ROME, N.Y., 17 Oct. 2005. Leaders of the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) are asking engineers at Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) of San Diego to help improve technology available to intelligence analysts.
SAIC will do the work under terms of a $3.7 million contract from the AFRL Information Directorate in Rome, N.Y. The three-year agreement is the "Next Generation Collaborative Infrastructure to Aid Analysts and Their Agents,"
SAIC experts at the company's Advanced Systems & Concept Group in Arlington, Va., will do the work.
"SAIC engineers will be developing the next generation collaborative infrastructure environment for the intelligence community under the AFRL Information Directorate's Topsail program," says Tandi Paugh, program manager in the directorate's Information and Intelligence Exploitation Division.
The objective of Topsail is to develop decision support aids for teams of intelligence analysts and policy personnel to assist in anticipating and preempting terrorist threats to U.S. interests. The goal is to develop automation, collaboration and cognitive aids technologies that make teams faster, smarter and more "joint" in their day-to-day operations.
"SAIC will deliver both software and hardware under this contract, although efforts will be made to use commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software and tailor it to the needs of the intelligence community," Paugh says.
"Programmers will write new software agents that have the capability to automatically exchange information contained in separate computer files of various intelligence analysts and planners. This will also encourage greater collaboration among the analysts."
Software agents have their own internal problem-solving abilities, which allow them to continuously collect specific information and determine when new information must be obtained to remain current in support of decision-makers.
Agent technology has the potential to assist users with informational changes and uncertainty associated with strategy and tactics for battlefield command and control, as well as peacetime crisis management situations.
