The United States Air Force has awarded Maxar a $20 million cost-plus-fixed-fee contract to boost the capabilities of its Red Wing geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) platform through new algorithms and other advancements including AI tech.
The Red Wing GEOINT platform is the Air Force’s automated cloud-based GEOINT analysis architecture. The branch’s initial version of the platform was developed by Maxar, who was awarded a $14 million contract by the Air Force Research Lab in 2019 to develop Red Wing.
“While data is the critical fuel for geospatial analysts, the ever-increasing volume of available information requires increased levels of automation and more efficient workflows,” Maxar stated in a release at the time of the original award.
The Red Wing architecture enables analysts to focus on addressing some of the most challenging intelligence problems by automating time-consuming workflows. Red Wing also enhances and optimizes the production of actionable insights from raw information through advanced exploitation and visualization services and edge node processing.
“For ease of use, Maxar [designed] the architecture to integrate with legacy systems,” the company said.
The new contract will provide necessary advancements to the platform to improve the portability and flexibility of the architecture and deploy it across multiple domains, including various security domains and remote edge environments.
According to the announcement, Maxar will integrate the platform with external storage segments, new data sources, and visualization services, will develop new algorithmic capabilities, and will deliver robust algorithm characterizations to inform user expectations.
Under the new deal, Maxar will also provide “accelerated” processing, exploitation, and dissemination (PED) software, which aims to improve interoperability across traditionally disparate systems by providing GEOINT analysts with a robust PED environment that supports evolving mission needs.
Work under the contract is set to be completed by June 2026.
