CHANTILLY, Va. - The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) has awarded HawkEye 360 Inc. a Commercial Radio Frequency Capabilities Augmentation (CRFCA) contract to provide commercial radio-frequency (RF) data for national security missions, moving the company's space-based RF sensing capability from a government evaluation effort into an operational augmentation role.
The contract follows a three-phase Commercial Radio Frequency Capabilities effort that began in September 2022 under a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA). The NRO says the effort evaluated multiple commercial RF providers through modeling, simulation, and on-orbit demonstrations. HawkEye 360's performance during the trials demonstrated the mission readiness of its systems and paved the way for the CRFCA contract.
The CRFCA vehicle is designed as a flexible operational contract that can scale to meet mission demands without a contract-value cap, according to the NRO. The agency says integrating commercial RF capabilities with national systems will increase intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capacity and flexibility while providing timely, persistent global coverage.
Related: NASA selects HawkEye 360 RF data for space-to-space communications research
HawkEye 360 operates a low Earth orbit satellite constellation that detects, geolocates and characterizes RF emissions. The company's RF data and analytics can provide information on activity such as communications, radar emissions and navigation-system interference.
Commercial RF
The NRO has been evaluating commercial RF capabilities for several years. In 2019, the agency awarded HawkEye 360 a commercial RF remote-sensing integration study to examine how commercial RF collection could be incorporated into the NRO's broader overhead architecture. In September 2022, HawkEye 360 was among six companies selected for NRO commercial RF study contracts. The resulting three-phase effort led to the current operational augmentation contract.
HawkEye 360 said it is the first commercial provider to transition from the NRO's BAA study contracts into an operational augmentation contract through the CRFCA program.
The award is part of the NRO's broader effort to operationalize commercial remote-sensing capabilities. The agency awarded three Radar Commercial Augmentation contracts earlier this month and says the RF and radar efforts build on its experience integrating commercial data services into national systems.
The NRO's Commercial Systems Program Office manages the CRFCA effort, which will provide RF collections for national security, civil, and humanitarian missions.
