SBIR-STTR Award

TAC proposes to conduct a feasibility study into a solution that streams open standard Tactical Common Operating Picture (COP) data from a range of applications on handheld devices (such as the Tactical Assault Kit and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s Mobile Awareness GEOINT Environment) to operational command systems, and this solution will effectively extend the reach of those devices and enable them to be handheld sensors for mission execution across the battlespace, even in DDIL environments. TAC has a 6-step approach to this problem: 1. Baseine the current capability fielded in SOCOM today; as-is known today, some SOCOM units are able to procure off- line mapping products such as Pix4D through purchases of military UAS systems, as accessory software, however, there exists no ‘easy’ arrangement except through third-party vendors to procure such software products that Pix4D and other GEOINT commercial companies offer through the standard SOCOM acquisition process. 2. TAC will explore both open source (GeoServer/OpenDroneMap) and commercial products (Pix4D, Dronedeploy.com, Reveal Inc., Agisoft, Blue Marble) to build out the positives and negatives of each open source and vendor provided solution and how it could be managed into a ‘headless’ workflow. 3. TAC proposes to identify with SOCOM the GEOINT chokepoints in both availability, a priori (TAK-TICS – NTM geospatial data available to TAK users), tactical chokepoints associated with both COTS and prevalent UAS systems, and also explore opportunities of exploiting the litany of targeting pod like equipment on manned platforms (e.g. LITENING Pod, SNIPER Pod, etc). 4. TAC will evaluate the approaches to the various software, sensors, and standards-based analysis needed to further examine the correct approach that will be cost-effective, operator simple, and repeatable across the SOF enterprise from a national to theater level mission type of SOF unit. 5. TAC will following the previous analysis conduct a tailored baseline ‘headless’ approach to providing the correct workflow to initiate a maximum capability payoff and identify any crucial integration steps that are needed to community (e.g. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), and commercial satellite imagery providers). Though proven techniques exist in the COTS community that have been utilized by SOCOM since 2014 to include Pix4D and Agisoft (offline mappers) and Hivemapper, Dronedeploy, the process is human intensive in ‘flying the mission’, off-loading the geospatial data, processing the geospatial data, and distributing the geospatial data out to tactical operators in SOCOM areas of operation. 6. TAC will provide paths forward to enable the GODS-I approach and ultimately have a robust and flexible architecture that allows SOCOM to plug-and-play various tactical sensing approaches for GEOINT given the circumstances the SOF operator may fall upon in various COCOMs. Anticipated

Develop open standards integration between sensors providing battlespace awareness at the tactical, operational, and strategic level. Special Operations Forces (SOF) utilizing tactical mobile devices in denied, degraded, intermittent and limited bandwidth communications environments have access to a number of sensor feeds that lack an open standard interface to synthesize information. Processing and exploitation of sensor data requires vertical integration with other platforms for near-real-time situational awareness between tactical and operational echelons. Open standards will also enable greater horizontal data sharing between SOF Operators, SOF Mission Planners, and partner nations across a limited bandwidth environment. The capability is intended for bi-directional integration with operational level Tactical Operations Centers and for SOF operating at the tactical level in austere environments to expand situational awareness and inform decisions required for execution of operations.