AFRL Awards BlackSky Contract to Boost Moving Target Engagement Capabilities

The Air Force Research Laboratory has awarded Earth imaging and analytics company BlackSky Technology a contract with a $24 million ceiling to enhance moving target tracking solutions.

The Herndon, Virginia-based company will use its tasking and analytics platform, BlackSky Spectra, and third-party data to develop and demonstrate moving target engagement capabilities. The approach will show how artificial intelligence and machine-learning solutions contribute to tasking, multi-intelligence data collection and other moving target engagement processes, BlackSky said Wednesday.

According to Brian O’Toole, the company’s CEO, BlackSky’s software-first AI technique will provide machine-speed capability in detecting, tracking and identifying moving targets.

O’Toole pointed out that BlackSky Spectra has been enhanced to operate in resource-limited locations. The enhancement will enable the platform to gather intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance data in a hybrid environment of multiple government and commercial sources, he added.

In early March, BlackSky announced that it received a multimillion-dollar Department of Defense contract for subscription access to its AI-enabled Spectra tasking and analytics platform.

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