Research Innovation wins Army cyber contract

The Army last week chose Research Innovation to build a prototype for the service’s Cyber Situational Understanding program.

The program "aims to provide a common cyber operational picture in order to visualize, collaborate and report cyber threats to operational commanders, allowing them better information to act upon," according to an Army press release.

Research Innovation received a $21.8 million other transaction agreement to build the prototype.

Cyber SU applications will be built on the software and hardware of the Command Post Computing Environment, which allows different command posts to directly communicate with each other through a common operating picture.

The CPCE is being fielded to select Army brigade combat teams and division headquarters.

The Army’s Project Manager for Mission Command is executing Cyber SU in three phases: see yourself, see the battlespace and understand the battlespace.

"As each phase builds, the prototype software will provide a tactical commander and staff the capability to visualize and understand the physical, logical and cyber-persona layers of cyberspace and understand the adverse effects and impacts," the release states.

The service will collect soldier feedback on Cyber SU and is identifying a BCT to perform developmental operations on the initial phases of the program’s tools in fiscal year 2021.

Research Innovation's Cyber SU prototype will participate in Cyber Quest, a prototyping experiment to demonstrate capabilities at Ft. Gordon, GA, this September.