Systems of Systems

For decades, the United States has successfully countered the threats of competitor nations by harnessing advanced technologies to create exceedingly robust and capable military platforms. But as advanced technologies have become more readily available to adversaries on commercial markets, the Nation’s focus on ever more complex weapons systems has become not just a strength but also a weakness. Effective as they are, U.S. military systems today are often too expensive to procure in the quantities needed, and may take so long to develop that the electronic components they contain are obsolete by the time they become operational.

DARPA has awarded a contract for the third and final phase of its Advanced RF Mapping program, known as RadioMap, which seeks to provide real-time awareness of radio spectrum use across frequency, geography and time. Akin to smartphone maps that show color-coded current traffic conditions, RadioMap is developing technology that visually overlays spectrum information on a map enabling rapid frequency deconfliction and maximizing use of available spectrum for communications and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) systems.

Today’s interconnected wireless world has led to congested airwaves, making Radio Frequency (RF) management a hot topic. For warfighters overseas, efficiently managing the congested RF spectrum is critical to ensure effective communications and intelligence gathering.

The Arctic region is poised for greater regional significance as polar ice retreats in coming decades. Ship traffic likely will increase during summer months, and commercial activity focused on the sea floor is expected to grow. The Arctic is largely isolated, vast, and environmentally extreme. Remote sensing may offer affordable advantages over traditional methods of monitoring the region—aircraft, satellites or manned ships and submarines—due to the great distances in the Arctic.