This is another suicidal video about the F-35 and probably it won't be the last. In fact, the subject that we are going to cover is one of the most complex when it comes to modern-air combat. We are talking about target recognition. So there are some videos on YouTube that throw around the statement that the F-35 uses 400-500 data points to recognize target while the first generation aircraft use barely a doton. I know where this is coming from, but I think it's a pretty misleading way of presenting the subject. I hope you have seen the previous video on this series. If you haven't, the link is at the end of this video. So if you have watched the previous video, you already know how the systems on the F-35 exchange data in the form of tracks. A track in this context is a snippet of data, or you say, may say a form that contains data about something that has been detected by the sensors. In fact, we have already explained how the F-35 combines and fuses all the data coming from all the sensors to provide high quality tracks. They give a single coherent picture about the kinematics that is speed, acceleration, altitude and so on. But as some of you have pointed out in the comments, in the previous video, there is something missing, and that is the identification of the track. There are a few papers from Lockheed Martin that are in the public domain that give a sort of overview on how target recognition is working on the F-35. And like many other systems on this aircraft, they are quite different from anything else. In the F-35 literature, target recognition is called combat ID. Combat ID is defined as the process of attaining and accurate characterization of detected objects in the joint battle space. Characterizations may include Friend or Phone, Class, Type, Nationality and even Mission Configuration. Yes, I had to read. Target recognition usually starts from features of the detected signals like micromodulations in the radar return or features in the infrared signature of the aircraft. And these will be used to infer the identity of the track. Recognition computer algorithms are usually heuristic in nature. What they basically do is comparing the observation with a database and then make a judgment call based on empirical evidence. The F-35 is quite a radical departure from this approach. It uses a probabilistic formulation which is suited to handle ambiguous situations where a heuristic algorithm is forced to make a decision. Lockheed Martin could choose between a Bayesian approach or a Demster Schafer inference algorithm and they choose the latter. I confess I am familiar with Bay statistics and I happen to have used it in my 9-5 job a few times. I was obviously aware of the existence of Demster Schafer but I didn't really know the details. So after looking it up I tried to find a way to give an explanation that could be understandable to someone who is not familiar to this kind of statistical reasoning and I couldn't find it. However there are several videos on YouTube that explain these type of statistics. You just have to search for Demster Schafer. I leave the task of explaining Demster Schafer to Dem because they can definitely do it better than I can. So let's just assume that the core of this mechanism is some sort of black magic. And let's move on. The advantage of Demster Schafer over Bay's or heuristic is the fact that Demster Schafer is not really reliant on a priori decisions. It means that we don't need a preliminary decision, a preliminary hypothesis that if wrong could completely sidetrack us. But let's make an example. Let's suppose that we have a fighter trying to track a UFO. For better a UAP as they're called today, a conventional heuristic algorithm will end up telling the pilot something like, well there is 15% probability that it is a balloon and I'm 10% confident that I'm right. So basically I use less information. A Demster Schafer implementation will tell the pilot something like, it's flying, it's neither friend or four, it doesn't look like a fighter and actually doesn't look like anything that I have in my database. And mine, this approach could be really useful if you have plenty of unknown targets around you. Park this for a minute, we'll come back to it. The F-35 relies on a large database of pretty much everything the aircraft could encounter in the theater of operations. In this database all the potential tracks are inter-connected in a relational taxonomy that also implement a hierarchy that goes from the domain level on top to the specific subtype and weapons load at the bottom. The Demster Schafer algorithm creates ambiguity lists that contain all the possible options and then it uses the database to discard all the meaningless ones. For example today a propeller aircraft can be a fighter, handing the database, there will be no propeller aircraft connected with the fighter class. At the end of the process a Demster Schafer algorithm gives a good characterization of what is known and what is not known about the track. It gives it in a statistical way but the pilot actually needs actionable information. In the language of the systems we need to move from soft decisions to hard declarations. This is done by establishing a confidence threshold for the hard declarations. The system uses the database to calculate confidence score and if the threshold is exceeded then a hard declaration is made. And when a hard declaration is made the identification data are attached to the track. To tell you what that blip actually is or better what the system thinks the blip actually is. What is the final output of all this? The F-35 Combat ID output on the big screen in the cockpit shows combat ID information from each level of the hierarchy. And the output also contains hard declarations that have been made by other sensors or other aircraft. It also contains the declarations that have been fused through the data link from other F-35s. So in this example we see a link system declaration so something that is actually derived from a legacy system that has been combined with a model declaration and I remind you the model the F-35 data link is considered a sensor for track management. The final result is a high confidence declaration of another F-35 with a confidence of 1. So in the end we have a system that gives much more information to the pilots that the other system do and those information are much more accurate. And this feature is beloved by the pilots because it greatly improves their situational awareness and this is what they need, this is what they crave. However all of this would not be possible without the integration and the management of all the sensors on board of the aircraft. And the F-35 is particular in this respect too. But this is going to be the subject of the next video of the series. And in the meanwhile if you haven't seen the first video it's going to appear beside me. I highly recommend you to have a look because what you didn't understand from this video will probably be clarified by this one. In the meanwhile thank you very much to all those who support the channel on Patreon or by being a member or by one of the nations. You can also support the channel by buying a model from Air Models. There is an affiliate link below. I have a small percentage and there is no extra cost for you. So thank you very much for watching and see you there.