BAE Systems receives DARPA contracts

BAE Systems has received two contracts from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop technology that will enable compact UAS to conduct multiple mission tasks with single, multifunction payloads that can adapt to changing battlefield situations in real time.

Being carried out under DARPA’s CONverged Collaborative Elements for Radio Frequency (RF) Task Operations (CONCERTO) programme, the work is geared toward supporting communications, radar and electronic warfare systems with a flexible RF architecture that uses shared common hardware, enabling multifunction systems that meet the low-SWaP requirements of compact UAS.

The converged systems are expected to be able to switch between intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, command and control, networking and combat operations support missions without requiring the physical payload changes that hinder current UAS operations.

BAE Systems will focus on maximising the hardware’s RF capabilities such as bandwidth, frequency, distance, and field of view, to ensure that all missions can be accomplished from the same components. The company is also developing a flexible, virtual RF processing engine that can be reconfigured to support simultaneous operating modes.