On Friday 15 April, a visit to the Interforze Satellite Telecommunications Centre by the European Union Satellite Center (EUSC)
The Director of the EUSC and his Head of Capability Development, welcomed by the Director of the CITS, Colonel Giuseppe D’Amico, were given a presentation of the Centre by the technical staff, illustrating CSK’s potential, which attracted particular interest, especially for applications involving the exploitation of images.
Special attention was paid to the techniques for enhancing SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) images and the data acquisition and processing capabilities conducted at the CITS as the Italian Defence User Ground Segment. The possibility of elaborating ‘high-level’ products such as DEMs (Digital Elevation Models), digital models of the terrain, which significant contribution is indispensable in the processing of the images themselves and is undoubtedly useful in civil and military applications of Modelling and Simulation in various contexts such as, for example, telecommunications and mission planning in the Operational Theatre, appeared extremely attractive.
Other topics of potential interest emerged from the meeting were Change Detection for infrastructure monitoring, Maritime Surveillance for the control of port areas, and the emphasis on the importance of robust training focused on the use of SAR data.
The visit achieved its objective of demonstrating that CSK is a highly valuable asset and stimulated the willingness of the European Satellite Centre to promote potential collaborations for activities of common interest between the Centres. The meeting also allowed the representative of the IV Department of SMD, Colonel Ettore Petraroli, to discuss, in an informal context, the proposals for amendments to the Council Joint Action (CJA) in view of the increasing challenges that the international landscape presents to European structures. The CITS, established in 1994 and based in Pratica di Mare (Pomezia), has the institutional task of providing for the operational management of the satellites of the multinational HélioseCOSMO-SkyMed programmes, constellations equipped with respectively electro-optical and synthetic aperture radar sensors.
