Distributed OperationsThe Air Force Research Laboratory/Information Directorate (AFRL/RI) is soliciting white papers under this Broad Area Announcement (BAA) for research, design, development, test, evaluation, and experimentation of innovative and enabling capabilities that allow operators at forward nodes the ability to conduct state-driven assessment of Air Force operations and distributed adaptive planning, and to perform these capabilities during periods of reduced communications with operational level nodes in accordance with distributed operations concepts.The Air Force is seeking capabilities in the form of software components that autonomously assess the progress of their operations, identify deviations from expected activities and outcomes, and recommend adjustments (re-plan) to enable continuous operations at forward nodes in anti-access and area-denial (A2/AD) environments.The DistrO Program will meet the distributed operations goal by filling technology gaps for dynamic planning, execution, and assessment; and tailor those capabilities for use at the operational level and at the tactical level within a distributed architecture to provide a resilient "push forward" and "push outward" capability to implement the distributed operations concept. For the purpose of this research, offerors may consider elements of the Theater Air Control System (TACS) and Theater Air Ground System (TAGS) as nominal candidates representing operational environments for target technologies.By developing these capabilities and achieving this goal, AFRL expects an order of magnitude improvement in the duration of maintaining continuity of air, space, and cyber operations at a forward node subject to contested communications; however, the focus of this effort is on the air domain with a desire not to preclude an approach that integrates all three domains. Additionally, efforts under this program are expected to provide the USAF and mission partners with a capability to conduct combat planning with its associated targeting and assessment forward in theater.The DistrO Program has been organized into two projects, (1) Planning and Assessment Technology Development and (2) Distributed Integration and Experimentation, each with defined focus areas for the FY16 acquisition cycle.The compartmentalization of the focus areas reflects project funding and thrusts. Offerors are invited to submit white papers for one or more of the focus areas/projects.Department of the Air ForceUSAF_f44f343c-b6c9-11e2-b3e2-1be1e2f52354Air Force Materiel CommandAir Force Research Laboratory - Rome Research Site, AFRL/Information Directorate, 26 Electronic Parkway, Rome, NY 13441-4514... an order of magnitude improvement in the duration of maintaining continuity of air, space, and cyber operations at a forward node subject to contested communications ..._f6d742c8-ba07-11e5-b1f1-72a64630016fTo research, design, develop, test, evaluate, and experiment with innovative and enabling capabilities that allow operators at forward nodes the ability to conduct state-driven assessment of Air Force operations and distributed adaptive planning, and to perform these capabilities during periods of reduced communications with operational level nodes in accordance with distributed operations concepts._f6d74516-ba07-11e5-b1f1-72a64630016fPlanning & Assessment Technology Development:Couple traditionally distinct planning and assessment activities in light-weight software services._f6d745f2-ba07-11e5-b1f1-72a64630016fProject 1The objective of this project is to advance the state of the art in C2 technologies in order to tightly couple traditionally distinct planning and assessment activities in light-weight software services that can be employed to enable forward entities during times of isolation from the centralized Air Operations Center (AOC). Target software solutions should be compatible with smaller-footprint environments such as those found in the TACS/TAGS.Research and development must be conducted to assist operators with the planning of Air Force operations, assessment of progress while identifying deviations from expected activities and outcomes, and recommending adjustments (re-plan). Assessment mechanisms will explicitly expose the immediate and projected problems from plan divergence. Adaptive planning mechanisms will be capable of both plan repair (for the current tasking cycle), and plan creation of future tasking cycles. Both the assessment and planning capabilities will operate as distributed replicated services across a federation of representative environments.The following describes the Project 1, FY 16 Focus Area:Coupled State-Driven Assessment & Distributed Adaptive PlanningProvide C2 capabilities at forward entities during times of isolation from the AOC._f6d7469c-ba07-11e5-b1f1-72a64630016f1.1The Coupled State-Driven Assessment and Distributed Adaptive Planning focus area objective is to research and demonstrate a fundamentally coupled planning and assessment methodology in an environment representing the operational challenges described above. The goal is to providing C2 capabilities at forward entities during times of isolation from the AOC. Current operations utilize centralized planning and assessment activities at the AOC, and distribute orders in the form of the Air Tasking Order (ATO) directing forward entities to perform missions aligned with the Commander's intent. In order to perform C2 activities forward in theater, research and development must be conducted to advance planning and assessment activities which allow these entities to act with the best information available, while meeting the intent of the Commander. This will require reasoning over the various attributes comprising the context of the situation, to include intent, assessments, existing plan, etc. Assuming that communications with higher echelons will be lost, research must be done to identify and document the right artifacts which must be pushed forward prior to loss of communications, to include Commander's Intent, Air Operations Directive, and Joint Integrated Prioritized Target List, to name a few.Operational SupportSupport the continued operations of forward entities for days beyond the current capability._f6d74764-ba07-11e5-b1f1-72a64630016f1.2The near-term goal of this focus-area is to support the continued operations of forward entities (such as TACS/TAGS) for days beyond the current capability. The spirit of the longer-term research goal involves enabling continued operations through a "Living Plan" capability, where missions are planned far beyond the current time horizon, with plan branches, sequels, and adaptations are continually happening on a rolling basis, based on new world state information and assessments of on-going and future operations.Providing an assessment of how a campaign is unfolding is extremely difficult, even if all co-located AOC operators have perfect and unambiguous situation awareness. It is even more difficult to conduct accurate and timely assessments at forward nodes within contested environments and uncertain world state. Meeting this challenge requires prepositioning commander's guidance at lower echelons and interfacing with local data sources and those in the cloud which may be accessible to conduct assessments, techniques to improve context formulation, trigger change notifications when plans deviate and recommend re-plan options.Technologies are required to support the move from the current centralized, military planning paradigm to a distributed planning environment. Enabling continued operations through a "Living Plan" capability at forward nodes is paramount to success in anticipated anti-access/area-denial A2/AD environment. The complexities of this challenge lie in Disrupted, Disconnected, Intermittent and Limited (DDIL) bandwidth connectivity of distributed planning nodes. Distributed planning, assessment, and plan adaptation tasks need to be flexible to support traditional top-down planning paradigms, while enabling the complex synchronization of Air Force activities in a distributed, asynchronous manner during periods of DDIL connectivity. To address this focus area, the development of automated adaptive planning and assessment algorithms, as software services, are required to be capable of recommending new and revised missions based on assessments and world state information.Distributed Integration & ExperimentationIntegrate, test and evaluate the software to ensure that it satisfies measure of performance parameters._f6d74818-ba07-11e5-b1f1-72a64630016fProject 2The two objectives of this project are to 1) integrate software components produced in Project 1 into a robust information cloud and 2) conduct tests/experiments to assess system-level efficacy of these combined technologies and determine amount of improvement.The following describes the Project 2 FY 16 Focus Area:Integration, Demonstration, Test and Evaluation: As part of any research and development, the software shall be integrated, tested and evaluated to ensure the software satisfies measure of performance parameters. Offerors are encouraged to utilize concise metrics for measuring performance of proposed technical solutions. Metrics should be identified, tracked, and available for analysis during integrated evaluation and testing events. This research will develop and implement an overarching test and evaluation methodology that assesses both quantitative and qualitative metrics. This will also be comprised of developing sample end-user scenarios with varying degrees of simulated communication degradation and data that are mission-focused and relevant to the research and development emphasis of this BAA.IntegrationIntegrate software components produced in Project 1 into a robust information cloud._f6d748f4-ba07-11e5-b1f1-72a64630016f2.1Experimentation & TestingConduct tests/experiments to assess system-level efficacy of these combined technologies and determine amount of improvement._f6d749c6-ba07-11e5-b1f1-72a64630016f2.22015-12-232016-01-13OwenAmburOwen.Ambur@verizon.net