Funding opportunity for assured cyber architectures (ACA) innovations

By Loren Blinde December 30, 2014

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The Department of the Air Force issued a funding opportunity on December 30 (Solicitation Number: BAA-RIK-14-03):

The technical objectives of this broad agency announcement (BAA) are to research innovative, disruptive technologies and methods to enable the Assured Cyber Architectures (ACA) vision in support of the Defense Intelligence Information Enterprise (DI2E). The ACA BAA seeks significant advances to the DI2E mission across the following sub-disciplines.

The sub-disciplines of interest to this solicitation include:

Infrastructure Service Technologies

Content Service Technologies

Application Service Technologies

Enterprise Evaluation

Mission Service Technologies

The innovative ACA technologies supporting the sub-disciplines above may require the planning and conducting of field tests to demonstrate the advancement in the specific technology. This includes preparing test plans; acquiring, transporting, deploying, and operating all equipment; operating and measuring ground truth sources; evaluating and monitoring test execution; and documenting all test results.

The ACA BAA will investigate assured computing architectures and associated technologies that will ultimately be incorporated within the Defense Information & Intelligence Enterprise (DI2E). The goal of interfacing with the DI2E is twofold; first, provide a more cohesive and complete situational awareness and assessment of enemy activities for on-going US missions, and second, provide surgical cueing for ACA opportunities. Automated knowledge-based tools and decision aids will provide a more effective use of the DI2E with its complementary intelligence data for improved Situational Awareness. The development of infrastructures, tools and techniques that equip the operational analyst in providing timely and highly accurate characterization of signals, objects and events leading to threat analysis is increasingly critical to the warfighter.

AWARD INFORMATION:

Total funding for this BAA is approximately $49.9M. The anticipated funding to be obligated under this BAA is broken out by fiscal year as follows: FY 14 – $10.3M; FY 15 – $9.6M; FY 16 – $10M; FY 17 – $10M; and FY18 – $10M. Individual awards will not normally exceed 36 months with dollar amounts normally ranging between $500K and $3M per year. There is also the potential to make awards above or below this range. Awards of efforts as a result of this announcement will be in the form of contracts, grants, and cooperative agreements, depending upon the nature of the work proposed.

The Government reserves the right to select all, part, or none of the proposals received, subject to the availability of funds. All potential offerors should be aware that due to unanticipated budget fluctuations, funding in any or all areas may change with little or no notice.

APPLICATION AND SUBMISSION INFORMATION:

APPLICATION PACKAGE: THIS ANNOUNCEMENT CONSTITUTES THE ONLY SOLICITATION. WE ARE SOLICITING WHITE PAPERS ONLY. DO NOT SUBMIT A FORMAL PROPOSAL AT THIS TIME. Those white papers found to be consistent with the intent of this BAA may be invited to submit a technical and cost proposal, see Section VI of this announcement for further details.

CONTENT AND FORM OF SUBMISSION: Offerors are required to submit three copies of a 3 to 5 page white paper summarizing their proposed approach/solution. The purpose of the white paper is to preclude unwarranted effort on the part of an offeror whose proposed work is not of interest to the Government. The white paper will be formatted as follows: Section A: Title, Period of Performance, Estimated Cost, Name/Address of Company, Technical and Contracting Points of Contact (phone, fax and email)(this section is NOT included in the page count); Section B: Task Objective; and Section C: Technical Summary and Proposed Deliverables. Multiple white papers within the purview of this announcement may be submitted by each offeror. If the offeror wishes to restrict its white papers/proposals, they must be marked with the restrictive language stated in FAR 15.609(a) and (b). All white papers/proposals shall be double spaced with a font no smaller than 12 pitch. In addition, respondents are requested to provide their Commercial and Government Entity (CAGE) number, their Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) Data Universal Numbering System (DUNS) number, a fax number, an e-mail address, and reference BAA-RIK-14-03 with their submission. All responses to this announcement must be addressed to the technical POC, as discussed in paragraph seven of this section. FORMAL PROPOSALS ARE NOT BEING REQUESTED AT THIS TIME.

SUBMISSION DATES AND TIMES: It is recommended that white papers be received by the following dates to maximize the possibility of award: FY 14 should be submitted by 30 Jan 2014; FY15 by 1 Jul 2014; FY 16 by 1 Jul 2015; FY 17 by 1 Jul 2016; and FY 18 by 5 Jul 2017. White papers will be accepted until 2pm Eastern time on 28 Sep 2018, but it is less likely that funding will be available in each respective fiscal year after the dates cited. The closing date for this BAA is 28 Sep 2018.