U.S. Air Force studies new tool to manage battlefield spectrum

The U.S. Air Force has started market research for a new electromagnetic battle management capability, the Department of the Air Force Multidomain Adaptive Management and Battle Space Awareness, or DAF-MAMBA, which it describes as part of the Advanced Battle Management System. The notice, posted on Nov. 4 by the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center at Hanscom Air Force Base, Massachusetts, supports an analysis of alternatives and gives companies until 5 p.m. Eastern on Nov. 11 to respond.

The sources-sought notice, FA222627R0002, states the problem plainly: legacy methods for managing the electromagnetic spectrum are inadequate and put operations in the electromagnetic operational environment at risk. The Department of the Air Force wants information on technologies, tools and methods for the battle management of systems that operate in the spectrum, so that its forces can establish and keep freedom of action there, and it says DAF-MAMBA will give operators situational awareness, decision support and command and control at both operational and tactical levels.

The requirements sit in a controlled unclassified attachment that companies must request access to, and the notice says SIPRNet access, the Pentagon’s classified Secret-level network, is needed for further information. The notice gives no budget, schedule or quantity, and it says the U.S. Air Force does not plan to award a contract based on the responses.

An analysis of alternatives is the formal study the Pentagon uses before committing to a new acquisition program. It compares possible solutions, from buying existing products to modifying fielded systems or developing something new, against cost, performance and risk, and its findings normally shape the requirements and acquisition strategy that follow. A sources-sought notice at this stage tells the U.S. Air Force which companies and technologies could feed into that comparison.

The electromagnetic spectrum covers everything from radio and satellite communications to radar, GPS and electronic warfare, and almost every modern weapon system depends on it. U.S. Air Force doctrine treats spectrum operations as a combination of electronic attack, electronic support, electronic protection and electromagnetic battle management, and it describes battle management as the function that ties the others together. In practice, that means building a near-real-time picture of who is transmitting where, where friendly signals are being jammed or interfering with each other, and where friendly electronic attack is being used, then giving commanders the tools to assign frequencies and direct effects to match their plans.

The U.S. Air Force has been working on that problem for several years. In fiscal 2023, the service commissioned RAND to characterize its electromagnetic battle management function, and one of the resulting volumes found that spectrum management, which RAND describes as a core part of battle management, still relied on fragmented databases and enterprise tools that needed updating. At the joint level, the Defense Information Systems Agency released the first version of Electromagnetic Battle Management-Joint, a cloud-hosted tool that gives combatant commands a common operating picture of the spectrum, in 2023.

DAF-MAMBA sits within a larger and longer effort. The Advanced Battle Management System began as the U.S. Air Force’s contribution to the Pentagon’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control vision of linking sensors and weapons across the services, and it is now managed under the Department of the Air Force’s command, control, communications and battle management organization as part of what the service calls the DAF Battle Network. The U.S. Air Force requested more than $1 billion for the Advanced Battle Management System in fiscal 2026, nearly twice its 2025 request, and in May 2026 L3Harris announced it had been selected to develop parts of the system’s digital infrastructure.

L3Harris and Shield AI have flight-tested an electromagnetic battle management system called Distributed Spectrum Collaboration and Operations with Shield AI’s autonomy software, and other companies offer spectrum sensing and management software aimed at military users. The notice does not name any company or existing product, and the market research is open to any firm that can handle controlled unclassified documents.