The Defense Innovation Unit has issued a solicitation for the Robotic Exclusion & Engagement Framework, or REEF, a joint U.S.-U.K. initiative to counter the increasing use of autonomous underwater vehicles by adversaries and non-state actors.
What Capabilities Are the US, UK Seeking Under the REEF Program?
According to the Commercial Solutions Opening the DIU posted Monday, the United States and the United Kingdom are seeking technologies that could protect critical infrastructure, including ports and harbors, and expeditionary forces from underwater threats.
The countries are interested in a cohesive suite of systems that integrates commercial off-the-shelf sensors, edge processing and software to detect, track, classify and defeat various undersea threats, including unmanned underwater vehicles, remotely operated vehicles and semisubmersibles.
The governments want scalable, rapidly deployable technologies capable of integrating with existing defense systems across diverse maritime conditions. Areas of interest include advanced sensing technologies, such as sonar, electro-optical/infrared systems, and distributed acoustic sensing, and artificial intelligence and machine learning tools to distinguish threats from biological or environmental noise. The program is also open to systems with kinetic capabilities, but preference will be given to non-kinetic approaches such as bubble curtains and rapidly deployable nets.
DIU said U.S. and U.K. government innovation teams will assess proposed technologies. A prototype other transaction agreement and follow-on production contract may be awarded as a result of the CSO. Responses are due April 3.
How Does REEF Align With DOW’s Broader Counter-Drone Efforts?
REEF aligns with broader efforts across the Department of War to address threats posed by the proliferating use of unmanned systems by adversaries and non-state actors. The Pentagon issued a separate solicitation for counter-small unmanned aerial system technologies in February to enhance detection, tracking and classification of aerial threats across both homeland defense and tactical environments.
