The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will hand over to the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, a program meant to help Marines develop concepts of multidomain fighting operations using a set of software training and experimentation tools.
DARPA said Tuesday that it concluded a five-day demonstration for the Prototype Resilient Operations Testbed for Expeditionary Urban Scenarios (PROTEUS) program with Marines this spring at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina and found that PROTEUS offered insights in support of the Force Design 2030 plan of the Marine Corps.
“Using the PROTEUS software, Marines were able to visualize and manipulate their electromagnetic footprint, apply logistics support automation, and obtain quantitative analytics on the effectiveness of force packages and tactics in real-time,” said John Paschkewitz, PROTEUS program manager at DARPA’s strategic technology office.
“PROTEUS brings the power of multi-domain force package and CONOPS (concept of operations) development to the platoon, company, and battalion. In terms of thinking about the future fight, where you have to be sensitive to your electromagnetic emissions or seek to employ unmanned assets in effective ways, PROTEUS is a powerful tool,” Paschkewitz added.
Companies that have developed technologies for PROTEUS are Cubic, Mitre, Metron, Cole Engineering Services, Data Machines Corp. and Guard Unit. Launched in 2017, PROTEUS has three components: ULTRA, COMPOSER and the Parametric Data Service.
ULTRA is a synthetic environment that acts as a multidomain operations military sandbox for analysis and experimentation. COMPOSER is a dynamic composition engine that includes logistics and electromagnetic spectrum operations wizards. PDS helps ensure that maps, models and other elements of COMPOSER wizards and ULTRA are authoritative and collects data from USMC sources to ensure that vehicle parameters, weapons ranges and radio specifications show actual capabilities.