Category Archives: Defense Department

BAE Systems, Navy

SPAWAR contracts BAE for towed surveillance sonar systems

BAE has been awarded a $7.8 million contract (cost plice incentive fee) to produce up to three “compact low frequency active transmit systems”, replacement sensors for the Navy’s SURTASS towed sonar array systems.  These active sonar are used at low frequency to detect potential threats at long range that might not show up on passive surveillance because they are too quiet.  They can also be used for “ocean mapping”.

SURTASS is the mobile element of the Integrated Undersea Surveillance System, the follow-on to the SOSUS system made famous by Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October . The SURTASS system is long-range sonar surveillance system, towed by T-AGOS ocean surveillance ships (like the one recently harrassed by Chinese sailors).

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Contractors & Vendors, Joint Combatant Commands, Lockheed Martin

JFCOM awards Lockheed contract for ISR video database

The US Joint Forces Command has given a team led by Lockheed-Martin for a system called “Valiant Angel”, which basically applies current broadcasting video technology to manage the collection, dissemination, processing, and storage of  the massive quantities of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance  full-motion video produced by the wide range of sensors in the DOD’s inventory.  The contract is for $29 million.

According to Lockheed’s release, “Valiant Angel will deliver a number of new capabilities to the warfighter. The system will:

  • Collect and store incoming video streams from a variety of sensors in a secure, networked database.
  • Categorize and manage videos by keyword, geographic region or other items of interest. For instance, users looking for a red pickup truck on 10th Street can search Valiant Angel’s library for any video footage matching that description and in that location, or set up alerts to tell them when new clips are posted to the network.
  • Fuse intelligence data from multiple sources into incoming video streams. For example, if two users are discussing a video over instant messenger, Valiant Angel will embed that chat history directly in the video stream, so other users can follow exactly what was discussed to glean important intelligence.”

via U.S. Joint Forces Command Awards Lockheed Martin Team $29 Million Contract for Advanced Video Intelligence System | Lockheed Martin.

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