Army looking to invest in airborne surveillance sensors

The Army seeks industry feedback on ideas for potential investments in airborne intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance sensors for manned and unmanned platforms, according to an Aug. 8 request for information posted on Federal Business Opportunities.

"The proliferation of advanced threat systems will continue to affect aerial systems," the notice states.

As a result, the service hopes to find platforms that are either highly resilient or are cheap enough to be expendable and is open to unconventional systems, such as high-altitude balloons, swarming unmanned aircraft systems and other systems that operate ahead of the front lines.

Some of these challenges to Army intelligence is how current aerial ISR was created to fight counter terrorism and counter insurgency operations, not a future peer level enemy.

"This Request for Information is to provide Army decision makers a better understanding of alternatives or concepts that will allow for our Aerial ISR systems to operate more effectively in a peer to peer environment," the notice states.

Regarding sensor technology, the Army wants devices that can pick up modern signals but operate on low bandwidth.