The Department of Defense last week is seeking solutions to counter unmanned systems (UxS) operating in all domains including the ability to counter autonomous swarms of uncrewed systems.
Separately, the Department of Homeland Security said that it plans to test solutions beginning this summer that employ kinetic means to defeat unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). So far, the DHS Science and Technology (S&T) Directorate has only evaluated non-kinetic counter-UAS solutions.
For the DoD, the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, Innovation & Modernization Office, plans to host an outreach meeting in mid-July to give “selected companies” an opportunity to present short technical presentations on their potential solutions.
A Needs Statement published on the government’s business opportunities website Sam.gov says DoD is interested in technologies for demonstrations and experimentation and ultimately the “rapid fielding” of C-UxS solutions. Specifically, the department is interested in technologies to counter autonomous UxS swarms through things like decoys, camouflage, and countering computer vision, using passive and active effectors such a barriers and artificially modified terrain to impact and impede UxS navigation, having robust, layered capabilities such as kinetic, directed energy, and control link attacks to defeat individual or multiple UxS, and be able to assess the efficacy of the various C-UxS technologies.
The DoD is interested in traditional and novel sensor technologies such as optical, electronic and acoustic, artificial intelligence and machine learning for classifying, detecting and recommending potential counter-UxS solutions, dynamic detection and tracking of underwater UxS in shallow and cluttered environments, and the ability to detect, classify and track UxS that move from one domain to another such as underwater to onshore.
The DHS S&T Directorate is conducting market research for vendors that can demonstrate kinetic capabilities against small UAS with demonstrations planned for the summer of 2023 and 2024. For now, the office wants to assess the current state of the market for these capabilities and is also interested in systems that minimize collateral damage.
“DHS components already have needs for kinetic C-UAS operations, and those requirements are likely to increase as the threat from UASs evolve,” S&T said in a notice published on Sam.gov.
DHS is interested in mitigating threats from Group 1 and Group 2 UAS, which weigh between zero and 20 pounds, and between 21 and 55 pounds, respectively. Ordnance, missiles, other munitions, directed energy, non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse, nets and other entanglement devices are all acceptable.
This summer’s event will showcase all potential kinetic capabilities in four broad mission areas. The follow-on demonstration will be a test and evaluation event that builds on the 2023 effort.