A call for anti-terrorism IT
The digital realm is an important front in counterterrorism, and the Defense Department is looking for a suite of tools to support its efforts.
WHAT: A broad agency announcement from the Pentagon's Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office seeking IT tools to help fight terrorism.
WHY: The digital realm is an important front in counterterrorism, and the Defense Department is looking for a suite of tools to support its efforts.
The announcement, issued by the Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office and the Navy Engineering Logistics Office, seeks leap-ahead advantages in several technologies. Specifically, it calls for analytical methods to better understand threats posed by adversaries in tunnels, an apparent weakness in defense planning capabilities. DOD officials want contractors to provide "a holistic analytic methodology for detecting tunnels and tunneling activity" and software tools that display results of analyses.
The department is also looking to make strides in cloud computing. It laments the lack of data storage and processing available to personnel in the field and therefore calls for "a low-cost, lightweight and hardened micro cloud server that stores mission-specific data" drawn from an operations center at the company or battalion level. The micro cloud server must have a minimum of 1 terabyte of usable capacity for stored data when disconnected and must interoperate with commercial gear and use the Pentagon's proprietary protocols to interface with government communications equipment.
The announcement includes a miscellaneous category of analytical capabilities -- essentially a fill-in-the-blank section for industry, with certain parameters. Tools that are fair game include platforms that ingest data from a variety of sources, mobile applications, and visualization and special recognition tools.
The sweeping solicitation also addresses cybersecurity and calls for tools capable of "anticipating adversarial actions, assessing potential impacts, and...implementing new broad-spectrum methodologies."
Responses are due by March 4. Most contracts awarded under the solicitation are expected to last from six months to two years.
Click here to read the announcement.
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