DARPA bolstering development multi-domain mission planning

BAE Systems has secured a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) contract to develop software enabling semi-autonomous multi-domain mission planning.

The endeavor would allow military operators to leverage battlespace resources from across various domains, such as space, air, land, and sea, for more effective, efficient missions.

DARPA’s Adapting Cross-Domain Kill-Webs (ACK) program will seek to help operators adapt to dynamic situations with software technology automatically identifying the best options.

BAE Systems’ FAST Labs research and development organization and Carnegie Mellon University have partnered to create software called Multi-domain Adaptive Request Service (MARS).

“Multi-domain mission planning is complex because it involves a tremendous amount of distributed variables such as domains, systems, resources, and manned and unmanned platforms,” said Chris Eisenbies, product line director of the Autonomy, Controls, and Estimation group at BAE Systems. “Our hope is that MARS will provide warfighters with the ability to automatically leverage the resources they need and quickly determine the most effective way to accomplish their mission no matter what type of battlespace they are operating in.”

The MARS software includes a visual interface that will allow the exploration of available asset options, helping operators arrive at the best course of action to deliver the desired effect on targets, per the project’s scope.