Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Contract Management Directorate (CMD), 3701 N. Fairfax Dr., Arlington, VA 22203-1714

A -- COHERENT COMMUNICATIONS, IMAGING AND TARGETING (CCIT) SOL RA00-35 DUE 081600 POC Dr. L.N. Durvasula, DARPA/TTO; Fax: (703) 696-2204, Contractual POC: Ms. Algeria K. Tate, Fax: (703) 696-2208 WEB: http://www.darpa.mil, http://www.darpa.mil. E-MAIL: RA00-35@darpa.mil, RA00-35@darpa.mil. The Tactical Technology Office (TTO) of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is seeking sources to provide innovative concepts and technology demonstrations for aberration free ground to space coherent communications, imaging and targeting (CCIT) at very long ranges in excess of 1000 kilometers. Unique requirements of high bandwidth at multi-gigabit per second communications and distortion free or near diffraction limited imaging at ranges in excess of 1000 kilometers require advances in silicon micro-machined spatial light modulators (SLMs), high speed addressing and integration of electronics on SLMs and signal processing. This new capability that combines simplicity of control and low cost to provide flexible optical wave-front surfaces is critical to aberration free ground to space secure laser communications and sensing and three-dimensional imaging of space objects at very long ranges. Robustness, reliability, and high response rate will depend heavily on scalable architectures and intermediate demonstrations. For example, the pixel flatness for the SLM would have to be one fiftieth of a wavelength and eight bits per pixel with integrated electronics on a 32x32-element unit cell scalable to 1024x1024 elements. A maximized pixel size with a high fill factor in excess of 98 per cent and a response time of 10 microseconds to provide a frame rate of 10 kilohertz are needed. In addition ground to air or mountain top demonstrations of aberration free communications and three-dimensional imaging at horizontal ranges in excess of 10 kilometers are required to establish the feasibility before full scale ground to space demonstrations of secure multi-gigabit communications and aberration free three-dimensional imaging. It is unlikely that any single organization can fully address all the requirements of the program. In order to facilitate teaming of organizations with complementary areas of expertise such as companies and academic institutions with Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratories, a Request For Information (RFI) announcement, RFI00-06, was published in the Commerce Business Daily (CBD) on January 12, 2000. The RFI asked interested organizations to provide non-proprietary information that could be used by other respondents to establish teams. This Research Announcement is a follow on announcement to RFI00-06. The program will be conducted in two phases. Phase I is a twenty-four month effort for all technology developments and preliminary demonstrations of aberration free communications and three-dimensional imaging at horizontal ranges in excess of 1 kilometer shall be conducted to establish the feasibility. It is anticipated one or more awards will be made. Eighteen months after the award of Phase I, a solicitation for Phase II will be issued. Phase II shall be an industry led effort for full-scale demonstrations of secure multi-gigabit communications and aberration free three-dimensional imaging utilizing the technologies developed in Phase. This research announcement requests proposals for Phase I from teams comprised of national laboratories, not for profit research laboratories, industry and/or universities to develop innovative concepts and technologies for, and conduct preliminary demonstrations of aberration free communications, imaging and targeting in excess of 1 kilometer, the results of which could be used under Phase II for full-scale demonstrations at very long ranges. Proposals should address: 1) System requirements and approaches to preliminary demonstrations of aberration free communications and imaging at slant ranges in excess of 10 kilometers, 2) multiple, innovative approaches to develop a 32x32-element unit cell SLM with pixel flatness of one-fiftieth wavelength, eight bits per pixel with hybrid integration of electronics and signal processing, 3) scalability of SLMs to 1024x1024 size and laboratory demonstrations of functional systems, 4) preliminary demonstrations of aberration free secure communications and imaging in excess of 1 kilometer using the 32x32 element SLM. The deadline for receipt of full technical and cost proposals for Phase I effort will be COB 4:00 PM ET Wednesday, August 16, 2000. Proposals received after this date will not be evaluated. Approximately ten million dollars ($10 million) are budgeted for Phase I and twenty million dollars ($20 million) for Phase II. The Government reserves the right to select one or more, or none of the proposals received in response to this announcement and fund portions of proposals if warranted. All teams are required to submit one original and six copies of their proposal. The proposals should be submitted in two volumes: 1) Technical and Management and 2) Cost. Volume 1 -- Technical and Management: The title page should include the following information of the principal investigators: names telephone and fax numbers and e-mail addresses. Pages two and three should be an executive summary. The technical proposal shall not exceed fifty pages and should be divided into two sections. Section I should be the technical proposal which describe the requirements, technical approach and the uniqueness of the design and the construction, the statement of work and technical milestones schedule, tasks to be performed by the team members and details on risk reduction and Go/No-Go decision points. Section II should be a summary of offerors unique capabilities, relevant prior work, organizational structure, and management plan including milestone review process and resumes of key individuals. Volume II -- Cost: The cost proposal shall contain a complete cost breakdown per task/milestone for the entire program and for the tasks performed by team members. All proprietary materials should be clearly marked and will be held in strict confidence. Separate attachments, such as institutional brochures, reprints, disks, or videotapes, will render the entire proposal ineligible. Facsimile transmissions or electronic media transmissions will not be accepted. Within approximately seven business days of receipt, DARPA will acknowledge receipt of the submission and assign a control number that should be used in all further correspondence regarding the proposal. Evaluation criteria, listed in order of decreasing importance, is as follows: 1) Technical excellence and innovativeness of proposed ideas and approach, well defined milestones, and intermediate and final demonstrations, 2) Composition of teams with breadth of technical expertise to execute the program and the potential effectiveness of the partnership to further develop widespread application of the products and processes to be developed (pervasive impact), and 3) Qualifications of the personnel proposed to participate and adequacy of facilities. The Government plans to make award decisions within approximately 30 days after receipt of full proposals. Final funding determination will be based on best value to the Government. Should a proposal from a team be selected for award, the team will be required to submit an intellectual property agreement among team members describing prior ownership of the intellectual property. All proprietary material submitted should be clearly marked as such and will be held in strict confidence. All proposals must reference DARPA RA 00-35. No additional information is available. Requests for same will be disregarded. ORGANIZATIONAL CONFLICT OF INTEREST: Each cost proposal shall contain a section satisfying the requirements of the following: Awards made under this RA are subject to the provisions of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Subpart 9.5, Organizational Conflict of Interest. All offerors and proposed subcontractors must affirmatively state whether they are supporting any DARPA technical office(s) through an active contract or subcontract. All affirmations must state which office(s) the offeror supports and identify the prime contract number. Affirmations shall be furnished at the time of proposal submission, and the existence or potential existence of organizational conflicts of interest, as that term is defined in FAR 9.501, must be disclosed. This disclosure shall include a description of the action the offeror has taken, or proposes to take, to avoid, neutralize or mitigate such conflict. If the offeror believes that no such conflict exists, then it shall so state in this section. It is the policy of DARPA to treat all proposals as competitive information, and to disclose the contents only for the purposes of evaluation. The Government intends to use Booz, Allen &Hamilton personnel as special resources to assist with the logistics of administering proposal evaluation, and to provide advice on specific technical areas. Personnel of this contractor are restricted by their contracts from disclosing proposal information for any purpose other than these administrative or advisory tasks. Contractor personnel are required to sign the Organizational Conflict of Interest Non-Disclosure Agreements (OCI/NDA). By submission of its proposal, each offeror agrees that proposal information may be disclosed to those selected contractors for the limited purpose stated above. Any information not intended for limited release to this contractor must be clearly marked and segregated from other submitted proposal material. DARPA is seeking participation from the widest number of offerors. Toward this end, DARPA is willing to consider all types of proposals including, contracts, grants and "Other Transactions". Information concerning "Other Transactions" can be found at URL http://www.darpa.mil/cmo/pages/other_trans.html. All responsible sources capable of satisfying the Government's needs may submit proposals, which will be evaluated as received. Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Minority Institutions (MIs) are encouraged to submit proposals and join others in submitting proposals. However, no portion of this announcement will be set aside for HBCUs or MIs due to the impracticality of reserving discrete or severable areas of research for exclusive competition among these entities. Telephone inquiries are strongly discouraged. All questions regarding this RA must be submitted in writing, e-mail or via FAX: (703) 696-2204, to the technical contact indicated. Offerors should submit proposals to: L. N. Durvasula Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency; Tactical Technology Office; REF: RA00-35; 3701 North Fairfax Drive; Arlington, VA 22203-1714; DARPA points of contact are: Dr. L. N. Durvasula (ldurvasula@darpa.mil) Posted 06/26/00 (W-SN468463). (0178)

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