WASHINGTON — The Defense Innovation Unit is seeking new hardware and software that can fuse together disparate data feeds and provide a real-time picture to aircrews that lack adequate situational awareness on the modern battlefield, according to a new solicitation.
The DIU notice thus seeks vendors who can build a prototype modular, open mission engine (OMEN) — essentially a platform to plug in new feeds and applications. The solicitation says the OMEN “should enable rapid development, deployment, and sustainment of mission applications” and include an open software development kit, published application interfaces, commercial grade user interface and cross-platform compatibility.
Many large mobility jets are decades old, with outdated avionics and limited communications systems. That lack of connectivity means crews are typically heavily dependent on pre-mission planning and aren’t able to be quickly retasked. Without a live picture of the environment, crews may also be more vulnerable to adversaries.
DIU says the first planned application for the OMEN platform will be a “Tactical Moving Map,” an aircrew display that can provide real-time visualizations of airspace activity like allied forces, threats and mission updates. The moving map should be capable of fusing legacy tools as well as “future-proofed” with an open software architecture. The solicitation adds that a “strong focus will be placed” on the performance of the map’s user interface, and that the map itself will “serve as a baseline for future capabilities.”
The DIU solicitation further includes a third line of effort for data integration and interoperability to ensure information is properly fused together. The notice lists relevant data feeds the government is seeking to ingest like the Department of the Air Force’s Battle Network, the Space Force’s Unified Data Library and other “common aviation sources” like notice to airmen (NOTAM) alerts.
“Offerors should describe how their architecture ingests, normalizes, exposes, and sustains these data flows in a standards-based, extensible way” the solicitation says.
Interested vendors can offer pieces of the puzzle, including “enabling capabilities” like cloud-hosted services for processing, “synchronization services,” fleet management and cybersecurity. “Such efforts should be clearly tied to the effective fielding, operation, and lifecycle management of mission applications within contested and DDIL [degraded, disrupted, intermittent or limited] environments, and will be considered for inclusion where they demonstrate clear relevance to mission needs and program objectives,” the solicitation says.
DIU says its efforts will dovetail with Pentagon-wide efforts to modernize aircraft, leveraging a slew of new initiatives acquiring software-defined radios, commercial off-the-shelf displays and sensor/data integration. The Air Force, for example, is pushing to modernize its mobility aircraft with updated communications links to boost crew situational awareness, though progress has been slow.
In the event a prototype is successfully fielded, a follow-on production contract could be awarded “without the use of competitive procedures,” per the DIU solicitation. Bids for the prototype contract are due April 15.
