Shadow Warriors Pursuing Next-Gen Surveillance Tech.

• Author: Harper, Jon

U.S. Special Operations Command and the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity are pursuing new technologies to identify and track threats.

Commandos rely on these types of capabilities when attacking terrorist groups and performing other critical missions.

"Intel drives ops," SOCOM Commander Gen. Richard Clarke said at a recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. "In order for us to compete more effectively in the future, we have to modernize both our precision strike and ISR...so that [special operators] can quickly see and sense the battlefield that they may have to be fighting in."

Encrypted communications and electronic warfare capabilities are also critical to protect the force, he noted.

SOCOM's program executive office for special reconnaissance is responsible for pursuing these types of technologies.

The office's mission "is to lead the rapid and focused acquisition of state-of-the-art sensors and associated command-and-control, emplacement, recovery and specialized communication systems across all domains to enable total situational awareness for Special Operations Forces," PEO David Breede said in an email to National Defense.

Its technology portfolio encompasses technical collection and communication to include hostile forces tagging, tracking and locating; blue force tracking; tactical video systems for reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition; and remote advise-and-assist kits.

It also includes integrated air-, maritime- and ground-based sensor systems; signals intelligence processing, exploitation and dissemination; sensitive site exploitation with biometrics, forensics and intelligence analysis capabilities; and leveraging of national space-based technologies.

"We're really looking at operations in a near-peer and non-permissive environment," Breede said at last year's virtual Special Operations Forces Industry Conference managed by the National Defense Industrial Association on behalf of SOCOM.

Breede's top three priorities for technology development are advanced unattended ground sensors, flexible tactical radio frequency systems and collaborative autonomous platforms, he noted in his email.

"While reducing size, weight and power requirements of unattended ground sensors will always be a focus area, the key to modernization will be increasing onboard processing power, integrating alternative communication pathways, and improving interoperability with disparate sensor networks," he said.

Such technology can help commandos gather...