DARPA Disruptive Capabilities for Future Warfare

Sponsor Deadline: 

Jun 11, 2020

Sponsor: 

DOD Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Tactical Technology Office

UI Contact: 

DARPA Disruptive Capabilities for Future Warfare
HR001119S0054
Proposers are strongly encouraged to submit an executive summary and, if encouraged, a proposal abstract in advance of a full proposal. This procedure is intended to minimize unnecessary effort and cost in proposal preparation and review.

Grants.gov  https://www.grants.gov/web/grants/view-opportunity.html?oppId=316977
FedBizOpps  https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=e7248da47889d975d0c...

Air Systems -
Capabilities that promote consistently successful mission objectives in a contested air environment – or undeterrable air presence.
 Investments in infrastructure and techniques that enable faster development and adaptation of air capabilities to support undeterrable air presence.
 Explore air responses to a wide-range of strategic challenges that provide effects proportional to the risk.

 Diverse weapons technologies that address threats with a limited window of vulnerability and identify, locate, target, and engage appropriately.
 Lethality through a combination of overwhelming performance (e.g. hypersonics) and overwhelming numbers (e.g. swarming low-cost weapons).
 Reduce reliance on evolutionary advances in traditional stealth technology applied to increasingly complex monolithic platforms.
 Rapidly develop prototypes and experiment with new concepts for undeterrable air presence.
 Greater levels of autonomy to minimize cost and risk to human warfighters, while increasing overall effectiveness and lethality.
 Encourage traditional TTO performers to search for technical advancements in academia and start-up communities that support new concepts in undeterrable air presence.

 

Ground Systems -
Capabilities and architectures that reduce reliance on consolidated forward-operating bases and subsequent lines of communication.
 Innovation in mobility and lethality for small units, or even individual warfighters, to enable local dominance.
 Expanding the combined arms maneuver trade space to include the vertical dimension, to exploit both natural and man-made subterranean environments.
 Developing a new class of kinetic and non-kinetic engagement capability for the ground forces.
 Leveraging advances in AI enabled autonomy for effective, integrated, manned/unmanned ground force operations.

Maritime Systems -
 Capabilities and system-of-system architectures that reduce U.S. warfighting reliance on monolithic, high-value surface, and sub-surface assets.
 The proliferation and disaggregation of maritime assets using small, inexpensive, massively-networked vessels derived from commercial designs
 Leveraging commercial private sector development in artificial intelligence and autonomy.
 Explore opportunities for proportional responses to actions short of armed conflict that retain free access to trade routes.
 Foster the development of a “new maritime” performer community composed of nontraditional providers of maritime capabilities and platforms to lower cost of development and launch of next-generation naval systems.
 Creating cross-domain capabilities that leverage the undersea domain to project power into all other domains.
 Incentivize traditional TTO performers to search for technical advancements in academia and start-up communities that support new maritime concepts.

Space Systems -
 Capabilities and system-of-system architectures that complicate an adversary’s counterspace plans by reducing warfighting reliance on monolithic, vulnerable, high-value space assets and instruments.
 Proliferating and disaggregating space assets at LEO, to reduce reliance on GEO assets –creating smaller, simpler satellites derived from commercial designs, and that leverage the emerging commercial private sector development of network and user segments.
 Leverage the space domain to find traction for those risks in defending the homeland peculiar to that domain.
 Incentivize the development and use of smaller, simpler launch vehicles for small satellites as well as launcher capabilities that can launch on shorter timelines and from non-traditional locations.

 Techniques and algorithms to enable space operations with increased autonomy and reduced human resources.
 Foster a performer community composed of re-energized traditional DoD space performers and emerging commercial “new space” entrants.
 Challenge the community to exploit advances in material science, manufacturing, and computational imaging to reduce the size and weight required.
 Seek innovative ways to counter emerging threats assuming a contested space environment.

Categories: