AFRL announces DistrO program funding opportunity

On December 23, the Air Force Research Laboratory released a broad agency announcement (BAA NUMBER: BAA-AFRL-RIK-2016-0003) for Distributed Operations (DistrO). The agency recommends that white papers be submitted by February 12 for best consideration in FY16.

The Air Force Research Laboratory/Information Directorate (AFRL/RI) is soliciting white papers under this Broad Area Announcement (BAA) for research, design, development, test, evaluation, and experimentation of innovative and enabling capabilities that allow operators at forward nodes the ability to conduct state-driven assessment of Air Force operations and distributed adaptive planning, and to perform these capabilities during periods of reduced communications with operational level nodes in accordance with distributed operations concepts.

The Air Force is seeking capabilities in the form of software components that autonomously assess the progress of their operations, identify deviations from expected activities and outcomes, and recommend adjustments (re-plan) to enable continuous operations at forward nodes in anti-access and area-denial (A2/AD) environments.

The DistrO Program will meet the distributed operations goal by filling technology gaps for dynamic planning, execution, and assessment; and tailor those capabilities for use at the operational level and at the tactical level within a distributed architecture to provide a resilient “push forward” and “push outward” capability to implement the distributed operations concept. For the purpose of this research, offerors may consider elements of the Theater Air Control System (TACS) and Theater Air Ground System (TAGS) as nominal candidates representing operational environments for target technologies.

By developing these capabilities and achieving this goal, AFRL expects an order of magnitude improvement in the duration of maintaining continuity of air, space, and cyber operations at a forward node subject to contested communications; however, the focus of this effort is on the air domain with a desire not to preclude an approach that integrates all three domains. Additionally, efforts under this program are expected to provide the USAF and mission partners with a capability to conduct combat planning with its associated targeting and assessment forward in theater.

The DistrO Program has been organized into two projects, (1) Planning and Assessment Technology Development and (2) Distributed Integration and Experimentation, each with defined focus areas for the FY16 acquisition cycle.

Full information is available here.

Source: FedBizOpps