Army kicks off cyber and EW prototyping experiment

An annual prototyping experiment will give the Army a chance to size up emerging cyber and electronic warfare technologies.

soldiers at Fort Hood

WHAT: A call from the Army for white papers to demonstrate capabilities in cyber defense and electronic warfare, among other fields.

WHY: The Army has put a premium on using training scenarios to simulate complex cyber and electronic warfare scenarios, as evidenced by a recent pilot program.

The annual prototyping experiment, run through the Army Cyber Center of Excellence at Fort Gordon, Ga., is in that same spirit of rigorous training and advanced technical capabilities. The goal is to let vendors and others plug directly into the Army's existing operating environment to see how their technologies stack up.

Interested vendors and academic institutions are asked to submit their latest tools spanning a number of fields. In the cyber arena, Army officials are interested in malware forensics, insider-threat detection and software to help with defensive planning.

"The challenges facing our warfighters are too complex to make concept and acquisition decisions based upon a static display [demonstration] of capability," the announcement states. "Therefore, the intent of this event will be to discourage inert demonstrations of solutions in a stovepiped…manner. Instead, solutions will be integrated with existing systems and live data feeds to drive outcomes and concepts toward wartime realism."

White papers are due by Aug. 31.

Click here to read the announcement.