DARPA is seeking innovative proposals to support the mission of the Adaptive Capabilities Office (ACO) and the Aerospace Projects Office (APO).
Abstracts are mandatory and will be assessed on a rolling basis until 30 November 2025. Invited full proposals will be due 30 January 2026.
Individual proposals must address the needs of either the ACO or the APO. Proposals can address more than one Relevant Technology Area for the Office targeted.
Adaptive Capabilities Office Relevant Technology Areas
- Architecture – creating and adapting kill webs across all domains and services; critical use of data analytics and other tools for optimisation; combining emerging resilience technologies for protect and defend; creating and adapting networks of production, raw materials, workforce and capital flows.
- Sensing and Tracking – finding and tracking difficult or high-value targets in diverse battlefield conditions; rapid geolocation and identification of targets in all physical domains; ability to fuse diverse data and develop tracks at various security levels; methods and data sources to assess engineering and production capabilities; evaluate constraints that lead to brittle supply chains and limit increased production scalability.
- Lethality – concepts and applications to improve the lethality of weapons systems.
- Survivability – increase survivability for weapons, platforms and critical infrastructure (including ‘fight-through’ protection, avoidance, adaptation and active defense).
- Sustainability – optimise the use of products and production capacity for military and civil needs.
- Communications – maintain robust, effective communications across divers battlefield and operational situations.
- Introspection, Forensics and Reverse Engineering – creating rapid, effective capabilities to further Department of Defense understanding of hardware and software of interest, to include forensic capture and instrumentation.
- Next-Gen Network Sensing– sensing and monitoring network devices, links and edges to detect and remediate any adversary activity.
- Next_Gen Tactics, Techniques and Procedures (TTPs) – advance the state-of-the-art in TTPs for offensive and defensive operations, with a particular focus in the cyber and information warfare domains.
- Advanced Battle Management – enabling timely complex battlefield operations across multiple services and domains.
- Complex All-Domain Experimentation – approaches and technologies to enable efficient, credible exploration and testing of complex kill webs.
- Relevant Non-Kinetic Effects – achieving program goals through non-kinetic means.
- Faster Than Real Time Modeling and Simulation – advanced modeling and simulation of kill webs and warfighting architectures with the ability to create ‘mission cost’ data-driven functions to inform future funding decisions and battle management approaches; advanced modelling and simulation capabilities for domestic and international supply chains.
Aerospace Projects Office Relevant Technology Areas
- Structure and Materials – high temperature metallic materials; structural concepts that allow design of thermally driven, weight-efficient aiframes.
- High Speed Weapon Separation – weapons, weapon bays and ejections systems to accommodate hypersonic separation from aircraft and flyout to targets.
- Dual Mode Propulsion – continuous powered operation of a turbine based combined cycle propulsion system over the entire flight envelope.
- Power Generation – power generation sufficient to support a modern avionics and sensor suite during all period of flight.
- Thermal Management Systems – integrated solution to managing the thermal environment of the aircraft and propulsion system.
- High Mach Turbine Engine – efficient turbine based combined cycle operations through ascending and descending mode transition with the need for water injection.
Document
Broad Agency Announcement – ACO & APO: HR001125S0006
