The Department of Homeland Security’s science and technology directorate is seeking proposals for technologies that can perform crowd count and analysis aimed at providing first responders with enhanced situational awareness. 

The technologies will be considered for inclusion in the National Urban Security Technology Laboratory’s (NUSTL) market survey intended for law enforcement and emergency response agencies, the DHS said Friday. 

The proposals being sought must be able to conduct video and post-event analysis and not rely on facial recognition systems. 

“Utilizing real-time crowd analysis technology could allow for more accurate and efficient response operations to ensure the safety of everyone involved,” said Tyler Mackanin, NUSTL engineer. 

The DHS said the market survey report will be posted to the document library of the System Assessment and Validation for Emergency Responders program. The deadline for submission is on Sept. 17 and offerors can visit the request for information notice on the sam.gov website.

Intel has won a contract from the Department of Defense to help the semiconductor industry establish and demonstrate an intellectual property ecosystem for the first phase of a commercial chip fabrication initiative.

Intel said Monday it will work with IBM, Cadence, Synopsys and other companies to build foundry infrastructure under the DOD’s Rapid Assured Microelectronics Prototypes-Commercial program as the U.S. government is looking to expand domestic access to secure computer processors.

The National Security Technology Accelerator manages prototyping efforts for the department via the Strategic & Spectrum Missions Advanced Resilient Trusted Systems other transaction agreement — also known as S2MARTS OTA.

“One of the most profound lessons of the past year is the strategic importance of semiconductors, and the value to the United States of having a strong domestic semiconductor industry,” said Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger.

“When we launched Intel Foundry Services earlier this year, we were excited to have the opportunity to make our capabilities available to a wider range of partners, including in the U.S. government, and it is great to see that potential being fulfilled through programs like RAMP-C.”

DOD tapped Intel’s commercial foundry services 10 months after the department announced its $197.2 million investment to bolster the microelectronics industrial base.

Microsoft and IBM were the awardees of RAMP Phase 1 funds amounting to $24.5 million to modernize and secure “back-end” design processes

Separately, Intel Federal business and Qorvo secured $172.7 million to create novel packaging methods for the second phase of DOD’s State-of-the-Art Heterogeneous Integration Prototype program.

Gelsinger unveiled in March the company’s plan to invest up to $20 billion to build two chip factories in Arizona in a push to become a major foundry services provider in the U.S. and European markets.

ExecutiveBiz, sister site of ExecutiveGov, will host a virtual forum on Oct. 24 about securing the supply chain. Visit the ExecutiveBiz Events page to register for the “Supply Chain Cybersecurity: Revelations and Innovations” forum.

The U.S. Army is close to deploying a platoon of four Stryker combat vehicles equipped with 50 kilowatt-class laser weapon prototypes in fiscal year 2022 after completing an assessment of the new directed-energy capability.

Marcia Holmes, the service’s deputy director of hypersonics, directed energy, space and rapid acquisition, said in a statement published Friday the Army Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office and industry were able to develop and implement the first prototype of the Directed Energy Maneuver-Short Range Air Defense system within 24 months.

Holmes noted that the DE M-SHORAD laser system is meant to protect brigade combat teams and divisions from unmanned aerial systems, rockets, mortars, artillery and rotary and fixed-wing threats.

Col. Scott McLeod, DE M-SHORAD program manager, said the Army intends to demonstrate the capabilities of the weapon system in a joint and coalition exercise as part of Project Convergence 21.

"[PC 21] will be a big opportunity for us to show how we can integrate with our systems and demonstrate the capability against other threats," McLeod added.

The DE M-SHORAD development team demonstrated the capabilities of the prototype during a combat shoot-off at Fort Sill in Oklahoma in July. McLeod said program leaders collected user feedback and data to better improve the laser.

In August 2019, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman were selected to build competing laser prototypes for Strykers under an other transaction authority agreement that Kord Technologies secured from the Army.

Defense News cited sources that say Northrop has decided to drop out of the DE M-SHORAD competition after the company encountered a problem with the power and thermal management system prior to the shoot-off.

NASA has granted Psionic rights to use a light detection and ranging technology that the agency originally developed for use in robotic servicing of a satellite in low-Earth orbit.

Under a signed licensing agreement, the company can further develop and integrate the Kodiak lidar system with similar commercial technologies to support future space missions, NASA said Saturday.

The agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland designed the technology to generate a 3D image for data collectors to measure the altitude and position of the target’s surface.

Kodiak will function as part of a relative navigation system for the On-orbit Servicing Assembly, and Manufacturing 1 spacecraft on a mission to automatically refuel the government-owned Landsat 7 satellite.

Hampton, Virginia-based Psionic licensed a Doppler lidar technology from NASA's Langley Research Center in 2016.