On July 23, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) announced that it has selected Orbital Insight, Inc., for up to $2 million in pilot funding for Project Aegir through NGA’s first Commercial Solutions Opening (CSO).
Project Aegir is NGA’s response to increasing customer requirements for rapid commercial analytics and unclassified intelligence products supporting maritime domain awareness. The CSO solicited commercial techniques for identifying, monitoring and tracking illicit maritime vessel activity in the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command area of responsibility.
“We challenged the commercial industry to show us the most innovative solutions to address hard problems in the Indo-Pacific theater,” said NGA Director of Commercial Operations Devin Brande.
NGA is leveraging CSOs as an innovative procurement method to expedite acquisition timelines, reduce barriers to entry and address ever-expanding mission needs. The entire CSO solicitation, from public announcement to selection, occurred in under 90 days.
“NGA’s first CSO used a new acquisition authority to increase the speed of procurements by bringing together mission experts in a streamlined evaluation process,” said Brande.
Eighty-two teams competed for the CSO, and 12 finalist teams were selected by a panel of analysts and collection managers from NGA and the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command to pitch in-person at the Defense Innovation Unit headquarters in Mountain View, California, July 8-12. Maritime experts from the U.S. Coast Guard Maritime Intelligence Fusion Center Pacific also attended the pitches at DIU to offer mission-based input.
DIU’s Senior Scientist and Program Manager for Remote Sensing Nirav Patel, PhD, hosted the pitch sessions, where finalists were assessed on their ability to fuse diverse data types to both identify maritime vessels and to increase confidence in using automation to confirm the characterization of maritime activity.
The finalists included: Airbus U.S. Space and Defense, Anduril Industries, Inc., BlackSky Geospatial Solutions, Inc., Freedom Technology Solution Group, HII Mission Technologies, Orbital Insight, Inc., NV5 Geospatial, Inc., Planet Labs Federal, Inc., Royce Geospatial Solutions, Inc., Space-Eyes (Channel Logistics, LLC), Striveworks, Inc. and Ursa Space Systems.
Over the next five months, pilot testing will be conducted on Orbital Insight’s proposed solution and capabilities, the results of which will determine any long-term contracts or broader acquisition efforts.
Source: NGA
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