WASHINGTON — BAE Systems won a $7 million contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to develop AI tools to automate the tracking of information collected by military satellites.
The corporate on May 25 announced it is going to work with AI specialists OmniTeq and AIMdyn on the DARPA project, generally known as Oversight.
DARPA also chosen Apogee Research, and Systems & Technology Research for the initial phase of this system.
“Traditional space intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) collection might be siloed and labor intensive,” DARPA said.
Current reliance on individual ground station operators “significantly increases latency and minimizes tactical utility of satellite sensor data,” said Lael Rudd, program manager for Oversight at DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office.
Because the Space Force and the Space Development Agency prepare to deploy large constellations of sensor satellites, he said, they’ll need tools to autonomously track targets of interest.
DARPA’s Oversight program will pursue AI-enabled software that autonomously maintains constant “custody” of a lot of targets tracked by satellites.
The three corporations chosen for the 15-month Phase 1 of Oversight will define tracking requirements, resource needs and interfaces between technologies in development.
Under Phase 2, the software will transition to in-orbit spacecraft.
Software to transition to SDA satellites
John Grimes, director of small satellites at BAE Systems’ FAST Labs, said the corporate’s track custody software can be applicable to multiple varieties of sensors, including electro-optical and radio-frequency.
If BAE is chosen for Phase 2 and beyond, the software could possibly be deployed on Space Development Agency sensor satellites that track hypersonic missiles, said Grimes.
Grimes described a hypothetical scenario for the way autonomous goal custody would work. A satellite, for instance, detects a signal from a vessel that’s unexpected because it’s in a controlled ocean region. The onboard system updates the opposite satellites within the network and prioritizes that vessel for custody.
Immediately, an electro-optical satellite passing overhead takes a picture and IDs the vessel as a fishing vessel. That location and ID are then sent to a close-by Coast Guard ship for investigation.