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

A -- ULTRA LOG SOL BAA 00-46 DUE 092000 POC Technical: Dr. Todd Carrico, DARPA/ISO, Fax (703) 522-8916; Contractual: Mr. Alan Frederick, DARPA/CMO, Fax (703) 696-2208 WEB: http://www.darpa.mil, http://www.darpa.mil. E-MAIL: baa00-46@darpa.mil, baa00-46@darpa.mil. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Information Systems Office (ISO) is issuing a single step (full initial proposal) Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) to solicit research proposals (structured as base year and three (3) one (1) year options) for the Ultra Log project. Multiple contract awards are anticipated with typical periods of performance of 12-48 months including final reports. RESEARCH NEED: The Ultra Log project is pursuing the development of technologies to enhance the security, robustness, and scalability of large-scale, distributed agent-based systems operating in chaotic wartime environments. The objective of the Ultra Log project is to create a comprehensive capability which will enable a massive scale, trusted, distributed agent infrastructure for operational logistics to be survivable under the most extreme circumstances. This announcement constitutes a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA 00-46) as specified in FAR 6.102(d)(2)(i). Information in this CBD announcement is NOT complete. Prospective offerors MUST also refer to the Proposer Information Pamphlet (PIP) before submitting a proposal. A bidder's conference will be held on 18 August 2000 at the Hilton Arlington & Towers in Arlington, Virginia to address potential offeror questions relative to this BAA. Registration and other information about the conference may be found on the DARPA Information Systems Office web site: http://www.darpa.mil/iso (search under "Solicitations"). Pre-registration for the bidder's conference is mandatory due to space limitations. PROGRAM SCOPE: GRAND CHALLENGE: The challenge of the Ultra Log project is to extend the Cougaar cognitive agent architecture (www.cougaar.org) using a layered, integrated approach with technologies in robustness, security, stability and scalability. The program will focus on research, development, evaluation, and demonstration of a prototype, distributed society of over 1000 medium complexity agents operating under directed adversary kinetic and Information Warfare (IW) attack. Ultra Log's goals are: operate with up to 45 percent information infrastructure loss in a very chaotic environment with not more than 20 percent capabilities degradation and not more than 30 percent performance degradation for a period representing 180 days of sustained military operations in a major regional contingency. By the final year of the project, Ultra Log must demonstrate successful completion of the program goals. TECHNICAL TOPIC AREAS: There are four technical topics. The first area is the core technology development, consisting mainly of research and development into extensions to the Cougaar architecture in security, scalability and robustness. The second area involves functional capability development to create aspects of the operational logistics functional agent society, external real world interfaces, experimental test harnesses and demonstration of the resulting society and its survivability. The third area is system integration, bringing all the technology pieces of the first area together with all the functional pieces of the second area in such a way as to create a survivable functional demonstration under extremely chaotic conditions. The fourth area is the periodic evaluation of the technology by teams not directly responsible for development. These teams will perform technical evaluations as well as Red Team assaults on the experimental environment. Area 1 -- Technology Development. Subarea 1 -- Security. The Government is interested in offerors to pursue research breakthroughs in securing the Cougaar architecture. The project desires concepts in pursuit of a secure, trusted system capable of operating effectively under coordinated IW attack. Subarea 2 -- Scalability. The Government is interested in offerors to pursue research breakthroughs in enhancing the scalability of the Cougaar architecture. The project is considering concepts in pursuit of highly scalable and provably stable system operations under very chaotic wartime environments. Subarea 3 -- Robustness. The Government is interested in offerors to pursue research breakthroughs in improving the robustness of the Cougaar architecture. The project is considering concepts in pursuit of a state of reliability, capability and survivability under frequent and significant failures induced in a chaotic wartime environment. Area 2 -- Functional Capability Development. The Government is interested in offerors to pursue the design and development of logistical functional processes in a more robust and survivable manner. This area puts the various technology developments for the architecture from Area 1 to the test through development of medium fidelity logistics PlugIns, which are combined into functional agent communities that will participate in the larger logistics society experimentation and demonstration. This development activity is specifically focused at understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the Cougaar agent technology in an operational prototype-like development environment. Area 3 -- System Integration and Development. The Government is interested in identifying offerors to act as system integrator(s) for implementing and maintaining techniques, technologies and capabilities developed in Areas 1 and 2. An integrator must be capable of complementing the ALP systems integration effort already being undertaken by the ALPINE Consortium under DARPA contract MDA972-97-C-0800. Proposals in this area must stress the offeror's current and planned capability and past track record for being responsive in a distributed team environment and for accomplishing integration type tasks such as: plan and conduct multi-site demonstrations, integrate technology from both subcontractors and associate contractors, maintain distributed systems using secure and non-secure communications, and manage diverse multi-faceted programs. Experimental Evaluation Environment: As part of the ongoing Ultra Log development, experimentation, and evaluation, this effort will establish a significant experimental infrastructure and operatingenvironment for the continued development of this technology. This environment will include computer network and data resources against which the developed technologies and demonstration systems will be expected to operate. The primary computational environments for the research and development will be on Windows NT and Linux operating systems against standard PC platforms. Area 4 -- External Review and Assessment. The Government is interested in identifying offerors to act as Technical and Survivability Red Teams to evaluate the evolving Cougaar agent architecture and assess the expanding, experimental logistics agent society's vulnerabilities and measures of survivability against IW and kinetic attack. These evaluations and assessments will provide direction and input to the ongoing research, development and integration efforts being conducted in Areas 1 and 3. As the Ultra Log project proceeds, the experimental agent society will become larger and more complex, and the evaluations and assessments applied to the architecture and the experimental society will expand to create the most brutal IW and kinetic wartime environment possible in an experimental testbed. The Government is also willing to consider proposals to construct Cougaar-based agents with the express purpose of infiltrating and disrupting the ongoing operations of the logistics society "blue" agents. While this should not be the sole focus of the effort, some consideration for "agent insiders" as a real and valid threat is warranted. PROJECT PRODUCT CONSIDERATIONS: The Ultra Log project will support the further development of the Cougaar technology, which operates under an Open Source license. It is expected that most functional and technology development should also fall under this Open Source license. Some functional development components may however contain significant military processes and may be determined to be too sensitive to put in the public domain. Similarly, development of some other technologies may result in classification of design documents and source code. Offerors should identify which, if any, of these categories they might expect their proposed development efforts to fall into and whether they would be willing to operate under an Open Source license, if required. If an offeror feels, especially in the security sub-area, that its technology may be a candidate for classification, the offeror should identify their organization's ability to develop in a classified environment. ORGANIZATIONAL CONFLICT OF INTEREST: Each cost proposal shall contain a section satisfying the following requirements: awards made under this BAA 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 Schafer Corporation, Mitre, Logistics Management Institute (LMI), and Digital Systems International Corporation (DSIC) personnel as special resources to assist with the logistics of administering proposal evaluation, and to provide advice on specific technical areas. These contractor personnel 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 these selected contractors for the limited purpose stated above. Any information not intended for limited release to these contractors 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, traditional FAR/DFARS type contracts, grants and "Other Transactions". Information concerning "Other Transactions" can be found at URL http://www.darpa.mil/cmo/ EVALUATION CRITERIA: Proposals will be selected through a technical/scientific/business decision process with technical and scientific considerations being most important. Evaluations will be performed using the following criteria: 1. Quality and Technical Merit, 2. Offeror'sCapabilities and Related Experience, 3. Approach to Technology Transfer, and 4. Cost. The PIP provides further details concerning the evaluation criteria including order of importance. PROPOSAL SUBMISSION: Proposers MUST obtain the BAA 00-46 PIP, which includes further information on the areas of interest: technical overview, program schedule, expected deliverables, preparation and formats for proposals, and proposal evaluation criteria. The PIP may be obtained from the World Wide Web one working day after release of the BAA in the CBD publication at URL http://www.darpa.mil (search under "Solicitations"), or requests may be sent via e-mail to baa00-46@darpa.mil. Proposers to multiple areas must submit a separate proposal for each area. To be considered, full proposals must be submitted to DARPA/ISO, 3701 North Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22203-1714 (Attn: BAA 00-46) on or before 4:00 p.m., local time, Wednesday, 20 September 2000. In addition to hardcopies, electronic copies of proposals should be submitted on floppy diskette(s) or Iomega 100MB Zip disk(s) according to instructions in the PIP. Proposals submitted by fax or e-mail are not acceptable and will not be considered. The Government anticipates completing the evaluation during the first quarter of fiscal year 2001. PROPOSAL FORMAT: Proposals shall consist of two separately bound volumes. Volume I shall provide the technical proposal and management approach and Volume II shall address the cost. Detailed instructions for completing the proposals are contained in the PIP. Proposals not meeting the specified format described in the PIP will not be reviewed. OTHER GENERAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE REQUIREMENTS: DARPA will construct a balanced program meeting its needs. A total of approximately $15M will be available in FY01 for multiple efforts. Total funding available over 4 years is expected to be approximately $90M. Size of each award and duration of efforts will vary according to the type of effort undertaken. The Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) will continue to partner in the development and transition of the Cougaar technology and may elect to fund, jointly or separately, proposals under this BAA. All responsible sources may submit a proposal that will be considered by the Agency. Historical 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 00-46 will be set aside for HBCU and MI participation due to the impracticality of reserving discrete or severable areas of technology for exclusive competition among these entities. The Government reserves the right to select for award all, some or none of the proposals received in response to this announcement. This Commerce Business Daily notice, in conjunction with the BAA 00-46 PIP, constitutes the total BAA as contemplated in FAR 6.102 (d) (2) (i). No additional information is available. This BAA 00-46 will remain open through 30 June 2001 for the purpose of subsequent proposal receipt, evaluation and source selection. COMMUNICATING WITH DARPA: All administrative correspondence and questions concerning this BAA must be directed, in writing, to one of the administrative addresses below. Electronic mail (e-mail) is preferred. DARPA intends to use electronic mail for most technical and administrative correspondence regarding this BAA. Technical and contractual questions should include the originator's full name and return e-mail address in the text. All questions and answers will be posted to URL http://www.darpa.mil (search under "Solicitations"). ADMINISTRATIVE ADDRESSES: The PIP and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) are available at URL http://www.darpa.mil (search under "Solicitations"). Written requests for these documents may be sent by facsimile to (703) 522-8916 addressed to ATTENTION BAA 00-46 INFORMATION, or by surface mail addressed to DARPA/ISO, ATTN: BAA 00-46 INFORMATION, 3701 N. Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22203-1714. Administrative, technical or contractual questions should be sent via e-mail, if possible, to baa00-46@darpa.mil. If e-mail is not available, please direct questions to one of the above addresses. These requests must include the name, address, and phone number of a point of contact. Posted 07/14/00 (W-SN474842). (0196)

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