Navy Seeks Vendor Partners for SCOUT Experimentation Program

A new Navy research program could present opportunities for vendors of biometric and computer vision technologies. Dubbed SCOUT Experimentation, the program is aimed at helping the Office of Naval Research to leverage automation and AI technologies to streamline operational management for warfighters.

As NextGov reports, the Navy issued a special notice asking for input from vendors toward the end of 2021, with the aim of establishing two research tracks to get underway in the summer of 2022. One of those tracks will focus on finding solutions for Naval enterprise problems, while the other will focus on helping Naval officials and partners to make faster decisions during operations.

The research will initially focus on supporting the efforts of the Navy’s Southern Command, JIATF-South, which is focused on fighting drug trafficking.

The Navy’s Special Notice about the program lays out a number of technological capabilities that are expected to contribute to significantly to addressing the problem areas of interest, including “sensor fusion capabilities, artificial intelligence, data processing on the edge, and machine learning algorithms for target recognition, natural language processing, pattern-of-life recognition, long-range sensors, persistent ISR platforms and payloads, and many others.”

Speaking to NextGov, Office of Naval Research SCOUT lead Daniel Cabel explained that his office will be looking for vendors that are flexible and creative in developing solutions for the program, and emphasized the importance of automation. ONR technical director Jason Stack added that the Office is looking for scalable solutions that in keeping with the Navy’s interest in unmanned systems.

Broadly speaking, the US military has demonstrated an interest in biometric technology across a number of fronts. Last year, for example, a report revealed the US Army’s efforts to train facial recognition technology on thermal face images; and the year before that, the Air Force awarded contracts to facial recognition and computer vision specialist SAFR.

The Office of Naval Research has set a deadline of January 14 for proposals from vendors interested in the SCOUT Experimentation program.

Source: NextGov

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January 5, 2021 – by Alex Perala