Military Usage
In US military slang, "ground truth" is used to describe the reality of a tactical situation as opposed to what intelligence reports and mission plans assert the reality to be. The term is reflected in the title of the 2006 Iraq War documentary The Ground Truth and is used in military publications, for example Stars and Stripes saying "Stripes decided to figure out what the ground truth was in Iraq."
The military usage of the term is long-standing but its origins are obscure. It is plausible but difficult to prove that "ground truth" began life as military terminology and then was applied to other domains such as remote sensing control.
Read more about this topic: Ground Truth
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