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The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is soliciting disruptive ideas from small businesses and non-traditional defense contractors for novel antenna designs, materials, manufacturing or processing as the first topic issued under the agency’s Bringing Classified Innovation to Defense and Government Systems (BRIDGES) initiative.
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DARPA’s BRIDGES effort aims to connect innovation from small companies that traditionally do not work with the US government to classified Department of Defense research and development efforts.
Specifically, the goal is to connect innovators directly to the challenging problems that exist in the classified realm and to help develop solutions to those problems — BRIDGES aims to provide companies that demonstrate they can provide innovation and value to the DoD the means to obtain a facility clearance and interact directly with DoD customers at classified levels.
As part of its plans, DARPA aims to solicit responses to multiple technical topics under BRIDGES, introduced periodically.
Greg Kuperman, program manager in DARPA’s Strategic Technology Office, said, “If your company is working on cutting-edge antenna designs for commercial applications and you’ve never considered or known how to apply your expertise to help solve Defense Department challenges, we want to hear from you.
“In the defence space, we’re at least 10 years behind state of the art in antennas. There’s a gold mine of untapped technical capability and potentially revolutionary concepts in small and large commercial companies across our country that could provide solutions to national security needs. We want to hear the best ideas related to active and passive sensing across RF (radio frequency), acoustic, and electro-optic/infrared spectral bands applied in every physical domain — air, space, sea, and land.
“The proposal process is very simple: Send us a four-page or shorter proposal of your antenna concept. If we find your proposal intriguing and of potential value to DoD, we may sponsor you through the BRIDGES consortium to receive a facility clearance so we can start to have classified discussions with you,” Kuperman added.
DARPA will conduct an initial round of evaluation on proposals received before 5pm Eastern time, Wednesday, 31 May 2023.
Proposals may still be submitted after then, but they will be evaluated on a rolling basis until the final deadline of 5pm Eastern time, 12 April 2024.
