China matches Nato in information arms race with deal for ‘Ferrari of war room software’
- Deal with Belgian company puts China on equal footing with US
- Technology may come with risks and lessons for government and military
China has obtained the big screen software used by Nato and the United States for war room mapping, putting its forces on an equal organisational footing with some of the West’s elite military operations.
Luciad, a defence contractor based in Leuven, Belgium, is selling the Chinese government high performance software used for situational awareness by the military commands of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, according to information from Chinese government contractors verified by the South China Morning Post.
The package includes LuciadLightspeed, a program that can process real-time data, including that from fast-moving objects, with speed and accuracy.
Situational awareness is the ability to know what is happening in a target environment and use that intelligence to defeat the enemy. In warfare, the situation is so fluid it can change in seconds.
Planners use data from sources such as drone feeds, satellite imagery, radar, sensor plots, weather forecasts and platoon status. Traditional software can introduce errors as large as 500 metres (1,600 feet) in the positioning of moving targets from different datastreams.
Luciad’s software can analyse data and generate seamless visuals at a speed of 100 calculations a second, 75 times faster than its closest competitor, with accuracy to within 3cm (one inch) and on a global scale, according to American graphics technology company Nvidia.