News From USJFCOM: USJFCOM signs cooperative research and development agreement with Raytheon

Urban operations training image USJFCOM signs cooperative research and development agreement with Raytheon

U.S. Joint Forces Command signed a cooperative research and development agreement with Raytheon to collaborate and conduct basic, applied and advanced research to address some of the challenges joint warfighters face in the urban environment.

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By Robert Pursell
USJFCOM Public Affairs

(NORFOLK, Va. - Nov. 8, 2006) - U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) signed a cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA) with Raytheon earlier this week to address some of the difficult and emerging challenges joint warfighters face in the urban environment.

A CRADA represents a non-Federal Acquisition Regulation legal agreement between USJFCOM and one or more non-government parties, such as private industry and academia. CRADAs offer both parties an opportunity to share knowledge, personnel and facilities when conducting mutually beneficial research and development (R&D).

The CRADA between USJFCOM and Raytheon is a two-year cooperative agreement, with three one-year options, focused on developing a nationally accessible operations-oriented test bed for exploration and rapid deployment of net-centric capabilities and components for use in urban environments.

Various sites throughout Indiana, including Indiana National Guard's Muscatatuck Urban Training Center and Camp Atterbury facilities, the Naval Surface Warfare Center located at Crane, Ind., and facilities owned by Purdue University will serve as this test bed. Raytheon will provide USJFCOM network access to the Indiana test bed at their Suffolk offices.

As part of the agreement, USJFCOM and Raytheon will provide scientific, engineering, and
operational expertise as needed. Both will also provide material, equipment, concepts, scenarios, modeling and simulation tools, and network access to facilitate experimentation and evaluation of capabilities and concepts.

Dr. Russ Richards, who heads the USJFCOM Office of Research and Technology Applications (ORTA), explained the importance of this CRADA.

"Joint Forces Command is the executive agent for joint urban operations and to really explore new concepts and new capabilities that support urban operations we need to do experimentation. But, we don't have a place that we can do live experimentation very well," he said.

"This CRADA will be partnering with Raytheon, but there are other players will be working with us to develop this true live urban operations test bed up in Indiana."

The Muscatatuck Urban Training Center is an ideal urban environment for joint concept development and experimentation on urban operations. It's a complete town consisting of approximately 70 buildings, a hospital, power station, and subterranean tunnels located on a thousand acres of rural, isolated property in the heart of Indiana.

The Camp Atterbury installation is the home base for many Army National Guard and United States Army Reserve units that train and mobilize in Indiana. Camp Atterbury offers the unit commander the support required to function as a complete unit for mission training.

Dr. Richard Carter, science and technology advisor for USJFCOM's Joint Urban Operations Office, said the command will benefit by using the sites to experiment with new urban-related technologies.

"We're going to have access to both Camp Atterbury and Muscatatuck. Basically the National Guard troops who will be training there will be testing our technologies," he said.

"It's the Indiana National Guard that's giving us access to Muscatatuck and Camp Atterbury. Raytheon is providing us a lot of their urban-related technologies that they want us to test and access to their network operations data center. We're bringing subject matter experts and technology to the table also," said Carter.

USJFCOM will also have access to the Crane Division, Naval Surface Warfare Center, focused on harnessing the power of technology for the warfighter, and Purdue University, which will offer its facilities as needed.

The agreement with Raytheon is the fifth USJFCOM has entered since the Office of the Secretary of Defense delegated technology transfer authority (TTA) to the command last year.