The U.S. Special Operations Command plans to hold a “disrupter event†at the 2019 Special Operations Forces Industry Conference on May 20 to 23 in Florida to discuss potential approaches to support its “hyper-enabled operator†efforts with industry, National Defense Magazine reported Friday.Â
Jim Smith, acquisition executive at USSOCOM, said the command wants to explore the areas of data, presentation and computation to build technologies and enables the warfighter as well as logisticians, medics and psychological ops personnel to receive and analyze information real-time in the field. The command plans to “hyper-enable†troops with human-machine teaming, social network mapping, biometric tools, tactical communications and navigation, edge computing and analytics and stand-off identification and characterization, among other technologies.
Col. Alex MacCalman, director of SOCOM’s hyper-enabled operator joint acquisition task force, said artificial intelligence may also play a significant role in the program. In November, SOCOM tested 41 technologies from 39 companies for the program. The command plans to use other transaction authority agreements to create partnerships with industry to develop the hyper-enabled operator concept.Â
