Since Vigilant Pursuit is a quick-reaction capability developed by CERDEC’s Intelligence and Information Warfare Directorate, or I2WD, for the U.S. Army G-2, Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, and not a program of record, operating and maintenance skills for the system are not taught in an Army schoolhouse.

The US Army/Research Development and Engineering Command Intelligence and Information Warfare Directorate has awarded a contract to Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) to design a vigilant pursuit (VP) system. Awarded in support of the US Army’s multi-functional teams (MfT), the $37m single-award firm-fixed price (FFP) contract has a performance period of one-year. Under the contract, the company will also provide services for the system that include production, testing, delivery, spares, training, and field service representative services. “We look forward to providing the US Army a vigilant pursuit system that leverages a flexible, extensible and modular architecture, enabling multi-functional teams to execute their mission-essential tasks and support manoeuvre-element missions.” As part of the contract, the company will work design a VP to allow MfT to provide tactical commanders with access to several theatre and national intelligence capabilities by making use of precise, real-time data provided by on-board sensors. SAIC will also enable the team to pursue and exploit, perform precision manoeuvre and immediate triage/site exploitation during the transmission of data on the mission. The platform agnostic VP system is a crew-served weapon of the MfT, which provides human intelligence and signals intelligence capabilities to enable soldiers to make successful decisions using cross-cueing and tipping in the battlefield. Designed to improve field intelligence, the quick reaction capability system is also employed by MfT to reduce the time taken to accurately generate time-sensitive detection, tracking and locating of targets.

Work under the contract will be carried out at the company’s facilities in South Carolina and Virginia, US.

1 / 2 Show Caption + Hide Caption – Vigilant Pursuit provides dedicated tactical pursuit vehicle-mounted and dismounted assets that utilize cutting-edge technologies, enabling Signal Intelligence, or SIGINT, and Human Intelligence, or HUMINT, Soldiers to cross-tip and cross-cue timely intelligence to more rapidly and accurately identify high-value targets. (Photo Credit: Kashia Simmons) 2 / 2 Show Caption + Hide Caption – Vigilant Pursuit provides dedicated tactical pursuit vehicle-mounted and dismounted assets that utilize cutting-edge technologies, enabling Signal Intelligence, or SIGINT, and Human Intelligence, or HUMINT, Soldiers to cross-tip and cross-cue timely intelligence to more rapidly and accurately identify high-value targets. (Photo Credit: Kashia Simmons) ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md. 27, 2015) -- Soldiers of an Army research center have worked to improve training for fellow Soldiers on a quick-reaction intelligence capability that better supports the system in the field and potentially reduces reliance on reach-back and in-field contractor support.

Non-commissioned officers from the U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center, or CERDEC, have expanded the training Soldiers receive on the Vigilant Pursuit system, a multi-intelligence system designed to reduce the time it takes to properly identify and take down a high-value target. Vigilant Pursuit combines human intelligence and signals intelligence capabilities, or HUMINT and SIGINT respectively, to provide Soldiers with information necessary to identify persons of interest while on a mission. HUMINT comes from information collected by Soldiers on people, while SIGINT is gathered by intercepting electronic signals. Vigilant Pursuit uses cross-cueing and tipping to enable Soldiers to make decisions that require time-sensitive responses. 'I'm a fan of this technology to find bad guys using one of these tools,' said Lt. Scott Fitzgerald, 109th Military Intelligence Battalion commander out of Joint Base Lewis-McCord, Washington.

'Vigilant Pursuit is user friendly and there was a lot of good training on the equipment. There was a lot of knowledge from trainers, and their recently deployed experience was helpful.' Since Vigilant Pursuit is a quick-reaction capability developed by CERDEC's Intelligence and Information Warfare Directorate, or I2WD, for the U.S.

Army G-2, Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, and not a program of record, operating and maintenance skills for the system are not taught in an Army schoolhouse. It is the responsibility of I2WD to train Soldiers on the system, said Sgt. 1st Class Tavaris Burke, CERDEC I2WD.

Vigilant Pursuit operations include HUMINT and SIGINT collectors, analysts, linguists and maintainers. For training purposes, these specialties are broken into two broader categories -- operators and maintainers. Operators' functions vary and can range from linguists to signal analysts, while maintainers must have the knowledge necessary to fix computer circuit boards and electronics for military intelligence systems such as Vigilant Pursuit. Training for both maintainers and operators has expanded since training on Vigilant Pursuit's new equipment began in February 2012.