Solving complex problems…in a manner judged to be truly superior

An Open Source Analysis

of the Airbus A400M Aircraft

Material provides up-to-date general information on products, services and use.Information is subject to change at any time.

Copyright © DECISIVE ANALYTICS Corporation, 2011.All Rights Reserved

Intelligence Analysis Portal

• CONTOUR ™ – Online Web Portal

Automatically Ingests All Source Data Real-time foreign language translation Robust search engine (metadata values) Analyzes structured/unstructured Multi-INT and OSINT data feeds 24x7 collection, indexing and storage of media, video, imagery, text Identifies themes, characterizes relationships and identifies potential actors Identifies emerging behaviors, events and networks to predict and prevent future actions

• Planning, Collection, Dissemination

and Analysis– GEOINT, MASINT, OSINT, HUMINT

• Intelligence Analysis

Any Media Delivered to the Desktop … How Powerful is the Intelligence Analyst Now?”

Contour Challenge Problem

We have been tasked to discover what is available on

Internet regarding the EADS A400M

The Search Approach• Over 15,000 Results• 5,560 in English• 4,500 duplicates• About 1,000 good pages

• Containing Multimedia Data– Text, Images, Videos

How Can We Analyze this Quickly?

The Contour Approach

Documents/Reports

Broadcast TV and Radio

Text and Video Web pages

Asset Index and Store

Colle

ction

Sub

syst

ems

Out

put

Newspapers

Semantic Processing

VideoConversion

Speech toText

Language Translation

EntityExtraction

Video Edit / Clipping

AnalyticsProcessing

Processing

On Call Services

Electronic Data Store

Web Interface

Text Docs

Security video

Actionable Intelligence

Contour Analytical Process

1. Create a Robot to Collect Data2. Filter Collected Data Based on Criteria3. Run Analysis on Selected Data4. Analyze Results to Create Product

Create a Robot to Crawl

Enter Query TermsSelect Robot Type

Select Language

Set SecuritySet Priority

Set Destination Folder

Interacting With & Filtering Data

Our Collection Source

Date Filters

People Organizations

Collected Data

Locations

Execute AnalyticsWe can now review the

emergent topics in the data

Emergent Topics

• General EADS A400M topic

Emergent Topics

• Military Sales to US, UK, Canada

Emergent Topics

• Videos of the Aircraft

Emergent Topics

Flight Test Delay & Earnings Impact

Engine Flight Test

Topics Emerging Over Time

Relationship Analysis

Contour examines the data, and automatically displays relationship. The relationships can be filtered by person, strength, and organization.

Deeper Analysis - Engine

Engine Summary

• Delays to the testing of the engine• Causing overall delays in the aircraft• Speculation on negative impact on EADS

earnings• Outlier discussion on propellers

– Discusses other types of propellers (not A400M)• Outlier on runway discussion

Deeper Analysis - Daimler

Deeper Analysis - Daimler

Daimler Summary

• Daimler’s revenue is increasing– As is their stock price and dividend

• This is in spite of the A400M– Responsible for 237M off of their balance sheet

Deeper Analysis - Runway

Deeper Analysis - Runway

• Most of the links talk about the “runway” in a way we would expect– Runway at Farnborough Air Show– Runway dimensions for the C-17– A nude man who ran across the runway at the Delhi

airport– Plane skidding off of a runway

• But the top link is focused on fashion

Deeper Analysis - Runway• When we pull up the document it is loaded with data on EADS and Airbus

Deeper Analysis - Runway

• And when we go to the website it also looks fairly harmless. But…

Deeper Analysis - Runway

• It is a treasure trove of information on the A400M

• With text, audio, and video

Runway Summary• Why is this interesting?

– The Runway page is information dense. It stands out in Contour because it is so tightly linked to all of the critical parts of the A400M.

– This showed up on the 23rd search page for Google*. They don’t know if this is about planes or models.

– This website was not a news or industry site. It’s simply someone passionate about the A400M.

• It Appears– They are mixing the contexts of “airplane runway” and “fashion runway”

to purposefully get AdWord Revenue from both communities.– The user is clearly obfuscating this page so that it is difficult to discover in

search engines

*Studies have shown users rarely go beyond the 2nd page of results on Google. This information almost certainly would have been missed

Contour is Able to Highlight this Page,Search Engines Bury it.

Further Analysis

Since Engines Were the problem, we now focus on the engine manufacturer:

Europrop International

The Search Approach• Over 15,000 Results• 6,420 in English• 5,800 duplicates• About 650 good pages

• Containing Multimedia Data– Text, Images, Videos

Create a Robot to Crawl

Enter Query TermsSelect Robot Type

Select Language

Set SecuritySet Priority

Set Destination Folder

Europrop Results

Emergent Topics- EPI Group

• Makeup of the EPI Team– ITP– MTU– Rolls Royce– Snecma

Emergent Topics- EPI Group

• Suppliers for Control System– Snecma- Installation &

controls– Hispano-Suizo- gearbox– Techspace Areo – lubrication

system

Emergent Topics- Rolls Royce

• Peter Price– Technical genius at Rolls

Royce– Designed the engine– Contributed to many other

programs– Extremely valuable asset

Emergent Topics- Rolls Royce

• Insight into Rolls Royce’s Contracts

Emergent Topics- LinkedIn Profiles

• Not just LinkedIn, but other profile site as well

Emergent Topics- Contract Awards

Clusters of Related Topics

General A400 Info Executive Team Profiles Contracts

Engine Specifics Link to Brazil A330 Crash

Videos and Images

Summary of Analysis

• Analyzed over 30,000 web pages– Most were the “noise” not the “signal”– Automatically distilled down to 1,600 useful pages– Automatically discovered

• Topics and relationships in the data• Supply chain of the A400M• Supply chain of the problematic Turboprop engine

– Uncovered 2nd tier subcontractors and there roles

• Elapsed time– Automatic Collection: 4 hours– Automatic Processing: 2 hours– Analysis: 2 hours

While you sleep!