The United States Air Force (USAF) is looking for white papers to develop “innovative, next-generation technologies to achieve cyber superiority to integrate and transition into warfighting capabilities,” with an eventual goal of a contract worth $975 million.
According to a broad agency announcement (BAA) posted to beta.SAM.gov, white paper submissions for the cyber contract are due April 5. White papers will continue to be collected every September until 2025.
“The Air Force Research Laboratory’s (AFRL’s) strategic vision for cyber superiority is to ensure the success of cyberspace-dependent missions in air, space, and cyberspace,” the BAA says. “The purpose of this BAA is to develop the next-generation technologies necessary to achieve this vision, so that they can be integrated and transitioned into warfighting capabilities.”
The total funding for the potential five-year contract is $975 million, which the USAF anticipates will be awarded to multiple companies. Individual awards will range from $100,000 to $99 million.
The BAA’s focus is on three areas: global vigilance, global reach, and global power. These three areas will support the USAF’s five core missions, “air and space superiority; intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; rapid global mobility; global strike; and command and control.”
According to the BAA, some of the technologies the USAF is interested in include cloud architectures, code analysis and evaluation, cyber modeling and simulation, decision support for cyber missions, means for recovery from attacks, and methods for data security in untrusted environments.
