Overview of the small unit operations situational awareness system

Maintaining situational awareness and communications for small unit operations in urban areas is a technical and operational challenge as experienced by military units in Bosnia, Mogadishu and more recently in Afghanistan and Iraq. The urban environment, characterized by massive steel and concrete canyons, tunnels, hallways, and intense radio frequency energy, is especially challenging for point-to-point mobile communications. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has developed a set of technologies that will enable the warfighter to maintain robust communications and situation awareness in urban areas as well as in open areas or dense vegetation. In this paper we present an overview of the DARPA small unit operations situational awareness system (SUO SAS) program, its objectives and methodology.