Air Force renews solicitation to industry to develop infrared and RF sensors for persistent awareness

WRIGHT-PATTERSON AFB, Ohio – U.S. Air Force researchers are approaching industry for enabling technologies in infrared sensors and active and passive radio-frequency (RF) sensors for next-generation global persistent awareness.

Officials of the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, issued an updated solicitation on Monday (FA8650-21-S-1180) for the Multi-Spectral Sensing Technologies Research and Development (MUSTER) project.

MUSTER seeks to develop and test electro-optical and RF sensors for future air, space, and command-and-control systems for surveillance and reconnaissance; time-sensitive targeting; and battlespace access.

This is an updated solicitation for the MUSTER program, which began in 2021. The updated program has 13 research topics: multiband multifunction array development; fully adaptive radar; advanced digital multifunction arrays; laser radar imaging, systems, components, and applications; passive radio frequency sensing; sensor information processing and integration; passive electro-optic and infrared sensor technology; novel infrared hardware and algorithms; hyperspectral imaging technology; standoff high resolution imaging (SHRI); infrared search and track technology; and passive infrared space-based sensing.

Advanced RF antennas

Multiband multifunction array development seeks to develop advanced antenna and electromagnetic technology for air, ground, and space-based sensing applications like radar, communications, satellite operations, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems (ISR) from HF to W-Band frequencies.

It involves detection; tracking; data fusion; modeling, and simulation of difficult targets in rapidly changing environments; antenna and scattering theory; situational awareness; architectures and algorithms for intelligence, surveillance, navigation, and communications.

The focus is on multiband and multifunction low cost lightweight planar and conformal phased array antennas operating at different power densities; small antennas with the gain performance of conventional antennas; radiating, wave guiding, wave transforming, and electromagnetically responsive structures and materials for aircraft; computational electromagnetic methods; space-based RF sensing; and RF technology for disaggregated systems.

Fully adaptive radar seeks to exploit all available degrees-of-freedom on transmit and receive for target detection; and tracking and classification in computationally demanding data-starved scenarios.

Related: Northrop Grumman to develop and demonstrate infrared search and track sensors for use on military aircraft

Advanced digital multifunction arrays involves digital RF sensors able to perform many tasks simultaneously, such as radar, electronic warfare (EW), and communications.

This will develop sensors with digital beamforming and an intelligent sensor resource manager (ISRM) for passive radar illumination, multi-mode resource allocation ,and scheduling coalescence.

Laser radar imaging involves laser radar (ladar)-based approaches for surveillance, precision attack, and air-to-air engagements. This may include the ability to detect, track, and identify difficult air and ground targets in challenging environments.

Included are new ideas for active focal plane arrays with integrated read-out integrated circuits (ROICs) and flight laser systems and components. Direct-detection and coherent ladar are of interest.

Passive RF sensing

Passive RF sensing involves situational awareness, tracking, and targeting applications. It should be able to exploit any available RF sources to provide situational awareness.

Waveform phenomenology, design, and applications seeks to identify signal phenomenology for new and difficult-to-detect RF waveforms. This involves noise-like waveforms, interference-tolerant waveforms, and low-probability-of-intercept waveforms.

Sensor information processing and integration seeks to understand of massive amounts of data coming from distributed sensors and develop actionable intelligence using autonomous or semi-autonomous situational awareness.

Passive electro-optic and infrared sensor technology involves target detection, recognition, and tracking using any infrared waveband. Novel infrared hardware and algorithms involves developing computers and software algorithms that can detect low-signal targets in noisy and heavily cluttered environments using infrared sensors.

Related: What is global persistent surveillance?

Hyperspectral imaging technology involves day and nighttime hyperspectral technologies for enhanced material detection and identification in contested environments.

Standoff high-resolution imaging (SHRI) seeks to advance long-range multi-band imaging in contested environments using large-format high-temperature imaging and video arrays with reduced detector size, and high-speed sampling.

Infrared search and track (IRST) technology seeks to develop an advanced long-range wide-field-of-view staring IRST system that can operate at video rates.

Passive infrared space-based sensing seeks to develop passive infrared sensing with reduced cost, size, and weight. This involves optics and data processing.

Original solicitation

The original MUSTER solicitation was issued in July 2021, and has resulted in at least three contracts. In April 2022 Senseeker Engineering Inc. in Santa Barbara, Calif., won a $1.4 million contract to develop an advanced large-format high-dynamic-range long wave infrared (LWIR) digital pixel readout integrated circuit (DPROIC) for airborne IRST applications.

In May 2022 BlackHorse Solutions Inc. in Herndon, Va., won a $5.4 million contract to develop RF and electro-optical sensors for offensive, defensive, and integrated offensive and defensive systems.

In July 2022 the Northrop Grumman Mission Systems segment in Linthicum, Md., won an $840,429 contract to support test flight of sensor systems.

Companies interested in the latest update of the MUSTER program should email white papers no later than 20 May 2026 to the Air Force's Jamie Jones-Brooks at [email protected], and Travis White at [email protected].

Those submitting promising white papers may be invited to send full proposals. The MUSTER program ultimately may spend as much as $250 million in separate contracts ranging from $100,000 to $10 million.

Email questions or concerns to the Air Force's LaMar Westbrook at [email protected]. More information is online at https://sam.gov/opp/bcfcb31bbf46413299e7cf01ad78b92f/view.