The Defense Department’s commercially-focused innovation arm on Monday released a solicitation seeking networking solutions to enable fleets of multi-domain unmanned vehicles (UxVs) to operate together and with crewed systems in contested, disconnected, and intermittent communications environments with a particular focus on Naval operations in the Pacific.
The Opportunistic, Resilient & Innovative Expeditionary Network Topology (ORIENT) project seeks secure and reliable communications capabilities that operators can use to direct and redirect various drone types in real-time through line of sight and beyond line-of-sight radio frequency and data networks, the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) says. It also prefers capabilities that can automatically join and exit the network.
The solicitation highlights the importance of attritable, multi-domain UxVs in helping to maintain freedom of navigation and the free flow of commerce.
“The Navy’s Pacific Fleet units need an effective means to ensure connectivity for a large number of unmanned vehicles to extend the Fleet’s capability to project effects into a contested environment and reduce the risk to Sailors and Marines in response to adversary escalations,” DIU says.
DIU does not want solutions with proprietary interfaces. Some desired characteristics it does want include security measures such as advanced encryption and intrusion detection, mesh networking, low latency, long and short-haul communications, different size, weight, and power configurations based on the type of UxVs, and jam resistance.
Offers to the commercial solutions opening for ORIENT are due by July 19. If DIU finds that an offer matches well with its partners’ needs, it will ask for a full proposal for a prototype contract.