Army looks to four companies for sensor-processing software to uncover terrorist networks
ADELPHI, Md., 9 May 2016. U.S. Army researchers are hiring four military surveillance companies for a quarter-billion-dollar program to develop enabling technologies in sensor-processing software to help locate terrorist networks armed with weapons of mass destruction.
Officials of the Army Contracting Command in Adelphi, Md., announced contracts Friday to the companies for the Persistent Surveillance-Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance (PS-ISR) research program. The four companies chosen are:
-- Applied Research Associates Inc. in Albuquerque, N.M.;
-- Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. in McLean, Va.;
-- EOIR Technologies Inc. at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md.; and
-- Leidos Inc. in Reston, Va.
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The companies will share as much as $249.8 million over the next five years in separate task orders to develop anti-terrorism persistent-surveillance technologies. The Army Contracting Command awarded the contracts on behalf of the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) in Adelphi, Md.
The companies will develop analytic software that not only will help locate terrorist networks through persistent surveillance, open source intelligence, but also to identify and pinpoint of weapons of mass destruction and improvised explosive devices (IED).
Research work will involve sensors, cloud computing, multi-source data fusion, munitions detection systems, signal processing tools and concepts, processing, exploitation, and dissemination (PED) tool automation capabilities, and counter improvise explosive devices (CIED) technologies in asymmetric, counter-terrorism, and counter-insurgency warfare scenarios.
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These technologies will convert sensor and intelligence data to actionable intelligence and enable local commanders to make informed real-time decisions based on all available intelligence, Army officials say. Work will involve technologies and information classified as top secret.
Experts from the four companies will do the work on these contracts at locations to be determined based on each task order, and should be finished by May 2021.
For more information contact the Army Research Laboratory online at www.arl.army.mil.
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.
