After an initial announcement in July, the Air Force Research Laboratory released a broad agency announcement for proposals related to the study of emerging exploitation developments in the air, space and ground sensor realm.
According to the notice, issued in early September, a "growing number of air, space, and ground sensors, each with advanced capabilities (range, sensitivity, resolution, features, etc.), has left the [United States Air Force] and sister services with a significant technological challenge in maximizing the information gained from those sensors. This program will address challenges that face the sensor exploitation community and maximize various sensor information."
The notice lists four general research areas for focus, which include detection and tracking, recognition, performance understanding and mission analysis and lastly, multi-intelligence exploitation.
The goal of the program, valued at $24,000,000 with multiple awards ranging from $250,000 to $5,000,000, is to gather several researchers of varying backgrounds and expertise to work innovative and high-risk projects addressing particular sensing and exploitation challenges.
The project, according to AFRL’s BAA, will cover several modalities including radar -- passive, distributed apertures, fully-adaptive radar, synthetic aperture radar -- wide area motion imagery, full motion video, electro-optic, infrared, overhead persistent infrared, hyperspectral, multispectral, ground moving target indication, signals intelligence, synthetic aperture laser, light detection and ranging, laser radar and vibrometry for ground, air and space applications.
Mark Pomerleau is a reporter for C4ISRNET, covering information warfare and cyberspace.
