Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Contracts Management Office (CMO), 3701 N. Fairfax Dr., Arlington VA 22203-1714

A -- TECHNOLOGY FOR TACTICAL SENSORS AND TASKING AND CONTROL IN SMALL UNIT OPERATIONS SOL BAA96-26 DUE 071596 POC Dr. Edward M. Carapezza, DARPA/TTO, fax (703) 696-2204. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), 3701 North Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22203-1714. TECHNOLOGY FOR TACTICAL SENSORS AND TASKING AND CONTROL IN SMALL UNIT OPERATIONS, SOL BAA 96-26, DUE 071596, POC: Dr. Edward M. Carapezza DARPA/TTO, FAX (703) 696-2204. PROGRAM OBJECTIVES AND DESCRIPTION: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is soliciting proposals for developing, demonstrating, and integrating enabling technologies in the areas of tactical sensors, real-time planning, tasking, and control, that will allow human and sensor-based assets to be rapidly tasked, retasked, and deployed to pursue missions. DARPA is seeking innovative concepts for developing and integrating technologies, in the area of Tactical Sensors and in the area of Tasking and Control, that will provide a leap ahead capability to Small Unit Operations (SUO). While the primary goal of the program is to support military small unit operations, some of the proposed technologies may be applicable to law enforcement and emergency response applications such as surveillance and monitoring in remote areas and Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams. Where appropriate, offeror should clearly, identify these technology applications. BACKGROUND: To fight effectively in the future, the DoD is developing concepts of operation which include smaller, more capable and flexible forces widely dispersed throughout the battlefield. The SUO program focuses on comprehensive awareness, tactical sensors, real-time tasking and control of assets, robust communications and an integrated grid of the battlespace. It emphasizes a tactical level comprehensive awareness capability that provides real-time, essential, information for small units and the warfighter. A range of diverse technologies including but not limited to wireless communications providing voice, data, video, and graphics capability to the warfighters, individual, internetted and arrayed tactical sensor systems, and autonomous systems which extend the warfighter's tactical awareness and complement theater and other sensors, are relevant to this program. This solicitation is limited to only the areas of 1) Tactical Sensor and 2)Tasking and Control components of the SUO program with goals described below: 1. TACTICAL SENSOR PROGRAM SCOPE: The goals of the Tactical Sensor program are to demonstrate advanced sensors systems, including sensor delivery systems, that will provide a significant organic tactical sensing capability to provide a detection, localization, and classification advantage for small, highly dispersed, tactical units over the counter detection, counter localization, and counter classification capabilities of enemy forces. Sensor systems providing a significant precision targeting capability to enable timely requests for indirect fire support are also of interest. In order to achieve the program goals, research and development will be needed, for example, in several areas including but not limited to: high resolution multispectral sensors, signal processing, internodal communications, data fusion and track correlation, and interfaces to a tasking and control component. Affordable manportable, fixed, tethered, and vehicle mounted sensor systems for urban and other restrictive terrain (e.g. built up, mountainous, and heavily forested) sensing applications with capabilities for detection and classification of targets of interest, including special purpose sensor systems for thru-the-wall, mine, and gunfire detection, are of interest. Miniature, affordable, unattended, internetted acoustic, magnetic, seismic, chemical, biological, radar, imaging, and environmental sensor systems, that are optimized for restrictive environments and can be packaged into low power configurations and can be hand emplaced, or delivered by artillery shells, or mortar, or missile systems (MLRS or ATACM), or tactical aircraft, or unmanned air vehicles, or unmanned ground vehicles, are also of interest. 2. TASKING AND CONTROL PROGRAM SCOPE: The goals of the Tasking and Control program are to demonstrate an integrated tasking, planning, and control system including an interface to the warrior that will allow a warfighter, (1) to effectively task and deploy single and/or multiple (homogeneous and heterogeneous) sensor-based land and air taskable assets within the battlespace, (2) store, filter, analyze, and retrieve information relevant to the individual warfighter's context from a set of distributed and heterogeneous data sources (including but not limited to sensors and sensor networks, and distributed databases). In order to achieve the program goals, research and development will be needed, for example, in several areas including but not limited to: agent based real-time planning, integration of reflective and reactive planning, integration of planning with control, real-time modification of plans and real-time software, human systems interfaces for tasking and displaying information, searching, integrating, and retrieving relevant information for enhanced situational awareness from a set of distributed and heterogeneous data sources and/or sensor-based assets, task decomposition for treating multiple physical homogeneous and heterogeneous assets as a single logical asset. The goal of the program is not to fund research in these individual areas but rather to fund research that will lead to capabilities desired by and needed for Tasking and Control of small unit operations. DARPA has budgeted approximately $1.5 million for FY 1996 and $10.0 million for FY97. Additional funding for FY98 may also be available. Multiple awards typically of 12-36 month duration are anticipated. Offerors should prepare proposals with a baseline period of performance of 12 months and one or two out year options each with a 12 month period of performance, and with an anticipated starting date of September 1, 1996. GENERAL INFORMATION: Offerors must submit an original and seven (7) copies of proposals to the administrative address for this BAA. The proposals are due on or before 4:00 PM (EST), July 15, 1996, in order to be considered for FY96 funding. Offerors are required to obtain a pamphlet, BAA 96-26 Proposer Information Package (PIP) that will be available on June 5, 1996. The PIP provides further information on proposal format, the submission, evaluation and funding processes, and other general information. Requests for this pamphlet, all administrative correspondence, and questions on this solicitation should be directed to one of the administrative addresses below, e-mail is preferred. To obtain the PIP, send an email message whose message field contains the single word ''help'', the ''HELP'' file will be returned which contains a list of the files available along with instructions on how to retrieve them. Requests by US mail to the administrative mailing address below will be honored. Faxed requests will not be honored. DARPA intends to use electronic mail for correspondence regarding BAA 96-26. Proposals not meeting the format described in the pamphlet may not be reviewed. Facsimile transmissions or electronic media transmissions of the proposal will not be accepted, any so sent will be disregarded. It is the policy of DARPA to treat all proposals as competitive information and to disclose the contents only for the purposes of evaluation. Nondisclosure notices notwithstanding, proposals may be handled for administrative purposes by employees of three support contractors, Digital Systems Research, Inc. (DSR), Meridian and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). Selections under this BAA will be made only by Government evaluators. This CBD notice, in conjunction with the pamphlet BAA 96-26 Proposer Information Package, constitutes the Broad Agency Announcement as contemplated by FAR 6.102(d)(2). A formal RFP or other solicitation regarding this announcement will not be issued. Requests for same will be disregarded. The Government reserves the right to select for award any, all, part, or none of the proposals received in response to this announcement. In addition, the Government reserves the right to award either contracts, grants, or other instruments determined to be of benefit to the government in achieving the goals of this program. All responsible sources capable of satisfying the Government's needs may submit proposals which will be evaluated. Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) and Minority Institutions (MI) are encouraged to submit proposals and join others in submitting proposals. However, no portion of this BAA will be set aside for HBCU and MI participation due to the impracticality of reserving discrete or severable areas of research in the tactical sensors and tasking and control component of small unit operations. This BAA will remain open for 3 months from the date of publication. Each potential offeror is cautioned to review its contract and subcontract history, to determine whether or not in its judgment a real or potential conflict of interest does or might exist that will prevent the contracting officer from considering its proposal, or making an award under this BAA. At a minimum, each offeror is required to furnish a statement affirming if the offeror is currently supporting any DARPA technical office through an active contract (or subcontract), to state which office(s) the offeror supports, and to identify the prime contract and any relevant subcontract numbers. All facts relevant to the existence or potential existence of organizational conflicts of interest, as that term is defined in FAR 9.501, must be disclosed. Proposals received on or before 4pm EDT, July 15, 1996, will be considered for initial awards. Proposals received subsequent to the deadline will be considered for funding at later dates. All awards will be contingent on funding availability. EVALUATION CRITERIA: Proposals will be evaluated using the following criteria: (1) Quality and Technical Merit, (2) Contributions /Relevance to DARPA and DoD, (3) Capabilities and Experience, (4) Plans and Capabilities to Accomplish Technology Transfer, and (5) Total Cost and Cost Realism. Individual proposal evaluations will be based on acceptability or non-acceptability without regard to other proposals submitted under the announcement. However, all acceptable proposals may not be funded due to budgetary constraints. This Broad Agency Announcement is an expression of interest only and does not commit the Government to pay any preproposal or proposal costs. The administrative addresses for this BAA are: Fax: (703) 696-2204 (Addressed to: DARPA/TTO, BAA 96-26) Electronic Mail: baa9626@DARPA.mil US Mail: DARPA/TTO, ATTN: BAA 96-26, 3701 N. Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22203-1714. (0002) (0157)

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