DARPA

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is seeing initial success from its Blackjack program, according to Paul “Rusty” Thomas, program manager. The research agency is developing a subset of a constellation, 20 low Earth orbit (LEO) globe-to-globe satellites, to demonstrate a new way of building out space systems.

“We are looking at how we might do space architecture differently,” said Thomas. “We want to limit the integration time, so we can actually get to the point where a payload might not even know what bus it is going to go on, and you can actually think of the payload as the mission.”

Packet Forensics LLC, Virginia Beach, Virginia, was awarded a $10,000,000 modification (P00004) to previously awarded HR0011-18-C-0056 for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Harnessing Autonomy for Countering Cyberadversary Systems (HACCS) research project. The modification brings the total cumulative face value of the contract to $21,200,000 from $11,200,000. Work will be performed at Virginia Beach, Virginia, with an expected completion date of August 2020. Fiscal year 2019 research and development funds in the amount of $10,000,000 are being obligated at time of award. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Arlington, Virginia, is the contracting activity.

In a dark, wet and rocky research coal mine in western Pennsylvania, teams from around the globe put their robotic systems to the test in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s, or DARPA’s, latest contest. The agency designed the Subterranean Challenge, also known as the SubT Challenge, to spur the advancement of technologies that work well underground, including autonomous and other robotic systems, which could benefit first responders and the military, explained Timothy Chung, program manager, Tactical Technology Office, DARPA, to the media in attendance at the event.

Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, was awarded a $9,107,025 cost-no-fee contract for the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency-based proposal titled "Diagnostic Epigenetics of Infectious agents and Chemical Toxicity." Bids were solicited via the internet with one received. Work will be performed in Tempe, Arizona, with an estimated completion date of July 21, 2021. Fiscal year 2018 and 2019 Defense Advanced Research Project Agency funds in the amount of $5,222,714 were obligated at the time of the award. U.S. Army Contracting Command, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, is the contracting activity (W911NF-19-C-0039).

The colossal reliance on semiconductor chips by the military and commercial industry reaches across weapons, machines and systems that perform key defense and national security functions. And while the Defense Department and the industry use secure chips, they are expensive and hard to design. To remedy that, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as DARPA, is looking to automatically include defense mechanisms into the design of microchips. The agency is creating tools to manage the supply chain custody throughout the life cycle of a microchip and increase the availability and economics of secure microelectronics.

Air Force officers in charge of creating air tasking orders have long developed mission plans at air operations centers, known as AOCs, or centralized hubs in a specific command. The Air Force is looking at diversifying and decentralizing how and where those plans are created to add depth and resiliency to the process. This may be needed as designing air battle plans against potential peer threats will only grow in complexity in the future, experts say.

Galois Inc., Portland, Oregon, was awarded a $16,479,920 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract for a research project under the Safe Documents (SafeDocs) program. The SafeDocs program aims to develop novel verified programming methodologies for building high assurance parsers for extant electronic data formats, and novel methodologies for comprehending, simplifying, and reducing these formats to their safe, unambiguous, verification-friendly subsets (safe sub-setting). SafeDocs will address the ambiguity and complexity obstacles to the application of verified programming posed by extant electronic data formats. Work will be performed in Portland, Oregon, with an expected completion date of May 2023.

Agile Defense Inc.,* Reston, Virginia, has been awarded a $33,095,787 modification (P00043) to previously awarded task order HR0011-15-F-0002 for unclassified information technology services. The modification brings the total cumulative face value of the task order to $172,149,790 from $139,054,004. Work will be performed in Arlington, Virginia, with an expected completion date of June 2020. Fiscal year 2019 research and development funds in the amount of $20,741,665 are being obligated at time of award. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Arlington, Virginia, is the contracting activity.

 *Small Business

A U.S. military-funded artificial intelligence (AI) contest that wraps up later this year may result in radio devices capable of autonomously and collaboratively sharing radio frequency spectrum for the next generation of mobile devices.

Fifth-generation (5G) cellular services are widely expected to hail a new era of greater speed, reduced latency and the ability to connect many more devices—think smart cities and the Internet of Things—and move vastly more data. The wireless revolution is fueling a voracious global demand for access to the radio frequency spectrum, but managing that increasing demand in a way that avoids interference is a challenge.