Command Electromagnetic Management & Command-node Awareness, Management, and Obscuration (CEMA CAMO)

Army formations, including XVIII Airborne Corps (XVIII ABC) and its subordinate formations, operating in Large-Scale Combat Operations (LSCO) face increasingly capable adversary intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) systems that can exploit electromagnetic emissions to detect, characterize, locate, and target command posts, platforms, and other mission-critical nodes. The proliferation of networked sensors and increasingly rapid sensor-to-shooter processes creates a need for affordable and scalable capabilities that reduce the effectiveness of adversary electromagnetic sensing and targeting. XVIII ABC requires capabilities that can be rapidly employed and distributed across formations to improve electromagnetic signature management and enhance survivability and freedom of maneuver in contested environments. This topic seeks innovative approaches for Command Electromagnetic Management & Command-node Awareness, Management, and Obscuration (CEMA CAMO), a low-cost, modular, distributed, and attritable capability for electromagnetic signature management. The desired solution should enable multiple software-configurable nodes to operate cooperatively across an operational area to sense the local electromagnetic environment and generate controlled electromagnetic activity that increases ambiguity and uncertainty for adversary ISR and targeting processes. Potential approaches may include distributed electromagnetic signature shaping, configurable RF effects representations, coordinated emissions, and adaptive management of distributed nodes. Proposed solutions should address the ability to sense and characterize the local electromagnetic environment, coordinate activity across distributed nodes, generate Government-authorized RF effects representations, and dynamically adapt system behavior as the electromagnetic environment changes. The solution should emphasize low cost, low size, weight, and power (SWaP), modularity, scalability, software configurability, distributed operation, and interoperability with Army command-and-control architectures at Corp and Division. Innovative approaches to autonomous coordination, AI-enabled processing, electromagnetic environment awareness, and dynamic signature management are encouraged. The capability should be scalable from individual nodes to distributed networks and adaptable to different platforms and operational environments. Offerors should characterize key trades including frequency coverage, bandwidth, processing requirements, network latency and synchronization, RF-generation capability, SWaP, node density, and unit cost. Solutions should demonstrate a credible pathway toward a fielded node cost below $50,000, with $30,000 desired where technically feasible. The desired outcome is a prototype capability that demonstrates how XVIII ABC and Army formations can employ distributed, attritable electromagnetic spectrum technologies to improve survivability and freedom of maneuver by complicating adversary ISR, reducing confidence in electromagnetic-derived targeting information, and degrading adversary decision-making and targeting cycles during LSCO. Throughout the SBIR|STTR Phase I and Phase II, CEMA CAMO prototype capabilities will be demonstrated in partnership with Joint Innovation Out Post (JIOP) through XVIII Airborne Corps (XVIII ABC) experimentation to assess operational effectiveness, inform capability refinement, and demonstrate integration with Army formations and command-and-control architectures.