November 18, 2024--After the initial launch of the Real-Time Information and Effects (RIE) program in 2021 with the Air Force, the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) has transitioned the project to a production OT award with a ceiling of $99M for use across the joint force. The RIE program operationalizes commercially and publicly available information, including foreign-language content from both physical and digital media, to deliver real-time analyses in important areas of responsibility. Analyses from the prototype identified useful trends, patterns, and relationships from around the globe that directly supported rapid follow-on operations and other actions overseas.
DIU received a total of 39 solution briefs for its initial solicitation in 2021. Vannevar Labs, headquartered in Palo Alto, was selected to develop a set of integrated commercial software and hardware tools that leveraged digital data from hostile military forces and infrastructure in areas of interest, using first party collected commercial and publicly available information, to enable meaningful decision making in operations. Through its prototype and use in multiple theaters and commands, Vannevar increased DoD’s capacity and speed to translate unstructured foreign language data, and produce insights at speed to inform senior leaders’ decision making and enable non-kinetic effects.
“MARFORPAC has received tremendous value working with DIU efforts to experiment and collaboratively develop new technologies. We look forward to continued collaboration with DIU to scale these technologies using this new production contract,” said Colonel Lawrence Hussey, U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Pacific (MARFORPAC), G39 Directorate, G39/G6 Division.
The iterative updates that are hallmarks of commercial companies, along with the use of emerging machine learning algorithms, allowed the DoD analysts to pull mission-relevant information at speed, providing useful and actionable information in a matter of hours, not days.
“With this DIU production scale contract, RIE technology will deliver cutting edge capabilities technology to the warfighter across a range of high priority missions,” said Doug Beck, DIU director. “Real-time knowledge technology supports missions across all the services and multiple combatant commands, and will only become more important over time.”
In one unclassified example of the RIE capability in action, Vannevar Labs supported U.S. military forces in the Indo-Pacific region during an August 2022 Congressional delegation to Taiwan led by the Speaker of the House. Their data and analytical tools delivered unique, otherwise unavailable insights into the interplay between China’s diplomatic signals and People’s Liberation Army activities, empowering military commanders with a deeper understanding of the operational context and enabling more informed decision-making.
“Utilizing public information of foreign adversaries, RIE was able to show how the military could use this open source data to identify trends and opportunities to act,” said Nat Higgins, Deputy Director of DIU’s Human Systems portfolio. “The broad applicability of this tool is seen across the Department and is already being seen to be integrated in a variety of scenarios with specific potential impact in INDOPACOM and EUCOM.”
Due to the need for this type of information across the Services and with our partners and allies, RIE has expanded the production user group to include 14 distinct organizations that include the Services, intelligence communities and also our Five Eye partners (United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand).