SPECIAL NOTICE: Advanced Naval Technology Exercise (ANTX) – 2017 Urban 5th Generation Marine (U5G) Exploration and Experimentation Exercise

Introduction: The Deputy Commandant for Combat Development & Integration (CD&I)and Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development, Test and Evaluation (DASN(RDT&E)) are soliciting mature prototypes from industry, academia, and government research and development (R&D) organizations to participate in the Urban 5th Generation Marine Exploration and Experimentation 2018 (U5G 18) exercise. The U5G 18 exercise will be a progressive series of exercises conducted between March 2018 and February 2019. The first exercise will be held March 15-25, 2018 at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, San Diego, California. The exercise provides Warfighters the opportunity to assess the operational utility of emerging technologies and engineering innovations that improve the Marines survivability, lethality and connectivity in complex urban environments. The objective of the exercise is to provide technology enhancements that support the Marine Rifle Company and its subordinate elements. The focus is therefore enabling the small percentage of Marines who engage in close combat. Based on the results of the technical and operational assessments from the March exercise, participants may be invited to participate in future U5G exercises which will progress through more complex scenarios and environments.

The Advanced Naval Technology Exercises (ANTX) are a series of exercises led by the NR&DE where industry, academia, and Government R&D organizations are invited to demonstrate emerging technologies and engineering innovations in operationally relevant environments and scenarios. Each ANTX exercise, or series of exercise(s), is focused on mission essential tasks. This notice is for the U5G 18 exercises which will be conducted between March2018 and February 2019. This notice will be updated with information related to future U5G 18 exercises.

The U5G 18 exercises are guided by a core team of operational, acquisition, and technical subject matter experts from: Marine Corps CD&

I, Marine Corps Warfighting Lab (MCWL), and the Naval Research and Development Establishment (NR&DE). Technical and operational assessments will be incorporated into a final report that informs capability development, experimentation, studies, wargaming, proto-type development, rapid capability development, and future Marine Corps acquisition decisions.

This Notice is NOT a solicitation for proposals or quotations. The purpose of this Notice is to invite industry, academia, and Government R&D organizations to demonstrate innovative operational concepts, non-developmental technologies, and/or engineering innovations that provide cost-effective alternatives that enhance the ability to gain advantage and win in urban combat. Exercises may be performed in operational urban littoral environments, on the beach, onboard ships, and/or onboard aircraft.

Urban ANTX Concept of Employment.

A Marine Air Ground Task Force (MAGTF) is given missions to operate in an urban environment. The ANTX will explore the five domains of air, space, cyber, logistics, and intelligence, but will focus on how those areas effect the operation in the urban environment at the company level. The ANTX uses two vignettes to provide context for employment: 1) a rifle company must secure a key piece of infrastructure in a hostile environment where adversaries blend with civilians requiring a high degree of urban situational awareness, precision effects, and minimal signature; 2) a rifle company as part of a larger operation must conduct offensive operations to clear a complex urban area consisting of multiple city blocks, underground corridors (subway, sewer basements, etc.), and multi-story buildings. Once cleared they must secure and defend the area while potentially providing assistance to civilians remaining. During the course of both vignettes the rifle company is continually conducting offense, defense, and stability

Offensive operations are characterized by maneuver warfare centered on units locating, closing with, and destroying enemy formations. Defensive operations are centered on force protection and protection of critical infrastructure. Defensiveoperations can be more static in nature, but may involve some limited offensive actions, as well as an active patrolling effort. Assistance operations focus on security of the population, return to order, and support to host nation civil authorities. These operations will most often occur simultaneously. The urban fight is physically, mentally, and emotionally challenging as urban environments hide adversaries, blend adversary actions with civilian, require increased combat loads, and tap the stamina and strength of those maneuvering through the urban canyons, buildings, tunnels and populations.

The urban area will often consist of a modern core surrounded by dense migratory and austere slums. There are industrial complexes, government facilities, and economic zones distributed throughout the area. Transportation, communications, and civil support infrastructure is modern but degraded with varying degrees of quality linked to socio-economic demographics. The compartmentalized and partitioned nature of the urban landscape will require small units to operate distributed and separated by streets, buildings, floors and rooms with varying heights and composition. Thus the urban environment quickly absorbs personnel—the ANTX looks for technology to exponentially increase the capabilities of the individual and small unit.

An urban environment is alive and must be understood. Marines must know and understand the construction and layout of buildings; the layout of any sub-surface tunnels, sewers, etc.; and the interactions between the various populations, civic/community leaders, and zones within the city. This knowledge is required in planning, execution, and assessment providing Marines understanding of what has occurred and potentially will occur.

The construction, composition, and density of buildings will interfere with more traditional VHF SINCGARS, UHF LOS, and UHF SATCOM communications as small units move from room to room, floor to floor, and building to building,while conducting offensive, defensive and stability missions. Currently, unit headquarters and leadership struggle to maintain their situational awareness of the physical location of friendly units as they attempt to apply precise fires and effects in the urban areas. The very real possibility of fratricide will create delays in the approval and clearance of fires and effects and could result in increased friendly casualties or unnecessary civilian casualties.

Degrading or denying the enemy’s UxS employment throughout the urban environment is currently a major challenge for Marine Rifle Companies. Future capabilities must enablelimiting adversary ability to command and control their activities and operations against us by disrupting or monitoring activity across the electro-magnetic spectrum.

Employing maneuver warfare will require the ability to effectively combat the enemy’s reconnaissance and surveillance activities, disguise our intentions, and mislead the enemy through the use of decoys, signature management and signature reduction. Similarly, our ISR systems must penetrate the urban environment to identify enemy critical vulnerabilities.

As Marines attempt to maneuver from one position to another (across streets and open areas, from building to building, room to room, around corners, from rooftop to rooftop, or from surface to subsurface), they must be able to see and understand what is in the next room, next floor/level, or next building before entering. Additionally, they must be able to clear rubble and other obstacles in the streets quickly and efficiently. Depending on the enemy threat and their capabilities, Marines will have to deal with restrictive terrain (narrow streets, alleyways, hallways, etc.) that will expose them to devastating effects of enemy systems, such as improvised explosive devices, automatic weapons, rocket propelled grenades, and guided missile systems. Marines must also be able to obscure their movement from the enemy, disguise their intentions, blend in to the environment, and be capable of moving and maneuvering quickly from location to location.

The application of lethal and non-lethal affects will be constrained by limited visibility and our ability to rapidly locate, classify, and discriminate between threats and civilians. The limited exposure time to locate, classify, and discriminate between the enemy and civilians as they move from street to street, building to building, and room to room is currently a major challenge for Marines. The limited exposure and the mixing of enemy with civilians also impacts the yield options for lethal and non-lethal effects. Additionally, Marines must be able to effectively communicate with the local population to either exploit local knowledge or to co-opt them into supporting our cause or remain neutral. The proliferation of social media, our ability to forecast, shape, influence, and monitor the ‘pulse’ of the population will be critical to conducting successful operations.

Operations in urban environments are man-power and resource intensive so the ability to sustain these operations is paramount. Small distributed units will potentially require sustainment more often and must be supplied throughout the sub-surface, surface, and super-surface areas of the urban environment. To further reduce the strain placed on Marine logistics requirements, Marines must be capable of foraging for basic necessities whenever and wherever possible for items such as water and electricity. When external supply is required, the amount of supply must be balanced with the carrying capacity of the individual Marine or the unit supplied. The distributed nature of employment will also create stress and strain on military and civilian medical requirements. Operations in an urban environment are typically casualty intensive, which makes the relative isolation of small units even more concerning. The ability for small units to locally stabilize and rapidly evacuate casualties, both vertically and horizontally, is critical to survival. The urban environment offers many challengesbut for the ANTX our focus is on the following capability concepts:

Urban Situational Awareness: Fully grasping all aspects of how an urban community functions while identifying and monitoring the capabilities and intent of blue, red, and green actors within the urban environment. Urban situational awareness provides information related to friendly, enemy, environmental factors in regards to surrounding conditions and attendant circumstances which may impact the mission. Urban situational awareness provides persistent and episodic sensing, classification, and identification (before, during, and after) of physical (humans, equipment, vehicles, communications, infrastructure); spectrum (EO/IR, SAR, MTI, EM, acoustic, thermal, etc); and friendly, enemy, and local population signatures and activities (digging, running, loitering), facial recognition and biometrics.

Some important aspects of Urban Situational Awareness are:

  • Personnel: Information related to friendly, neutral & enemy actors, within the operational area, regarding position, movement, action, & disposition.
  • Environmental: Information about the operational area regarding location, physical and meteorological characteristics, and hazards that have a potential to impact operations.
  • Signature: Information related to friendly, enemy, environmental factors in regard to multi-spectral signals within the operational area.
  • Reconnaissance: Obtain information about the activities and resources of an enemy or adversary, or to secure data concerning the meteorological, hydrographic, or geographic characteristics of a particular area, in order to support the isolation, over watch, and identification of key information requirements.

Counter-Reconnaissance: Deny the enemy's ability to obtain, by visual observation, electronic sensing, or other detection methods, information about activities and resources of friendly forces or to prevent data collection concerning the meteorological, hydrographic, or geographic characteristics of a particular area.

Mapping and determining inter-visibility, avenues of approach and weapons effect within urban environments is critical to understanding from where and how our enemy will strike and identifying the best avenues for friendly maneuver. The counter-reconnaissance fight requires the ability to detect adversary capability, determine their intention, and detect critical vulnerabilities while denying the adversary the ability to target and determine our capabilities and vulnerabilities. This requires actively operating to detect personnel within structures, tunnels, and close urban terrain penetrating (looking through walls and barriers); the ability to provide sensors to monitor personnel entering a room, structure, or subterranean feature.Rapidly identifying missile, rocket, mortar, direct fire signatures, and launch positions provides a means to identify and target adversaries. Similarly projecting signatures and employing decoys / deception in the urban environment is vital to protecting our vulnerabilities.

Three sub components of Urban Counter-Reconnaissance are:

  • Signature Management: To understand, mask, and alter a unit's physical, technical, or administrative signatures in order to protect critical information associated with their operations.
  • Deceive: To mislead enemy decision makers, thereby causing the adversary to take specific actions (or inactions) that will contribute to the accomplishment of the friendly mission.
  • Detect Enemy Sensors: To discover or discern the existence or presence of.

Fires and Effects: The use of weapons systems or other actions to create specific lethal or non-lethal effects on a target. These effects could include kinetic, electronic, cyber, etc. Marine Rifle Companies require both mass and precision fires solutions. These fires must penetrate urban structures with or without destruction. The ability to incapacitate, damage and destroy equipment, personnel, EM spectrum, as well as to provide obscuration of systems and personnel when in a CYBER contested environment is essential. Solutions can include direct and indirect fires that produce a thermobaric, blast, fragmentation, electro-magnetic pulse, directed energy and provide scalable effect to achieve the desired result without collateral damage.

The ability to provide persistent, wide area imagery capable, airborne ISR throughout the urban complex is essential to identifying threats and opportunity; similarly an airborne or semi-autonomous “guardian angel” is essential to protecting friendly critical vulnerabilities. One of the goals for this “guardian angel” is to enable Marines from within the rifle company to control its sensors and access its sensor information, while simultaneously being able to direct kinetic and non-kinetic effects

Guidance should provide fire and forget systems operable from enclosed space with variable attack profiles to defeat active and passive protection.

  • Minimal launch or employment signature with extended loiter time to acquire.
  • Adjustable range that can arm and achieve effect at short arming range (e.g. 20M) and capable of achieving effect at variable ranges.
  • Minimal launch signature with near immediate launch to impact.

Indirect fire systems that can be employed from concrete or asphalt without preparation of the surface and provide volume of fires to rapidly suppress and destroyare highly desired. At the same time, precise fires that acquire, track, and guideto engage stationary and moving targets are critical.

Weapon system: single system with interchangeable munitions; or multiple munitions compatible with current or programmed weapons inventory; man packable; small vehicle ); Interoperable with current fire control systems ; extended round magazine.

Non – Lethal Effects: Capable of dispersing crowd; capable of incapacitating individuals or personnel within a room; capable of disrupting power, water, traffic control, telecom (WiFi, cell), radio/TV; internet for selected periods in specific or broad areas (one building; one block; 4 by 4 blocks); and capable of delivering messages directly to potential adversary or non-combatant communications devices.

For the purposes of the U5G Fires and Effects submissions, some important definitions are:

  • Effect:The physical or behavioral state of a system that results from an action, a set of actions, or another effect. This includes both lethal & non-lethal effects against adversary and/or potential non-combatants.
  • Accuracy: The ability to prosecute a target within a given standard of precision.
  • Accessibility: The ability of the requesting unit to deploy the requested asset in a tactically relevant timeline.
  • Engagement Profile: The characteristics and capabilities of the system from system emplacement, weapon launch, time of flight, and impact.
  • Warhead / Fusing: Characteristics or effects of the round (e.g., Blast Frag, Electromagnetic, thermobaric, etc.) and fusing.

Command and Control C2: Reliable and resilient command and control capable of penetrating urban architecture and subterraneanfeatures, that enables extended and mutual support of distributed units. Small units operating within an urban environment require a common operatingpicture(COP) capable of displaying friendly, enemy (indicates criminal, potential enemy, conventional, SOF, militia), and local population; that provides user defined graphics; supports immediate orders and directions; navigation; fire support to a Category I Target Location Error (TLE) standard and logistics support.This COP/C2 architecture must be scalable from team to above company level. Desired COP characteristics include: user defined friendly, enemy, and population location; linkage to urban situational awareness mapping; automated point and click fires, to include weapons employment (range, wind, building composition, friendly location, TLE, etc) and collateral damage estimation algorithms down to the Joint Fires Observer level, and logistics support.

Desired reliable and resilient data and voice communications in the urban environment include: minimal standard is voice, text, position location information, and cross-banding Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR)multiple bi-directional sensor streams (up to 100) from urban environments to higher headquarters; capabilities to communicatein urban canyons (external to external); capabilities to communicate from internal structures to other internal structure; and internal (structures, subterranean) to external (outside structure, above ground).

Also desired are multiple communications pathways that are resilient, adaptable and self-healing that provide the ability to autonomously retransmit and relayand that are resistant to jamming, provide security and Electromagnetic (EM) hardening. Communication capabilities that are scalable to provide low and high power and operate in low and / or high bandwidth are also desired.