Photo: U.S. Army

The U.S. Army has released a Request for White Papers (RfWP) to develop new C5ISR modular open Suite of standards (CMOSS) mounted form factor (CMFF) prototypes.

Through CMFF, the Army aims to easily and rapidly equip ground vehicles and aviation platforms with positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) and electronic warfare (EW), through capability cards plugged into a common chassis.

The chassis, which offers power, networks and radio frequency, allows Soldiers to “plug and play” capabilities right into the vehicle without the need to custom install and upgrade individual communication and computing systems.

In this prototype effort, the key needs are to develop, procure and furnish the Army with the CMFF chassis, also known as Mounted Common Infrastructure (MCI), plus the smart display for user interface, hardware development, software development and Plug-In Cards with the following capabilities:

• Converging tactical communication waveforms.
• Mission Command applications.
• Assured Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (APNT.)
• Force Protection capabilities.

The Army plans to award a contract using the Other Transaction Authority (OTA) with system of system and prototype integrators to provide the complete CMFF system offerings. Industry partners who respond to the RfWP will have an opportunity to showcase the fully functional CMFF system at a technology demonstration in late summer 2024.

“The power of the true concept is when you can take a chassis and put it in another vehicle and you can mix and match cards,” said Col. Shermoan Daiyaan, project manager for Mission Command. “That’s when you’re following a standard. You’re matching a standard, and it just works.”

<p>The post US Army issues white paper request for CMFF prototypes first appeared on GPS World.</p>

The enhanced V-BAT’s flexible vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) capability is based on a platform deployed to address the U.S. Army’s Future Tactical Unmanned Aircraft System (FTUAS) mission. For FTUAS, the U.S. Army is seeking a rapidly deployable, GPS-denied navigation-capable, expeditionary VTOL system capable of persistent aerial reconnaissance for U.S. Army brigade combat teams, special forces, and Ranger battalions.

The offering is based on Martin’s UAV V-BAT UAS. According to Northrop Grumman, it is compact, lightweight, simple to operate, and can be set up, launched and recovered by a two-soldier team in confined environments. The V-BAT also is designed with sufficient payload capacity to carry a range of interchangeable payloads, including electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR), synthetic aperture radar (SAR), and electronic warfare (EW) payloads, depending on mission-specific requirements. Additionally, Shield AI’s recent acquisition of Martin UAV will enable rapid development of GPS-denied and autonomy capabilities for V-BAT through the future porting of Shield AI’s autonomy stack, Hivemind, onto V-BAT.

Northrop Grumman and Martin UAV conduct flight testing of Martin UAV’s V-BAT aircraft for the U.S. Army’s Future Tactical Unmanned Aircraft System effort in Camp Grafton, North Dakota. (Photo: Northrop Grumman)

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The U.S. Army awarded Bohemia Interactive Simulations (BISim) a major extension to demonstrate technologies for a cloud-enabled, virtual world training capability.

BISim is a global developer of advanced military training and simulation software.

The contract award helps meet the requirements of the Army’s Synthetic Training Environment (STE) initiative. STE aims to converge virtual, constructive and gaming training environments into a single unified architecture.

The ambitious STE project will enable simulation systems Army-wide to leverage a persistent virtual world for any imaginable training need, including support for multi-domain operations incorporating cyber and space.

Central to STE is a cloud-enabled One World Terrain (OWT) that will let warfighters conduct virtual training and complex simulations anywhere on a virtual representation of the Earth. OWT will leverage cloud technologies to deliver to the point of need, ensuring a common and high-fidelity whole-Earth terrain representation for a multitude of different simulation systems.

The Synthetic Training Environment will assess Soldiers in enhancing decision-making skills through an immersive environment. (Photo: U.S. Army)

“The U.S. Army’s vision for STE marks a monumental change in how they acquire, develop and deliver new simulation and virtual training technologies to soldiers,” said Pete Morrison, BISim’s co-CEO and chief product officer. “We’re honored to be selected to assist the Army in developing innovative solutions that will shape the future of how virtual training is used to enhance operational readiness.”

BISim has been developing its next generation of simulation technologies since 2014. The new technology suite includes a cutting-edge, military-specific whole-earth game engine, deterministic AI, an efficient geospatial terrain server and component-based development technology.

BISim technology underpins funded research and development for One World Terrain. Additionally, BISim recently demonstrated Reconfigurable Virtual Collective Trainer (RCVT) prototypes for STE. The latest OTA extension is a significant ramp up in the breadth and ambition of the technology being demonstrated.

BISim’s STE offering includes four core technologies uniquely suited to meeting future military simulation requirements (including U.S. Army requirements).

VBS Blue. A high-performance, whole-planet data ingestion and rendering engine with a very high level of procedural detail, designed to ingest any conceivable terrain data format as well as source data directly. VBS Blue will support networked (cloud) terrain paging and geo-specific insets as well as the latest graphics technologies. It provides photorealistic detail, and includes a massive vegetation library representing every region on Earth. The technology is highly applicable across all types of image generation and is optimized for many AR/VR applications.

STEWS. A geospatial data server that provides efficient networked access to the various data sources required for rendering applications. STEWS provides a curated database of terrain data layers that can be streamed into any STE-connected client application at run time (including non-BISim applications). Any application connected to STEWS can stream high fidelity terrain data in a performant manner. Both new and legacy terrain formats are supported through new STEWS plug-ins.

VBS Control. High fidelity, doctrinal and deterministic entity-level artificial intelligence that is uniquely suited to operation on whole-earth terrain. VBS Control runtime offers highly efficient real-time path planning that allows AI to move seamlessly through open, urban and interior spaces. The VBS Control Editor allows powerful new AI behaviors to be developed at both the individual entity level and at higher levels of command for land, sea and air assets.

Gears. A software development framework that defines a standard way for components to communicate through formal interfaces. Gears uses a component-based architecture to promote rapid development by building applications from self-contained systems and having them communicate via formally defined interfaces. This allows functionality to be reused and avoids the complexity of tightly coupled systems. See www.gears.studio for more information.

The Army also selected BISim for a five-year contract to support their Games for Training Program and BISim’s technology is being rolled out on CCTT (the U.S. Army’s largest ground simulator training program).

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The U.S. Army’s Joint Precision Airdrop System (JPADS) has developed a new capability with a navigation alternative to GPS.

In recent tests, JPADS were dropped from planes, and immediately determined their location using optical sensors to compare local terrain with commercial satellite imagery. The new system demonstrated navigation to its intended point, using nothing but imagery to guide it.

The new JPADS also works with little knowledge of the aircraft’s location at the drop point.

JPADS, largely guided by GPS, has already proven its importance in supplying troops with necessary materials and equipment, relying less on vulnerable convoys.

Dropping critical supplies from the air has allowed the U.S. military to rely less on easily-ambushed truck convoys and helicopter resupply. Exposure to improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and ambushed convoys resulted in more than 3,000 causalities in Afghanistan and Iraq through 2007.

JPADS has proven to be an important tool in the Army’s logistics chain in many scenarios to supply troops with material and equipment in adverse terrain and remote locations when ground lines of communication are not possible or deemed too high a risk.

A JPADs pallet lands on target, followed by several others still in the air, during recent testing. (Photo: US Army)

The Army life cycle manager, Product Manager Force Sustainment Systems (PM-FSS), continues to improve the JPADS capability with technology enhancements being led by the Army’s Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center (NSRDEC), including making JPADS more robust and versatile to environment, terrain and other factors. Investments are focused on significant increased accuracy, lower cost and lower retrograde weight/volume of the reusable JPADS at all weight classes.

The U.S. Army NSRDEC, with Draper and numerous other partners, recently began testing a new version of the JPADS guidance system that takes advantage of Draper’s technology to navigate precisely to its intended ground impact point using imagery alone, and having minimal knowledge about the aircraft’s location when the package is dropped. The accuracy is critical, as payloads that stray even slightly off course can force troops to expose themselves to enemy fire, or can tumble down mountainsides in rugged terrain, explained Chris Bessette, Draper’s JPADS program manager.

“This is a huge step forward for aerial resupply,” Bessette said. “The guided airdrop system is keeping U.S. forces from the danger that has killed thousands of their fellow troops. By enabling the system to operate using imagery alone when dropped as high as 25,000 feet above Mean Sea Level and upwards of 20 miles away from the target depending on winds, we can ensure that JPADS is even more versatile so troops receive supplies like fuel, ammunition, food, and water in the safest manner possible.”

Draper’s JPADS software autonomously flies the cargo-carrying parafoil to land at a user defined location, adapting in real-time to local environmental conditions, such as varying wind. The company’s work on JPADS takes advantage of its expertise in applying position, navigation, and timing algorithms to combine the outputs of precision instruments to enable highly accurate, long-duration navigation solutions.

The recent testing demonstrated the ability to accurately navigate JPADS to a pre-selected user position, using imagery alone, with almost no information about where the package was released from the plane. During testing in Arizona, the payloads were dropped from planes, and then JPADS immediately determined their own location by comparing terrain features spotted using optical sensors with commercial satellite imagery of the area.

The Army is also supporting Draper in developing upgrades to the vision-aided navigation system to address current limitations, including cloud cover, which degrades the system’s ability to correlate vision sensor inputs with satellite imagery.

The military can leverage the same technology to help guide military free fall paratroopers and unmanned aerial vehicles utilizing imagery data alone, Bessette said.

<p>The post Aerial delivery without GPS can aid troops, relief operations first appeared on GPS World.</p>

According to the announcement, HyDRA allows users to view, collect and edit unclassified water resources features via Android 2.2+ OS smart devices using Google Maps and Google Earth applications. Wells, water tanks, water storage points, dams, treatment plants and other features may be added, queried and edited in “connected” and “disconnected” modes; collected features may also be edited through a Web page using the same functionality. The Web page and app were created to assist U.S. Army engineers and the water community working in infrastructure and reconstruction operations with feature collection and identification. A compass feature is also included to assist the user in finding the nearest water feature and its bearings.

The mobile application may be downloaded from the AGC’s Web site. An offline version of the mobile application is under development and will allow the user to store collected data locally and sync to the server after an internet connection becomes available.

<p>The post U.S. Army Geospatial Center Introduced the HyDRA Android App first appeared on GPS World.</p>