A -- INDUSTRY BRIEFING: RADIO FREQUENCY TAGS PROGRAM (POC: DR. MARK MCHENRY, DARPA/TTO, FAX (703) 841-4759) The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will present an industry briefing on the DARPA Radio Frequency (RF) Tags program on Monday, February 23, 1998 from 1300 -- 1800 at the Holiday Inn Arlington at Ballston, 4610 N. Fairfax Dr., Arlington, VA. Registration will begin at 1200. All interested industrial, educational, and private research and development organizations are invited to attend this briefing, but are requested to limit attendance to two participants per organization. This industry-wide briefing will provide information concerning DARPA's goals and objectives for the RF Tags program in anticipation of the release of a solicitation. At this briefing DARPA will present its program objectives and describe its vision of the RF Tags development, integration, test and demonstration program. In addition, information will be presented on other related DARPA programs and the RF Tags acquisition strategy, schedule, and funding plans. The briefing will be unclassified. PROGRAM OBJECTIVES: The DARPA RF Tags Program objectives are to develop technology to allow airborne radars (both Moving Target Indication (MTI) and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR)) to communicate directly with ground devices to provide identification of friendly assets, to communicate information from ground sensors to the platform, and to correct for errors in the radar-determined location of targets. There is significant and growing national investment and reliance on airborne radar for surveillance and targeting purposes. A significant technical barrier with this class of systems is the difficulty of obtaining target identification using radar data alone. This is especially true in present and future conflicts where clear battle lines are less likely to occur and friendly, unfriendly, and neutral forces will be mixed with non-combatants. It is envisioned that RF tags will greatly enhance the utility of airborne radar systems by aiding in the identification of unfriendly targets via the timely communication and fusion of unattended ground sensors (UGS) data with the radar picture. Tags will also help to identify friendly assets by adding a unique ID to their radar return that is fused to the radar picture. Airborne radars are also being considered for targeting stationary and moving targets. A targeting mission could require location accuracies better than several meters which is difficult to achieve with radars. By combining a GPS receiver with a tag, and using the tag to transmit the tag's geographic coordinates to the platform, the location of targets within a certain distance of the tag can be determined with great accuracy. This will allow rapid, all weather targeting with a wide range of airborne radar systems. While the immediate RF Tags Program goals are to enhance the utility of airborne radars, it is envisioned that there are significant space based radar applications of this technology. Finally, a key goal of the RF Tags Program is a system with very high security. The tag signal must have low probability of detection, intercept and exploitation. While this is an inherent feature of radar responsive tags, the government desires a tag system that is secure against an adversary with detailed knowledge of all aspects (except for crypto key information) and moderate technical capability. INDUSTRY BRIEFING REGISTRATION: Due to the large response anticipated for this briefing, each company is limited to a maximum of 2 representatives. Large corporations may send 2 representatives per major division. Pre-registration is strongly encouraged to avoid long delays in registering on-site the morning of the briefing. Contact Ms. Sandra Chacon at (703) 528-2470 (TEL), (703) 528-4715 (FAX), schacon@wod.srs.com (EMAIL) to pre-register. Provide the following information for each person attending the briefing: Name, Company/Division, Mailing Address, E-Mail Address, Tel #, Fax #. Following the briefing, DARPA intends to make public the list of attendees to the industry briefing.

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