Air Force releases solicitation for radar initiative to improve target tracking and imaging
WRIGHT-PATTERSON AFB, Ohio, 2 Dec. 2013. U.S. Air Force Researchers are asking industry to develop radar and electronic warfare (EW) technology that improves target detection, tracking, imaging, classification, and identification in the midst of enemy RF jamming, spoofing, and other challenging conditions.
Officials of the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, last week released a broad agency announcement (BAA-RQKS-2014-006) for the Contested Environment Radio Frequency Exploitation And Research (CERFER) program, which seeks to address problems of concurrent detection, tracking, imaging, classification, and identification of targets.
The CERFER program will require advances in radar subsystems, particularly in hardware, software, and algorithm solutions to detect, track, image, and identify targets within contested areas. This includes exploiting passive and active signals.
The goal of the CERFER program is to advance RF sensing hardware, software, and algorithms using spatial diversity, waveform diversity, transmit and receive adaptivity, signals of opportunity, and similar resources to enhance sensor performance.
The idea is to address problems of concurrent detection, tracking, imaging, classification, and identification of targets within contested environments with single- and distributed-sensing architectures. The project will involve developing models, hardware, software, algorithms, and techniques for active and passive sensing.
Air Force researchers primarily are interested in distributed sensing architectures; distributed active detection; distributed active and passive tracking; distributed active and passive imaging; distributed active and passive identification and classification; synthetic aperture radar (SAR) detection, tracking, imaging, and identification; and fully adaptive radar (FAR) detection, tracking, imaging, and identification.
The CERFER program will last for seven years -- five years for the ordering period and two years to complete all tasks and submit the final report. Air Force officials expect to choose one contractor for the anticipated $46 million project.
Companies interested should respond no later than 3 Jan. 2014. Industry was notified about the CERFER project last August.
For technical questions contact Air Force Maj. Jason Paul by phone at 937-528-8127, or by email at [email protected]. For contracting questions contact Marcus Duff by phone at 937-255-6351, or by email at [email protected].
More information is online at https://www.fbo.gov/spg/USAF/AFMC/AFRLWRS/BAA-RQKS-2014-006/listing.html.
John Keller | Editor
John Keller is editor-in-chief of Military & Aerospace Electronics magazine, which provides extensive coverage and analysis of enabling electronic and optoelectronic technologies in military, space, and commercial aviation applications. A member of the Military & Aerospace Electronics staff since the magazine's founding in 1989, Mr. Keller took over as chief editor in 1995.
