DARPA Announces Participants in Effort to Develop Secure Data Delivery Tech

The Department of Defense‘s research arm has announced the three industry teams involved in its Mission-Integrated Network Control program.

MINC is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s effort to develop a new capability to securely deliver data to the right person in a contested environment. 

The goal of the program is to give warfighters “on-demand” connectivity using various approaches to network configuration and information flow, DARPA said.

CACI, BAE Systems Information and Electronic Systems Integration and Peraton Labs are under contracts to perform work under the program.

CACI teamed with Nokia Bell Labs, Network Centric Solutions and Phoel Technology Solutions; BAE is working with Apogee Research, RAM Laboratories and the regents of the University of California; while Peraton teamed with Charles River Analytics, Scientific Systems Company and the University of Memphis. 

DARPA said that the participants have already begun collaborating on the program and have completed their first workshop.

As part of Phase 1 of MINC, the participants will focus on delivering a minimum viable product that can be demonstrated in a military testbed.

Future phases will involve a demonstration in a live, virtual and constructive environment as well as forming partnerships to transition the technology. 

Mary Schurgot, MINC program manager in DARPA’s Strategic Technology Office, said that the program is expected to result in networks that can adapt to changes in mission and operational conditions without human intervention.

The contractors and their teammates are “re-imagining the state-of-the-art in commercial networking” to create the ability to translate mission objectives into network management rules, Schurgot added.