History

Development studies for BALİSTİKA® started in 1995. The first protocol was signed with the Gendarmerie General Command (JGK) at the beginning of 1995, and the first version of BALİSTİKA® was delivered at the end of the same year.

As the studies yielded positive results and the system's potential became more apparent, the BALİSTİKA® system continued to be developed using internal resources of TÜBİTAK UZAY, and cooperation with JGK was maintained. In 2002, cooperation with EGM KPL began. Within this scope, a working group was formed and various investigations, development studies, and experiments were carried out on the BALİSTİKA® system. Testing the system's performance was the primary focus of these studies. For this purpose, EGM KPL experts came and tested the system in TÜBİTAK UZAY laboratories. The results were evaluated as very successful, and a protocol was signed between EGM KPL and TÜBİTAK UZAY for the purpose of testing the BALİSTİKA® system only by KPL experts in the KPL working environment, and a BALİSTİKA® system was delivered to them. After this period, communication with EGM KPL was maintained continuously, and the system continued to be developed according to the needs and possibilities available.

İlk Nesil BALİSTİKA

First Generation

The first studies for the BALİSTİKA® system date back to 1995. Development studies began in cooperation with the Gendarmerie General Command (JKDB). This system, which was semi-automatic, worked on two-dimensional images. The user marked the traces through an interface. According to these marks, the system automatically compared and presented the most similar ones to the user. Although this system met a need, it was thought that more capable systems needed to be developed. The main motivation was to move away from an operator-based system.

Second Generation

In 2000, a BALİSTİKA® version with fully automatic recognition capability was developed. In this version, three-dimensional data acquisition was provided. The image card and computers were improved. The system was equipped with various motor mechanisms to provide sufficient image quality and resolution. The system was designed and implemented in a way that the cartridge case was viewed by a precise motor mechanism and the camera was moved within the image area, and then these images were merged to obtain a single image.

İkinci Nesil BALİSTİKA
Üçüncü Nesil BALİSTİKA

Third Generation

The BALİSTİKA® system continued to be developed using TÜBİTAK UZAY internal resources, and cooperation with EGM KPL began in 2002. Within this scope, a working group was formed and various investigations, development studies, and experiments were carried out on the BALİSTİKA® system. Testing the system's performance was the primary focus of these studies. From this point on, the system was mainly developed to increase comparison speed. Although the decision to work on personal computers provided cost-effectiveness, even the most powerful personal computers are insufficient when tens of thousands of comparison operations need to be performed. Various solutions were considered to eliminate this problem, and ultimately, it was decided to redesign and implement the system to operate on multiple computers by parallelizing the processes. With this design, it was partly implemented, and as a result, it was seen that it was possible to solve large amounts of data using personal computer networks with distributed processing. Thus, third-generation BALİSTİKA® was created, and a contract for BALİSTİKA® 2010 Project was signed with the General Directorate of Security (EGM).

The BALİSTİKA® 2010 System was first put into operation in EGM KPLs in 2013 and in Jandarma Criminal Laboratories in 2018. BALİSTİKA® is currently being used effectively in 10 Criminal Police Laboratories of the General Directorate of Security in Turkey and 4 Jandarma General Command Criminal Laboratory Directorates. BALİSTİKA® has also been exported to Saudi Arabia and is being used in 13 different regions.

Fourth Generation

The new generation of BALİSTİKA® has been developed using current technologies in hardware and software to better meet the needs of the Forensic Science world. With the new version, the system has been made easier to use, allowing the operator to work more comfortably and efficiently. Using up-to-date operating systems and modern interface libraries, it can capture better quality images. With the completely revamped new camera module, while preserving the compatibility with old data, it creates 3D images with very high resolution.

With the software and hardware developments, the increasing data load expected in the future has been brought to a level where it can be easily handled. The distributed architecture and computing infrastructure have been updated with new technology software architectures to increase the system's resilience and performance. The algorithms used in correlations have been updated with the support of artificial intelligence to be designed to maintain high success performance for all types of weapons.

Dördüncü Nesil BALİSTİKA