The U.S. Air Force has asked industry to submit white papers as it seeks to develop and transition next-generation technologies into warfighting capabilities that could help the service achieve cyber superiority.
The Air Force Research Laboratory expects the Capabilities for Cyber Advancement broad agency announcement to have a ceiling value of approximately $975 million and anticipates multiple awards in the form of procurement contracts, cooperative agreements, grants or other transactions, according to a notice posted Tuesday on the beta SAM website.
“Individual awards will not normally exceed 60 months with dollar amounts normally ranging from $100K to $99M,” the BAA reads.
The scope of the BAA focuses on three areas: global vigilance and preservation of freedom of action in the space domain; global reach and provision of independent options; and global power and joint lethality and effectiveness.
Technologies of interest in support of the BAA include cloud architectures, cyber modeling and simulation, code analysis and evaluation, decision support for cyber missions, zero trust computing, virtualization, trusted hardware and software, mobile and embedded device security and risk management approaches.
Platforms of interest to the Air Force include military platforms and programs of record with cyber components or dependence, embedded devices and firmware, automation systems, wired and wireless networks at the tactical and enterprise levels, mobile and bring your own device platforms and shared/commercial and private/and government clouds.
The service expects to obligate $121 million in funds for fiscal year 2021, $160 million for FY 2022, $195 million for FY 2023, $211 million for FY 2024, $226 million for FY 2025 and $62 million for FY 2026.
White papers for FY 2021 are due April 5. ARFL will continue to accept white papers for FY 2022 through FY 2026 and those documents are due every end of September between 2021 and 2025.
