The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)


The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has the mission to help maintain U.S. technological superiority over, and to prevent technological surprise by, its potential adversaries. Thus, the DARPA goal is to pursue as many highly imaginative and innovative research ideas and concepts with potential military and dual-use applicability as the budget and other factors will allow. DARPA funds projects and efforts that are in the very early stages of the engineering life cycle (concept exploration or proof of concept efforts). Although the majority of the DARPA funded efforts do not relate to UXO they have funded many UXO related efforts over the years. The majority of the UXO related efforts funded to date tended to focus around detection and discrimination technologies. DARPA has a Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) program where small business contractors are invited to send proposals to DARPA for funding. DARPA SBIR programs tend be awarded in phases.

Phase I

Phase I efforts are usually Firm Fixed Price (FFP) contracts under a $99,000 threshold.

Phase II

Phase II proposals are excepted by invitation by the respective Phase I program manager (with the exception of Fast Track Phase II proposals). DARPA Phase II proposals are usually structured as follows: the first 10-12 months (base effort) costing approximately $375,000; the second 10-12 months of incremental funding also being approximately $375,000. Thus the entire Phase II effort generally does not exceed $750,000 under a Cost Plus Fixed Fee (CPFF) arrangement.

Phase II Enhancement Policy

To encourage the transition of SBIR research into DOD Systems, DARPA has implemented a Phase II Enhancement policy. Under this policy DARPA will provide a Phase II company with additional Phase II SBIR funding, not to exceed $200K, if the company can match the additional SBIR funds with non-SBIR funds from DOD core-mission funds, the private sector, or at the discretion of a DARPA Program Manager. DARPA will generally provide the additional Phase II funds by modifying the Phase II contract.

DARPA selects proposals for funding based on technical merit and the evaluation criteria contained in this solicitation document. As funding is limited, DARPA reserves the right to select and fund only those proposals considered to be superior in overall technical quality and highly relevant to the DARPA mission. As a result, DARPA may fund more than one proposal in a specific topic area if the technical quality of the proposal(s) is deemed superior, or it may not fund any proposals in a topic area.

For more information on DARPA contact them at:
DARPA/CMO/SBIR
3701 North Fairfax Drive
Arlington, VA 22203-1714
(703) 526-4170
Home Page http://www.darpa.mil

Although DARPA does not have any current UXO related efforts advertised at this time, UXOInfo.com will keep you posted when the next SBIR DARPA topic area related to UXO is advertised.