Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), Contracts Management Office (CMO), 3701 North Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22203-1714

A -- SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT FOR THE BATTLEFIELD AWARENESS AND DATA DISSEMINATION (BADD) ADVANCED CONCEPTS TECHNOLOGY DEMONSTRATION SOL BAA96-11 DUE 050296 POC Dr. Robert Douglas, Technical, (703) 696-7443. The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) is soliciting proposals (technical and cost) from system developers for the Battlefield Awareness and Data Dissemination (BADD) System. The goal of BADD is to empower warfighters at echelons from the Task Force Commander down to Battalion, and possibly below, and especially mobile warfighters, by providing them with advanced battlefield awareness applications that are driven by near-real-time data that is delivered by advanced data dissemination methods. The goal of the ''BA'' part of BADD is to provide warfighters comprehensive awareness of the battlefield, including the status of enemy, friendly, and neutral forces, beyond what they have today, based on greater accessibility to near-real-time data to drive these applications. The goal of the ''DD'' part of BADD is to use advances in direct digital broadcast satellites and tactical and backbone point-to-point communications to support a dissemination concept that delivers data to the warfighter's workstation in the background, selecting out of the wide broadcast stream only that data useful to the particular area of interest and mission of the warfighter, so that it is already available when and according to the battlefield awareness applications' needs. The BADD system development contractor to be procured under this BAA will be responsible for design and implementation of the evolving BADD baseline and all interfaces that the baseline has with information sources, communications assets, etc. The contractor will implement the BADD baseline using an iterative development approach, and will participate in demonstrations or field exercises at approximately one year intervals. Under a separate BAA, an affiliated contractor will provide simulations and analyses to ARPA in support of the BADD design, and one or more affiliated contractors will provide technology enhancements for potential inclusion in the BADD baseline (decisions regarding inclusion of these results into the baseline system will be made by ARPA, but the system development contractor will be responsible for their inclusion). The anticipated award date for the system development contract is July 1996. The effort will be procured in a basic phase with one optional phase. The total length of the basic phase is estimated to be 27 months from July 1996 through 30 September 1998. The total length of the optional phase is estimated to be 27 months from 1 July 1998 through 30 September 2000. The selection of a system development contractor for award will be based on an evaluation of an offeror's response (both technical and cost aspects) to determine the overall merit of the proposal in response to this announcement. The technical aspect, which is ranked as the first order of priority, shall be evaluated based on the following criteria that are listed in order of priority: (a) understanding of the scope of the technical effort, (b) soundness of the technical approach, (c) quality, quantity, and availability of technical personnel, (d) quality of the program plan, (e) innovativeness of the solutions, (f) relevant experience, (g) commitment and plan for incorporation of new technologies and use of other products provided by the affiliated contractors. Cost is ranked second in order of priority. No other evaluation criteria will be used. ARPA reserves the right to select for award a contract for any, all, part, or none of the proposals received. A Proposers Information Package (PIP) will be available on 13 February 1996 via the World Wide Web at http://www.arpa.mil/baa/#iso. The PIP provides detailed information on the following: technical rationale and goals, program schedule, informational briefing to industry, proposal abstract preparation and submission, proposal preparation and submission, award criteria, and other important information. On 22 February 1996 an unclassified informational briefing to industry that covers both this BAA and the simulations and analyses and technology enhancements BAA will be held from 0900 to 1600 EST at a location to be announced in the Tysons Corner/McLean area of VA. Specific location can be obtained from the Web site above. Offerors should follow the procedure described in the PIP to attend this briefing. Abstracts of proposals will be due to ARPA on 7 March 1996 and proposals will be due on 2 May 1996. This is an unrestricted solicitation. There will be no other solicitation issued in regard to this requirement. Offerors should be alert for any BAA amendments that may be published. No portion of the BAA will be set-aside for HBCU or MI participation due to the impracticality of reserving discrete or severable areas of development for exclusive competition among these entities. Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Minority Institutions are encouraged to team with other offerors. (0043)

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