Arthur McMiler
CACI International and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point will work jointly on electronic warfare technology advancements under a five-year cooperative research and development agreement, or CRADA. John Mengucci, CACI president and CEO, said in a statement Monday that the agreement a “groundbreaking” effort providing West Point cadets exclusive access to the company’s EW technology stacks for insights that can further improve the U.S. Army’s digital signals processing.
“Both CACI and the Army will reap significant benefits as we work together to continue to evolve this critical mission area,” added Mengucci, a Wash100 awardee.
Ways for Dominating the Electromagnetic Spectrum
The agreement’s first project will center on widening the EW technology application of GRID, short for GPU Radiofrequency IQ Dataplane, to enable enhanced real-time signal delivery, threat detection and the Army’s electromagnetic spectrum dominance on the battlefield. A technology stack providing graphic processing unit, or GPU, capabilities, GRID was developed for the Program Executive Office – Intelligence, Electronic Warfare & Sensors to support the Army’s EW systems.
Through the CRADA, West Point trainees will gain field access to CACI’s signals intelligence, or SIGINT, deployed across over 2,000 EW systems globally and designed to collect and counter more than 1,000 unique signals. The agreement enables USMA cadets to build radio frequency blocks to test GRID’s performance while creating systems and methods to extend the technology’s support on future waveforms for emerging operational requirements.
The deployment of CACI innovations and capabilities in the CRADA aims to boost the ranks of future EW and SIGINT operators to support national security goals, the company noted. CACI already had previous collaborative SIGINT development initiatives with active U.S. military branches, including the Army and the Navy.
