The purpose of this combined Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) under Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Part 35 and Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) under 2 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) 200.204 (henceforth referred to as “BAA”) is to solicit research proposals for submission to the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM) Army Research Laboratory (ARL) for funding consideration.
ARL’s mission as the Army’s foundational research laboratory is to Operationalize Science to ensure overmatch in any future conflict. ARL’s foundational research mission spans basic research (budget activity 6.1) and applied research (budget activity 6.2) as defined by 32 CFR 22.105 but may include advanced technology development (budget activity 6.3) and advanced component development and prototypes (budget activity 6.4) when opportunities arise to directly or indirectly help achieve ARL’s mission. ARL partners across the national security enterprise to deliver fundamentally advantageous change that is rooted in the creation and exploitation of scientific knowledge.
Whitepapers for initial concept reviews and full proposals are sought 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 scientific research that supports the ARL mission and the published ARL research topics of interest. Whitepapers and full proposals are expected to be for cutting-edge innovative research that could produce discoveries having a significant impact on enabling new and improved Army operational capabilities and related technologies.
Interested parties are encouraged to continually browse the ARL BAA topics website for white paper and proposal topics that ARL desires to explore. These specific research topics should be viewed as suggestive, rather than limiting. ARL is always interested in considering other innovative research concepts of relevance to the Army if those concepts align with ARL's mission. Please see Section II, Detailed Information about the Funding Opportunity, for more information on the ARL research topics advertised through this BAA. Interested parties should also review https://www.grants.gov/ and https://sam.gov/ to obtain the latest version of the BAA for whitepaper and proposal submission requirements.
This BAA is a continuously open announcement valid throughout the period from the date of issuance through 20 November 2027, unless announced otherwise. This announcement succeeds BAA W911NF-17-S-0002 and W911NF-17-S-0003 (including all modifications) dated 1 April 2017.
SPECIAL NOTICE - Distributed Analytics in Tactical Networks
The aim of this Special Notice under the DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory (ARL) Broad Agency
Announcement (BAA) (W911NF‐23‐S‐0001) as amended, under Grants.gov Opportunity W911NF‐23‐S‐
0001‐SPECIALNOTICE‐Distributed Analytics in Tactical Networks, is to solicit proposals related to the ARL
BAA Topic, “Networking Structure, Dynamics, and Protocols”. The future battlefield will be increasingly
complex (dynamics, scale, heterogeneity, peer adversaries) and resource constrained (bandwidth,
storage, memory, computing power). This complex network must support multiple conflicting demands
and must support distributed analytics at the edge. The Army is interested in collaborating with an
awardee on research efforts to further develop adaptive, goal‐driven, semantically‐aware, distributed
analytics for situational understanding at the tactical edge. Proposals are expected to focus on one of the
research goals and to identify possible linkages to the other research goals.
Proposal must be submitted in accordance with the preparation and submissions instructions under BAA
W911NF‐23‐S‐0001. In order to be considered for award associated with this Special Notice, proposals
must be received by 20 March 2024.
Unless noted in Section II.A.3 or as dictated by the award instrument type, eligible applicants under this BAA include 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 ARO Targeted Opportunities, please see the specific eligibility requirements in the II.A.3 ARO Targeted Opportunities section above. For specific Other Transactions for Prototypes eligibility requirements, please see the “Other Transaction for Prototype or Production” section within the II.B. Federal Award Information section.