Open Call for Innovative Defense-Related Dual-Purpose Technologies/Solutions with a Clear Air Force Stakeholder Need

The emerging cruise missile and weaponized UAV threat has the advantages of low-altitude flight, high-speed and low-observability against large, soft, immobile or slow-moving targets. The decreasing cost of exploitable technology gives the adversary the opportunity to enhance this threat through proliferation. Current area defense systems are being outgunned, outrun, and outnumbered. A solution to salvo cruise missile and UAV attacks is not achieved by multiplying existing point defense systems. An effective solution begins with the deployment of a wide area network of multi-modal sensors coordinated with intelligent software that can fuse these disparate data into a unified and comprehensive understanding of the threat. This sensing and information network must be coupled with an effective means of engaging the threat. The engagement decision countermeasure system must be responsive to the specific threat detected, it must be adaptable to real-time measures of effectiveness and it must be able to optimize use of available resources while ranking defense priorities. In this Phase I effort, BRC offers to produce a preliminary design of a Cruise Missile and UAV Area Defense System incorporating all these characteristics as depicted in Figure 1, and validated in a series of simulated engagement scenarios.