Exploration of Highly Complex Defense Systems

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Tactical Technology Office (DARPA/TTO) is seeking applications from researchers, engineers, and subject matter experts to attend an invitation-only workshop focused on design, development, and management of highly complex systems. The workshop will be held on November 13th to 15th, 2024 at a to-be-determined hotel in the Boston, MA metropolitan area. DARPA strongly encourages non-traditional performers including small businesses, academic and research institutions, and first-time Government contractors to apply.

Background & Purpose

DARPA/TTO creates technological surprise and provides new options for national security by demonstrating revolutionary platforms and systems with disruptive capabilities. Many of these systems are now profoundly complex, where “complexity” refers to the number and range of interactions between subsystems and components; their cross-domain and interdependent nature; and the inherently disparate data types and analyses required to characterize them. For example, integrated circuits have billions of components; however, the behavior of each component is well understood, and design rules ensure that interactions are limited to nearest neighbors. This type of system qualifies as a “complicated” system. In contrast, the flight control software of an inherently unstable aircraft like the F-22—which consists of electrical, mechanical, computational, and networked components and subsystems interacting in overt and subtle ways— is complex.

Advanced digital engineering processes and environments, where high-fidelity computational modeling, simulations, and testing enable precise decision-making at a revolutionary scale, can provide insights into complex interactions during the design phase; however, generalized methods for predicting and managing system complexity do not exist.

TTO Office Wide BAA HR001124S0023 defines the Management of Complexity focus area as follows: “Reduce risk and cost through new methods of design space exploration and high-capacity computing that provide more efficient and complete insight on system architectures, deliver visibility into higher-order interactions, and enable focused and efficient testing. This includes nontraditional systems engineering processes that promise to deliver faster design, engineering, and manufacturing of complex defense systems.”

Examples of complex systems that are of interest to TTO include, but are not limited to:

• Ground vehicles equipped with local tactical sensor, computation, and response networks
• State of the art combat aircraft
• Nuclear powered submarines
• Theatre missile defense systems
• Global cross-domain tactical information systems
• Space systems and sensing

This workshop is designed to bring together leading experts in the field of complexity to distill design method architectures, organizational models, and other constructs to understand and enable rapid design and development of high-performance, complex systems with national security applications. DARPA plans to invite successful workshop applicants to virtual and inperson residential sessions for the purposes of reviewing and discussing current and future research relevant to this topic, and developing new insights and areas of study. More specifically, via this workshop TTO intends to foster methodologies, including non-traditional systems engineering processes, to

1. Provide insight into system architectures allowing for a new understanding of and lexicon for complexity
2. Enable effective analysis of simplified interactions through improved system architecture modeling and design
3. Enable effective decision-making and reduce risk through new tools, new methods of rapid design space exploration, and high-capacity computing
4. Deliver visibility into higher-order interactions and non-linearities to advance measurement and prediction methods
5. Enable efficient and maximally informative testing, as well as efficient accreditation

Desired Workshop Outcomes

The desired outcomes of this workshop are to enable a new framework for understanding complex systems, and to explore/inspire new concepts and ideas that could serve as foundational knowledge and material for potential new TTO program areas. Based on DARPA’s interests, DARPA may invite workshop participants to provide proposals to be submitted under the TTO Office Wide Broad Agency Announcement, HR001124S0023 and evaluated in accordance with the published evaluation criteria in Section II of that document.

DARPA intends to provide further details via email to the applicants selected for workshop attendance by October 22, 2024, 5:00PM ET.

About the Workshop

This workshop will be structured as an Ideas Lab. An Ideas Lab offers a unique opportunity for interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation. This intensive workshop brings together a select group of scholars from diverse fields to address critical challenges, within an intensive, immersive format designed to foster deep engagement and creative thinking. Participants from various disciplines come together in a residential setting, conducive to focused discussion and idea generation. Sharing meals, meeting spaces, and after-hours activities, participants are co-located for optimal collaboration. Throughout the workshop, expert facilitators and guides provide support and mentorship to guide participants through the process of generating novel research ideas.

The Ideas Lab offers a valuable opportunity to build new connections, develop research ideas, and gain new perspectives. By networking with colleagues from diverse fields, participants can establish new collaborations and explore innovative research approaches. Additionally, the interdisciplinary nature of the Ideas Lab fosters the generation of novel research concepts and provides exposure to different disciplinary approaches, allowing participants to broaden their understanding and gain valuable insights. If selected to participate in the Ideas Lab, you will have the opportunity to contribute to groundbreaking research and shape the future of your field.

Application Areas of Interest

Workshop application areas of interest include new and emerging concepts in characterization of complex systems, development of tools and techniques, and implementation. In addition, to maximize workshop engagement and optimize outcomes a focus on flexible thinking, teamwork, and interdisciplinary collaboration is critical.

1. Characterization

• Characterizing highly complex systems using deterministic, stochastic, or chaos theory approaches
• Understanding existing capabilities and constraints in large-scale complex system modeling, including exploration of complex design spaces and assumptions tied to multiple design variants
• Leveraging computational methods such as decomposition, substructuring, and highperformance computing to analyze complex systems
• Predicting emergent effects from large numbers of interoperating complex subsystems, including the impact of embedded autonomous systems

2. Tools & Techniques

• Simulation and modeling of complex systems in a high-fidelity, multi-disciplinary environment during nominal and off-nominal operations, and in highly computational environments including the use of high-performance computing. Also of interest are approaches under novel conditions (e.g., hypersonics, directed energy), as well as analysis over the full life cycle
• Tools to integrate software in a multi-physics environment, i.e., encompassing disparate physical representations of systems
• Analytical tools and processes to empower data analytics, allowing projects to be completed with less risk and within revolutionary time scales
• Techniques to actively control a system in real-time to manage/dampen/mitigate/remove unanticipated interactions with other subsystems

3. Implementation

• Methods to characterize, rapidly design and develop, test, and accredit highly complex systems
• Mission engineering, specifically creating the link between operational and design simulations in a digital engineering environment, to evaluate the performance effectiveness of new national security systems measured by engineering analysis

4. Innovative Collaborative Engagement

• Interdisciplinary collaboration: forging effective partnerships with colleagues from diverse fields
• Multidisciplinary development: approaches that encompass multiple disciplines, meeting the requirements to address full-scale problems
• Flexible mindset: exploration and shaping ideas with others, with imaginative immersion and fluid thinking
• Active and open engagement: open contribution to group discussions, collaboration on research ideas, and participation in team-based activities. Applicants are strongly encouraged to include non-proprietary information to ensure that selected respondents can engage in open exploration of ideas.

The following describe approaches that are not likely to be considered:

• Incremental improvements to current approaches that do not introduce fundamentally new elements. DARPA seeks revolutionary, not evolutionary, improvements that support new generations of techniques and toolsets.
• Approaches limited to single or few disciplines and unable to meet the needs and requirements meant to address full-scale design problems. Efficient processing of a complex system needs to scope to multi-disciplinary problems.
• Non-integrated wrappers or loosely coupled tools for modeling or data analysis, or simple calls to and from software packages. Tight coupling is necessary to work efficiently in a multi-disciplinary environment.
• Development solutions meant to deal with data and processing for desktop-scale engineering problems. Solutions will most likely be relevant to highly computational environments.

Applicants from the following disciplines are of particular interest:

• Systems engineering and design
• Mathematics
• Modeling and computation
• Integration and Test
• Accreditation
• Explainable Artificial Intelligence (AI)
• Design space exploration
• Formal verification methods
• Management and organization
• Human and complex system integration
• Ethical and legal human system supervision

Application Process

Via this workshop and subsequent discussions, TTO intends to foster a new ecosystem of researchers and practitioners in the field of highly complex systems, and so applications are encouraged from professionals in the defense industry and non-defense industry, academia, not for-profit organizations, national labs, small businesses, and any other organizations with information or ideas to contribute.

General Application Guidelines:

1. All responses to this Special Notice (SN) must be submitted via the online application: https://apply.knowinnovation.com/ttocomplexityworkshop/. Responses will be accepted any time from the publication of this SN until October 4, 2024 at 4:00PM ET. Early responses are encouraged.
2. All technical and administrative correspondence and questions regarding this SN should be sent to the SN email address: DARPA-SN-24-102@darpa.mil. Emails sent directly to the Technical POC may result in a delayed or no response.
3. Do not include elaborate brochures or marketing materials; only include information relevant to the submission requirements.
4. All submissions shall be Unclassified. DO NOT INCLUDE ANY CUI OR CLASSIFIED INFORMATION IN THE APPLICATION.
5. To the maximum extent possible, respondents are encouraged to send non-proprietary information. The intent behind this request is to ensure that invited respondents can engage in an open exploration and discussion of the topics raised at the workshop. If an applicant chooses to include proprietary information, the applicant is responsible for clearly identifying it. Submissions containing proprietary information must have the cover page and each page containing such information clearly marked with a label such as “Proprietary” or “Company Proprietary.”

NOTE: “Confidential” is a classification marking used to control the dissemination of U.S. Government National Security Information as dictated in Executive Order 13526 and should not be used to identify proprietary business information.

Invitation:

DARPA may invite applicants to attend the workshop based on the relevance of the application to the four Application Areas of Interest. Applicants are required to apply via the online application to be considered for the workshop. DARPA will respond to applicants that will be invited to the workshop only. Upon review of the applications, DARPA may elect to invite all, some, or none of the applicants to the workshop because workshop space is limited.

Schedule of Events

Applications Due  10/4/2024

Workshop Invitations Sent to Invited Participants NLT 10/22/2024

Acceptances Due 10/25/2024

Participant Orientation & Virtual Microlab Virtual 11/6/2024

Residential Ideas Lab Boston, MA 11/13 – 11/15/2024

Final Presentations Virtual 11/20/2024

Disclaimers and Important Notices

• This SN is not a formal solicitation and/or request for proposals. Responses do not bind DARPA to any further actions related to this topic, including requesting follow-on proposals from respondents to this SN.
• DARPA will not provide reimbursement for costs incurred in responding to this SN.
• Respondents are advised that DARPA is under no obligation to acknowledge receipt of the information received or provide feedback to respondents with respect to any information submitted under this SN.
• DARPA will disclose submission contents only for the purpose of review. Submissions may be reviewed by the Government (DARPA and other Government partners); FFRDCs; and Scientific, Engineering and Technical Assistance (SETA) support contractors.