Real-Time Threat Forecasting

Request for Information (RFI) for Real-Time, Continuous Threat Forecasting Sources Sought Notice for Real-Time, Continuous Threat Forecasting DISCLAIMER: THIS IS NOT A SOLICITATION: No award will be made as a result of this request. This RFI is for informational and planning purposes only; this is not an Invitation for Bid, a Request for Proposal, or a Request for Quotation. No solicitation document exists, and a formal solicitation will not be issued by the Government after receiving responses to this RFI. The Government will not be liable for payment of any costs incurred in response to this RFI and is under no obligation to act in any way on the information received. No costs incurred by interested companies in response to this announcement will be reimbursed. The information provided may be used by the Army in developing a future acquisition strategy, Performance Work Statement, Statement of Objectives and/or Performance Based Specification(s). Interested parties are responsible for adequately marking proprietary or competition sensitive information contained in their response. PURPOSE: The U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM), Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C5ISR) Center is surveying the market to locate/identify interested Business Concerns. The U.S. Army C5ISR Center, Engineering & Systems Integration (ESI) is interested in receiving information from companies that have solutions for real-time continuous forecasting near-term enemy courses of action (ECOA) based on current Situational Awareness (SA), predict fleeting windows of enemy vulnerability in a systems warfare context, and depict those scenarios in geospatial and operational context projected into future time junctures, from minutes and tens of minutes to an hour or a few hours. BACKGROUND: Future warfare portends a hyperactive, interactively complex battlefield characterized by robotics and autonomous systems, loitering intelligent munitions, thousands of semi-autonomous entities, short-range point defenses, AI/ML-enabled multi-INT deceptions, small, distributed Soldier-Machine Teams, and self-organizing intelligence networks. To survive a Transparent Battlefield, friendly and enemy forces will continuously reorganize as self-composable edge organizations. As seen in the Ukraine and Nagorno-Karabakh Wars, forces will adapt tactics, techniques, and procedures at a rate that will challenge all-source intelligence analysts ability to forecast enemy courses of action (ECOA). Future military intelligence (MI) staffs cannot assume an enemy whose behavior can be modeled via a doctrinal template. Massive data from networked all-domain sensors makes near term situation prediction easier while the complex and heterogeneous data makes situation visualization difficult. At the same time, Multi-Domain Operations demand that all-source analysts predict fleeting windows of opportunity to target temporary enemy vulnerabilities, i.e., system component vulnerabilities that will likely persist for minutes and hours versus days and weeks. INFORMATION REQUESTED: Interested parties with the ability to prototype and demonstrate real-time continuous threat forecasting should submit a Whitepaper not to exceed 15 pages in length. At a minimum, the Whitepaper should address the following information: Note: All correspondence including the Whitepaper shall have correct CUI markings in accordance with DoDI5200.48 - Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI). 1. Ability to develop software tools that use a priori threat information, e.g., enemy unit and weapon system last known locations and activities from the common operational picture (COP) as provided by input from data processed by Army Intelligence Data Platforms, Edge Nodes, Intel Apps, and similar capabilities, to provide continuous, real-time predictive visualization of how the threat situation could evolve over the next few minutes to hours. 2. Ability to run feasible software on a standard laptop and take advantage of emerging artificial intelligence and/or machine learning technologies. 3. Ability to accept input that could include a priori event templates, threat system parametric data and known operating procedures; processed, correlated data derived from multiple sensors and Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT); and the metadata behind moving and stationary threat COP symbology. Output would include a continuously updated and projected threat picture preferably using 3D visualization technologies and techniques. Output would also allow analysts to run simulations of how the enemy situation might progress in the next few tens of minutes to few hours, this latter objective understood as a non-trivial challenge for the M&S community. Output should also be ideally available for interoperability with other applications performing Running Estimates and Correlation of Forces and Means (COFMs) with friendly data. 4. Appropriate software must be easy to train and easy to use by U.S. Army Soldiers who will be digital natives, but may lack college degrees in game theory, agent-based simulations, knowledge graphs, computer engineering, data science, and expert systems. The goal, if feasible, is a software that does not require in-depth technical expertise to manage and use. If this goal is not feasible, RFI respondents will describe the minimum technical expertise required to use the software. 5. User interfaces must be as intuitive as technologically possible. Recent respondents to technical wargaming tool design commented that compared to commercial videogames, DoD interfaces often took months to learn whereas the gaming community can typically assimilate a new game within a matter of hours or days. Interfaces and usability are critical to ensure buy-in from the intelligence analysts who will use the capability. 6. Describe how the solution approach would integrate into the Army Intelligence Data Platform (AIDP), Command Post Computing Environment (CPCE), Army Military Intelligence Cloud Computing Service Provider (A2CSP) Cloud, and Intelligence Community (IC) Cloud environments; employ human-machine teaming; build confidence in analytic results as software outputs; generate or collect data required for development, testing, and evaluation; be tested and evaluated in live or virtual environments. 7. We are asking industry to provide a response to this RFI that also includes rough order of magnitude (ROM) cost and schedule estimate for the effort; estimated technology readiness level (TRL) at start and finish of the effort; and risk areas from a cost, schedule, and technical approach with your rationale. Responses to this RFI are to be unclassified or CUI and received no later than 45 days after date of release. All whitepapers will be submitted via DoD SAFE. Please reach out to the technical POC at usarmy.apg.devcom-c5isr.mbx.esi-oid-itb-isroms@army.mil in order to request the DoD Drop off Link when ready to submit your white paper. Your white paper submission should include a Cover Page (excluded from page count) that includes: Note: All correspondence including the Whitepaper shall have correct CUI markings in accordance with DoDI5200.48 - Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI). Point of contact information to include: company name, contact name, company address CAGE Code and SAM Unique Entity ID