The United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) has awarded CAE USA Mission Solutions Inc. an other transactional authority (OTA) contract to support the Special Operations Forces (SOF) global situational awareness initiative.
Under a program called Mission Command, USSOCOM sought industry innovation to accelerate the application of commercially derived software development into deployable mission support capabilities. The scalable next-generation Mission Command system is intended to enhance the SOF enterprise through the creation of a common operational picture (COP).
The OTA contract allows US defense department agencies to carry out prototype and research and development projects under commercial industry standards and best practices.
CAE USA MSI will now progress to the next phases of the Mission Command program by developing a prototype that leverages a synthetic environment to provide global situational awareness. The synthetic environment will support data/track object management, information integration, standards-based interoperability, automated production and visualization to fuse data into a COP that provides next generation command and control capabilities.
“CAE USA is leveraging our modelling and simulation expertise to translate the physical world into synthetic environments that enhance planning and operational mission support for our defense forces,” said Ray Duquette, President and General Manager, CAE USA. “Synthetic environments can be a powerful tool for course of action analysis and decision making that can help enhance readiness, interoperability and shared situational awareness between collective, joint and coalition forces.”
This is not the first contract USSOCOM has awarded to CAE USA MSI. Last year, the company was awarded the Open Geospatial Consortium Common Database (OGC CDB) rapid prototyping contract to develop and enhance data visualization and mission rehearsal for global SOF forces. The OGC CDB establishes greater interoperability in use of geospatial data through development of geospatial standards and interoperable solutions.
