 MILNET Brief DARPA Project Table, July, 2008 |
| MILNET Brief DARPA Project Table, July, 2008 |
| Weapon
Acronym |
Description |
| New
Technology |
|
| Advanced Night Vision System (ANVS) |
"
The Advanced Night Vision System (ANVS) program is developing
the core technologies for improving our night vision capability
in urban operations." - DARPA, April 2008 |
| Autonomous Real-time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance - Imaging System (ARGUS-IS)  |
"to provide military users a flexible and
responsive capability to find, track and monitor events and activities
of interest on a continuous basis in areas of interest. The overall objective is to increase situational awareness and
understanding enabling an ability to find and fix critical events in a
large area in enough time to influence events. ARGUS - IS provides
military users an "eyes-on" persistent wide area surveillance
capability to support tactical users in a dynamic battlespace or urban
environment." -DARPA (addtl) |
| Brood of Spectrum Supremacy (BOSS) |
"The goal of the Brood
of Spectrum Supremacy (BOSS) program is to
provide a radio frequency (RF) spectrum analogue to night vision
capabilities for the tactical warfighter, with a particular focus on
RF-rich urban operations. The program is intended to apply
collaborative processing capabilities for software-defined radios to
specific military applications...Cooperative use of computational and
software-defined radio capabilities, in aggregate, offer the potential
for breakthrough capabilities in warfighter situational awareness.
Therefore, by using software-defined radios, the goal of the BOSS
program is to provide a radio frequency (RF) spectrum analogue to night
vision capabilities for the tactical warfighter, with a particular
focus on RF-rich urban operations." - DARPA (addtl) |
Camoflauged Long Endurance Nano Sensors (CLENS) |
"composed of a network of wideband RF nodes that
jointly support radar and communications. The network can operate
stand-alone or as an addition to existing unattended ground sensors,
providing robust detection and low false alarm performance in urban,
riverine, subterranean (within caves), forested, and similarly
challenging environments. The wideband communications that are
indigenous to the design supports exfiltration of data from the
network's interior to long-haul communications at its periphery. The
final node has been designed to fit easily into the warfighter's
backpack and robustly operate at node separations exceeding 20 m. These
characteristics of the system will provide the ability to cover large
areas of interest with a quantity of nodes that can be easily
transported and deployed by a small unit of action. The CLENS nodes are
designed to endure for 6 months or more without need for service or
battery changes." - DARPA |
Close Combat Lethal Recon (CCLR) |
"
CCLR will provide an individual warfighter the ability to engage
hidden, non-line-of-sight (NLOS) targets at extended ranges in complex
urban environments. This will be accomplished with a compact,
hand-launchable cruise munition. The munition is command guided to the
target using an intuitive soldier interface underpinned by automatic
guidance and controls technology. High-bandwidth communications with
the user is achieved through a secure optical fiber link." - DARPA |
| Cognitive Technology Threat Warning System (CT2WS) | DARPA technology solicitation
reads, "...soldier-portable visual threat warning devices...development
of prototype soldier-portable digital imaging threat
queuing systems capable of effective detection ranges of 1-10 km
against dismounts and vehicles while simultaneously surveying a
120-degree or greater field of view (FOV). The system is envisioned to
queue the operator to potential threats in the FOV; target
identification is presumed to be a subsequent action taken by the
user/operator and is not a required function of the CT2WS system" - DARPA, April 2008 - NewScientist |
Deep Green |
"University of Southern California (USC) researchers are developing
several parts of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
Deep Green program. Their efforts are intended to help commanders on the battlefield to anticipate enemy moves.
‘The system interweaves anticipatory planning with adaptive execution
to help the commander think ahead, identify when a plan is going awry
and prepare options before they are needed.’ Deep Green will be able to
add computing resources on the spot if the problem faced by a commander
is too difficult." - ZDNet, 5/1/2008 - DARPA |
| Deep Speak Reliable Urban Communications  |
"Reliable communications enables our warfighters to fight together
cohesively and cooperatively, thus magnifying our striking power.
Critical communications links may be broken in the urban warfighting
scenarios where radio-frequency signals are severely attenuated by the
surrounding infrastructure. The Deep Speak program is developing new
networking, coding and waveform techniques that enable communications
signals to penetrate the surrounding buildings and underground
facilities, and thus maintain the warfighters' links to each other and
the global network. A Deep Speak demonstration is expected in 2007" - DARPA |
| Information Assurance Dynamic Quarantine of Computer-Based Worm Attacks  |
"develop reconfigurable, ad hoc mobile
network based systems and dynamic quarantine defenses to defend against cyber attack and to support successful
missions in the face of malicious attacks to include computer worms, malicious code, remote cyber intrusions, and
soft and hard run-time failures. STO's development of robust, secure interconnectivity that far exceeds today's
capabilities and that guarantees continuity of communication across network boundaries" "develop the capability to automatically detect and respond to worm-based attacks against military networks, provide advanced warning to other DoD enterprise networks, study and determine the worm's propagation and epidemiology, and provide off-line rapid response forensic analysis of malicious code to identify its capabilities, modalities, and future behavior. Further, the program will develop defenses against cyber attacks on mobile ad hoc network (MANET) systems that can to sense failures and attacks and auto-recover in real-time. Technical approaches include the automatic and dynamic quarantine response and forensics analysis of malicious code that will employ static and dynamic code analysis for program understanding." -DARPA, 2005 |
Integrated Sensor is Structure (ISIS) |
"develop a stratospheric airship based autonomous unmanned sensor with
years of persistence in surveillance and tracking of air and ground
targets. It will have the capability to track the most advanced cruise
missiles at 600 km and dismounted enemy combatants at 300 km. The ISIS
program will develop the technologies that enable extremely large
lightweight phased-array radar antennas to be integrated into an
airship platform. ISIS uses a large aperture instead of high power to
meet radar performance requirements. This approach exploits the
platform's size and conforms to the platform's limitations on weight
and power. Major technical challenges are the development of
ultra-lightweight antennas, antenna calibration technologies, power
systems, station keeping approaches, and airships that support
extremely large antennas." -DARPA, 2008 (see PDF 2.0mb) |
| Forester ID Highly Obscured Targets RADAR  |
"
The Foliage Penetration Reconnaissance, Surveillance, Tracking and
Engagement Radar (FORESTER) is a joint DARPA/Army program to develop
and demonstrate an advanced airborne UHF radar capable of detecting
people and vehicles moving under foliage. FORESTER will provide robust,
wide-area, all-weather, persistent stand-off coverage of moving
vehicles and dismounted troops under foliage, filling the surveillance
gap that currently exists." - DARPA |
| Jigsaw ID Highly Obscured Targets LADAR  |
" will provide the warfighter unprecedented ability to identify
targets through dense foliage and other obscurants. Before delivering
munitions, warfighters need high confidence visual identification of
targets. The Jigsaw mission is to develop sensor technologies needed to
deliver this confidence. An active Laser Radar (LADAR) system, when integrated on a platform
that permits multiple viewpoints and combined with a processing chain
that integrates this information, observation through porous
obscurants, such as foliage and camouflage becomes possible. This type
of system can support high confidence identification day or night. The
figure below shows the process from collection to 3-D image formation" - DARPA |
Large Area Coverage Optical Search-while-Track and Engage (LACOSTE) |
"develops extremely wide field-of-view coded aperture imaging technology
to support single sensor day/night persistent tactical surveillance of
all moving vehicles in a large urban battlefield. LACOSTE coded
aperture imaging technology focuses on achieving a very wide
instantaneous field-of-regard (~900 cone angle) using multiple
simultaneous wide Field-Of-View (FOV) images. For persistent tactical
surveillance, the coded aperture provides sufficient resolution across
a large coverage area (~500km2) while operating from a significant
stand-off distance (~20km)" - DARPA |
LAN Droids |
"will help to solve the urban communications
problem by creating intelligent autonomous robotic radio relay nodes,
called LANdroids (Local Area Network droids), which work to establish
and maintain mesh networks that support voice and data traffic. Through
autonomous movement and intelligent control algorithms, LANdroids can
mitigate many of the communications problems present in urban settings,
e.g., relaying signals into shadows and making small adjustments to
reduce multi-path effects. LANdroids will be pocket-sized and inexpensive. The concept of
operations is that warfighters will carry several LANdroids, which they
drop as needed during deployment. The LANdroids then form the mesh
network and work to maintain it - establishing a communications
infrastructure that supports the warfighters in that region." -DARPA |
| Long View inverse synthetic aperture LADAR |
DARPA project to "develop an inverse synthetic aperture LADAR that will enable the
high-resolution imaging of geostationary satellites when coupled to a large aperture telescope.
Specifically, the technologies being developed in the Long View program are an optical reference
oscillator that is stable over the propagation time to a geostationary satellite (GEOSTAT) and
back (about a quarter of a second) and auto focus algorithms that restore image quality that has
been degraded due to atmospheric turbulence and optical reference oscillator instability over
the imaging time (about 100 seconds). These two technologies are required in order to make
inverse synthetic aperture LADAR systems feasible for objects in geostationary orbits." - DARPA, 2006 Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems, Linthicum Heights, Md., is being awarded a $12,787,169 cost-plus-fixed fee contract. To be finished by September 2008 - Military & Aerospace News, 12/2006 - GlobalSecurity.com |
Low Cost Cruise Missile Defense (LCCMD) |
"design, develop, demonstrate and transition an affordable electronically scanned array (ESA)
seeker for use on a missile interceptor system to defeat unsophisticated air vehicles. Unsophisticated air vehicles are
affordable, can be procured in large numbers to overwhelm U.S. defenses and provide a credible long-term threat to both
civilian population centers and military targets. To reduce the cost of defending against such threats, it is crucial to
reduce the cost of the guidance and control sections of defensive weapons. The LCCMD program will enable this through
analyses, laboratory testing and field-testing of an all-weather seeker costing less than forty thousand dollars in
production." - DARPA - DTIC Abstract, Report |
| Multispectral Adaptive Networked Tactical Imaging System (MANTIS) VIDEO |
"integrate and demonstrate a soldier-worn
visualization system, consisting of a head-mounted multispectral sensor
suite with a high resolution display and a high performance vision
processor (ASIC), connected to a soldier-worn power supply and radio.
The helmet-mounted MANTIS Vision Processor will provide the soldier
with digitally fused, multispectral video imagery in real time from the
Visible/Near Infrared (VNIR), the Short Wave Infrared (SWIR) and the
Long Wave Infrared (LWIR) helmet-mounted sensors via the high
resolution visor display. The processor adaptively fuses the digital
imagery from the multispectral sensors providing the highest context,
best nighttime imagery in real-time under varying battlefield
conditions. The system also allows the video imagery to be recorded and
played back on demand and allows the overlay of battlefield
information. MANTIS will exploit the existing soldier radio network and
provide soldier-to-soldier sharing of video clips viewed as
picture-in-picture on their helmet mounted displays. MANTIS will
"regain the nighttime advantage" and "exploit the net" to provide the
individual soldier with unprecedented situational awareness." - DARPA |
| Multifunction Electro-Optics for Defense of US Aircraft (MEDUSA) | "to take out any enemy electro-optic and infrared air defense systems
that track and attack our aircraft. The program takes the paradigm we
use to protect our aircraft from radar-guided surface-to-air missiles
and applies it to protection against optical and infrared guided
missiles. The MEDUSA approach is much more active, searching for and
detecting these types of threats and dealing with them before they
launch or immediately after launch. MEDUSA combines both active and
passive optical systems and includes multiple modes of operation:
search, track, classify and optical defeat. The objective is to break
the enemy air defense kill chain at multiple points, not just at the
endgame." - DARPA |
NetTrack |
"Persistent
reconnaissance, surveillance, tracking and targeting of evasive
vehicles in cluttered environments...enabling persistent tracking
through advanced radar feature assocation and feature exchange between
networked radar:
|
| Optical RF Communications Adjunct (ORCA) | "an opportunity for research in optical and Radio Frequency (RF)
communications to provide a high data rate gateway network capability
to warfighters. This includes airborne nodes; on-the-move (OTM) and
on-the-halt (OTH) ground vehicles; and Global Information Grid (GIG)
Points of Presence. In this capability, the ground vehicles will act as
stub networks. To ensure technical maturity of what is being developed,
there will be a series of demonstrations and experiments throughout
this effort." - DARPA, 2007 |
| Quantum Sensors Program |
"Phase I of the Quantum Sensors Program investigates several quantum
sensor approaches to determine whether the resolution improvement
through entanglement is robust to outdoor propagation and interaction
with targets. In the “Type I” approach sensors transmit entangled
photons to the target whereas “Type II” sensors constrain the entangled
state to the detector. A third approach, based on ghost imaging, is
also being explored. If any of these approaches is robust, Phase II of
the program will define component technology requirements for
development of quantum sensors during Phase III." - DARPA |
Quint Networking Technology (QNT) |
"a modular network data link program focused on
providing a multi-band modular capability to close the seams between
five nodes - Aircraft, UCAV, Weapons, tactical UAV and dismounted
ground forces. The specific intended QNT hardware users are weapons,
air control forces on the ground (dismounted) and tactical UAV's...must exploit distributed sensor platforms to
rapidly and precisely find, fix, track, and engage static and moving
targets in real time...to use data links to fully integrate tactical
UAVs, dismounted ground forces and weapon control into the future
network centric warfare environment." - DARPA |
| Robust Surface Navigation (RSN) |
"will provide the U.S. Warfighter with the ability to geo-locate and
navigate effectively when the Global Positioning System (GPS) is
unavailable due to hostile action (e.g. jamming) or blockage by
structures and foliage. The RSN program will develop the procedures and
technologies for geo- location of stationary assets and navigation of
mobile platforms by exploiting signals of opportunity and/or
specialized signals from satellite, airborne, and terrestrial assets.
The use of widely available, powerful, and economically important (and
thus dependable) signals of opportunity will provide a robust non-GPS
capability. Signals of opportunity can also be augmented when necessary
by purpose- deployed signal-emitting beacons. RSN will use the greater
strength and diversity of these opportunistic and intentional signals
to provide coverage when GPS is denied due to lack of penetration and
when severe multi-path is a problem, or when GPS is jammed or denied
globally." - DARPA |
| Sub Surface Navigation (SSN) |
"develop the procedures and technologies for geo-location of stationary
assets and navigation of mobile platforms via exploitation of signals
of opportunity (SoOP) and/or specialized signals from satellite,
airborne, and terrestrial assets. The use of widely available,
powerful, and economically important (and thus dependable) signals of
opportunity will provide a robust SSN capability. Signals of
opportunity are expected be augmented when necessary by
purpose-deployed signal-emitting beacons. SSN will use the strength and
diversity of these opportunistic and intentional signals to provide
coverage for users who are inside underground facilities, tunnels, or
caves." - DARPA |
| Synthetic Aperture LADAR for Tactical Imaging (SALTI) | "develop and demonstrate a Synthetic Aperture Laser RADAR (LADAR) sensor
capable of long range, high resolution synthetic aperture imaging from
a Contractor operated aircraft to demonstrate performance and validate
readiness for transition to an operational customer" - DARPA, November, 2007 |
| Symbiotic Communications Program (SYCO) |
"The Symbiotic Communications (SYCO) program is developing airborne
passive radar system technology which will enable battlefield
situational awareness and precision targeting from low-observable
platforms, in clear and adverse weather. Successful feasibility
experiments have been completed, and a SYCO airborne test-bed is now
being developed. The SYCO test-bed will demonstrate the complete system
concept, including passive-mode high resolution Synthetic Aperture
Radar (SAR) operation, with real-time processing, display and
exploitation on the aircraft. The test-bed will be ready for flight in
early CY2007, and a series of flight tests are planned during the
remainder of FY2007 to demonstrate the technical and operational
performance of the concept." - DARPA |
Tactical Control Plane |
"The Control Plane Program will improve end-to-end network performance between the Continental United States (CONUS)
operating base and forward deployed tactical units. Control Plane seeks to develop the ability for individual hosts
(end-points) to learn essential characteristics about the network path between themselves and other hosts, allowing
the hosts to shape any transmission to pass through the network with the minimal network load. Additionally, when
multiple network paths are available, a host will be able to either choose the path that best meets its requirements
or simultaneously transmit over multiple paths. This technology will support the Defense Department's Global
Information Grid concept of operations." - DARPA |
UrbanScape |
"to provide the
warfighters patrolling an urban
environment with an up-to-date, high resolution model of the urban
terrain that can be viewed, manipulated and analyzed. The overall
objective of the program is to make the foreign city as "familiar as
the soldier's backyard". UrbanScape is directed at the lowest
echelon warfighter and his
immediate commanders. These are the individuals who must deal with the
urban environment at its greatest level of detail and who require the
absolute latest information. UrbanScape will allow the dismounted
warfighter to view the city from any ground perspective. This will be
particularly useful to aid in the identification of visual landmarks
for navigation and to cue normal activity and movement.
UrbanScape collects its data in the normal course of patrol operations.
This provides the warfighter with a detailed record of where they have
been in a fashion that is geographically accessible and can be shared
and viewed at any echelon. UrbanScape will also provide data that
supports automatic analysis to
help locate potential sniper locations, predict current mobility
corridors and plan operations for UGSs, OAVs, and UGVs." - DARPA |
| Vehicle and Dismount Exploitation Radar (VADER) |
" a pod-mounted radar for UAVs, designed to have an immediate
impact on the GWOT. VADER will provide real-time data products to a
command echelons at which the real-time information will be immediately
actionable...monitor a road, track a vehicle to a stop,
observe dismount motion near the vehicle, characterize certain motions
(like someone carrying a heavy load), and measure a ground disturbance
after the vehicle departs...will provide long-range all-weather vehicle and
dismount detection as well as long-range high-resolution SAR imaging
capabilities. It will operate at relatively short ranges and at high
grazing angles so as to be suitable for urban operations in some
contexts. VADER will be able to scan for vehicles and dismounts at high
area rates and to provide precision target locations. The VADER program
is developing the data exploitation tools which will enable long
duration tracking of ground vehicles, SAR coherent change detection,
motion pattern analysis, and dismount motion characterization. VADAR
will use NetTrack as part of its exploitation suite and so will avail
the field commander unprecedented insight into vehicle and dismount
movement within his area of operation." - DARPA |