy combatants for duplicate identities in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Foundation engineers also used this system to work with the DoD Office of Military Commissions, MITRE, and the FBI Audio Visual Image Analysis Unit to provide face recognition analysis to support prosecution of enemy combatants in Afghanistan.

• The Naval Post-Graduate School has relied on SRG engineers at the Biometrics Fusion Center to execute field tests of biometric systems as key contributors to the USSOCOM Tactical Network Topology (TNT) experiments. SRG staff developed experiment objectives, measures of performance and measures of effectiveness, and procedures to evaluate various biometric vendor offerings for the last seven of these quarterly scenario events. SRG engineers assessed the performance of the systems in realistic DoD exercises on land and at sea.

• The Biometrics project’s technical team has assisted the US Navy in its effort to develop the requirements for the “Identity Dominance System – Maritime Domain (IDS-MD).” IDS-MD is being developed as the US Navy’s Program of Record for biometrics. Foundation engineers developed and coordinated biometric system tests aboard the USS Mustin and USS Ingraham in Sea Trial experiments to assess how biometric systems could be used to identify potential adversaries during Maritime Interception Operations.

• These experiments established a base of knowledge for the Navy to perform biometric identifications in very austere conditions that included submission of fingerprint queries to the DoD’s Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) and the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS). The Sea Trials were used as a Proof of Concept trial for the Navy’s nascent biometrics developmental program.

• The Biometrics program’s technical experts used records from Operation Iraqi Freedom to organize iris images, fingerprints, and face photos into a multi-modal test database. The biometrics database includes over 200,000 iris images from over 50,000 individuals, allowing statistically significant testing of biometrics matching algorithms. The WVHTC Foundation staff then used the database to measure iris matching algorithm performance with using ANSI/INCITS 409.1 test standards. This project was executed in less than six months.

• SRG engineers also provide leadership in critical testing and evaluation of biometrics identification systems for the DoD in Afghanistan and Iraq. These evaluations are a crucial step in the rapid deployment of biometric technologies in Iraq. SRG staff perform a comprehensive battery of tests which include conformance to recognized data transmission standards (e.g., the FBI Electronic Fingerprint Transmission Specification), logging and reporting, backup and restore, encryption, and compatibility with required operating systems and databases.

• SRG engineers provide technical support to the DoD in the Center for Identification Technology and Research (CITeR), the National Science Foundation Industry University cooperative research group for biometrics. CITeR includes government participation from DOJ, DHS, DoD, NSA, CIA, FAA, and USSOCOM.

• Foundation engineers also participate in the Intelligence Technology Innovation Center Colloquia on biometrics research. SRG staff members attend biometrics workshops and presentations at the National Institute for Standards and Technology, and participate in INCITS standards development.