The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) awarded BAE Systems a $7.8 million contract to develop tightly integrated machine learning software as part of the Multi-Sensor Exploitation for Tactical Autonomy (META) program.
This technology will enable advanced situational awareness and automatic target recognition (ATR).
Under the terms of the award, BAE Systems’ FAST Labs research and development organisation will provide Environmentally Adaptive Geospatial Learning and Exploitation, an innovative suite of machine learning and fusion algorithms.
The system integrates multiple elements of the company’s extensive autonomy portfolio to provide high confidence detection, tracking, identification, and intent understanding for critical mobile targets in contested environments, including targets under camouflage, concealment, and deception.
Mark Kolba, Program Manager for BAE Systems’ FAST Labs, said: “With the addition of environmentally adaptive processing, this solution bridges a critical gap in machine learning.
“Providing local situational awareness and human-like context of environmental conditions will greatly reduce false alarms.”
BAE Systems develops autonomous data exploitation capabilities for systems and sensors for potential use in US military operations across air and space domains.
The program builds on the success of the company’s Multi-intelligence ATR for Geospatial Intelligence Capabilities technology that was successfully developed through AFRL’s Study of Emerging Exploitation Developments program.
If you would like to join our community and read more articles like this then please click here.
Post written by: Matt Brown
RELATED ARTICLES
February 5, 2026
Maritime - Ultra Maritime to supply sonobuoys
The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) has formalised a £40 million contract with Ultra Maritime to supply sonobuoys for the
February 5, 2026
Air - Novel technology to counter illegal drones
UK Defence Innovation (UKDI), on behalf of the Ministry of Justice (MOJ), has launched a new themed competition to tackle
