{"id":51336,"date":"2024-05-03T22:55:03","date_gmt":"2024-05-03T14:55:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/darpa-selects-northrop-grumman-umbra-for-phase-ii-of-drift-program\/"},"modified":"2024-05-03T22:55:03","modified_gmt":"2024-05-03T14:55:03","slug":"darpa-selects-northrop-grumman-umbra-for-phase-ii-of-drift-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/darpa-selects-northrop-grumman-umbra-for-phase-ii-of-drift-program\/","title":{"rendered":"DARPA Selects Northrop Grumman, Umbra for Phase II of DRIFT Program"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n<p><strong>Northrop Grumman <\/strong>and&nbsp;<strong>Umbra<\/strong>&nbsp;have been awarded small contracts by the<strong> Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency<\/strong> (DARPA) to continue to the second phase of a program designed to collect data from radar-equipped satellites flying in formation and develop innovative algorithms to process the data for military applications.<\/p>\n<p data-uw-rm-sr=\"\">Umbra\u2019s contract under the Distributed Radar Image Foundation Technology (DRIFT) program is for $6 million and will last for six months and Northrop Grumman\u2019s is for $2 million and covers one year, a DARPA spokesperson said.<\/p>\n<p>The companies along with Jacobs Solutions and Terran Orbital received Phase I contracts from DARPA in late 2022 and early 2023. DRIFT is part of the agency\u2019s Mosaic Warfare concept to overwhelm and adversary with many weapons and sensor platforms.<\/p>\n<p>Umbra currently has eight synthetic aperture radar (SAR) sensing satellites on orbit. Last November, the company\u2019s first tandem pair of satellites were launched aboard the&nbsp;SpaceX&nbsp;Transporter-9 mission. Umbra plans to deploy 32 satellites in what it says will be \u201cstrategically designed pairs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>During Phase II, Umbra\u2019s satellites will generate bistatic and multistatic datasets for DARPA and Northrop Grumman to use in the development of processing algorithms.<\/p>\n<p>Collecting data from more than one satellite increases the range of radar returns, which in turn can improve object detection and insights, expanding the utility of SAR satellites. Umbra said that at the end of Phase II it will \u201cconduct an on-orbit demonstration showcasing the multistatic capabilities it has developed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>DARPA\u2019s fiscal year 2025 budget documents say that plans in FY \u201924 include on-orbit data collection in formation flying and joint radar operations, test and validation of algorithms using the satellite data, and \u201cbegin to optimize algorithms and software to run on tactically relevant timescales.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In FY \u201925, DARPA will continue to optimize the algorithms and \u201cdemonstrate tactical use cases scenarios for DoD applications,\u201d the document says. DARPA also says that technology developed under DRIFT will transition to the military services. The agency is requesting $7 million for the program in FY \u201925.<\/p>\n<p data-uw-rm-sr=\"\"><em>This story was first published by Defense Daily<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Northrop Grumman and&nbsp;Umbra&nbsp;have been awarded small contracts by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to continue to the second phase of a program designed to collect data from radar-equipped satellites flying in formation and develop innovative algorithms to process the data for military applications. Umbra\u2019s contract under the Distributed Radar Image Foundation Technology (DRIFT) [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51338,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51336"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}