US Army seeks soft-kill C-UAS system integrated within its H-MIF autonomous platform

The U.S. Army’s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office (RCCTO) has extended its deadline from 12 April to 15 April 2024 in its Request for White Papers (RFWP)  for counter-small Unmanned Aerial System (C-sUAS) solution/capability that will be integrated into robotic platforms as part of the human-machine integrated formation (H-MIF) architecture that will guide emerging Robotics and Autonomous Systems (RAS) capabilities.

According to the project description in www.sam.gov:

“The Army must protect and defend personnel, facilities, and assets in an environment where increasing numbers of UAS’ will share the skies. In response, the H-MIF C-sUAS effort has been initiated to develop robotic infantry and armor platoon capabilities to detect and defeat Group 1&2 threat UAS. The C-sUAS should be able to disrupt the threat posed by small UAS as well as the indirect threat posed by small UAS used for targeting. Further development of U.S. Army counter-UAS capabilities and an effective counter-UAS approach are essential to meeting the challenges of the battlefields of today and the battlefields of future.”

“The Army RCCTO seeks solutions and approaches to design, build, test, and deliver a C-sUAS that can operate in a RAS contested environment, This C-sUAS effort will build on the work and demonstrations of prior C-sUAS efforts conducted by various DoD entities. The derived operational specifications and evaluation criteria will be employed to develop selected candidate CsUAS platforms as operational prototypes that can integrate with existing unmanned Army ground vehicles…. H-MIF C-sUAS solutions shall adopt a modular open systems approach (MOSA) in their offerings. The solution is envisioned to be a non-kinetic system that can be employed autonomously or operated manually.”