R&D Contracting Directorate, Bldg 7, 2530 C Street, WPAFB, OH 45433-7607

A -- DUAL USE APPLICATION PROGRAM SOL BAA No. 97-05-AAK POC Contact Bettie L. Steely, Contracting Officer, (513) 255-5252, 2530 C Sreet, Bldg 7, Wright-Patterson AFB OH 45433-7607 INTRODUCTION: PART I OF II -- Wright Laboratory is interested in receiving proposals (technical and cost) in the area of Dual Use Science and Technology (S&T) as described in specific topic areas identified in the Section entitled B-Requirements. Proposals in response to this BAA shall be submitted by 15 April 97, 1500 hours Eastern Time, addressed to Wright Laboratory, Directorate of R&D Contracting, Building 7, Area B, Attn: Bettie L. Steely, Wright-Patterson AFB OH 45433-7607. Note: All proposals shall indicate the Topic Area number on the outside of the proposal package. This is an unrestricted solicitation. Proposals shall not be submitted by facsimile. Small businesses are encouraged to propose on all or any part of this solicitation. Proposals submitted shall be in accordance with this announcement. Proposal receipt after the cutoff date and time specified herein shall be treated in accordance with restrictions of FAR 52.215-10; a copy of this provision may be obtained from the contracting point of contact. There will be no other solicitation issued in regard to this requirement. Offerors should be alert for any BAA amendments that may permit subsequent submission of proposal dates. Awards resulting from this BAA will not employ the standard Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) guidance, but will be governed by DoD Directive 3210.6-R and OMB Circular A-110 as revised. Offerors should request a copy of the WL Guide entitled, "PRDA and BAA Guide for Industry" dated November 1992. This guide was specifically designed to assist offerors in understanding the PRDA/BAA proposal process. Copies may be requested from the contracting point of contact stated herein. The Guide is also available on the internet, address: www.wl.wpafb.af.mil/contract/hp.htm. B-REQUIREMENTS: (1) This program is being conducted in cooperation with DOD's Dual Use Application Program (DUAP) managed by the Joint Dual Use Program Office (JDUPO). WL seeks projects to create and develop new product or process technologies which have potential for both Air Force and commercial applications. If successfully developed, the technology will have both Air Force relevance and sufficient potential commercial applications to support a viable production base. The offeror must bear at least 50% of the cost of the proposed effort. Proposals that involve either basic research or final product development beyond the stage of product prototype or feasibility demonstration are outside the scope of the competition and will not be acceptable. Teaming arrangements among companies are encouraged when appropriate and will produce a stronger technical proposal. Teaming with a DOD or national laboratory is permitted. Due to limited funding, the Government reserves the right to limit awards under any topic, and only proposals considered to be of superior quality will be funded. Topic areas, with technical points of contact, which will be considered in this BAA are identified below. There is no guarantee that awards will be made in each of the identified topic areas. The Government may award several proposals in a single topic area depending in part on the cost of individual proposals and available funding. (2) Reporting Requirements: All offerors receiving awards under this BAA will be required to develop a commercialization plan for the activity stimulated by the award. Awardees will be required to make periodic reports on technical progress and financial outlays associated with their project(s), and, in addition, awardees will report on the progress towards the stated project goals. All recipients will be required to submit a business status report which shall provide summarized details of the resource status of the agreement, including the status of the contributions of both parties. (3) Security Requirements: It is not anticipated that any project would require access to classified information. (4) Other Special Requirements: International Traffic in Arms Regulations may apply to some technology areas, it is anticipated that some restrictions mayapply to the release of technology to foreign nationals. (5) The following identifies the topic areas by WL/Directorate/Division, Topic Area Number, Technical Point of Contact and Contracts Point of Contact: 1 Avionics (WL/AA) WL001 -- FUTURE AIR NAVIGATION AND TRAFFIC AVOIDANCE SOLUTION THROUGH INTEGRATED CNI (FANTASTIC): The impending Air Traffic Control (ATC) requirements jointly agreed to by our FAA and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) for the Future Air Navigation System (FANS), also called Global Air Traffic Management (GATM), will have an enormous cost impact on both military and civilian aircraft. The implementation cost for the Air Force alone is estimated to be in excess of $10B, and for most tactical aircraft, a typical black-box solution is also size prohibitive. The FANTASTIC initiative offers a cost/size effective solution to meeting these requirements -- developing an integrated, common module solution, similar to that being developed for the F-22 platform, to implement these new ATC requirements. The F-22 technical approach and lessons learned, along with other programmable radio developments both military and commercial/civilian, will be evaluated to determine a cost effective and available baseline. Software will be developed and demonstrated to perform new ATC requirements, and risk reduction technology efforts will be performed to facilitate transition to currently fielded platforms and support a follow-on engineering and manufacturing development effort. A heavy influx of commercial technology, parts, and manufacturing practices are anticipated to reduce costs. The FANTASTIC approach not only will solve these currently planned ATC requirements, but the programmability facilitates rapid and cost effective software upgrades to support future ATC requirements. The commercial spin-off is targeted at the rapidly reviving general aviation market, which has similar cost/size constraints as the tactical fighters. The modular hardware and software would be directly applicable to this commercial application and other markets. Estimated Program Value is $10,000,000.00. Technical POC: Mr. Joel Arnold, WL/AAMI, AC (937) 255-1608 Ext 3403. Contracts POC: Mr. Ken Smith, WL/AAKR, AC (937) 255-5201. WL002 -- COHERENT CONFORMAL ARRAY/CONTINUOUS TRANSVERSE STUB(CTS) ANTENNA TECHNOLOGY: Aperture arrays can be made conformal for installation on the skin of an aircraft, ship, submarine, spacecraft or ground vehicle. Recent efforts have confirmed the utility of this technology to future systems through two iterations of designs. These efforts have developed an array design process, modified computational prediction tools for array design and demonstrated confidence in the technology. Current emphasis is in wideband (6-18 Ghz) arrays (design, build and test) and adaptive beamforming techniques to form and steer a beam on a conformal array. Future emphasis will be for 2-6 Ghz for aircraft applications, 20 and 44 Ghz for satellite communications. The effort will emphasize costand manufacturability. Our studies have shown that the cost of the array should be comparable to a Resonant Metallic Radome (RMR) used in most advanced aircraft today. The primary difference between the RMR and a conformal array is the interconnect technology. An array for automobile applications needs to be <10 dollars for an obstacle avoidance system and <50 dollars for satellite communications systems. Continuous Transverse Stub (CTS) antenna technology is currently being applied for low cost automobile collision avoidance systems. Technology insertion like this makes the stringent cost goals appear possible. The benefit of this development to the commercial market is an affordable and compatible with modern systems without impact the platform's Radar Cross Section (RCS). The output of this effort will be a proof of concept arrays for both commercial (aircraft or automobile) and military application (fighter or UAV). Estimated Program Value is $8,000,000.00 Technical POC Mr. Joe Tenbarge, WL/AAMP, AC (937) 255-6127 Ext 4231 or Todd Kastle, WL/AAMR, AC (937) 255-6427 Ext 4328. Contracts POC: Mr. Ken Smith, WL/AAKR, AC (937) 255-5201. WL003 -- PRECISE REFERENCE INFORMATION FOR INFORMATION SUPERIORITY: The objective of this effort is to demonstrate, via analysis, simulation, and possible flight experiments, the use of airborne and ground based reference systems assets to achieve information superiority during advanced battlespace operations. This objective shall be accomplished through the application and enhancement of recently developed avionics technology including any of the following: reference systems and mission sensor data fusion algorithms, software, architectures, and very low cost expendable GPS sensors, as well as covert position/communications radio module sets. Developed capabilities shall produce highly precise (i.e., GPS and differential-GPS level accuracies) information with respect to a common n-dimensional grid, even during periods of intermittent GPS availability. This shall be accomplished through the sharing and fusion of reference information (position, velocity, pointing, and time) from multiple platforms widely separated in space and time including airborne, ground based, and overhead platforms (e.g., U2- Rs, UAVs, seismic sensors, and ground based expendable GPS sensors). Information could include data and/or imagery from Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), Interferometric SAR (IFSAR), electro-optical systems and digital terrain systems. Included in the technical requirements is the precise registration and alignment of multisource reference information and imagery, including information in multiple reference frames or with respect to different geographic datums. Examples of commercial technologies to be leveraged include current commercial systems that perform SAR, IFSAR, and EO sensing, mapping, and fusion; various low-cost GPS receivers, GPS sensors, remote intelligence communications modules, and GPS based mapping products; and image processing software. These technologies are currently used for applications ranging from environmental/geophysical monitoring to identification, and tracking of semi-trucks and their cargo. Performance period will be 30 months. Estimated Program Value is $2,000,000.00. Technical POC: Sandy Berning, WL/AAC, AC (937) 255-5668 Ext 4140 or Todd Jenkins, WL/AAC, AC (937) 255-5668 Ext 4141. Contracts POC: Mr. Ken Smith, WL/AAKR, AC (937) 255-5201. WL004 -- COLLABORATIVE ENGINEERING AND VIRTUAL PROTOTYPING: Participants will develop collaborative engineering technologies and a Collaborative Engineering Environment to enhance DoD and commercial sector productivity and competitiveness by advancing avionics virtual prototyping processes and applications. Proposals should build on the significant commercial technology base existing for electronic systems design (VHDL, VHDL-AMS), DARPA's Simulation Based Design initiative, and other commercial/industry modeling standards, Collaborative Virtual Prototyping (CVP) involves the application of advanced distributedmodeling and simulation over a geographically disperse area using an integrated simulation environment to support design, performance, and producibility trade-off analyses throughout the entire life cycle of system development. CVP is an enabling technology and a change in the way of doing business that will have major implications for the commercial and defense sector. A Collaborative Engineering Environment provides the middleware and databases to integrate domain specific engineering tools and simulations for virtual prototyping. The commercial sector is realizing the significant increases in productivity possible through employment of collaborative engineering and simulation. CVP will become a mainstream concept in the design and production of commercial systems. The commercial marketplace will increase for generic simulation techniques, engineering and simulation infrastructure, and off-the-shelf components for applications in financial industries, manufacturing, industrial process control, biotechnology, healthcare, communication and information systems. Performance Period is 3 years. Estimated Program Value is $4,000,000.00. Technical POC is Mr. William K. McQuay, WL/AASE, AC (937) 255-4429 Ext 3568. Contracts POC: Bettie Steely, WL/AAKD, AC (937) 255-5252. 2 Flight Dynamics (WL/FI) WL005 -- RF MULTIFUNCTION STRUCTURAL APERTURE: Modern aircraft (fixed wing and rotary) are required to have multiple-band communication and navigation requirements in the frequency range of VHF (30 Mhz) up through Ku-band (18 Ghz). This covers voice, data, IFF, TACAN, GPS, and SATCOM functions. Current and near-future (5 years) practice is to provide a separate antenna for each required function, typically as an add-on to an exterior surface (blade antenna as an example). For instance, a current fighter/attack aircraft configuration has numerous apertures at many separate sites. This proliferation of apertures is apparent on commercial transports as well. These apertures are required to maintain information dominance and improve total situational awareness. Aircraft designers are faced with three problems: 1) finding real estate on the airframe for each antenna, 2) providing structural reinforcements to support the antenna in a structural load-free environment, and 3) adding the weight of the various antennas (plus the structural reinforcement for their installation) to the overall weight budget of the airframe. Develop a wideband, lightweight, structurally-integrated aperture suitable for a composite or composite/metal hybrid airframe that covers the frequency range of 30 Mhz to 1500 Mhz which meets all the current single-system RF requirements. The aperture would be capable of simultaneous transmit and receive. The design must be manufacturable and have a life-cycle cost less than the equivalent ensemble of conventional, conformal single-system antennas. The design also must be consistent with signature requirements, though signature is not an initial requirement. This aperture technology would be transferred to a givenprogram for integration into the airframe's design. The aperture would then be included in the manufacture of primary or secondary structure of the airframe. The benefits to be derived by this load bearing antenna structure include greater airframe efficiency, improved antenna performance, reduced signature, and reduced maintainability. Key technology issues to be addressed include broadband apertures in restricted volumes; structural integration in load bearing composite lay-ups; reliability/repairability/supportability; reconfigurable, flexible electronics; and broadband apertures in a reduced signature environment. This 24 to 36 month effort will culminate in a demonstration of a panel incorporating embedded multifunction antennas. Estimated Program Valus is $2,000,000.00. Technical POC: Mr. James M. Tuss, WL/FIBA, AC (937) 255-5865. Contracts POC: Doug Harris, WL/FIK, AC (937) 255-4427. WL006 -- ELECTRICALLY POWERED HYDRAULIC SYSTEM: The U. S. Government is requesting proposals for the provision ofan advanced electrically powered hydraulic generating system. The system shall be capable of utilizing electrical power typical of both commercial and military aircraft and shall generate hydraulic power to 4,000 psi at 25 gpm. The system shall be available for system integration testing early in 1998 and suitable for flight test and available for such tests Mid 1999. This initiative should be approximately an 18 month effort. Estimated Program Valus is $6,000,000.00. Technical POC: Mr. David Homan, WL/FIGS, AC (937) 255-4104. Contracts POC: Doug Harris, WL/FIK, AC (937) 255-4427. 3 Materials (WL/ML) WL007 -- SWITCHABLE POLYMER-DISPERSED LIQUID CRYSTAL HOLOGRAPHIC MATERIALS FOR HIGH RESOLUTION DISPLAYS: Program to develop Polymer-Dispersed Liquid Crystal (PDLC) materials and concepts for optical and photonic applications. Specifically, electrically switchable holograms recorded in new PDLCs will be investigated for high contrast, high brightness, high resolution flat panel displays. Switchable holograms are produced through a single step process utilizing economical materials. Gratings of periodic PDLC planes are formed in situ from an initial homogeneous photopolymer-liquid crystal mixture. Continued study of materials and processes are desired to improve the optical quality, increase the diffraction efficiency, lower the switching voltage, and enhance the response time of resulting devices. In addition, new models are required to explain the electro-optic properties of switchable holograms in PDLC materials. New models will enable the design of the next generation of switchable diffractive optics with novel properties for a variety of applications. Morphological studies of the PDLC materials will also be required to achieve greater insight of materials performance. This program will also facilitate the transfer of this promising technology to flat panel displays for end products such as virtual reality goggles, laptop computers, cockpit displays, and head/helmet mounted displays.. The program performance period is 30 months. Estimated Program Value is $2,000,000.00. Technical POC: Pam Schaefer, WL/MLPJ, AC (937) 255-3808 Ext 3150. Contracts POC: Dixie Wightman, WL/MLKN, AC (937) 255-5051. 4 Manufacturing Technology (WL/MT) WL008 -- IDENTIFICATION AND QUANTIFICATION OF STRUCTURAL DAMAGE IN AGING AIRCRAFT: This project is targeted at requirements to provide rapid and accurate on-aircraft techniques for the detection of hidden cracks and corrosion damage. It is intended that technologies be developed and matured as required to find and quantify cracks and corrosion damage in multi-layer and complex (e.g. bulkheads) metallic structure. Solutions should increase both the probability of inspection (POI) and probability of detection (POD) when compared with present capabilities. Known technology candidates include low frequency eddy current and ultrasonic scan techniques. Air Force target applications (a minimum of two are required) should be developed from C-135, C-141, B-1B, F-16 and T-38 systems. Potential dual use outlets should be selected in cooperation with the Federal Aviation Administration, and commercial airframe manufacturers. In developing responses, offerors must consider the requirements of and provide a migration path leading to full NDI system production and support implementation. Performance period is 18 months. Estimated Program Value is $8,000,000.00. Technical POC: Mr. Michael Waddell, WL/MTPN, AC (937) 255-7277. Contracts POC: Mr. Stuart Hazlett, WL/MLKT, AC (937) 255-3506 or e-mail HAZLETSA@wl.wpafb.af.mil. 5 Aero Propulsion and Power (WL/PO) WL009 -- EXTENSION OF AEROSPACE COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMIC (CFD) SOFTWARE TO NON-AEROSPACE APPLICATIONS: The Air Force uses Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software for analysis of advanced propulsion technologies. Aerospace CFD tools appear to be suitable for non-aerospace applications in the automotive, medical, and power generation industries. This effort will enable the conversion of an aerospace CFD tool into a commercially-viable product. The contractor shall develop methods such as bench marking, validation/verification, and user efficiency upgrades to adapt an existing CFD software tool to investigate (model and simulate) internal and external fluid flows and conduct combustion analyses for non-aerospace applications. The selected CFD tool must be owned by the contractor, or the offeror must secure the rights to (0059)

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