Tools for engineering of complex, embedded, high-performing real-time systems comprise a critical technology area. 21st Century Systems, Inc. proposes to design and eventually (in Phases II and III) develop and commercialize an environment tool-suite that will perform systems synthesis for such… More

In an information-rich environment, the possibility of enhancing the decision-making processes and outcomes is closely tied to the proper and timely management and analysis of information. In a team decision making environment coopertion, communication, collaboration, shared situational awareness… More

In an information-rich environment, the possibility of enhancing the decision-making processes and outcomes is closely tied to the proper and timely management and analysis of information. In a team decision making environment coopertion, communication, collaboration, shared situational awareness… More

21st Century Systems, Inc. (2CSI, formed April 1996) proposes a tool suite which will combat architectural design errors in large-scale, high-assurance systems through systematic and intelligent simulation and modeling of alternate designs. The suite will feature a wide range failure analysis,… More

Not Available Recent activities in the development of electromagnetic directed energy for defense against missiles have focused on compact explosive driven sources of high power microwaves among several other technologies. There exist several issues which need to be addressed in order to bring this… More

In response to Small Business Innovative Research solicitation AF01-053, 21CSI is pleased to propose the development of a proof-of-concept software decision aid for satellite command composition. Our decision aid, the Satellite Operator Decision Aid andTraining System (SODATS), will be built from… More

A military combat unit must

21st Century Systems, Inc. proposes to research and realize agent-based decision support system under uncertainty for submarineoperations. We will use a highly innovative hybridBayesian/differential game modeling approach to tackle thisproblem. The resulting theory and technology will… More

In response to Small Business Innovative Research solicitation OSD01-CR10, 21CSI is pleased to propose the development of a proof-of-concept software knowledge assessment tool for TPED teams. Our assessment tool, the TPED Knowledge Acquisition andAssessment System (TPED-KAAS), will be built from… More

For efficient space operations, and for effective space force enhancement to terrestrial forces, Aerospace Operations Center (AOC) personnel must be continuously aware of the status of on-orbit assets, payload coverage, reacting to system degradations andfailures, and responding to intolerant… More

For efficient space operations, and for effective space force enhancement to terrestrial forces, Aerospace Operations Center (AOC) personnel must be continuously aware of the status of on-orbit assets, payload coverage, reacting to system degradations andfailures, and responding to intolerant… More

"A military combat unit must "see" the battlefield better than the enemy, decide sooner than the enemy what to do, "move" to fight effectively and "shoot" to destroy the enemy. As the US Army moves toward weapons systems for the digital battlefield, newer,lighter weight and more capable hardware is… More

"In response to Small Business Innovative Research solicitation A01-207, 21CSI is pleased to propose the development of a proof-of-concept software decision aid that aggregates space objects into a single, integrated space picture. Our decision aid,SituSpace, will be built from the bottom up to… More

"21st Century Systems, Inc. (21CSI) proposes to continue its research and realization of an agent-based decision support system, EXLOG21, for logistics and maintenance operations. In Phase I we researched the base theoretical underpinnings for expeditionarylogistics and constructed a convincing… More

"21st Century Systems, Inc. (21CSI) proposes to continue its research and realization of an agent-based decision support system, EXLOG21, for logistics and maintenance operations. In Phase I we researched the base theoretical underpinnings for expeditionarylogistics and constructed a convincing… More

"21st Century Systems, Inc. proposes to research and realize an agent-based decision support system for logistics and maintenance operations. We will use a highly innovative hybrid Bayesian/differential game modeling approach to tackle this problem. Theresulting theory and technology will facilitate… More

"In response to Small Business Innovative Research solicitation BMDO02-016, 21CSI is pleased to propose the development of a proof-of-concept sensor intranet and decision aid software application that ties disparate and legacy sensors into a net. Ourconcept, Sensor-AEDGE, will be built from the… More

"The goals of an enhanced mobile infantry, a weapons system that leaves the warrior with his whole mind free to handle his weapons and notice what is going on around him, as expressed in Heinlein's timeless Starship Troopers is becoming a reality todaythrough the innovative progress being made by… More

As we progress towards the network-centric environment envisioned by JV2010 and JV2020, our dependency upon space assets to meet our force enhancement (C4, weather, navigation, intelligence, surveillance, etc.) requirements is expected to growexponentially. This trend is not only for our forces,… More

There are major changes in today's business methods. Expensive and time consuming travel for gathering project personnel together will be replaced, in part, by network-centric technology. Management directives of large corporations are increasinglystipulating the use of a collaborative workspace… More

Most of today's precision guided weapons use Global Positioning System (GPS) signals to gain improved accuracy. But, as Operation Iraqi Freedom recently showed, foreign militaries have equipment to locally jam GPS signals. Another effective method ofautonomous navigation is necessary to ensure… More

72526S03-I Collaboration on experimental nuclear physics projects is international and requires hundreds of participants. Due to the sheer size and complexity of the experiments, a great deal of the experimental planning, equipment design, preparation, and assembly must be carried out prior to the… More

Agents, Agent Architectures and Agent-based applications have become a phenomena in recent years with seemingly everyone jumping on the bandwagon. However, as with any truly revolutionary breakthrough technology, Agents have lacked standards and rulingbodies to govern the direction of the bandwagon… More

As demonstrated with recent engagements, US forces will not go into combat alone. Multinational coalition forces will be the norm and our forces must flexibly adapt to the command and control (C2) environment with the newly formed team. Whether a neighboror long time ally with similar but… More

It is a global extent of terrorist networks, opposed to large powers, attacking the U.S Navy abroad, U.S. Embassies, and now in our homeland. Traditional methods are based on defending from what has happened in the past:

In response to SBIR solicitation OSD03-027, 21st Century Systems, Inc. (21CSI) is pleased to propose investigating and developing a software agent system organized in a hierarchically networked architecture that incorporates use of multiple existingsystems into a high-level information fusion… More

21CSI proposes, in Phase II, to deliver to the Navy a working prototype of the Sentinel Net system: A wireless, distributed asymmetric threat detection,reporting and situational awareness system for naval force protection. Through a specially designed system of networked client devices linked to a… More

At the start of one new weapon development program, the projected cost of integration was more than the weapon development program itself. It resulted in killing the program. It's better now, thanks to the development and widespread use of a standard interconnection system. MIL-STD-1760 capable… More

Keeping the Air Force assets flying is difficult enough at depot level where there are extensive facilities and expert help but in austere environment these advantages aren't present. A recent innovation, the Portable Maintenance Aid (PMA), is a new tool to the help the human through these… More

The goal of a sensor manager is to cue the right sensor to perform the right service on the right target at the right time. This task essentially implies JDL Level 4 strategies and algorithms for control and action. In response to SBIR MDA04-023, 21st Century Systems, Inc. is pleased to propose… More

There is a need to automate training, performance evaluations, and knowledge formation for personnel but especially expeditionary forces. The immediacy and high levels of performance required of expeditionary forces can push training tools and techniques to their limits. In response to SBIR… More

Traditional military command & control (C2) usually evokes images of operators in command posts centers. But what about the mounted or dismounted soldier trying to get from A to B without getting blown up? It's C2 as well, just a different scale. The digital battlefield provides an explosion of… More

The capability to gather, analyze, and integrate vast amount of information from diverse data resources in various heterogeneous types and forms, and to distill from them the valuable intelligence leads or cohesions with respect to command and control decisions has become the top priority for U.S.… More

The need for autonomous unmanned vehicles is becoming more evident. Unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) provide benefits ranging from manpower reduction and force multiplication, to performing missions too dangerous for manned platforms. One of the most critical challenges is the avoidance of… More

Compared to fighting in the open field, military operations in urban terrain is the greater challenge. It's riskier and costlier in manpower, assets, and time. Warfighting in cities adds so many challenges that most commanders would prefer to bypass population centers. But that is not always… More

There is strong requirement to field an interactive simulation environment that will model tactical and environmental entities in real time and enable goal-directed scenario generation. This capability is especially desirable in system integration, testing, certification, training and life-cycle… More

When the call comes in to respond to a time critical target, there is little time for the watchstander to weigh the myriad factors that go into targeting decisions. We know where the target is now, but where will it be when the weapon system arrives to engage it? In order to plan for an effective… More

Compared to fighting in the open field, military operations in urban terrain (i.e., man-made, built-up areas) is the greater challenge. It is riskier and costlier in manpower, resources, and time. The urban environment easily provides the in-place enemy with settings for ambush, places to hide,… More

Submarine commanders are currently hamstrung in tactical mission planning due to the limited capability to assess operational options in response to changes in the threat, environment or assigned objectives. Current techniques to evaluate the assigned mission take little advantage of the recent… More

Keeping the Air Force assets flying is difficult enough at depot level where there are extensive facilities and expert help. But in an austere environment, these advantages aren't present. A recent innovation, the Portable Maintenance Aid (PMA), is a new type of tool to help the human through these… More

The time and cost it takes to integrate new airborne weapons on platforms is still too great. The current F-15E Strike Eagle weapon integration timeline is 4 years, from requirements to fielding, and costs up to 20 million dollars. What is really needed for rapid aircraft-store integration is a… More

The capability to correlate and integrate disparate information from heterogeneous intelligence sources that come with varying degrees of certainty and reliability is crucial for counter-terrorism operations (CTO). 21st Century Systems, Incorporated is pleased to propose continuing its successful… More

Submarine commanders are currently hamstrung in tactical mission planning due to the limited capability to assess operational options in response to changes in the threat, environment, or assigned objectives. Current techniques to evaluate the assigned mission take little advantage of the recent… More

In the realm of asymmetric threat detection, it is imperative to spot suspicious indicators in the ever-growing volume, variety, and complexity of data. It is recognized that quick detection of threats at the planning, attempting, and line formation stages is key and intelligence is crucial to… More

The challenge of providing the sensor operator and tactical decision maker with all pertinent acoustic information and clues associated with any given contact has long eluded a solution. The technology to address this shortcoming is now available and we are pleased to have this opportunity to… More

Software Agents and Agent Systems are steadily transitioning from small research projects to mainstream industrial and government markets. Multi-agent systems will live up to the expectations of implementing an openly-architected replacement of legacy stove-piped systems by providing flexible,… More

Culturally diverse people are now participating in military multinational coalition applications as well as in extreme environments - once the province of American males drawn from a relatively homogenous cultural pool. Human biases and routines, capabilities and limitations strongly influence… More

As demonstrated with recent engagements, US forces will not go into combat alone. Multinational coalition forces will be the norm and our forces must flexibly adapt to the command and control (C2) environment with the newly formed team. Whether a neighbor or long time ally with similar but… More

The capability to gather, analyze, and integrate vast amounts of information from diverse resources in various types and formats, and to distill valuable and actionable intelligence leads from them has become a top priority for U.S. military commanders. 21st Century Systems, Inc. is pleased to… More

The Navy has issued a challenge to develop an interactive simulation environment that will model tactical and environmental entities in real time and enable goal-directed scenario generation. This will serve the needs of a myriad of applications, such as system integration, testing, certification,… More

Human biases and routines, capabilities, and limitations strongly influence overall mission effectiveness; whether during real operations or simulations using models of humans. Many missions and environments challenge human capabilities (e.g., combat stress, waiting, fatigue from long hours or… More

Information overload and cluttered user interfaces cause decreased situational awareness and lowered performance of the human operators. Irrelevant data increases searching times for tasks requiring the identification of threats, causing delayed decisions. Cognitive burden on the user increases as… More

Complex relationships between power system components and utilization equipment require large amounts of measurement points along the service train and estimation of service capability. In the past, false alarms, missed failures, mishandled preventive maintenance scheduling, and underutilized… More

The essence of information assessment is the process of distinguishing signals from noise. In the military, intelligence analysts are constantly searching for signals that might suggest an adversary's intentions. In each case the analyst must search through a quantity of data, searching for… More

Crowd management is an important task for civilian, police, and military groups that can be very difficult on its own, and becomes even more difficult in hostile environments. The difficulty comes from the many levels of granularity that events can happen at. Making such a system automated adds… More

There is an increasing demand for systems with more autonomous operations interacting with other autonomous and human-based systems. What is needed is an architecture bundled with developer tools for the creation of intelligent real-time control systems that marry the talents of modern control… More

In an Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) scenario, the ability for the rescuers to maintain an accurate and comprehensive situational awareness is critical to allow them to maximize their effectiveness in a chaotic and dangerous environment. Timeliness is, of course, paramount to saving lives, and… More

Our adversaries understand the need to limit their exposure time to preying USAF eyes. The enemy hides, exposes only during the briefest of time and then hides again. As the enemy adapts to our technology and finds methods to minimize their exposure, the F2T2EA process had to be compressed from… More

The recent outbreak of E. coli only served to remind us of the vulnerability of our food production. It stirred memories of an amateur bio-terror attack using salmonella in local salad bars in an attempt to influence a local election in Oregon. In handling any bio-terrorism event, there are two… More

Information overload and cluttered user interfaces cause decreased situational awareness and lowered performance of the human operators. Irrelevant data increases searching times for tasks requiring the identification of threats, causing delayed decisions. Cognitive burden on the user increases as… More

Software Agents and Agent Systems are making their way from the university research labs to the mainstream industrial and government markets. We are witnessing a revolutionary change in the computing environments as legacy stove-piped systems are giving way to flexible customizable multi-agent… More

There are many challenges in addressing the problem of Political Will. The first is developing a clear, complete, consensual definition of Political Will driven by both theory and field practice. But a larger challenge is deconstructing and unpacking the Political Science and Social Science concept… More

In today's complex, multi-dimensional, coalition, effects-based campaigns; commanders must be able to "see" the situation in their decision making tasks. The modern fighting force is privy to an enormous array of intelligence gathering, database, and sensor sources of information to the point of… More

We currently have thousands of security cameras in the war zone. Automated Target Recognition (ATR) is essential for reducing the manpower required for monitoring the security cameras. Having human operators staring at video screens for hours at a time is not an effective use of our forces. ATR is a… More

Multi-UAV supervisory control and UAVs operating along side of manned operations in the terminal approach area will not occur until improvements are made in UAV mission management. Indeed, the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board indicated that significant advancements needed to be made in the realm… More

The United States has a mechanized military that relies heavily on fuel availability. Delivering large quantities of fuel is a logistical burden. Besides the cost of the fuel itself, we must transport it, store it, and protect it. Fuel convoys are large targets moving along predicable paths. They… More

In an Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) situation, the ability for the rescuers to maintain an accurate and comprehensive situational awareness is critical to allow them to maximize their effectiveness in a chaotic and dangerous environment. Timeliness is paramount to saving lives, and… More

Understanding shallow underwater environment is increasingly important, but shallow water acoustic models depend on a large number of factors that interact in a non-linear fashion. There are many different acoustic back scatter models, but many of the models haven't changed in years and some of the… More

The potential of cell phone use in asymmetric operations against coalition forces has grown exponentially and has expanded well beyond the now-familiar IED detonators. The ubiquitous cell phone is the easiest way for insurgents to communicate in order to coordinate attacks and reconnoiter… More

The Navy's conversion to a 'Rapid Response - Force Protection' tactical mindset due to asymmetric threats requires a change in hardware to support the new tactics. Exposing a potential adversary's intent is key to determining the actions a commander should take. Unfortunately, with regards to aerial… More

Dependable electrical power is critical for complex weapon systems. An advanced diagnostic and prognostic capability would improve the Navy's fight-through capability. 21st Century Systems, Incorporated is teaming with the University of Missouri - Rolla and Qualtech Systems, Incorporated to continue… More

The essence of information assessment is the process of distinguishing signals from noise. In the military, intelligence analysts are constantly searching for signals that might suggest an adversary's intentions. In each case, the analyst must search through a quantity of data, searching for… More

High fidelity, large scale simulations of complex systems pose a very difficult situation to the scientist trying to understand the physical domain and characteristics of their system. Often, it is impossible to manually search through the data that can come out of these simulations, which may range… More

Providing commanders with accurate, on-the-spot, clear, concise, usable information wins battles and saves lives. With incoming information from many heterogeneous sources, the focus has been primarily on determining what information to present, and visual ways of communicating the information.… More

There is a need for a next-generation integrative decision support system for Space Control operations. This next-generation system should provide high-level capabilities for managing case files containing evidence, expert opinions, and data relationships. The system should enhance operator… More

In today's asymmetric warfare, there is a clear need to accelerate the flow of weapons from magazine to aircraft. This involves developing a semi-automated system that will significantly improve ordnance handling aboard air-capable ships. This system should prepare a Weapons Handling Plan using as… More

Historically speaking, subjectivity was mostly considered as problematic and undesirable. Recently, the availability of the inherently subjective folksonomies has made it readily apparent that inherent subjectivity is highly desirable and that it can be accounted for and utilized by superimposing… More

The driving force behind ONR's unmanned sea surface vehicle (USSV) program is the great potential for these versatile vehicles to support Navy ships in the littoral environment. However, if USSVs are to fulfill this expectation, efforts must be made to make them less challenging to operate in order… More

The monitoring of multiple UAV video sources is challenging, in part, due to the poor quality of the video received. Significant video degrading is caused by clouds, haze, and dust in the atmosphere; jitter and blurring from the UAV platform motion; and low video resolution due to sensor… More

High fidelity simulations of complex systems still pose a challenge to the scientist trying to understand its physical characteristics. The challenge is in finding useful bits in terabytes of data that directly relate to the nature of time-varying, multivariate data. An intelligent data mining… More

The monitoring of multiple UAV video sources is challenging, in part, due to the poor quality of the video received. Significant video degrading is caused by clouds, haze, and dust in the atmosphere; jitter and blurring from the UAV platform motion; and low video resolution due to sensor… More

The potential for radio communications to be used in asymmetric operations against coalition forces has grown exponentially and has expanded well beyond the now-familiar IED detonators. Expeditionary forces, in particular, convoys on the move, need an effective counter surveillance capability to… More

Current Army logistics systems contain massive amounts of data that need to be effectively extracted into actionable information. But, the databases themselves do not contain all that is needed to make it actionable. The Army needs an effective Enterprise Intelligence System to find data from many… More

The ability to see and understand the data is critical to situational awareness. As data becomes more prevalent, the need to link causal data into actionable information becomes paramount. Analysts are faced with mountains of data, and finding that piece of relevant information is the proverbial… More

To increase all-weather, visual search capabilities, modern submarine surface imaging systems have installed several different modality cameras in the periscope or photonic mast. The current system displays each sensor modality independently, where the operator must decide which modality is optimal… More

OBJECTIVE: Current Software and System Engineering (SSE) methodologies for Human System Integration provide a process or sets of processes by which to develop a SSE-HSI scheme of how one integrates humans, operations, systems, and technical perspectives with requirements, analysis, and verification… More

ABSTRACT: Airspace congestion with RPAs in close proximity to manned systems poses a serious threat for mishap. At present, RPA pilot training in airspace management is minimal. RPA operator training should consider communications, asset management, deconfliction, and coordination among RPA and… More

History is replete with"intelligence failures"that were not intelligence weaknesses at all, but an inability to"put the pieces together"in time. Quintessentially, the 9/11 attack is an example, but it is merely the one most remembered. Pieces of intelligence were collected, like… More

Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnissance (ISR) systems are diverse, and each one comes with its own interface to process and present imagery to the warfighter. When coupled with the complexities of processing multiple types of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) full motion video, it creates an… More

Critical information can be lost when lossy compression techniques are used in bandwidth limited environments, such as from unmanned systems. More serious, this lost information is unknown to the analyst, which can lead to incorrect analysis and potentially fatal conclusions. 21st Century Systems,… More

To improve safety, modern submarine surface imaging systems have multiple camera modes, such as optical, infrared, and more. Current systems display modalities independently, compelling the submariner to switch between sensors manually to glean the relevant information. Following a successful Phase… More

In the GMD battlespace, it"s critical to rapidly ascertain specific identifying characteristics of a track so follow-on sensors can match the same track. Currently, sensors communicate track data with differing biases and uncertainties with little data-rich content and attempts to utilize track… More

Situation/threat modeling and threat prediction require higher levels of data fusion to provide actionable information to the warfighter. Beyond sensor data and sources the analyst has control over, the use of out-sourced and re-sourced data are becoming more common. However, the current data fusion… More

Today"s intelligence exploitation has an information challengethere is a great deal of data being processed by a large number of analysts with insufficient ability to identify anomalies in the data. The process needs a capability that can facilitate a rapid understanding of complex information… More

Army logisticians and fleet managers need an effective method to extract actionable information from their large data stores. They need to extract root cause and case-based analysis to diagnose or predict breakdowns. An Enterprise Intelligence System that extracts data from multiple sources, fuses… More