The purpose of this modification is to republish the original announcement, incorporating all previous modifications, pursuant to FAR 35.016(c). This republishing also includes the following change: Increases the total funding for the BAA. No other changes have been made.
It is recommended white papers be received by 1 May 08. White papers will be accepted until 2:00 p.m. Eastern time on 31 December 2009, but it is less likely that funding will be available after the date cited.
I. FUNDING OPPORTUNITY DESCRIPTION:
INFORMATION WARFARE: AFRL/IF is soliciting white papers to identify and develop technologies to enable a distributed information infrastructure that provides all the mechanisms and services required to allow the warfighters to craft their C4I information environments, including ability to establish distributed virtual staffs, to share a common consistent perception of the battlespace, and construct distributed task teams among sensors, shooters, movers, and command posts. These technologies will be applied across the full spectrum of cyber operations, in support of Air Force mission requirements. Specific technologies include, but are not limited to: network protocols, information adaptation, network management, routing technologies, adaptive interfaces, distributed information environments, multimedia services, adaptive security services, global resource management, architectures, computer and network risk assessment/management, vulnerability assessment, assurance techniques, detection of intrusions and misuse, network security, wireless information assurance, assessment of information damage, cyber forensics, recovery of information systems and computer networks to operational levels, and a full spectrum of active response and computer network attack techniques.
Information superiority is an integral part of air and space superiority, an Air Force doctrine. This gives the commander freedom from attack, the freedom to maneuver and the freedom to attack. Information superiority is that degree of information advantage of one force over another that permits the conduct of operations at a given time and place without prohibitive opposition. Information operations are not focused exclusively on information superiority and information operations alone is not sufficient to achieve information superiority. AFRL/IF has developed a responsive R&D technology program to help the US achieve information superiority. The technology research in this BAA will be focused in the following areas of information operations: influence operations, network warfare operations and electronic warfare operations.
Influence Operations: Focused on affecting the perceptions and behaviors of leaders, groups, or entire populations. Influence operations employ capabilities to affect behaviors, protect operations, communicate commander's intent and project accurate information to achieve desired effects across the cognitive domain. These effects should result in differing objectives. The military capabilities of influence operations are psychological operations, military deception, operations security, counterintelligence operations, counterpropoganda operations and public affairs operations.
Network Warfare Operations: The integrated planning, employment, and assessment of military capabilities to achieve desired effects across the interconnected analog and digital network portion of the battle space. Network warfare operations are conducted in the information domain through the combination of hardware, software, data and human interaction. The operational activities of network warfare operations are network attack, network defense and network warfare support.
Electronic Warfare Operations: The integrated planning, employment, and assessment of military capabilities to achieve desired effects across the electromagnetic domain in support operational objectives.
The objective of this BAA is to address highly innovative R&D areas in information operations. Proposed work should address the innovative and strategic thought of the 21st century adversary, and develop new concepts to counter with innovative information-based capabilities. Further, proposed work should address new concepts for continuously analyzing the information battle space to identify US vulnerabilities and adversary weaknesses, and develop new defensive and offensive strategies and capabilities accordingly.
There are critical technical areas of focus under this BAA which are high leverage areas to be worked in order to address the most difficult Air Force requirements, provide the Air Force with the greatest technology push possible, and surface opportunities for contributing to important national security issues such as defending information systems and countering cyber terrorism.
Network Attack: Employment of network-based capabilities to destroy, disrupt, degrade, deny, delay, corrupt or usurp information resident in or transiting through networks. A primary effect is to influence the adversary commander's decisions.
Network Defense: Employment of network-based capabilities to defend friendly information resident in or transiting through networks against adversary efforts to destroy, disrupt, degrade, deny, delay, corrupt or usurp it. Actions include analyzing network activity to determine the appropriate course of action to protect, detect, and react to internal and external threats to Air Force networks.
Network Warfare Support: The collection and production of network related data for immediate decisions involving network warfare operations. Specifically, network warfare support provides profiling, event analysis, open source review, as well as pattern analysis in support of network defense and countermeasure development.
II. AWARD INFORMATION:
Total funding for this BAA is approximately $49.9M. The anticipated funding to be obligated under this BAA is broken out by fiscal year as follows: FY 06 - $13M; FY 07 - $13M; FY 08 - $13M; and FY09 - $10.9M. Individual awards will not normally exceed 24 months with dollar amounts ranging between $100,000 and $1,000,000 per year. Awards of efforts as a result of this announcement will be in the form of contracts, grants, cooperative agreements, or other transactions depending upon the nature of the work proposed.
See full announcement at https://www.fbo.gov/?s=opportunity&mode=form&tab=core&id=c5326f373c3ed81fcb2534a2577c7fb5&_cview=0.
