FROM BBC (Queen Rothschild)
The camera was already trained on the two insurgents before the people watching the monitors had even spotted them.
As they parked their vehicles and removed a large package from the back, it zoomed in and followed them.
The two men moved across a patch of vegetation that made them trickier to see, so the surveillance monitor automatically switched to thermal imaging and followed them closely as they tried to conceal themselves behind a building.
The suspicious pair were in fact actors. This was an experiment.
But the imaging forms part of what the UK's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) says will be used by soldiers within five years - a package of surveillance systems that can recognise insurgents or terrorists.
You can't tell who is an insurgent by what they look like, but you can track their behaviour
Andrew SeedhouseDstlThis high resolution imaging with in-built software to detect and follow the fake insurgents as they planned their covert meeting, was one of the technologies tested by DSTL during what it described as a "cops and robbers" style trial.
DSTL, which develops and tests the latest technologies for the Ministry of Defence, had members of its staff "act out" insurgent-like behaviour, while developers and and engineers took on the role of the "good guys", pursuing and monitoring them.
"You can't tell who is an insurgent by what they look like, but you can track their behaviour," explained Andrew Seedhouse, chief technologist for sensors and countermeasures at Dstl.
The surveillance equipment tested in the trial ranged from extremely high resolution digital cameras to radar and lasers.
The military twist was that these hi-tech surveillance techniques are being combined with software that can pick out unusual patterns in behaviour - such as two vehicles meeting in a concealed area.
The surveillance, DSTL says, will eventually help to "win the battle" against insurgency.
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