Fusion or Integration: What’s the difference?

The U. S. Air Force uses the term “fusion” in a very specific manner. For example, the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratories have defined fusion on different objects, like sensors, data and classifiers. Yet there is ambiguity in some instances as to what is meant by it usage. Other Air Force research and acquisitions groups use the term “integration” to describe the process of combining data, knowledge, command, control, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. Even the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Program Agency (DARPA) has a program called “Integrated Sensing and Processing” (ISP) that aims to open the next paradigm for application of mathematics to the design and (co)operation of DoD sensor/exploitation systems and networks of such systems. The program hopes to develop mathematical tools that enable the design and global optimization of systems that interactively combine traditionally independent functions of sensing, signal processing, communication, and exploitation. On the surface it appears that integration is the same as fusion. In this paper, we define fusion and integration using the language of category theory. These definitions are in agreement with their usage in the Air Force. Using category theory we show the difference (and similarities) between fusion and integration.