DARPA BAA HR001120S0034: Strategic Technologies

Category	Opportunity
DoD Communities of Interest	R&D Research and Development
Subject	DARPA BAA HR001120S0034: Strategic Technologies
Due Date	31 October 2021
Government Organization	DEFENSE ADVANCED RESEARCH PROJECTS AGENCY (DARPA)
Description DARPA's Strategic Technology Office (STO) is seeking innovative ideas, and disruptive technologies that provide the U.S. military increased lethality in an era of eroding dominance within the broader Mosaic Warfare focus areas objective: Mosaic Technologies, Mosaic Effects Web Services (EWS), and Mosaic Experimentation. 1.1 PROGRAM OVERVIEW DARPA’s Strategic Technology Office (STO) is seeking innovative ideas and disruptive technologies that provide the U.S. military increased lethality in an era of eroding dominance. For decades, the U.S. military has enjoyed overwhelming dominance in all domains by virtue of its weapon systems' performance and sophistication. Unfortunately, this dominance is being challenged by peer competitors, who have had decades to study our strengths, and are hard at work developing counters to degrade the advantages we currently possess. It is becoming evident that the U.S. cannot solve this dilemma by continuing legacy practices of building the next bigger, faster, more powerful, more survivable version of what came before. A new paradigm is needed that values “lethality” over monolithic system dominance. Whereas dominance is measured by comparing capabilities across systems, lethality is measured by the ability to deliver the desired effect at will, regardless of the system or systems of systems involved. DARPA/STO aims to provide the U.S. military lethality using Mosaic Warfare strategy: fast, scalable, adaptive joint multi-domain lethality. The disaggregation of effects chain functions (e.g., Find, Fix, Target, Track, Engage, and Assess or F2T2EA) across a heterogeneous mix of manned and unmanned platforms from all domains. Furthermore, it can compose and recompose effects chains at high speed without prior knowledge of which systems will provide which function(s) of a given effects chain. The result presents an adversary with an overwhelming, diverse set of kinetic and non-kinetic decision dilemmas without common counters or failure modes. To achieve this ambitious vision, DARPA/STO is seeking innovative ideas and disruptive technologies within the focus areas of the broader Mosaic Warfare objective: Mosaic Technologies, Mosaic Effects Web Services (EWS), and Mosaic Experimentation. Research supporting any of STO's broad mission objectives identified in the Funding Opportunity Description above may be submitted under this BAA. Topic areas of specific interest include, but are not limited to, the following Effects: What effects provide the best likelihood of meeting campaign objectives? How can deterrence and de-escalation be achieved? How can deterrent effects be created while preserving surprise? Force Composition: How should a commander provision assets for the battle? What elements should be used to deliver the desired effect? How should these assets be organized? How can we understand logistics flow and readiness to know how and when these assets will be available? How can the probability of success of a given effects chain be “verified” against situation uncertainties? Strategy and Mission Planning: How would different effects chains be employed at different times during a campaign? What information is needed to make these decisions and plan the effects? How can this information be acquired? Communications: - How do we provide assured high-capacity mobile communication capabilities in space, air, ground, sea surface, and underwater environments (to include systems with and without access to infrastructure)? - How can we better communicate across physical domains? - Are there ways to create a greater density of links, potentially leveraging indigenous infrastructure and non-traditional communication channels? - Are there ways to make heterogeneous links more interoperable, even when they have different physical-layer protocols? -Are there ways to make links more discoverable and configurable to support dynamic networking? - Are there new radio and device technologies that can enable faster integration of new waveforms, greater adaptability, and more options to serve as gateways between networks? Task Planning: How do we develop fine-scale tactics automatically? Can these fine-scale tactics learn and adapt to the combat situation? How should tasks be assigned to specific systems (e.g., within a swarm or constellation)? How can this tasking and supporting information be translated into a message framework each system will understand? How can both autonomous machines and human combat units maintain coherent task coordination and execute missions at the edge when communications are degraded or denied? Training: How will human warfighters operate with new mosaic elements without prior training? Are there novel ways to train Artificial Intelligence (AI) synergistically with the human operator's training to instill human context and intuition into the AI while avoiding human bias? How can we train human operators to fast and minimize operator burden? Can new systems be developed with streamlined, more intuitive human-machine interfaces? How can more of the mechanical tasks of operating a new system (i.e., “button pushing”) be automated to minimize learning requirements and enable warfighters to focus on more cognitive functions? How can we enable humans and machines to share tasks at the edge? What are approaches to managing the level of autonomy? How do we develop trust within human-machine teams? 1.1.2 Mosaic Effects Web Services (EWS) DARPA/STO has a legacy of developing advanced mission systems technologies: sensors, seekers, and electronic warfare. Generally, these systems are thought of as providing a component capability, or service, of an effects chain. In recent years, DARPA/STO has been developing these systems to enable and be enabled by a system of systems. In the context of Mosaic Warfare, these capabilities are ‘tiles’ within the mosaic, or Mosaic Effects Web Services (EWS). For example, DARPA/STO is currently developing payloads and processing that provide new distributed sensing and electronic warfare. DARPA/STO is seeking technologies that expand upon this set of tools, placing an increased emphasis on novel sensors and effectors consistent with the Mosaic Warfare strategy. DARPA/STO wishes to expand the sensing emphasis to the “find and fix” portions of the kill chain and emphasize offensive non-kinetic effects against peer adversaries.
Website	https://beta.sam.gov/opp/7b3237fc6a984a8aab3f131e392f41ad/view