Air Force lab wants to advance multisource analysis
The lab is looking for automated, real-time analysis of potential threats and activities performed closer to sensors in the field or in the air.
In a step that underscores the growing importance of data in military operations, the Air Force Research Laboratory is soliciting white papers on automated, multisource analysis in order to improve how it conducts intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) activities.
The lab’s Activity Based Analysis Branch, part of its Information Directorate, wants to be able to fuse and share analysis drawn from multiple intelligence and data source in real time, according to the solicitation. It’s interested in scientific studies, analytical tools, algorithm developments, projects and experiments on the subject.
Automation is key to the process, according to the solicitation, which identifies three focus areas:
- Integrated tracking, analysis and discovery (ITAD), to allow an analyst to collect, characterize and locate activities and transactions of actors in a particular area.
- Multisource information extraction and analysis that can handle data from many different sources in multiple languages, genres and domains of interest, and make use of automated analysis and visualization.
- Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) Enterprise to the Edge (CETE), a program that is looking for “revolutionary” ways to process data closer to sensors .
The Air Force Lab plans to test proposed solutions at its APEX Center. “The overall mission is to understand, measure, and advance the state of technology in the fusion of information,” according to the solicitation.
The program has about $50 million in funding spread from fiscal 2014-2018. The solicitation lists contacts for each of the three areas of focus.