The Department of the Air Force announced a pre-emptive call on Tuesday to explore new targeting capabilities that leverage AI and other cutting-edge technologies.
The Air Force plans to spend about $99 million on the multi-year innovation effort, which is expected to include multiple grant awards, according to the announcement.
According to the solicitation, the department is seeking research to “design, develop, test, evaluate, and deliver innovative technologies and methodologies for next-generation target tracking architectures that leverage a wide range of data sources and harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and machine reasoning (MI) algorithms in a high-performance computing (HPC)-enabled framework.”
This includes processing and accelerating 3D pixel, vector and point clouds, as well as using AI and machine learning for “identification, classification and pattern learning to infer information from multiple data modalities,” including open source intelligence, signals intelligence, imagery and geospatial intelligence.
The Air Force Research Laboratory, which is overseeing the effort, is also seeking tools to help ingest and process GPS, non-GPS, inertial navigation systems, radio frequency identification trackers or telematics-based data into “traffic tracking that can measure line utilization,” according to the announcement.
Additionally, the lab is interested in the ability to process GPS data from cell phones and non-GPS data from inertial navigation systems, accelerometers, altimeters and personal fitness devices, which Air Force officials say could help emergency responders find vulnerable people at disaster sites.
The pre-solicitation noted that successful prototyping efforts, which will be funded through other trade agreements, could lead to the award of follow-on manufacturing contracts.
Vendors seeking funding for fiscal year 2025 are encouraged to submit white papers by November 30th.
Next-generation target tracking is a top modernization priority for the Air Force. For example, the moving target command, control, communications and battle management (C3BM) system is one of two programs the Air Force recently launched through Quick Start expedited procurement authority granted by Congress in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024. The Air Force plans to build its first addition in 2027.
While the Army is trying to more quickly deploy next-generation target-tracking capabilities, Acquisition Director Andrew Hunter told lawmakers it will take some time to fully build out the new network architecture to support those tools.
“If we're going to be able to execute the entire mission thread at scale anywhere in the world, it's going to be a few more years before we can say we've actually deployed it to warfighters,” he said at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in May.
