SOURCES SOUGHT
A -- Innovative Information Exploitation Technology (Part 1 of 2)
- Notice Date
- 10/25/2002
- Notice Type
- Sources Sought
- Contracting Office
- Other Defense Agencies, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Contracts Management Office, 3701 North Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA, 22203-1714
- ZIP Code
- 22203-1714
- Solicitation Number
- BAA03-03
- Archive Date
- 2/12/2003
- Point of Contact
- Steven Welby, DARPA Program Manager, Phone 000-000-0000, Fax 703-516-7360, - Alan Frederick, Contracting Officer, Phone (703) 696-0047, Fax (703) 696-2208,
- E-Mail Address
-
none, afrederick@darpa.mil
- Description
- BAA03-03 (Part 1 of 2) PROGRAM DESCRIPTION AND GOALS: DARPA's Information Exploitation Office (IXO) is soliciting proposals for advanced research and development of systems, subsystems, and technology that will provide transformational improvements to the efficiency and effectiveness of military command and control, communications, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C3ISR) operations in complex environments. The goal of the program is the identification of areas for potential improved performance, and the design and development of systems, sub-systems and core supporting technologies to validate these performance gains. Proposed systems and sub-systems need not be composed entirely of newly developed components, but may integrate new technology into existing systems and/or subsystems. Proposed efforts should constitute at least two phases. The first phase should seek to establish the technical feasibility of the concept. Phases beyond the first should be proposed as options leading toward increasingly robust technology development. AREAS OF INTEREST: The DARPA Information Exploitation Office (IXO) develops sensor and information system technology and systems with application to battle space awareness, targeting, command and control, and the supporting infrastructure required to address land-based threats in a dynamic, closed-loop process. IXO is focused on addressing the systemic challenges associated with performing surface target interdiction in environments that require very high combat identification confidence and an associated low likelihood for inadvertent collateral damage. IXO is addressing the synergies between: 1) Appropriate sensor, sensor control and sensor data exploitation capabilities to detect targets, perform high confidence target identification, to ensure that specified targets (including challenging targets) are correctly engaged without undesirable collateral damage. 2) Dynamic battle management systems, to ensure effective and efficient use of, sensor platforms, weapons, weapons platforms, and resources required for exploitation and decision-making and assessment. 3) Supporting infrastructure, to ensure rapid dissemination, timely processing, effective human-computer interaction, and the availability of suitable threat and terrain models. Threats of interest include mobile and fixed surface targets (structures, objects, vehicles and dismounts) in all environments: open, partially obscured, in hide (e.g. under foliage), in evasive maneuver and in urban settings. The challenge of high-confidence target identification impacts a wide range of operational systems and requires development, maturation and integration of new sensor and sensor exploitation approaches with application to: a) Intelligent seekers to reliably achieve high confidence endgame b) Focused identification surveillance automation to confirm ID, and maintain target identity confidence during weapon assignment, launch, and fly out; c) Local area surveillance to track and identify specific targets while minimizing false alarms, which surveillance is then used to cue the focused identification surveillance; d) Wide area surveillance to detect targets while minimizing false alarms; which is then used to cue the local area surveillance, and establish critical situation context; e) Dynamic battle management (planning and execution) to prosecute fleeting surface targets in difficult environment and f) Integrated and responsive battle damage assessment to evaluate operational effectiveness and guide re-planning. Dynamic battle management technology is needed to unify control of tactical ground and air-to-ground operations, implement effects-based target analysis and attack against networked systems, and to support overall interactive campaign planning and assessment. IXO is pursuing innovative sensor technology to provide new target signature features to enhance target detection and recognition and provide the high confidence identification needed for attack decisions. Sensor/target phenomena that can reduce a target's potential to hide, deceive or counter a surveillance sensor or weapon seeker may be exploited with new sensors and sensor modalities. Technology enhancements to legacy sensor systems and seekers are also being developed to greatly expand their capability for precise target identification IXO is exploring capabilities to increase the automation of sensor data and information processing and analysis to reduce the manpower and training needed to exploit advanced sensors. This effort emphasizes the application of advanced sensors, sensor modes and sensor platforms to acquire target features coupled with intelligent acquisition of features by multiple-looks and multiple sensor modes. IXO is investigating command and control technology at the tactical level to automate control of air and ground forces, with minimal but immersive supervision by unit commanders. This includes a focus on dynamic mission planning to improve strike effectiveness. At the targeting level, IXO is exploring effects-based option generation and analysis concepts to achieve precise and timely outcomes with minimal undesired effects. At the campaign level, IXO is investigating mixed-initiative systems to allow geographically distributed planning staffs to collaborate in the continuous construction and assessment of the complex, multi-threaded operations plans required to support dynamic operations in high-threat environments with constrained rules of engagement. At all levels, IXO battle management concepts are addressing the constraints imposed by the requirement to provide combat ID confidence across the full range of rules of engagement. Sensor, exploitation and battle management systems will achieve flexibility through the use of an advanced computing infrastructure. IXO is addressing advanced correlation, pattern matching, and pattern discovery technologies that exploit relational structures in data, models, and knowledge to describe adversarial networks, organizations, and activities, both in conventional ground operations and in unconventional situations. Agent-based architectures, semantic webs, information dissemination technologies, and reference knowledge bases allow war fighters to adapt information flows to deal with unexpected or unconventional mission requirements. IXO is addressing these challenges with a balanced program focused on the development, integration and demonstration of systems, subsystems and component technologies and with investigative efforts designed to improve the state of the art in supporting core technologies. Specific areas of interest include: IXO is particularly interested in new and novel techniques to apply C4ISR technology in operational urban combat. Urban environments offer key challenges to precision war fighting, due to the inherent density of urban areas, their three-dimensional nature and the greater likelihood of intermixed combatants, noncombatants and friendlies in the urban context. New concepts are sought to 1) provide detailed precision context to support operations in urban environments, including surface, subsurface and internal building features at high resolution 2) support precision location, tracking and identification of threat and friendly dismounts and vehicles throughout urban environments using networks of emplaced or opportunistic video sensors 3) provide sensor and exploitation support for the real time characterization of urban environments to support robotic maneuver in complex urban terrain 4) support through wall sensing of building interiors 5) provide new and novel means of isolating urban terrain compartments 6) provide over watch support and real time situational awareness to forces maneuvering in urban environments 7) support precision direct and indirect fires in urban environments 8) provide tracking of individuals and dismounts in urban environments across a distributed network of emplaced or preexisting video cameras with non-overlapping fields of view 9) provide precise geolocation of threat communications systems in urban environments 10) provide command and control to mixed robotic, teleoperated and manned forces in urban environments and 11) support other novel applications of C4ISR technology in an urban context for peacekeeping, unconventional combat and conventional combat. IXO is interested in innovative technologies and tools for lightweight planning, course of action analysis, plan representation and plan refinement, with particular emphasis on application to distributed, highly maneuverable land combatants, light infantry, airborne and air assault operations and application supporting special operations forces missions. IXO is interested in innovative technologies and tools to support the planning, collection management, dynamic tasking, synchronization of organic, tactical, theater and national intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems. Interests include innovative mechanisms for identifying and representing commander?s intent, collection requirements, asset capabilities, availabilities and supporting resources, sensor models, and performing optimal assignment of actors to tasks. IXO is particularly interested in systems for rapid, dynamic re-planning across the full spectrum of available collectors, with further emphasis on active sensing approaches that seek to resolve uncertainty through increasing refined dynamic collection replanning. IXO is particularly interested in system concepts that jointly plan, synchronize and manage ISR and strike capabilities together to improve response performance in time-sensitive engagements. IXO is interested in advanced concepts, approaches, techniques and tools for the network-centric engagement of time sensitive and evasive targets. Approaches of interest to IXO will enable use of multiple networked sensors across a distributed battle space to collaborate and fuse sensor information, distributed over tactical networks, to localize, identify and track targets of interest. Network-centric approaches may consider the complex interaction of sensors, platforms, communications, command and control systems, and network enabled weapons to provide new engagement capabilities. Concepts of interest may focus on radar (SAR or GMTI), ELINT, SIGINT, COMINT, video, EO/IR, MSI/HSI or other sensor phenomenology. IXO is interested in innovative technologies for multi-user collaborative interaction in tactical and operational environments. Applications of interest involve distributed collaborative planning, distributed collaborative control of forces, distributed situational awareness, distributed collaborative sensor data exploitation and others. Potential opportunities include advanced visualization, immersive interfaces, advanced human computer interfaces, natural language, gesture and mixed interfaces and other collaboration enabling technologies. IXO is interested in emerging technologies which may enable a combination of ubiquitous sensing and computing such as smart pixel concepts, plastic transistors and associated digital logic. IXO is interested particularly in fabrication methodologies that may be ripe for limited system level proof of concept brass board prototyping. IXO is interested in new radar system concepts for application with unmanned aerial reconnaissance and advanced combat vehicles. Of particular interest are low cost approaches utilizing electrically scanned antennas demonstrating wide bandwidth and simultaneously wide angular scanning ability in the millimeter wave frequency region. IXO is interested in new and novel sensors and sensor exploitation techniques for the rapid detection and discrimination of dismounted combatants (to include irregular combatants) using novel RF techniques (including GMTI and SAR imaging), low frequency and UWB radar techniques, EO/IR, MSI/HSI, e-field, trace chemical and seismic acoustic sensing. New concepts are sought for low cost, low power, lightweight close-proximity sensing options as well as standoff vehicle/aircraft/UAV mounted sensor concepts. Of particular interest are concepts capable of detecting and/or discrimination of humans under foliage. Human discrimination characteristics of interest include the ability to discriminate unarmed from armed combatants. IXO is interested in innovative tools to aid in the automated identification, interpretation and understanding of diverse databases and other active data sources by autonomous and semi-autonomous software agents. IXO is also interested in tools and techniques for rapidly capturing and associating appropriate semantic content with large and distributed data stores. IXO is also interested in new and unique mechanisms to rapidly capture very large corpus expert knowledge in machine manipulable formats for use by intelligent agents. IXO is interested in new and novel techniques to detect and/or discriminate small and large vehicular targets under tree canopy. Techniques of interest include novel sensing approaches (such as FOPEN GMTI radar) and novel sensor exploitation techniques (such as 3D radar image reconstruction and rapid wide area change detection approaches). IXO is also interested in new and novel techniques for detecting and/or characterizing targets in revetments, in defilade, and in impromptu subsurface shelters. IXO is interested in new and novel sensor and sensor exploitation techniques to permit rapid discrimination of both manufactured and impromptu target decoys from actual targets. Also of interest are new and novel techniques to detect and identify targets under camouflage, including optical and RF scattering nets and optical and radar absorbing treatments. IXO is interested in new and novel techniques for tagging, tracking and locating objects, vehicles and dismounts over large areas. IXO is particularly interested in small, low powered, long life devices and techniques, with a focus on capabilities that can be read out from stand off over large areas of regard. Potential applications may be active or passive and may utilize RF, EO/IR, or multi-spectral communications concepts or other phenomenology to designate target items of interest. IXO is also interested in new and novel techniques to deploy small tagants with low probability of detection. IXO is interested in new and novel techniques to identify targets of military interest in stand off remote sensing data. This data may consist of 1-D, 2-D or 3D information and may include real beam radar data, HRR profiles, synthetic aperture radar imagery, ultra high-resolution SAR imagery, EO/IR imagery, EO/IR motion imagery, HSI/MSI, stereo cameras and imaging LIDAR sensors. Of interest are very low false alarm rate wide area target detection approaches and focused high probability of correct classification, low error rate approaches to target identification. Also of interest are approaches to ?fingerprinting? targets through prior-free feature measurement approaches, to permit high confidence target reacquisition. IXO is also interested in new and novel approaches to evaluate automatic target recognition capabilities and in new and novel techniques to establish performance bounds for aided and autonomous recognition systems. IXO is interested in new and novel sensing approaches and sensor data exploitation concepts to support near real time assessment of battle damage and strike effectiveness. Approaches may include novel exploitation of strike platform sensor data or weapons augmentation to provide a BDI/BDA signature. IXO is interested in novel sensor and sensor data exploitation concepts for the characterization of engagement zones prior to engagement for the purpose of insuring that restrictive rules of engagement are satisfied prior to weapons release and delivery. IXO is interested in new and novel approaches for utilizing UAV borne sensor payloads such as high definition motion imagery to support simultaneous tracking, monitoring and engagement of multiple targets within the field of regard (but in separate fields of view) of an airborne sensor. IXO is interested in new and novel approaches to provide flexible, high bandwidth, low-latency ad hoc networking capability for strike platforms, ISR platforms and weapons. This capability will enable flexible, airborne network centric engagement of evasive targets in complex environments. Approaches of interest include, but are not limited to: novel antennas, highly-integrated, multi-protocol small data-link concepts, novel dynamic network management approaches, and signal reliability and protection approaches for counter spoofing and operation in a jamming environment. Concepts for novel weapon embedded data links are particularly sought, with emphasis on quality of service, low cost and protocol compatibility with other existing or planned terminals. IXO is interested in pursuing novel tools and techniques focused on treating the dismounted combatant as a sensor and sensor fusion platform. Techniques of interest include distribution and dissemination of video and night vision imagery with appropriate annotation from soldier to soldier (inter-squad) and across and up in echelon. Additional sensing and sensor exploitation concepts may include small micro sensors deployed and monitored by the individual combatant and advanced data fusion, context integration and visualization approaches for dismount manipulation and interpretation of local and remote sensor feeds in real-time. IXO is interested in new and novel sensor and sensor application approaches capable of providing very high combat identification confidence when cued to a delimited target area. It is desired that these approaches yield a correct probability of identification in the range of 99.9% to 99.999%. Such techniques may imply very high resolution and/or high dimensionality and/or multiple sensed phenomenologies. Implementation of these sensor and sensor exploitation approaches must be practical for the appropriate class of surveillance platform; for close-in sensing these approaches must be consistent with the limited size, weight power and aperture available on a small unmanned air vehicle. IXO is interested in new and novel techniques to provide blue force combat identification and IFF. Techniques considered should be appropriate for both surface to surface and air to surface applications and should support IFF of both vehicles and dismounted combatants. IXO is interested in tools and techniques to permit rapid, custom assembly of C4ISR systems and networks from individual components. Such a capability would permit components from multiple vendors to be bound together in a just-in-time fashion to build ?just enough? C4ISR system capability to support current operations. Additionally, such a capability would allow much more rapid technology refresh for C4ISR components, by permitting sub-components of a system to be replaced independently. Potential areas of effort include development of tools and techniques to permit distributed, machine-to-machine semantic negotiation of software/data/system interfaces, approaches to scale and distribute command and control computing in response to changes in operational tempo and demand for services, and concepts and tools for automated system verification and validation. IXO is interested in tools and techniques to permit rapid dynamic fusion of multiple sensors across a theater (or other extended battle space) to support high confidence long duration tracking of threat vehicles over time. Such an approach might exploit diversity in collection geometry and diversity in sensor phenomenology and performance to maximize tracking performance using active synchronized tasking of sensors across the entire available platform constellation. Tools and techniques pursued may address tracker architecture and implementation, distributed tracking, multi-phenomenological feature aided tracking and dynamic, active sensor constellation management.
- Record
- SN00194222-W 20021027/021025213548 (fbodaily.com)
- Source
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