Tag Archives: Army

United States Military Academy Broad Agency Announcement

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The US Military Academy (USMA) at West Point’s mission is “to educate, train, and inspire the Corps of Cadets so that each graduate is a commissioned leader of character committed to the values of Duty, Honor, Country and prepared for a career of professional excellence and service to the Nation as an officer in the United States Army.” USMA executes research to enhance the education of cadets, develop the faculty professionally, and address important issues facing the Army and the Nation. In addition, the Academy conducts research and analysis in emerging fields that may realize novel or vastly improved Army capabilities. 

At West Point, research is organized and administered through centers and institutes, most of which reside within academic departments. These centers and institutes, affiliated with each other through the Academy Research Council (ARC), coordinated and supported by the Academic Research Division (ARD), provide the infrastructure necessary to tackle the nation’s and the world’s most challenging problems. Our research centers and institutes bring context to the classroom, are central to our vibrant and pioneering faculty, and are one way West Point connects to the Army and to the Nation. In addition to applied research, there are centers and institutes at West Point that focus on other aspects of the USMA mission.

The USMA BAA identifies topics of interest to the USMA departments, directorates, and research centers and institutes. These groups focus on executing in-house research programs, with a significant emphasis on collaborative research with other organizations. The groups fund a modest amount of extramural research in certain specific areas, and those areas are described in this BAA.

The USMA BAA seeks proposals from institutions of higher education, nonprofit organizations, state and local governments, foreign organizations, foreign public entities, and for-profit organizations (i.e., large and small businesses) for research based on the following campaigns: Socio-Cultural; Information Technology; Ballistics, Weapons, and Protections; Energy and Sustainability; Materials, Measurements, and Facilities; Unmanned Systems and Space; Human Support Systems; and Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Quantum Technologies.

Proposals are sought for cutting-edge innovative research that could produce discoveries with a significant impact to enable new and improved Army technologies and related operational capabilities and related technologies. The specific research areas and topics of interest described in this document should be viewed as suggestive, rather than limiting.

Army Research Lab – Scalable, Adaptive, and Resilient Autonomy (SARA) Funding Opportunity

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Key Dates:

  • Opportunity Webinar – January 24, 2020
  • Deadline for Questions on Funding Opportunity – January 31, 2020
  • Proposals due for Cycle 1 – February 14, 2020

Program Description

Future Army forces will need to conduct cross-domain maneuver (CDM) and at times, operate semi-independently, disbursed, and while communications and infrastructure such as Global Positioning System (GPS) are disrupted or denied. Robotics and Autonomous Systems (RAS) will play a key role in expanding the operational reach, situational awareness, and effectiveness of maneuver forces in CDM. The Combat Capabilities Development Command (CCDC) Army Research Laboratory (ARL) is focused on developing fundamental understanding and informing the art-of-the-possible for warfighter concepts through research to greatly improve air and ground based autonomous vehicle perception, learning, reasoning, communication, navigation, and physical capabilities to augment and increase the freedom of maneuver in complex and contested environments. The Scalable, Adaptive, and Resilient Autonomy (SARA) program is focused on developing and experimentally accelerating emerging research in autonomous mobility and maneuverability, scalable heterogeneous and collaborative behaviors, and human agent teaming to realize adaptive and resilient Intelligent Systems that can reason about the environment, work in distributed and collaborative heterogeneous teams, and make optempo decisions to enable Autonomous Maneuver in complex and contested environments. In order to achieve this vision, advancements are needed in following:

  • Novel methods for all-terrain ground and aerial maneuver to interact with and move through complex environments.
  • Methods for scalable and heterogeneous collaborative behaviors in support of collaborative air and ground manned-unmanned teaming operations.
  • Techniques for improved perception, decision-making, and adaptive behaviors for fully autonomous maneuver in contested environments.
  • Methods, metrics, and tools to facilitate, simulate, and enable testing and evaluation of emerging approaches for intelligent and autonomous systems under Army relevant constraints and environments.
  • Experimental testbeds to develop and refine knowledge products to inform and transition technology to Army stakeholders.

Additional information, including the solicitation, can be found on the SARA webpage or on grants.gov.

U.S. Army STTR Industry Day Event 9/10/2019 – Chapel Hill, NC

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The Army invites research institutions and small businesses to attend its September 10, 2019 STTR Industry Day Event in Chapel Hill, NC at The Friday Center. Please register at the link below. It is an opportunity to network and form collaborations to submit for 21 PH I awards and 7 PH II awards. Additionally, the Army’s office of small business programs and application reviewers will be there to answer questions as to how to submit a successful application.

The registration page for the event and the ARO Pre-BAA Announcement describing the seven topics are available.

Topic Titles:

  • Intrinsically Interference and Jamming-Resistant High Frequency (HF) Radios
  • Millimeter Waveforms for Tactical Networking Intrinsically Interference and Jamming-Resistant High Frequency (HF) Radios
  • Positions, Navigations and Timing (PNT) Without the Global Positioning System (GPS)
  • Tactical Edge Sensor Processing
  • Adaptable Tactical Communications
  • Phased-Array Antennas for Advanced Extremely High Frequency Satellite Communications
  • Standoff Electronic Denial

Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences Broad Agency Announcement for Basic Scientific Research (2018)

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Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) W911NF-18-S-0001 for the Foundational Science  Research Unit of the U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social  Sciences (ARI) solicits new proposals for its fiscal year 2018 program of basic  research in behavioral science. The U.S. Army Research Institute for the  Behavioral and Social Sciences is the Army lead agency for the conduct of  research, development, and analyses for the improvement of Army readiness and  performance via research advances and applications of the behavioral and social  sciences that address personnel, organization, training, and leader development  issues.  The basic research program supports research projects that are designed  to expand fundamental knowledge and discover general principles in behavioral and  social sciences.

 A key consideration in the decision to support a research proposal is that its  findings are likely to stimulate new, basic behavioral research which, in turn,  will lead to improved performance of Army personnel and their units.  Proposals  may address both traditional behavioral issues as well as psychophysiological (to  include neuroscience) and network science approaches to social phenomena, memory,  cognition, and personality. ARI will not support proposals through this BAA that  are primarily applied research projects (e.g., human factors studies or training  program evaluations) or purely focused on physiology, psychopathology, or  behavioral health. 

Interested offerors are encouraged to submit white papers prior to submitting  proposals. 

The full research announcement and application instructions for both white papers and proposals may be viewed at grants.gov under opportunity number W911NF-18-S-0001.

White paper submissions due by April 4, 2018.

Full proposal submissions due by June 15, 2018.

Research topic areas of interest include the domains listed below (see the BAA p. 8, available here, for more information):

  1. Personnel Testing and performance
  2. Leader Development
  3. Organizational Effectiveness
  4. Learning in Formal and Informal Environments
  5. Culture