Weekly GEOINT Community News

Raytheon Awarded U.S. Navy & Air Force Contracts; NGA Selects Radiant Solutions for Machine Learning Contract; White House to Establish AI Panel; CIA to Use Amazon Cloud for Big Data Experiments; More

1000w_q95

Raytheon Awarded U.S. Navy & Air Force Contracts

The U.S. Navy awarded Raytheon a $28.5 million contract to provide an electro-optical/infrared sensor technology designed to process visual imagery and complement electronic sensors of a U.S. Army unmanned aerial vehicle. Raytheon will provide 20 common sensor payloads that include data, one turret, and an electronics unit in each CSP system for the Army’s MQ-1C Gray Eagle. 

The company was also awarded a potential five-year, $37.4 million contract from the U.S. Air Force to sustain a technology platform that helps multinational forces share intelligence. Raytheon will continue to perform sustainment work on the Cross Domain Enterprise All Source User Repository (CENTAUR) architecture and further develop the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s (NGA) Coalition Data Broker system. CENTAUR helps U.S. and international forces exchange ISR information.

NGA Selects Radiant Solutions for Machine Learning Contract

Radiant Solutions, a Maxar Technologies company, announced a contract with NGA to provide more than one million labeled objects within high-resolution satellite images that will be used to accelerate the development of machine learning algorithms that can extract valuable information from imagery at scale. NGA is partnering with Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx) to launch the 2018 DIUx xView Detection Challenge to spur innovation that will ultimately support national security and humanitarian missions. With the challenge, individuals and organizations will use DigitalGlobe imagery to train algorithms to automatically identify dozens of objects relevant to global challenges.

White House to Establish AI Panel

The White House announced it will establish a panel to evaluate issues surround artificial intelligence (AI), according to The Hill. The administration announced the new Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence the same day it held an AI summit with business leaders. The new panel will include officials from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the National Science Foundation, and DARPA. The committee will also include officials from the National Security Council, the Office of the Federal Chief Information Officer, and the Office of Management and Budget. Its goal will be to examine U.S. priorities and investments with regard to AI development. 

CIA to Use Amazon Cloud for Big Data Experiments

Bloomberg Government reports the CIA is looking to team up with industry experts to run a series of open-source intelligence projects using its Amazon cloud. The agency released a revised acquisition schedule for a project known as Mesa Verde that will test the frontiers of big data and open-source intelligence. The project calls for using the CIA’s C2S cloud, built by Amazon Web Services, to pore through thousands of terabytes of data and apply tools such as natural language processing, sentiment analysis, and data visualization to draw conclusions.

NOAA Issues Second Commercial Weather Data RFP

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) opened a second round of request for proposals for commercial satellite data to help enhance weather forecast models. The second round of solicitation for NOAA’s Commercial Weather Data Pilot program seeks companies that can provide a minimum of two periods of GPS radio occultation data and at least 500 daily atmospheric soundings recorded within three consecutive months. NOAA will accept proposals until May 25.

T-REX to House Geospatial Resource Center

St. Louis-based technology incubator T-REX is devoting an entire floor of its historic downtown building to establishing a pipeline of workers and advancements in geospatial technology. T-REX will soon house a Geospatial Resource Center, spurred in part by the soon-to-be-built Next NGA West campus in north St. Louis. T-REX Executive Director Patricia Hagen recently discussed the new center with St. Louis Public Radio

Peer Intel

Peraton named The Honorable Jeffrey K. Harris, former U.S. Air Force assistant secretary for space and National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) director, to its advisory board. Harris, who is chairman of USGIF’s Board of Directors, is credited with managing the integration of NRO programs into three functional directorates and leading efforts to consolidate signals intelligence systems in a first-of-its kind partnership between NRO and the National Security Agency. He is currently chairman of D-Wave Government, and previously served as president of Lockheed Martin Missiles and Space, and as president of Space Imaging. 

Adam Marks, formerly vice president of strategy and corporate development at Thales Group, joined Maxar Technologies’ SSL subsidiary as chief strategy officer. Marks will oversee the development of new partnerships and markets as well as seek new business opportunities for space systems and communications platforms in support of government and commercial clients.

Red Hat Inc. announced Alfred “Al” W. Zollar has been appointed to its board of directors. Zollar has served as an executive partner at Siris Capital Group LLC since 2014. He previously held several leadership positions at IBM, including serving as general manager of its Tivoli Software division, general manager for eServer iSeries, president and CEO of its Lotus Software division, and division general manager of its Network Computer Software division. 

Weekly GEOINT Community News

Peraton announced its completion of the acquisition of Perspecta Inc, Norwegian Space Agency launches new NorSat-3 maritime tracking microsatellite, TCarta created products for two project pilots to enable NOAA to test the use of SDB, and more.

Weekly GEOINT Community News

Dr. Stacey Dixon of NGA nominated by the President as Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, NRO to sign deals with commercial providers of satellite radar imagery, and more.

Weekly GEOINT Community News

BlackSky’s Newest Satellite Delivers First Insights Within 24 Hours, startups selected for NGA program, Lockheed Martin And Omnispace Explore Space-Based 5G Global Network, and more.