The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Information Directorate has awarded an $8,549,283 contract to Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) of San Diego, Calif., for research of advanced space-based radar technologies.
The five-year contract, "Next Generation Space-Based Radar Analysis and Testing," is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of Arlington, Va. The research is designed to develop and document new algorithmic solutions for space-based radar, investigate solutions developed elsewhere, and evaluate the performance of the related systems through data collection and analysis, simulation, and testing.
"Under the proposed effort, SAIC is providing technical research, analyses and assessment of various advanced radar concepts for DARPA and AFRL," said Steven A. Scott, program manager in the directorate's Information and Intelligence Exploitation Division.
"These concepts will be generated either internally by SAIC, at the direction of the government, or by the DARPA contractors investigating innovative antenna technologies, advanced clutter cancellation, low-power density apertures, and other radar technologies."
"SAIC's primary function is to independently evaluate algorithms and system designs proposed by the other development contractors and report these results to the government," added Mr. Scott.
"They will also participate in organizing data collections and process the resulting data to provide these independent results. Finally, SAIC engineers will develop new concepts and algorithms, as necessary to potentially fulfill technology gaps, and then evaluate them and report the results."
This contract crosses several DARPA programs including: the Innovative Space-Based Radar Antenna Technology (ISAT), Knowledge-Aided Sensor Signal Processing and Expert Reasoning (KASSPER), the Integrated Sensor is the Structure (ISIS), and several other programs — all of which are contributing to the technical design and maturity of the nation's efforts to achieve true tactical sensing of moving vehicles using space-based radars.
Michael J. Graniero of the directorate's Contracting Division negotiated the agreement. The work is expected to be performed at SAIC facilities in McLean, Va.
