SOCOM plans new round of advanced ISR technology experiments

Research and development officials at US Special Operations Command are looking to industry to help the command develop a slew of advanced intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance (ISR), and exploitation technologies, to get those capabilities into the hands of the US armed forces’ most clandestine units.

The technologies being sought and ultimately selected by command officials, which run the gamut from Android devices to exfil highly sensitive data from austere combat locations to new single man portable unmanned ground systems (UGS) for ISR missions, will be slated for live demonstrations during SOCOM’s upcoming Technical Experiment 21-2.

Set for March 2021 at the Muscatatuck Urban Training Center, and Jefferson Proving Ground in Indiana, the advanced ISR technologies on display will “provide participants with the opportunity to gain Special Operations Forces (SOF) insight [and] perspective on . . . emerging technologies, technical applications, and their potential to provide solutions for future SOF capabilities,” the 3 December request for information (RFI) stated.

As part of the slate of ISR technologies SOCOM is seeking input from industry on its development of advanced software defined radios, digital receivers, and antennas for secure data transmission during expeditionary operations, the RFI stated. On the radios and digital receivers, command officials are seeking remotely reprogrammable and reconfigurable systems, capable of secure unattended operations and “full [radio frequency] spectrum capabilities and processing against all known signals of interest,” the solicitation states. The advanced radios must also include data infiltration and exfiltration capabilities to support payload information transport, it added.