Tight deadlines for US Defense Innovation Unit UAV and SATCOM solicitations

The Defence Science Institute (DSI) at the University of Melbourne reports that the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit is urgently seeking small UAV components and deployable, Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) SATCOM ground stations in two separate solicitations, the first of which closes on 31 March. The second closes on 4 April.

In the first, for what it calls “Blue UAS Architecture”, the DIU seeks commercial solutions for small, unmanned UAV components that support the development and integration of a common system architecture for small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS). If appropriate, the US Government may request vendors to create integrated teams to combine solutions and/or work with commercial firms currently supporting components in this architecture.

More information here.

In the second solicitation, the DIU seeks commercial solutions for deployable ground stations capable of rapidly and semi-autonomously tasking, receiving, prpcessing, explpiting, fusing and disseminating space based sensor data to provide networked situational awareness and direct tactical support to Army commanders at echelon. The mobile ground station prototype will task and receive data from a diverse set of of space based sensors. The goal of the program is to reduce sensor to shooter latency via automated metadata correlation to provide time-dominant intelligence for delivery of desired effects (eg: Long-Range Precision Fires, LRPF)

More information here.