DAF SBIR DAF26BX06-DV511: Low SWaP-C Tactical Awareness Payload for Proliferated, Agile Satellites (TAPPAS) for Space Domain Awareness

Quick Answer

DAF26BX06-DV511 is a Department of the Air Force SBIR Direct to Phase II topic under the DAF 2026 SBIR Commercial Solutions Opening, Release 6. The Space Force wants a compact, low size, weight, power, and cost sensor payload that gives a host satellite persistent 4 pi steradian awareness of its own local space environment in geosynchronous orbit. Think of it as a self-awareness bubble: the satellite sees what is around it, tracks nearby objects autonomously, and assesses whether they are debris, unremarkable neutral objects, friendly, or a potential threat. The deliverable at the end of Phase II is a production representative article of flight qualifiable hardware. Awards are up to $3,000,000 for up to 24 months, with a 20 page technical volume limit. The topic opens September 23, 2026 and closes October 21, 2026 through the Defense SBIR/STTR Innovation Portal.

This is the largest award ceiling in the release and also the most hardware-committed. The government states plainly that its primary focus is on the speed of delivery for proven technology now. That framing should shape everything about your proposal: this is a manufacturing and qualification topic more than a research topic, and a proposal that reads as exploratory will lose to one that reads as production ready.

Topic At a Glance

Topic number: DAF26BX06-DV511

Title: Low SWaP-C Tactical Awareness Payload for Proliferated, Agile Satellites (TAPPAS) for Space Domain Awareness

Solicitation: Department of the Air Force 2026 SBIR Commercial Solutions Opening (CSO), Release 6, Direct to Phase II

Program type: Direct to Phase II (D2P2), no Phase I awards will be made for this topic

Award maximum value: $3,000,000, the highest in this release

Award maximum duration: 24 months

Technical volume page limit: 20 pages or slides

Component Technology Priority Area: Space Technology

Projected CMMC level requirement: Level 2 (Self)

Export control status: Restricted under ITAR 22 CFR Parts 120-130 and EAR 15 CFR Parts 730-774

Target orbit environment: Geosynchronous, the GEO belt

Expected maturity at Phase II completion: approximately TRL 6, a system or prototype demonstrated in a relevant environment

Topic open date: September 23, 2026

Proposal deadline: October 21, 2026, at the time stated in the DoW FY26 SBIR CSO

Selection timeline: within approximately 90 calendar days of solicitation close, meaning on or about January 19, 2027

Submission portal: DSIP at dodsbirsttr.mil

Keywords: surveillance, space based surveillance, proliferation, constellation, resident space object, space domain awareness, geostationary orbit, GEO belt, visual magnitude, electro optical, infrared, radio frequency, free flyer, GEO SDA, low size weight and power, own-ship awareness, local area sensor

Note on the deadline time. The DAF instructions point applicants to the DoW FY26 SBIR CSO for the submission deadline date and time. DoW SBIR CSO deadlines are ordinarily 12:00 p.m. Eastern on the close date. Confirm on the live DSIP posting rather than assuming end of day.

The Performance Requirements, Stated Plainly

These are the numbers your proposal will be measured against. State your position on each one explicitly.

Field of regard: persistent 4 pi steradian awareness of the local space environment for the host vehicle. Occlusion zones are probable and should be minimized based on satellite design and sensor placement.

Power: the ideal payload would not exceed 50 watts of power consumption.

Mass: the ideal payload would not exceed 15 kilograms.

Self-awareness bubble range: 200 kilometers as the threshold, 500 kilometers as the objective radius.

Detection sensitivity: ability to detect a 0.5 meter object as the threshold, down to 0.2 meter as the objective.

Detection confidence: probability of detection of 0.8 and probability of false alarm of 0.01.

Phenomenologies of interest: multiple, including but not limited to electro-optical, infrared, and radio frequency.

Bus compatibility: to be suitable for integration across a wide range of buses, solutions must be aggressively optimized for low size, weight, and power, with affordability in mind.

The topic softens the SWaP figures with the phrase "while any available tested technology will be considered," and calls the 50 watt and 15 kilogram figures ideal rather than absolute. Do not read that as permission to ignore them. Read it as an invitation to propose something proven that comes close, and to justify any excess against the platform integration argument the topic makes, which is that these characteristics are critical for enabling integration onto platforms with stringent resource limitations.

What the Space Force Is Actually Looking For

The operational logic

The modern space domain requires a layered sensing architecture to ensure resilience. This topic targets one element of that architecture: a compact, efficient payload that gives its host vehicle persistent local awareness.

The Space Force draws an explicit analogy to other warfighting domains. Following the traditions of air, maritime, and ground combat architectures, proliferated tactical sensors and their on-board assessment technology must become part of any combat system baseline. In plain terms, combat aircraft and ships carry their own sensors for self-protection as a matter of course, and satellites do not yet. This topic is about closing that gap.

The dual purpose is stated clearly. The effort targets the combination of in-space sensing and sense-making, with the goal of enabling both self-protection, through the organic ability to detect, track, and characterize immediate threats to support threat response, and contribution to shared awareness of the tactical space picture across the domain. So the payload serves the host vehicle and the broader Space Domain Awareness enterprise at the same time.

The payload capability is described as a critical enabler for mission resilience and ultimately space superiority, through greater autonomy, decision-agility, and survivability in contested space warfighting environments.

Beyond detection: the sense-making requirement

This is where the topic asks for more than a sensor. The sensor data must feed into advanced on-board analytics to autonomously track nearby objects, to support assessment of intent, distinguishing between debris, unanticipated neutral or friendly objects, and potential threats, to enable both autonomous tactical response and intuitive operator visualization.

Four elements in that sentence deserve individual attention in your proposal. On-board analytics, meaning processing at the edge rather than downlinking raw data. Autonomous tracking. Object classification into debris, neutral or friendly, and potential threat categories, which is a characterization problem, not just a detection problem. And output that supports both machine action and human understanding.

A proposal that delivers excellent detection with no on-board sense-making has answered half the topic.

The four named key challenges

The topic lists four challenges to be addressed. Use them as an organizing structure, because they map to what the evaluators are looking for.

Autonomous threat detection in a low SWaP-C package: proactively gathering, processing, and analyzing data to characterize threats using a highly efficient, lightweight payload.

Scalable, mature, and manufacturable solutions: solutions must emphasize high Technology Readiness Level, Manufacturing Readiness Level, and scalability for hardware and software. Note the explicit inclusion of Manufacturing Readiness Level. MRL is rarely called out in SBIR topics and its presence here reinforces the production orientation. Address your MRL directly.

Efficient hardware integration: use common interfaces for power, data, and thermal to ease integration onto platforms. Minimize footprint and be flexible with mounting options.

Efficient data integration: optimize the payload to provide decision-quality information efficiently, with an architecture that allows for integration with enterprise data systems.

Phase II activities and success criteria

The successful completion of Phase II should be production of a production representative article, or PRA, that can be space qualified and meets the SWaP and performance requirements.

Four Phase II activities are named. Prototype fabrication and assembly: fabricate or procure necessary components to fabricate and test a PRA. Firmware and software development: develop and integrate firmware and software necessary to support processing of sensor data and provide output that can be ingested by the bus for autonomous operation, with necessary data formatted for further exploitation on the ground. Environmental and performance testing: conduct a comprehensive test campaign to validate payload performance and survivability, expected to include thermal-vacuum cycling representative of the GEO thermal environment, random vibration testing to assess launch survivability, and electromagnetic interference testing to ensure no harm to other space vehicle subsystems. Laboratory-based performance demonstration: conduct performance testing in a laboratory environment to validate key performance parameters.

Successful completion is determined by demonstration of three things: demonstrated performance of the unit, successful completion of space environmental testing covering TVAC, random vibration, and EMI, and demonstrated data output format.

Phase II deliverables

Five primary deliverables are listed. A Production Representative Article. Performance and environmental test data and reports, described as an End Item Data Package. A reliability analysis. A preliminary Interface Control Document. And ground software for commanding the sensor payload and processing telemetry and mission data.

Read that list against your 24 month schedule and $3,000,000 ceiling. Hardware fabrication, a full environmental test campaign at GEO-representative conditions, an ICD, a reliability analysis, and ground software is a substantial program. The proposals that win will show a credible schedule with test facility access identified, not an optimistic one.

Phase III

Phase III activities, funded through non-SBIR/STTR government contracts or other appropriate funding mechanisms, are intended to support continued maturation, qualification, and operational integration. The focus would be advancing the payload toward flight-qualified configurations suitable for incorporation into operational Space Domain Awareness mission architectures.

Potential Phase III activities include qualification of the payload design for space flight, refinement for manufacturability and scalability, integration support with host spacecraft platforms, and preparation for operational testing and evaluation. Where appropriate, Phase III may also support Low-Rate Initial Production planning and execution, subject to government priorities and funding availability.

On the maturity ladder: upon successful completion of Phase II the payload is expected to achieve approximately TRL 6, a system or prototype demonstrated in a relevant environment. Phase III efforts may mature the technology to TRL 8 through flight qualification and system-level testing, and ultimately to TRL 9 upon successful on-orbit deployment and operational use.

The topic notes that the full scope of potential Phase III efforts is defined in 15 U.S.C. 638 and the SBA SBIR/STTR Policy Directive Section 4(c), and that per Section 4(b)(2) of the Policy Directive the Government may, at its discretion, include Phase III procedures in its Phase II Funding Agreement. That last point is worth flagging to your counsel: a Phase III provision inside the Phase II agreement is a meaningful commercial advantage if it materializes.

The Feasibility Requirement

Direct to Phase II means you must document that you already did the Phase I equivalent work outside the SBIR program. The DAF disqualifies proposals where the Phase I equivalency documentation does not establish feasibility and technical merit, and applies that screen before evaluating technical merit.

What this topic requires

The topic states it is intended for technology proven ready to move directly into Phase II, and that Phase I awards will not be made. The applicant is required to provide detail and documentation in the D2P2 proposal demonstrating accomplishment of a Phase I type effort, including a feasibility study. That includes determining, insofar as possible, the scientific and technical merit and feasibility of ideas appearing to have commercial potential.

Then two specific requirements that are easy to under-deliver on. The applicant must have validated the product-mission fit between the proposed solution and a potential Air Force or Space Force stakeholder. And the applicant should have defined a clear, immediately actionable plan with the proposed solution and the DAF customer and end-user.

Notice what those two sentences require. Not just that your sensor works, but that you have engaged with a specific Air Force or Space Force stakeholder and validated that your solution fits their mission, and that you and that customer have a plan you could act on now. That is a business development requirement embedded in a technical feasibility requirement, and it cannot be manufactured in the four weeks the topic is open. If you have not had those conversations, that is the gap to close first.

The general D2P2 rules

The feasibility work must have been substantially performed by the applicant or the principal investigator.

Feasibility documentation cannot be based upon or logically extend from any prior or ongoing federally funded SBIR or STTR work. This authority exists for companies that matured technology outside the SBIR pipeline.

If technology in the feasibility documentation is subject to intellectual property rights, provide IP rights assertions, plus a short summary for each item asserted with less than unlimited rights describing the restriction's nature and the intellectual property intended for use in the proposed research.

Feasibility documentation can be included as part of Volume 5 and is listed as required of all proposal submissions.

For a hardware topic like this one, useful feasibility evidence includes prior flight heritage of the sensor or its components, environmental test reports from non-SBIR work, breadboard or engineering unit performance data against the detection thresholds, and documented stakeholder engagement establishing the product-mission fit.

Funding Allowance and Cost Structure

Award ceiling

Up to $3,000,000 across up to 24 months. The topic index warns that proposals in excess of this amount will not be considered for evaluation or award, and proposals in excess of this duration will not be considered for evaluation or award.

The DAF also notes that per-award and per-topic funding caps are budgetary estimates only, more or less funding may become available, multiple procurements are planned and anticipated, each proposal is a separate procurement evaluated on its own merit, and the Government may award all, some, or none. Funding decisions are made with complete disregard to other awards under the same topic.

Contract type and fee

Generally firm-fixed-price contracts are appropriate for Phase II awards, and per the SBA SBIR/STTR Policy Directive, Phase II contracts must include profit or fee.

A firm-fixed-price hardware program with a full environmental qualification campaign carries real cost risk. Build your estimate with that in mind, since the Government may award without exchanges if it takes no exceptions to your proposal, meaning your initial submission should carry your best terms rather than an opening position.

Technical and Business Assistance

Up to $50,000 per Phase II award, in addition to the per-topic total, identified in the Volume 3 Cost Proposal. Applicants may elect to use $25,000 on a first SBIR Phase II award and $25,000 on a sequential SBIR Phase II award.

TABA can only fund the activities in 15 U.S.C. 638(q)(1)(A) through (E): access to a network of scientists and engineers, assistance with product sales, intellectual property protections, cybersecurity assistance, market research, market validation, development of regulations and manufacturing plans, and access to technical and business literature through online databases. For this topic, development of manufacturing plans deserves a serious look, given the explicit Manufacturing Readiness Level emphasis and the Phase III scalability and Low-Rate Initial Production framing.

The detailed request must appear in Volume 5, including provider name, point of contact with email and phone, an explanation of unique qualifications, the tasks the provider will perform including purpose and objective, and total provider cost with hours and labor rates. Average or blended rates are acceptable. The task milestone list must track to the milestone payment schedule otherwise provided by the applicant. Requests that only specify a value in the Volume 3 Cost Proposal will not be considered.

Cost volume expectations

A detailed cost proposal by individual cost element and by contractor fiscal year, in sufficient detail to determine the basis for estimates and the purpose, necessity, and reasonableness of each. Cost proposal attachments do not count toward page limits, and cost proposal information will be treated as proprietary.

For a hardware program, several cost volume elements carry unusual weight here.

Direct cost materials: an itemized list of types, quantities, prices, and where appropriate purpose. For planned computer or software purchases, detailed information such as manufacturer, price quotes, proposed use, and support for the need will be required. Long-lead space-qualified parts belong here with quotes.

Other direct costs: specialized services such as machining or milling, special test and analysis, and costs for temporary use or lease of specialized facilities or equipment, with usage hours expected, rates, sources, and a brief discussion of purpose and justification. Thermal-vacuum chamber time, vibration table time, and EMI chamber access all live in this category. Proposals including leased hardware must include an adequate lease versus purchase rationale.

Special tooling, special test equipment, and material: inclusion will be carefully reviewed relative to need and appropriateness to the work. Purchases must, in the Contracting Officer's opinion, be advantageous to the Government and relate directly to the effort, and should not be of a type an applicant would otherwise possess in the normal course of business. These may include innovative instrumentation or automatic test equipment.

Subcontracts: must be supported with copies of subcontract agreements adequately describing the work and cost bases, including a statement of work, assigned personnel, hours and rates, materials, and proposed travel. A letter from a subcontractor agreeing to perform a task at a fixed price is expressly not considered sufficient. The prime must accomplish price analysis including reasonableness of proposed subcontractor costs, and provide cost analysis where price analysis techniques are inadequate or the FAR requires cost or pricing data.

Consultants: a separate agreement letter for each, stating the service, hours required, and hourly rate, plus a short concise resume.

Travel: each effort should include at a minimum a kickoff or interim meeting, justified with destinations, trips, travelers, airfare, per diem, lodging, and ground transportation against the Joint Travel Regulation.

Indirect costs: indicate proposed rate bases, identify specific rates and allocation bases, and provide rates and applications per fiscal year across the anticipated performance period. Do not propose composite rates.

Non-SBIR governmental or private investment is allowed but not required and will not be a proposal evaluation factor.

Work performance requirements

The instructions state two thresholds that do not obviously align. The Consultants and Subcontractors section requires, per the SBA SBIR Policy Directive, a minimum of 50 percent of the R/R&D be performed by the proposing firm unless otherwise approved in writing by the Contracting Officer. The Performance of Work Requirements section states that for Phase II a minimum of one-third of the research or analytical effort must be performed by the awardee, measured by both direct and indirect costs, not including profit. Separately, the proposed total of all consultant fees, facility leases or usage fees, and other subcontract or purchase agreements may not exceed one-half of the total contract price unless approved in writing by the Contracting Officer.

This is a live problem for space hardware specifically. If you are buying detector assemblies, procuring space-qualified components, and leasing TVAC and vibration facilities, those costs accumulate against the one-half cap quickly. Model your cost distribution early. Planning to perform at least half the R/R&D in house and keeping all outside costs below half the contract price satisfies every reading.

If you cannot meet it, requests for Performance of Work deviations must be made twice: prior to submission during the topic open period, and again as part of the initial proposal submission. The DAF will not consider these requests before proposal submission. Given the ambiguity between the stated thresholds, raise it with the DAF SBIR/STTR One Help Desk early in the open period.

Where work must be performed

All R/R&D must be performed in the United States by the small business and its team members. Based on rare and unique circumstances the DAF may approve a particular portion of the work to be performed or obtained outside the United States, and the awarding Funding Agreement officer must approve each specific condition in writing. Requests must accompany the initial proposal submission.

Export Control, Which Is Explicit on This Topic

The technology in this topic is restricted under ITAR 22 CFR Parts 120-130, which controls the export and import of defense-related material and services including export of sensitive technical data, and the EAR 15 CFR Parts 730-774, which controls dual use items.

Offerors must disclose any proposed use of foreign nationals, their countries of origin, the type of visa or work permit possessed, and the statement of work tasks intended for accomplishment by those individuals. The topic advises that foreign nationals proposed to perform on this topic may be restricted due to the technical data under U.S. export control laws.

A foreign national means any person who is not a citizen or national of the United States, not a lawful permanent resident, and not a protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b. All applicants proposing to use foreign nationals must follow the FY26 SBIR CSO and disclose regardless of whether the topic is subject to ITAR.

Where the topic area is subject to export control, permitted foreign national participants are limited to work in the public domain, and assigned tasks must not be capable of assimilation into an understanding of the project's overall objectives, which the instructions note prevents foreign persons from acting in key positions such as Principal Investigator or Senior Engineer.

For projects with military or dual-use applications developing beyond fundamental research, the contractor must comply with all U.S. export control laws, is responsible for obtaining appropriate licenses or approvals including for deemed exports of hardware, technical data, and software, must obtain export licenses before using foreign persons including where work is performed on-site at any Government installation whether inside or outside the United States, is responsible for regulatory record keeping associated with licenses and exemptions, and must ensure these provisions apply to its subcontractors.

If asserting export-controlled status, a certified DD Form 2345 Militarily Critical Technical Data Agreement, or evidence of application submission, belongs in Volume 5, and DD Form 2345 approval will be required if the proposal is selected for award.

Space sensing companies frequently employ non-U.S. persons in engineering roles. Resolve who can work on what before you build your key personnel section.

Proposal Structure: The Seven Volumes

Formatting, with a note about the tighter page limit

Type no smaller than 11-point on standard 8.5 by 11 paper, one-inch margins, pages consecutively numbered. This differs from Army SBIR instructions, which allow 10-point.

The technical volume limit for this topic is 20 pages or slides, notably tighter than the 35 pages allowed for the two air-domain topics in the same release. Pages in excess will not be considered by the Government in evaluations. That constraint matters here because the topic asks for a great deal: performance against seven or eight numeric requirements, four named challenges, four Phase II activities, five deliverables, environmental test planning, and a commercialization plan. Ruthless economy is required. Push resumes, subcontract documents, and cost detail into the volumes where they do not count against the limit.

Proposals should be direct, concise, and informative. Applicants are discouraged from including promotional and non-programmatic items, and if included, such material counts toward the page limit. Marketing material will not be evaluated.

Preferred submission format is PDF, graphics must be distinguishable in black and white, and all submissions must be virus-checked. Note that "pages or slides" means a slide-format technical volume is acceptable, which many hardware teams find more efficient for conveying design and test information within a tight limit.

Volume 6 Fraud, Waste, and Abuse training must be completed before submission, and DSIP will not allow submission until it is complete and certified. The DAF recommends completing submission early because site traffic is heavy prior to close and causes system lag, will not be responsible for proposals not completely submitted before the deadline due to system inaccessibility unless advised by DoW, and will not accept submission outside DSIP.

Volume 1, Cover Sheet

Per DSIP instructions. The technical abstract should include a brief description of program objectives, a description of the effort, anticipated benefits, commercial applications, and a list of keywords and terms. The abstract of each successful proposal goes to the Office of the Secretary of War for publication and must not contain proprietary or classified information. If selected for funding, the technical abstract and discussion of anticipated benefits will be publicly released, so keep sensitive design detail out of it.

Volume 2, Technical Volume

Required items in the order provided: table of contents immediately after the cover sheet; glossary of acronyms and abbreviations; milestone identification with a program schedule showing all key milestones; identification and significance of the problem or opportunity; Phase II technical objectives with technical approach and methods and an assessment of potential commercial application for each objective; work plan; deliverables; related work; commercialization potential; relationship with future R/R&D efforts; key personnel; facilities and equipment; consultants and subcontractors; and prior, current, or pending support of similar proposals or awards.

The work plan is a separate and distinct part of the package, divided from the technical proposal by a page break and begun on a new page. It must contain a summary description of the technical methodology and task description in broad enough detail to provide contractual flexibility, and must not contain proprietary information, because if the proposal is selected the work plan will be incorporated into the resulting contract by reference. Recommended format is 1.0 Objective, a brief overview of the specialty area explaining purpose and expected outcome; 2.0 Scope, a concise description of the work including technology area, goals, and major milestones, with task development and deliverables as key elements, consistent with section 4.0; 3.0 Background, identifying applicable specifications, standards, and other documents, constraints to understanding requirements, relationships to previous, current, or future operations, and techniques previously determined ineffective; and 4.0 Task and Technical Requirements, with detailed individual task descriptions in orderly progression, sufficient detail to establish overall program requirements and goals, work segregated into major tasks in separately numbered paragraphs, each delineated by subtask. Every task must appear in definite, realistic, clearly stated terms. Use "shall" for binding provisions, "should" or "may" for a declaration or purpose, and "will" where no contractor requirement is involved.

For this topic, the work plan is where your environmental test campaign, PRA fabrication sequence, and deliverable production get expressed contractually. Because it becomes part of the contract by reference, be deliberate about which statements you make binding with "shall."

Deliverables must clearly describe the specific sample or prototype hardware and software to be delivered, plus data deliverables, schedules, and quantities. Be aware of the possible requirement for unique item identification under DFARS 252.211-7003, Item Identification and Valuation, for hardware, which is directly relevant to a Production Representative Article. If hardware or software will be developed but not delivered, provide an explanation. At minimum all Phase II contracts require Scientific and Technical Reports. Rights in technical data including software developed under a SBIR contract generally remain with the contractor, and the Government obtains SBIR/STTR data rights in all data developed or generated under the contract for 20 years commencing at contract award, after which the Government has Government purpose rights to the SBIR data. The Final Report's first page is a single-page project summary identifying purpose, briefly describing the effort accomplished, and listing potential result applications, which may be published by DoW and therefore must contain no proprietary or classified information. Status reports are due quarterly at a minimum. The Air Force may require additional reporting including software documentation and users' manuals, engineering drawings, operation and maintenance documentation, safety hazard analysis when the project results in partial or total development and delivery of hardware, and updates to commercialization results.

Related work must describe significant directly related activities including previous programs conducted by the principal investigator, proposing firm, consultants, or others, their application to the proposed project, how they interface with it, and planned coordination with outside sources. List any applicant-identified subject matter experts regardless of affiliation with comments regarding the applicant's knowledge of the state of the art in the specific approach proposed. Describe previous work not directly related but similar, with a short description, the client including an individual to be contacted and phone number, and the date of completion.

Commercialization potential requires a commercialization plan with the Phase II proposal addressing the first planned product to incorporate the technology, probable customers and estimated market size, how much money is needed to bring the technology to market and how it will be raised, whether the firm has necessary marketing expertise and how it will compensate if not, and probable competitors with the anticipated price or quality advantage. Commercial potential is evidenced by the existence of private sector or non-SBIR governmental funding sources demonstrating commitment to Phase II efforts and results, the existence of Phase III follow-on commitments for the research subject, and other indicators of commercial technology potential including the firm's commercialization strategy. If awarded, the awardee must periodically update commercialization results via SBA, at completion of the effort and when submitting a new SBIR/STTR proposal to DoW, with annual updates requested from firms not submitting new proposals. The Commercialization Plan and the Company Commercialization Report are distinct documents.

Relationship with future R/R&D efforts must state the anticipated results of the proposed approach, specifically addressing plans for Phase III if any, and discuss the significance of the D2P2 effort in providing a basis for the Phase III effort if planned. Given how specific this topic is about the TRL 6 to TRL 8 to TRL 9 path and Low-Rate Initial Production, this section should track that language.

Key personnel must identify all key personnel with information directly related to education, experience, and citizenship, and include a technical resume for the principal investigator with publications. Concise technical resumes for subcontractors and consultants are also useful. Identify all non-U.S. citizens expected to be involved as direct employees, subcontractors, or consultants, and for those individuals provide countries of origin, type of visa or work permit held, and the tasks they are anticipated to perform. The principal investigator's primary employment must be with the small business at the time of award and during the entire period of performance, where primary employment means more than one-half of the PI's time is spent in the small business's employ, which precludes full-time employment with another entity. Only one principal investigator or project manager may be designated per proposal.

Facilities and equipment must describe instrumentation and physical facilities necessary and available to carry out the effort, justify equipment to be purchased with detail in the cost proposal, and state whether proposed performance locations meet federal, state, and local environmental laws and regulations for airborne emissions, waterborne effluents, external radiation levels, outdoor noise, solid and bulk waste disposal practices, and handling and storage of toxic and hazardous materials. For this topic, identify your access to TVAC, vibration, and EMI test facilities here, whether owned or contracted.

Consultants and subcontractors: private companies, consultants, or universities may be involved, all should be described in detail and included in the cost proposal, and signed copies of all consultant or subcontractor letters of intent must be attached, briefly stating the contribution or expertise being provided, with statements of work, detailed cost proposals, and information regarding unique qualifications. Subcontract copies and supporting documents do not count against the page limit, which is a meaningful relief valve on a 20 page topic. Identify any subcontractor or consultant foreign citizens.

Prior, current, or pending support: while it is permissible with proper notification to submit identical proposals or proposals containing a significant amount of essentially equivalent work under numerous federal program solicitations, it is unlawful to enter into contracts or grants requiring essentially equivalent effort, and any potential for that must be disclosed to the solicitation agencies before award. If substantially the same as another proposal submitted previously, currently, or in the process of being funded by another federal agency, DoW component, or the DAF, indicate so on the cover sheet and provide agency names and addresses, submission or award dates, proposal titles, PI names and titles, solicitation titles, numbers and dates, contract numbers if awarded, and applicable topics. If the section does not apply, state so in the proposal and certify on the cover sheet, "No prior, current, or pending support for proposed work."

Volume 3, Cost Volume

Covered above.

Volume 4, Company Commercialization Report

Required in DSIP. The DAF states that information contained in the CCR will not be considered during proposal evaluations, which differs from Army SBIR practice. Complete it for compliance.

Volume 5, Supporting Documents

May be required if applicable: DD Form 2345, which applies to this export-controlled topic; Verification of Eligibility of Small Business Joint Ventures, Attachment 3 to the DoW SBIR FY26 CSO; and Technical Data Rights Assertions if asserting data rights restrictions.

Required of all submissions: feasibility documentation as described above, including IP rights assertions with a short summary for each item asserted with less than unlimited rights.

If appropriate, include a reference or works cited list as the last page. Do not include marketing material.

Volume 6, Fraud, Waste, and Abuse Training

Complete once per year, before submission.

Volume 7, Disclosures of Foreign Affiliations or Relationships to Foreign Countries

Complete the webform in Volume 7 of the DSIP submission. It will not be accepted as a PDF supporting document in Volume 5, and previous versions of the form must not be uploaded to Volume 5.

How Your Proposal Will Be Evaluated

The criteria for this topic

DV511 is evaluated under the criteria set covering DV026, DV511, DV512, and DV513, in descending order of importance.

Criteria A, most important: the soundness, technical merit, and innovation of the proposed approach and its incremental progress toward topic or subtopic solution, and the qualifications of the proposed principal and key investigators, supporting staff, and consultants. This includes whether the proposed cost elements are realistic for the work to be performed, reflect a clear understanding of the requirements, and are consistent with the unique methods of performance and materials described in the technical proposal.

Criteria B, second: the degree of mission impact and the urgency of the identified need, the specificity of the defense requirement addressed, and the adequacy of the proposed effort in fulfilling the research topic or subtopic solution.

Criteria C, third: the potential for commercial application in the Government or private sector and the benefits expected to accrue from that commercialization.

Two implications for a hardware proposal. First, cost realism lives inside the top-weighted criterion, and on a firm-fixed-price hardware program with a qualification test campaign, an unrealistic cost estimate is a technical credibility problem, not just a pricing problem. If your work plan promises TVAC, random vibration, and EMI testing, your cost volume must show facility access, hours, and rates that make that plausible. Second, "incremental progress toward topic solution" rewards showing where you start and where you land. Anchor your current maturity honestly and show the delta.

General evaluation process

D2P2 proposals are evaluated on a competitive basis by subject matter expert scientists, engineers, or other technical personnel, with confidential proposal and evaluation information protected to the greatest extent possible. Proposals will be disqualified and not evaluated if the Phase I equivalency documentation does not establish the proposed technical approach's feasibility and technical merit.

Selections are based on a determination of the overall technical value of each proposal and an evaluation of the cost volume for selection of the proposals most advantageous to the Government. Where technical evaluations are essentially equal in merit, cost or price will be considered. All evaluation criteria other than cost or price, when combined, are significantly more important than cost or price. The DAF is seeking varying technical and scientific approaches and varying and new technologies responsive to the problem statements and areas of interest, multiple procurements are planned and anticipated, each proposal is a separate procurement evaluated on its own merit, and the Government may award all, some, or none.

Foreign risk evaluation

The DAF will evaluate all small business concerns submitting under this release on whether they present a security risk, using the due diligence process required under 15 U.S.C. 638(vv), disclosures required under 15 U.S.C. 638(g) and (o), and coordination with the intelligence community as defined in section 3 of the National Security Act of 1947, federal law enforcement, and other counterintelligence capabilities of the United States Government.

The risk-based assessment covers cybersecurity practices, patent analysis, employee analysis, foreign ownership including financial ties and obligations covering surety, equity, and debt obligations of the concern and its employees to a foreign country, person, or entity, foreign affiliations of a covered individual, owner, or other key personnel with an entity in a foreign country of concern, investment relationships with an individual or entity in a foreign country of concern, technology licensing agreements or joint ventures including joint venture like agreements with an individual or entity in a foreign country of concern, and business relationships between a covered individual, owner, or other key personnel and an individual or entity in a foreign country of concern. The DAF also assesses proposals using open-source analysis and analytical tools for nondisclosures of information set forth in 15 U.S.C. 638(g)(13) or 638(o)(17), and examines any relationship of the concern to any entity or individual on the lists described in 15 U.S.C. 638(g)(16)(D) and 638(o)(20)(D).

If the DAF assesses security risks, it may either create a mitigation plan or decide not to select the proposal based on a totality of the review.

Awards must be denied under 15 U.S.C. 638(g)(16) or 638(o)(20) where the concern has an owner or covered individual party to a malign foreign talent recruitment program; a business entity, parent company, or subsidiary located in the People's Republic of China or another foreign country of concern; an owner or covered individual with a foreign affiliation with a research institution located in the PRC or another foreign country of concern; or a security risk connecting the concern, including any affiliates, to an entity or individual on the UFLPA Entity List maintained by DHS, the Non-SDN Chinese Military-Industrial Complex Companies List maintained by Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, the Section 889 Prohibition List, the Section 1260H list of Chinese Military Companies, the Military End User List maintained by Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security, the Entity List maintained by BIS, the FCC List of Equipment and Services, or the Withhold Release Orders and Findings List maintained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Awards are also denied where the concern has a security risk with a primary source that is classified, or a security risk the DAF determines warrants denial.

Applicants must disclose under penalty of perjury the representations, attestations, and certifications required under 15 U.S.C. 638(g)(13) and 638(o)(17), fulfilled by completing Volume 7, and must provide a written statement of any substantial changes to the foreign disclosure form to the awarding agency within 30 days while on a DAF project.

For space hardware, the parts supply chain is the exposure. Detectors, focal plane assemblies, radiation-tolerant compute, and passive components frequently trace to suppliers with entries on one or more of those lists. Audit the bill of materials against them before you propose.

Ownership, support contractors, status, and protests

Small business concerns owned in majority part by multiple venture capital operating companies, hedge funds, or private equity funds are eligible to submit applications or receive awards for DAF topics. That matters on this topic in particular, since venture-funded space companies are the natural applicant pool.

Proposals may be handled for administrative purposes only by support contractors, which may include APEX, Peerless Technologies, Engineering Services Network, HPC-COM, Mile Two, REI Systems, MacB (an Alion company), Montech, Oasis, Astrion/Oasis, and Infinite Management Solutions. Only Government employees and technical personnel from the FFRDCs MITRE and Aerospace Corporation working under contract to provide technical support to Air Force Life Cycle Management Center and Space Force may evaluate proposals. All support contractors are bound by appropriate non-disclosure agreements. Concerns about any of these contractors go to the DAF SBIR/STTR Contracting Officer.

The principal investigator and Corporate Official indicated on the cover sheet will be notified by email regarding selection or non-selection, with a separate notification for each proposal submitted. Automated feedback is provided for proposals designated Not Selected, and additional feedback may be provided at the sole discretion of the DAF. Proposals are received and evaluated by different organizations, handled by topic, each operating on its own schedule, so notification timeframes vary.

The DAF anticipates all proposals will be evaluated and selections finalized within approximately 90 calendar days of solicitation close. Refrain from contacting the DAF for status before that time. Protests after award should be submitted, as prescribed in FAR 33.106(b) and FAR 52.233-3, to the Air Force SBIR/STTR Contracting Officer and to the individual procuring contracting officer listed on the firm's selection notification. Final reports go to the awarding DAF organization per contract instructions, not directly to the Defense Technical Information Center.

Timeline and What to Do When

The dates

Topic opens: September 23, 2026

Proposal deadline: October 21, 2026, at the time specified in the DoW FY26 SBIR CSO, ordinarily 12:00 p.m. Eastern. Confirm on DSIP.

Selections finalized: within approximately 90 calendar days of close, on or about January 19, 2027

Period of performance: up to 24 months from award

A working backward plan

Before September 23. The hardest items here are not writing tasks. Confirm your stakeholder validation: you need a documented product-mission fit with an Air Force or Space Force stakeholder and an immediately actionable plan with that customer. Secure written commitments or at least confirmed availability for TVAC, random vibration, and EMI test facility access within your schedule window, because the cost volume needs rates and hours. Get quotes for long-lead space-qualified parts. Audit your bill of materials against the foreign entity denial lists. Resolve export control staffing questions, since the topic warns foreign nationals may be restricted. Start DD Form 2345 if you do not hold one. Complete Volume 6 training, verify SAM and DSIP alignment, and send clarifying questions to the DAF SBIR/STTR One Help Desk, which explicitly encourages early inquiries.

September 23 through October 3. Draft Volume 2 against the 20 page limit, which will require several passes to compress. Build a compact requirements response covering 4 pi steradian coverage and occlusion minimization, 50 watts, 15 kilograms, 200 to 500 kilometer bubble, 0.5 to 0.2 meter detection, probability of detection 0.8 and false alarm 0.01, phenomenologies, TRL and MRL, and common power, data, and thermal interfaces. Consider a slide-format volume, which the page or slide limit permits and which suits hardware and test content.

October 4 through October 12. Build the cost volume by element and fiscal year, with materials quotes, test facility usage hours and rates, special test equipment justification, and indirect rates per fiscal year with no composite rates. Collect signed letters of intent, statements of work, and detailed cost proposals from every subcontractor and consultant, since a letter agreeing to a fixed price is not sufficient. Check the one-half subcontract and purchase agreement cap and your R/R&D percentage. Write the detailed TABA request into Volume 5 if requesting TABA.

October 13 through October 16. Assemble Volume 5, complete the Volume 7 webform, finish the Volume 4 CCR, and run compliance: 20 page limit, 11-point minimum type, one-inch margins, consecutive page numbers, graphics legible in black and white, virus-checked PDF, no marketing material, no proprietary content in the technical abstract or the work plan.

October 17 through October 19. Submit and certify in DSIP.

October 20 through October 21. Buffer only.

Frequently Asked Questions

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What is DAF SBIR topic DAF26BX06-DV511?

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DAF26BX06-DV511 is a Department of the Air Force SBIR Direct to Phase II topic titled "Low SWaP-C Tactical Awareness Payload for Proliferated, Agile Satellites (TAPPAS) for Space Domain Awareness," released under the DAF 2026 SBIR Commercial Solutions Opening, Release 6. It seeks a compact sensor payload providing a host satellite persistent 4 pi steradian awareness of its local space environment in the GEO belt, with on-board analytics that autonomously track and characterize nearby objects.

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How much funding is available under DAF26BX06-DV511?

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Up to $3,000,000 for a period of performance up to 24 months, the largest ceiling in this release. Proposals exceeding either limit will not be considered for evaluation or award. Up to $50,000 in Technical and Business Assistance may be requested in addition.

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When is the proposal deadline?

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The topic closes October 21, 2026. The DAF instructions point to the DoW FY26 SBIR CSO for the exact submission time, ordinarily 12:00 p.m. Eastern on the close date. Confirm on the live DSIP posting.

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When does this topic open?

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September 23, 2026, giving a 29 day submission window.

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What are the size, weight, and power targets?

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The ideal payload would not exceed 50 watts of power consumption and 15 kilograms of mass. The topic frames these as ideal rather than absolute, noting any available tested technology will be considered, but states these characteristics are critical for enabling integration onto platforms with stringent resource limitations. If you exceed them, justify it against the integration argument.

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What detection performance is required?

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A self-awareness bubble with a range of 200 kilometers threshold to 500 kilometers objective radius, the ability to detect a 0.5 meter object at threshold and 0.2 meter at objective, with a probability of detection of 0.8 and a probability of false alarm of 0.01. Coverage is persistent 4 pi steradian, with occlusion zones minimized through satellite design and sensor placement.

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What sensing phenomenologies are of interest?

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Multiple, including but not limited to electro-optical, infrared, and radio frequency.

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Is this only a sensor, or does it need onboard processing?

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It needs onboard processing. The sensor data must feed advanced on-board analytics that autonomously track nearby objects and support assessment of intent, distinguishing between debris, unanticipated neutral or friendly objects, and potential threats, enabling both autonomous tactical response and intuitive operator visualization. A detection-only proposal answers half the topic.

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What is the Phase II deliverable?

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Successful Phase II completion should produce a Production Representative Article that can be space qualified and meets the SWaP and performance requirements. The five primary deliverables are the PRA, performance and environmental test data and reports as an End Item Data Package, a reliability analysis, a preliminary Interface Control Document, and ground software for commanding the payload and processing telemetry and mission data.

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What environmental testing is expected?

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A comprehensive test campaign validating payload performance and survivability, expected to include thermal-vacuum cycling representative of the GEO thermal environment, random vibration testing to assess launch survivability, and electromagnetic interference testing to ensure no harm to other space vehicle subsystems. Successful completion is determined in part by successful completion of that space environmental testing.

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Can I submit a Phase I proposal for this topic?

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No. This topic is intended for technology proven ready to move directly into Phase II, and Phase I awards will not be made.

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What feasibility documentation does this topic require?

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Detail and documentation demonstrating accomplishment of a Phase I type effort including a feasibility study, determining insofar as possible the scientific and technical merit and feasibility of ideas appearing to have commercial potential. Critically, you must have validated the product-mission fit between your proposed solution and a potential Air Force or Space Force stakeholder, and should have defined a clear, immediately actionable plan with the proposed solution and the DAF customer and end-user.

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Can I use a prior SBIR award as my feasibility basis?

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No. Feasibility documentation cannot be based upon or logically extend from any prior or ongoing federally funded SBIR or STTR work, and the feasibility effort must have been substantially performed by the applicant or the principal investigator.

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How long can my technical volume be?

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20 pages or slides for this topic, tighter than the 35 pages allowed for the two air-domain topics in the same release. Pages in excess will not be considered during evaluations. Type must be no smaller than 11-point on 8.5 by 11 paper with one-inch margins and consecutively numbered pages. Note that subcontract copies, supporting documents, and cost proposal attachments do not count toward the limit.

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Can I submit slides instead of a written document?

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The limit is expressed as pages or slides, so a slide-format technical volume is acceptable. Many hardware teams find slides more efficient for conveying design and test content within a tight limit.

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Is this topic export controlled?

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Yes. The technology is restricted under ITAR 22 CFR Parts 120-130 and EAR 15 CFR Parts 730-774. You must disclose any proposed foreign nationals with countries of origin, visa or work permit type, and assigned statement of work tasks, and the topic advises those individuals may be restricted from performing due to the technical data involved. A certified DD Form 2345, or evidence of application, belongs in Volume 5, and approval will be required if selected.

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How is my proposal evaluated?

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Under three criteria in descending order of importance. Criteria A, most important, covers soundness, technical merit, and innovation of the approach, incremental progress toward a solution, the qualifications of key personnel, and whether proposed cost elements are realistic and consistent with the technical proposal. Criteria B covers degree of mission impact, urgency of the identified need, specificity of the defense requirement, and adequacy of the effort. Criteria C covers commercial application potential. All criteria other than cost or price, combined, are significantly more important than cost or price.

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Does Manufacturing Readiness Level matter?

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Yes, and unusually so. One of the four named key challenges is scalable, mature, and manufacturable solutions, which explicitly requires emphasis on high Technology Readiness Level, Manufacturing Readiness Level, and scalability for hardware and software. MRL is rarely called out in SBIR topics, and its presence signals a production orientation. Address your MRL directly.

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How much of the work must my company perform?

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The instructions state two thresholds. The Consultants and Subcontractors section requires at least 50 percent of the R/R&D be performed by the proposing firm unless the Contracting Officer approves otherwise in writing. The Performance of Work Requirements section states at least one-third of the Phase II research or analytical effort must be performed by the awardee, measured by direct and indirect costs excluding profit. Separately, all consultant fees, facility leases or usage fees, and other subcontract or purchase agreements together may not exceed one-half of the total contract price without written Contracting Officer approval. That last cap is a real constraint on space hardware programs that buy components and lease test facilities. Performing at least half the R/R&D in house satisfies every reading; deviation requests must be made twice, prior to submission during the open period and again with the initial proposal.

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Does the Company Commercialization Report affect my score?

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No. Completing the CCR as Volume 4 is required, but the DAF states information contained in the CCR will not be considered during proposal evaluations.

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What is TABA and how do I request it?

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Up to $50,000 per Phase II award in addition to the per-topic ceiling, identified in the Volume 3 Cost Proposal, splittable as $25,000 on a first SBIR Phase II and $25,000 on a sequential one. The detailed request must be in Volume 5 with provider name, point of contact, unique qualifications, tasks with purpose and objective, and total cost with hours and labor rates, and the task milestone list must track to your milestone payment schedule. Requests specifying only a value in Volume 3 will not be considered. Development of manufacturing plans is an eligible activity worth considering on this topic.

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Who owns the data and software I develop?

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Rights in technical data including software developed under a SBIR contract generally remain with the contractor. The Government obtains SBIR/STTR data rights in all data developed or generated under the contract for 20 years from contract award, after which the Government has Government purpose rights to the SBIR data.

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What happens in Phase III?

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Phase III, funded through non-SBIR/STTR government contracts or other appropriate mechanisms, supports continued maturation, qualification, and operational integration, advancing the payload toward flight-qualified configurations for operational Space Domain Awareness mission architectures. Potential activities include space flight qualification of the design, refinement for manufacturability and scalability, integration support with host spacecraft platforms, preparation for operational testing and evaluation, and where appropriate Low-Rate Initial Production planning and execution subject to government priorities and funding. The Government may, at its discretion, include Phase III procedures in the Phase II Funding Agreement per SBA Policy Directive Section 4(b)(2).

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What technology readiness level is expected?

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Upon successful completion of Phase II the payload is expected to achieve approximately TRL 6, a system or prototype demonstrated in a relevant environment. Phase III may mature it to TRL 8 through flight qualification and system-level testing, and ultimately TRL 9 upon successful on-orbit deployment and operational use.

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Are venture-backed companies eligible?

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Yes. Small business concerns owned in majority part by multiple venture capital operating companies, hedge funds, or private equity funds are eligible to submit applications or receive awards for DAF topics.

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When will I hear about selection?

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The DAF anticipates all proposals evaluated and selections finalized within approximately 90 calendar days of solicitation close, meaning on or about January 19, 2027. The principal investigator and Corporate Official on the cover sheet are notified by email.

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Who do I contact with questions?

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The DAF SBIR/STTR One Help Desk at usaf.team@afsbirsttr.us for general program and proposal preparation questions, and the DAF encourages requesting clarifying information as early as possible because delays constrain its ability to respond. For DSIP submission system issues, dodsbirsupport@reisystems.com. The Air Force SBIR/STTR Contracting Officer is Mr. Daniel J. Brewer at Daniel.Brewer.13@us.af.mil. Address or point of contact changes after submission go to the One Help Desk with the subject line "FY26 SBIR CSO Address Change."

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Positioning Advice for Startups Considering This Topic

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Read "speed of delivery for proven technology now" as the governing sentence. The government wrote that its primary focus is speed of delivery for proven technology. That is a direct instruction about what wins. Existing hardware with test heritage, an established supply chain, and a manufacturing path beats a better architecture that needs to be invented.

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Answer the numbers in a compact traceability section. With eight or so quantitative requirements and only 20 pages, a tight requirements response near the front of the volume earns its space. Meet, exceed, or path to meet with the risk named, for each one.

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Do not neglect the sense-making half. Many sensor companies will propose excellent detection and treat the on-board analytics as a software afterthought. The topic asks for autonomous tracking, characterization into debris, neutral or friendly, and potential threat, and output serving both autonomous response and operator visualization. That is a distinguishing opportunity.

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Put Manufacturing Readiness Level in writing. It is named as a key challenge alongside TRL. Give your MRL, justify it, and describe the production scaling path. Very few competitors will do this well.

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Prove your test facility access with specifics. TVAC at GEO-representative conditions, random vibration, and EMI within 24 months is a scheduling problem before it is a technical one. Named facilities, confirmed availability, and rates in the cost volume make the schedule believable and directly support the cost realism element inside Criteria A.

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Close the stakeholder validation gap now, not in the proposal. The feasibility requirement demands validated product-mission fit with an Air Force or Space Force stakeholder and an immediately actionable plan with that customer. If you have not had those conversations, that is the binding constraint on your eligibility, and the open period is short.

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Model the subcontract cap before you finalize the architecture. Buying focal planes, procuring space-qualified parts, and leasing test chambers can push your outside costs past one-half of the contract price. Discovering that after you have committed to a design is expensive.

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Audit the supply chain against the eight denial lists. Space electronics bills of materials touch them more often than teams expect, and a denial under 15 U.S.C. 638(g)(16) or 638(o)(20) is mandatory, not discretionary.

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Build the commercialization case on the commercial GEO market. Criteria C is third in importance but should not be thin. Commercial GEO operators, satellite manufacturers who would embed the payload as a baseline subsystem, and insurers with an interest in collision and proximity risk are all natural buyers for local space awareness, and the topic's own framing of proliferated tactical sensors as part of any combat system baseline generalizes cleanly to commercial fleets.

DAF SBIR DAF26BX06-DP027: OPEN Topic, Proliferated Low-Altitude Detection for Counter-sUAS

Quick Answer

DAF26BX06-DP027 is a Department of the Air Force SBIR Direct to Phase II open topic under the DAF 2026 SBIR Commercial Solutions Opening, Release 6. The Air Force is trying to solve what it calls the "sneaky drone" problem: detecting, tracking, and identifying small, low-altitude, terrain-masked, and radio-frequency-silent Group 1 through 3 unmanned aircraft around permanent bases. The wanted solution is a low-cost network of perimeter sensor nodes that can spot a drone that is not emitting anything, fuse all sensor data at a node into a single track, and integrate with the Medusa command and control system. Awards are up to $2,000,000 for up to 24 months, with a 35 page technical volume limit. The topic opens September 23, 2026 and closes October 21, 2026 through the Defense SBIR/STTR Innovation Portal.

Three features make this topic unusual and worth understanding before you write. First, it carries hard numeric performance thresholds, including a full-rate production cost target of less than $100,000 for the system, which is a stringent constraint that will disqualify many otherwise capable sensor architectures. Second, because it is an open topic, a small business concern may submit only one proposal to it, and if you submit more than one, only the most recent certified proposal is evaluated while all prior ones are marked nonresponsive. Third, it uses a different evaluation rubric than the other topics in this release, one where Defense Need carries equal weight with Technical Approach.

Topic At a Glance

Topic number: DAF26BX06-DP027

Title: OPEN, Proliferated Low-Altitude Detection for C-sUAS

Solicitation: Department of the Air Force 2026 SBIR Commercial Solutions Opening (CSO), Release 6, Direct to Phase II

Program type: Direct to Phase II (D2P2) open topic, no Phase I awards, Phase I proposals will be rejected

Award maximum value: $2,000,000

Award maximum duration: 24 months

Technical volume page limit: 35 pages or slides

OUSD (R&E) Critical Technology Area: Quantum and Battlefield Information Dominance (Q-BID)

Component Technology Priority Areas: Trusted AI and Autonomy; Integrated Sensing and Cyber

Projected CMMC level requirement: Level 2 (Self)

Proposals allowed per company: one, because this is an open topic

Transition customers named: AFLCMC/ES and the JIATF-401 counter-UAS marketplace

Topic open date: September 23, 2026

Proposal deadline: October 21, 2026, at the time stated in the DoW FY26 SBIR CSO

Selection timeline: within approximately 90 calendar days of solicitation close, meaning on or about January 19, 2027

Submission portal: DSIP at dodsbirsttr.mil

Keywords: sensor network, sensors, acoustic, optical, radio frequency, C-sUAS, sneaky drone, RF-silent dark drone, base defense

Note on the deadline time. The DAF instructions point applicants to the DoW FY26 SBIR CSO for the submission deadline date and time rather than restating it. DoW SBIR CSO deadlines are ordinarily 12:00 p.m. Eastern on the close date. Verify the exact time on the live DSIP posting and do not plan around an end-of-day deadline.

What Makes This an Open Topic, and Why It Matters

The DAF states that this release contains an open topic, and under section 7 of the SBIR and STTR Extension Act of 2022, innovation open topic activities are meant to increase the transition of commercial technology to the Department of War, expand the small business nontraditional industrial base, increase commercialization derived from DoW investments, and expand the ability for qualifying small businesses to propose technology solutions that meet DoW needs.

The practical difference the DAF draws is this: unlike conventional topics, which specify the desired technical objective and output, open topics can use generalized mission requirements or specific technology areas to adapt commercial products or solutions to close capability gaps, improve performance, or provide technological advancements in existing capabilities.

In practice DP027 sits somewhere in between. It is labeled OPEN, and it invites adaptation of commercial sensing products, but it also carries very specific numeric requirements. Read it as an invitation to bring a commercial sensor product to a defined base defense problem, not as an invitation to propose whatever you like.

The rule that follows from open-topic status is strict and mechanical. A small business concern may only submit one proposal to each open topic. If more than one proposal from a single concern is received for a single open topic, only the most recent proposal to be certified and submitted prior to the submission deadline will receive an evaluation. All prior proposals submitted by that concern for the same open topic will be marked nonresponsive and will not receive an evaluation.

If your company has more than one candidate architecture, you must choose before you submit. And if you submit early and then decide to submit a revised version, understand that the earlier one is simply discarded rather than considered as an alternative.

What the Air Force Is Actually Looking For

The problem statement

Small drones that do not emit radio frequency energy are hard to find. Most fielded counter-UAS detection depends on picking up the control link or video downlink. A drone flying a preprogrammed route with its radios off, hugging terrain at low altitude, defeats that approach. The Air Force calls this the sneaky drone problem, and this topic is aimed squarely at it.

The DAF describes this as a focused open topic seeking counter-small-UAS detection options for transition into the USAF and USSF, specifically supporting AFLCMC/ES and the JIATF-401 marketplace. The effort seeks low-cost detection and recognition sensors configured as a perimeter network for early warning of low-flying drones.

The hard performance requirements

These numbers are the specification. Treat them as pass or fail gates in your proposal, and state explicitly where you meet or exceed each.

Detection altitude band: the system must detect targets from 1 meter up to 300 meters as the threshold, and 500 meters as the objective, off the ground.

Per-node horizontal detection range: individual sensor nodes must detect targets at a horizontal range of at least 100 meters.

Aggregate coverage: the nodes must integrate to create at least 10 kilometers of combined linear boundary coverage.

Full-rate production cost: the final system must cost less than $100,000 at full-rate production.

Target class: Group 1 through 3 UAS.

Operating conditions: the sensors must work in cluttered environments and recognize non-RF-emitting "dark" drones, meaning the system must distinguish a drone from something that is not a drone.

Data fusion: the system must integrate data from all sensors at a node into a single track, providing at least the target's heading along with the absolute location of the detecting node.

Control: the system must feature remote node control and be fully controllable via external API commands.

C2 integration: the system must be able to integrate into the Medusa C2 system or other Air Force directed C2.

The constraint that is deliberately relaxed

This is important and easy to miss. Solutions are strictly for permanent base defense applications. Therefore, strict size and weight limitations do not apply, and systems can rely on direct or off-grid permanent power.

That is a meaningful design freedom. If your sensor concept was previously ruled out because it was too heavy, too large, or too power-hungry for a tactical or mobile application, this topic removes that objection. Do not compress your architecture to hit SWaP targets that this topic does not impose. Do use that freedom to hit the detection performance and cost requirements instead.

Phase II deliverable

Deliver a field-ready, production-representative, low-cost, scalable network of sensors prototype capable of recognizing Group 1 through 3 drone targets up to altitudes of 300 meters threshold and 500 meters objective. The system must recognize non-RF-emitting targets both day and night. It must integrate with the Medusa C2 system or other Air Force directed C2.

Environmental and hardening requirements for Phase II are specific. The hardware must be ruggedized for real-world environmental conditions, demonstrating an ingress protection of at least IP65, operability in ambient relative humidity up to 95 percent non-condensing, and temperature tolerances from minus 32 degrees Celsius to 55 degrees Celsius. The system must include anti-tamper features for critical components and be capable of receiving an ATO or IATO.

Proposals should include development, demonstration, and test and evaluation of the proposed solution prototype.

The ATO requirement deserves attention. Receiving an Authority to Operate or Interim Authority to Operate is a cybersecurity accreditation process, not a technical performance milestone, and it takes time and documentation discipline. Address your plan for it explicitly rather than asserting capability.

Phase III and commercial applications

Phase III is transition to AFLCMC/ES and the JIATF-401 counter-UAS marketplace for base defense. Named commercial dual-use applications are airport security, critical infrastructure protection, and border patrol.

The references the Air Force cites reinforce the airport and infrastructure framing: a March 2024 GAO report on federal efforts to address unauthorized drone flights near airports, the Department of Defense Counter-Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Strategy, the summary of the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, and the June 2025 statement for the record by General Michael Kurilla, then Commander of U.S. Central Command, before the Senate Committee on Armed Services on the posture of U.S. Central Command.

The Feasibility Requirement

Direct to Phase II means you must already have done the Phase I equivalent work, outside the SBIR program, and be able to document it. The DAF will disqualify proposals where the Phase I equivalency documentation does not establish the proposed technical approach's feasibility and technical merit, and it applies that screen before evaluating technical merit.

What this topic specifically requires

The topic states that the Government requires the applicant to have accomplished a Phase I type effort accomplished outside of the SBIR program through other means. To demonstrate feasibility, the applicant must have developed and validated a working prototype that has been tested in a simulated or non-operational relevant environment.

Then it gets specific about what the prototype must have shown. The applicant must demonstrate that their system is capable of detecting and tracking non-RF emitting Group 1 through 3 UAS at low altitudes while outputting basic track and sensor node location data.

That is a tight, checkable claim. Your feasibility documentation needs to show three things: detection and tracking of non-emitting targets, in the Group 1 to 3 class, at low altitude, with track output plus node location. Test data against cooperative RF-emitting targets does not satisfy this. Detection without tracking does not satisfy it. Tracking without location output does not satisfy it.

The general D2P2 rules that also apply

The feasibility work must have been substantially performed by the applicant or the principal investigator. Work performed by someone else does not qualify.

Feasibility documentation cannot be based upon or logically extend from any prior or ongoing federally funded SBIR or STTR work. This authority exists for companies that matured technology outside the SBIR pipeline.

If technology in your feasibility documentation is subject to intellectual property rights, you must provide IP rights assertions, plus a short summary for each item asserted with less than unlimited rights describing the nature of the restriction and the intellectual property intended for use in the proposed research.

Feasibility documentation can be included as part of Volume 5, and is listed as required of all proposal submissions.

Funding Allowance and Cost Structure

Award ceiling

Up to $2,000,000 across up to 24 months. The topic index states that proposals in excess of this amount will not be considered for evaluation or award, and proposals in excess of this duration will not be considered for evaluation or award.

The DAF also notes in the evaluation section that per-award and per-topic funding caps are budgetary estimates only, that more or less funding may become available, and that multiple procurements are planned with each proposal treated as a separate procurement evaluated on its own merit. The Government may award all, some, or none of the proposals, and funding decisions are made with complete disregard to other awards under the same topic.

The $100,000 production cost target is a design requirement, not a budget line

Do not confuse the two dollar figures in this topic. The $2,000,000 is what the Government may pay you to develop the prototype. The under $100,000 figure is what the resulting system must cost at full-rate production. That second number is a technical requirement that shapes your entire sensor selection and architecture.

Because this is a network of nodes covering at least 10 kilometers of linear boundary, the cost engineering question is what a node can cost and how many you need. A proposal that does not address unit cost, node count, and the path to the sub-$100,000 system cost has left a central requirement unanswered. Show the bill of materials logic at production volume, not at prototype volume.

Contract type and fee

Generally firm-fixed-price contracts are appropriate for Phase II awards. In accordance with the SBA SBIR/STTR Policy Directive, Phase II contracts must include profit or fee.

Technical and Business Assistance

The DAF will provide up to $50,000 per Phase II award, in addition to the per-topic total, identified in the Volume 3 Cost Proposal. Applicants may elect to use $25,000 on a first SBIR Phase II award and $25,000 on a sequential SBIR Phase II award.

TABA can only fund the activities in 15 U.S.C. 638(q)(1)(A) through (E). Eligible activities include access to a network of scientists and engineers, assistance with product sales, intellectual property protections, cybersecurity assistance, market research, market validation, development of regulations and manufacturing plans, and access to technical and business literature through online databases. For this topic, cybersecurity assistance and development of manufacturing plans are worth considering given the ATO requirement and the production cost target.

The detailed request must appear in Volume 5 Supporting Documents and must include the provider name, point of contact with email and phone, an explanation of the provider's unique qualifications, the tasks the provider will perform including purpose and objective, and total provider cost with hours and labor rates. Average or blended rates are acceptable. The task milestone list must track to the milestone payment schedule otherwise provided by the applicant. TABA requests that only specify a request value in the Volume 3 Cost Proposal will not be considered.

If using TABA to hire or augment staff or fund training, provide names and positions, the business need or training to be provided, the number of employees involved, their qualifications or the detailed training need, and total staff or training cost with hours and labor rates.

Cost volume expectations

A detailed cost proposal broken out by individual cost element and by contractor fiscal year, in sufficient detail to determine the basis for estimates and the purpose, necessity, and reasonableness of each. Cost proposal attachments do not count toward page limits, and cost proposal information will be treated as proprietary.

Direct labor requires key personnel by name where possible, labor category otherwise, with direct labor hours, labor overhead or fringe, and actual hourly rates for each individual. Direct cost materials require an itemized list of types, quantities, prices, and purpose, and for planned computer or software purchases, manufacturer, price quotes, proposed use, and support for the need. Other direct costs cover specialized services such as machining or milling, special test and analysis, and temporary use or lease of specialized facilities or equipment, with usage hours, rates, sources, and justification, and leased hardware needs a lease versus purchase rationale. Special tooling and special test equipment must be advantageous to the Government in the Contracting Officer's opinion, relate directly to the effort, and not be items an applicant would ordinarily possess in the normal course of business.

Subcontract costs must be supported with copies of subcontract agreements adequately describing the work and cost bases, including a statement of work, assigned personnel, hours and rates, materials, and proposed travel. A letter from a subcontractor agreeing to perform at a fixed price is expressly not sufficient. The prime must accomplish price analysis including reasonableness of proposed subcontractor costs, and provide cost analysis where price analysis techniques are inadequate or the FAR requires cost or pricing data.

Consultants require a separate agreement letter each, stating the service, hours required, and hourly rate, plus a short resume. Travel should include at a minimum a kickoff or interim meeting, justified against the Joint Travel Regulation. Indirect costs require proposed rate bases, the specific rates and allocation bases, and rates and applications per fiscal year across the anticipated performance period, with no composite rates.

Non-SBIR governmental or private investment is allowed but not required and will not be a proposal evaluation factor.

If no exceptions are taken to your proposal, the Government may award without exchanges, so your initial proposal should contain your best terms from a cost, price, and technical standpoint.

Work performance requirements

The instructions contain two statements that do not obviously align. The Consultants and Subcontractors section states that per the SBA SBIR Policy Directive, a minimum of 50 percent of the R/R&D must be performed by the proposing firm unless otherwise approved in writing by the Contracting Officer. The Performance of Work Requirements section states that for Phase II, a minimum of one-third of the research or analytical effort must be performed by the awardee, measured by both direct and indirect costs, not including profit. Separately, the proposed total of all consultant fees, facility leases or usage fees, and other subcontract or purchase agreements may not exceed one-half of the total contract price unless approved in writing by the Contracting Officer.

Planning to perform at least half the R/R&D in house and keeping all outside costs below half the contract price satisfies every reading. If your teaming structure cannot, requests for Performance of Work deviations must be made twice: prior to submission during the topic open period, and again as part of the initial proposal submission. The DAF will not consider these requests before proposal submission. Given the ambiguity between the two stated thresholds, raise it with the DAF SBIR/STTR One Help Desk early.

This is a live concern for sensor topics specifically, because a network combining acoustic, optical, and RF modalities often means buying subsystems from multiple suppliers. Watch the subcontract and purchase agreement total against the one-half cap.

Where work must be performed

All R/R&D must be performed in the United States by the small business and its team members. Based on rare and unique circumstances, the DAF may approve a particular portion of the work to be performed or obtained outside the United States, with written approval from the awarding Funding Agreement officer for each specific condition. Requests must be made with the initial proposal submission.

Foreign Nationals and Export Control

Unlike three of the other topics in this release, DP027 does not carry a topic-level ITAR and EAR restriction notice. That does not remove your disclosure obligations.

All applicants proposing to use foreign nationals must follow the FY26 SBIR CSO and disclose this information regardless of whether the topic is subject to ITAR restrictions. In the technical volume, identify all non-U.S. citizens expected to be involved in the project as direct employees, subcontractors, or consultants, and for those individuals provide, in addition to technical resumes, countries of origin, the type of visa or work permit held, and the tasks they are anticipated to perform.

A foreign national means any person who is not a citizen or national of the United States, not a lawful permanent resident, and not a protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b.

Where a topic area is subject to export control, permitted foreign national participants are limited to work in the public domain, and assigned tasks must not be capable of assimilation into an understanding of the project's overall objectives, which prevents foreign persons from acting in key positions such as Principal Investigator or Senior Engineer. Additional information may be requested during negotiations to verify eligibility.

For all projects with military or dual-use applications developing beyond fundamental research, the contractor must comply with all U.S. export control laws including ITAR 22 CFR Parts 120 through 130 and EAR 15 CFR Parts 730 through 799, is responsible for obtaining appropriate licenses or approvals including for deemed exports of hardware, technical data, and software, must obtain export licenses before using foreign persons including where work is performed on-site at a Government installation, is responsible for regulatory record keeping, and must ensure these provisions apply to its subcontractors.

Counter-UAS sensing is a domain where export control questions arise readily, so form a view on your own classification early rather than assuming the absence of a topic-level notice settles it. If you are asserting export-controlled status, a certified DD Form 2345 or evidence of application submission goes in Volume 5.

Proposal Structure: The Seven Volumes

Formatting

Type no smaller than 11-point on standard 8.5 by 11 paper, one-inch margins, pages consecutively numbered. This differs from Army SBIR instructions, which allow 10-point, so do not reuse an Army-formatted volume without adjusting.

Proposals should be direct, concise, and informative. Applicants are discouraged from including promotional and non-programmatic items, and if included, that material counts toward the page limit. Marketing material will not be evaluated.

Technical volume limit for this topic is 35 pages or slides, and pages in excess will not be considered by the Government in evaluations. Preferred format is PDF, graphics must be distinguishable in black and white, and all submissions must be virus-checked.

Volume 6 Fraud, Waste, and Abuse training must be completed before submission, and DSIP will not permit submission until it is complete and certified. The DAF recommends completing submission early because site traffic is heavy before close and causes system lag. The DAF will not be responsible for proposals not completely submitted before the deadline due to system inaccessibility unless advised by DoW, and will not accept submission outside DSIP.

Volume 1, Cover Sheet

Completed per DSIP instructions. The technical abstract should include a brief description of program objectives, a description of the effort, anticipated benefits, commercial applications of the proposed research, and a list of keywords and terms. The abstract of each successful proposal goes to the Office of the Secretary of War for publication and must not contain proprietary or classified information. If selected for funding, the technical abstract and discussion of anticipated benefits will be publicly released.

If your proposal is substantially the same as one submitted previously, currently, or in the process of being funded by another federal agency, DoW component, or the DAF, you must indicate that on the cover sheet. If the prior support section does not apply, certify on the cover sheet, "No prior, current, or pending support for proposed work."

Volume 2, Technical Volume

Required items in the order provided: table of contents immediately after the cover sheet; glossary of acronyms and abbreviations; milestone identification with a program schedule showing all key milestones; identification and significance of the problem or opportunity; Phase II technical objectives with the technical approach and methods and an assessment of potential commercial application for each objective; work plan; deliverables; related work; commercialization potential; relationship with future R/R&D efforts; key personnel; facilities and equipment; consultants and subcontractors; and prior, current, or pending support of similar proposals or awards.

The work plan is a separate and distinct part of the package, divided from the technical proposal by a page break and beginning on a new page. It must summarize technical methodology and task description in broad enough detail to provide contractual flexibility, and must not contain proprietary information, because if the proposal is selected the work plan is incorporated into the resulting contract by reference. The recommended format is 1.0 Objective, 2.0 Scope, 3.0 Background, and 4.0 Task and Technical Requirements. Section 2.0 should concisely describe the work including technology area, goals, and major milestones, with task development and deliverables as the key elements, consistent with section 4.0. Section 3.0 should identify applicable specifications, standards, and other documents, constraints to understanding requirements, relationships to previous, current, or future operations, and techniques previously determined ineffective. Section 4.0 requires detailed individual task descriptions in orderly progression with sufficient detail to establish overall program requirements and goals, segregated into major tasks in separately numbered paragraphs, each delineated by subtask. Every task to be accomplished must appear in definite, realistic, clearly stated terms. Use "shall" for binding provisions, "should" or "may" for a declaration or purpose, and "will" where no contractor requirement is involved.

Deliverables must clearly describe the specific sample or prototype hardware and software to be delivered, plus data deliverables, schedules, and quantities, with awareness of the possible unique item identification requirement under DFARS 252.211-7003 for hardware. If hardware or software will be developed but not delivered, explain why. Rights in technical data including software developed under a SBIR contract generally remain with the contractor, and the Government obtains SBIR/STTR data rights in all data developed or generated under the contract for 20 years commencing at contract award, after which the Government has Government purpose rights. The Final Report's first page is a single-page project summary identifying purpose, briefly describing the effort accomplished, and listing potential result applications, which may be published by DoW and therefore must contain no proprietary or classified information. Status reports are due quarterly at a minimum. The Air Force may require additional reporting including software documentation and users' manuals, engineering drawings, operation and maintenance documentation, safety hazard analysis where hardware is developed and delivered, and updates to commercialization results.

Related work must describe significant directly related activities including previous programs by the principal investigator, proposing firm, consultants, or others, how they interface with the proposed project, and planned coordination with outside sources, plus any applicant-identified subject matter experts regardless of affiliation with comments on the applicant's knowledge of the state of the art. Describe similar but not directly related previous work with a short description, the client including an individual to contact and phone number, and the date of completion.

Commercialization potential requires a commercialization plan addressing the first planned product to incorporate the technology, the probable customers and estimated market size, how much money is needed to bring the technology to market and how it will be raised, whether the firm has necessary marketing expertise and how it will compensate if not, and the probable competitors and the anticipated price or quality advantage. Commercial potential is evidenced by private sector or non-SBIR governmental funding sources demonstrating commitment to Phase II efforts and results, Phase III follow-on commitments for the research subject, and other indicators including the firm's commercialization strategy. If awarded, the awardee must periodically update commercialization results via SBA. The Commercialization Plan and the Company Commercialization Report are distinct documents.

Key personnel must identify all key personnel with information directly related to education, experience, and citizenship, and include a technical resume for the principal investigator with publications. The principal investigator's primary employment must be with the small business at the time of award and during the entire period of performance, where primary employment means more than one-half of the PI's time is spent in the small business's employ, precluding full-time employment with another entity. Only one principal investigator or project manager may be designated per proposal.

Facilities and equipment must describe instrumentation and physical facilities necessary and available, justify equipment to be purchased with detail in the cost proposal, and state whether proposed performance locations meet federal, state, and local environmental laws and regulations for airborne emissions, waterborne effluents, external radiation levels, outdoor noise, solid and bulk waste disposal, and handling and storage of toxic and hazardous materials.

Consultants and subcontractors: private companies, consultants, or universities may be involved, all should be described in detail and included in the cost proposal, and signed copies of all consultant or subcontractor letters of intent must be attached, briefly stating the contribution or expertise provided, with statements of work, detailed cost proposals, and information on unique qualifications. Subcontract copies and supporting documents do not count against the page limit. Identify any subcontractor or consultant foreign citizens.

Prior, current, or pending support: while it is permissible with proper notification to submit identical proposals or proposals containing a significant amount of essentially equivalent work under numerous federal program solicitations, it is unlawful to enter into contracts or grants requiring essentially equivalent effort, and any potential for that must be disclosed before award. Provide the federal agency or DoW component names and addresses, submission or award dates, proposal titles, PI names and titles, solicitation titles, numbers and dates, contract numbers if awarded, and applicable topics for each.

Volume 3, Cost Volume

Covered above.

Volume 4, Company Commercialization Report

Required in DSIP. Note the DAF states that information contained in the CCR will not be considered during proposal evaluations, which differs from Army SBIR practice where it is considered. Complete it for compliance, but do not treat it as a scoring opportunity.

Volume 5, Supporting Documents

May be required if applicable: DD Form 2345 for export-controlled topics; Verification of Eligibility of Small Business Joint Ventures, Attachment 3 to the DoW SBIR FY26 CSO; and Technical Data Rights Assertions if asserting data rights restrictions.

Required of all submissions: feasibility documentation, as described above, including IP rights assertions where applicable.

If appropriate, include a reference or works cited list as the last page. Do not include marketing material, which will not be evaluated.

Volume 6, Fraud, Waste, and Abuse Training

Complete once per year, before submission.

Volume 7, Disclosures of Foreign Affiliations or Relationships to Foreign Countries

Complete the webform in Volume 7 of the DSIP submission. The webform will not be accepted as a PDF supporting document in Volume 5, and previous versions of the form must not be uploaded to Volume 5.

How Your Proposal Will Be Evaluated

The rubric for this topic is different from the others in this release

DP027 has its own evaluation structure. Factor A and Factor B are of equal importance and are of more importance than Factor C, with Factor C being less important than Factors A and B. All evaluation criteria other than cost or price, when combined, are significantly more important than cost or price.

Criteria A, Defense Need. The Defense Need being fulfilled and the ability of the proposal to impact that Defense Need. This is assessed through the appropriateness, relevance, and specificity of an identified Defense Need; the adequacy of the proposed effort and its relationship to fulfilling the identified Defense Need; the level of defense mission impact and urgency of the Defense Need; and the breadth of applicability of the solution.

The Air Force adds a specific hint here that appears nowhere else in this document: while not required, signed letters of support from other Government personnel may be indicators of the appropriateness, relevance, and specificity of an identified Defense Need.

Read that carefully. On a topic where Defense Need is co-equal with Technical Approach as the most important factor, the Air Force has told you that a signed letter of support from a Government stakeholder is evidence it values. If you have a relationship with a base defense force support squadron, a security forces unit, AFLCMC/ES, or a JIATF-401 participant, a letter is worth pursuing during the open period.

Criteria B, Technical Approach. The clarity of the problem statement, technical approach, soundness, technical merit, and innovation of the proposed technical approach, its differentiation from current customer alternatives, and the proposed principal investigator's, project manager's, supporting staff's, and consultants' qualifications to execute the proposed approach.

The phrase "its differentiation from current customer alternatives" is doing real work in a crowded counter-UAS market. You will be read against fielded and competing systems. Name them and explain why your approach is different, especially on the non-emitting detection problem and on the cost target.

Criteria C, Commercialization. The potential for commercial application in the Government or private sector and the benefits expected to accrue from that commercialization.

General evaluation process

D2P2 proposals are evaluated on a competitive basis by subject matter expert scientists, engineers, or other technical personnel. Confidential proposal and evaluation information is protected to the greatest extent possible. Proposals will be disqualified and not evaluated if the Phase I equivalency documentation does not establish the proposed technical approach's feasibility and technical merit.

Selections are based on a determination of overall technical value plus evaluation of the cost volume, for selection of the proposals most advantageous to the Government. Where technical evaluations are essentially equal in merit, cost or price will be considered. Multiple procurements are planned and anticipated, each proposal is a separate procurement evaluated on its own merit, and the Government may award all, some, or none.

Foreign risk evaluation

The DAF will evaluate all small business concerns submitting under this release on whether they present a security risk, using the due diligence process under 15 U.S.C. 638(vv), disclosures required under 15 U.S.C. 638(g) and (o), and coordination with the intelligence community as defined in section 3 of the National Security Act of 1947, federal law enforcement, and other counterintelligence capabilities.

The risk-based assessment covers cybersecurity practices, patent analysis, employee analysis, foreign ownership including financial ties and obligations covering surety, equity, and debt obligations of the concern and its employees to a foreign country, person, or entity, foreign affiliations of a covered individual, owner, or other key personnel with an entity in a foreign country of concern, investment relationships with an individual or entity in a foreign country of concern, technology licensing agreements or joint ventures including joint venture like agreements with an individual or entity in a foreign country of concern, and business relationships between a covered individual, owner, or key personnel and an individual or entity in a foreign country of concern. The DAF also uses open-source analysis and analytical tools for nondisclosures of information set forth in 15 U.S.C. 638(g)(13) or 638(o)(17), and examines relationships to entities or individuals on the lists in 15 U.S.C. 638(g)(16)(D) and 638(o)(20)(D).

If security risks are assessed, the DAF may create a mitigation plan or decide not to select the proposal based on a totality of the review.

Awards must be denied under 15 U.S.C. 638(g)(16) or 638(o)(20) if the concern has an owner or covered individual party to a malign foreign talent recruitment program; a business entity, parent company, or subsidiary located in the People's Republic of China or another foreign country of concern; an owner or covered individual with a foreign affiliation with a research institution located in the PRC or another foreign country of concern; or a security risk connecting the concern or its affiliates to an entity or individual on the UFLPA Entity List, the Non-SDN Chinese Military-Industrial Complex Companies List, the Section 889 Prohibition List, the Section 1260H Chinese Military Companies list, the Military End User List, the Entity List, the FCC List of Equipment and Services, or the Withhold Release Orders and Findings List. Awards are also denied where a security risk has a primary source that is classified or where the DAF determines a security risk warrants denial.

Applicants must disclose under penalty of perjury the representations, attestations, and certifications required under 15 U.S.C. 638(g)(13) and 638(o)(17), fulfilled by completing Volume 7, and must provide a written statement of any substantial changes to the foreign disclosure form to the awarding agency within 30 days while on a project for the DAF.

For a sensor hardware topic, the supply chain implications here are direct. Camera modules, RF front ends, and edge compute boards frequently trace to suppliers on one or more of the named lists. Audit your bill of materials against those lists before you propose, not after selection.

Ownership, support contractors, status, and protests

Small business concerns owned in majority part by multiple venture capital operating companies, hedge funds, or private equity funds are eligible to submit applications or receive awards for DAF topics.

Proposals may be handled for administrative purposes only by support contractors, which may include APEX, Peerless Technologies, Engineering Services Network, HPC-COM, Mile Two, REI Systems, MacB (an Alion company), Montech, Oasis, Astrion/Oasis, and Infinite Management Solutions. Only Government employees and technical personnel from the FFRDCs MITRE and Aerospace Corporation working under contract to provide technical support to Air Force Life Cycle Management Center and Space Force may evaluate proposals. All support contractors are bound by non-disclosure agreements, and concerns about any of them go to the DAF SBIR/STTR Contracting Officer.

The principal investigator and Corporate Official on the cover sheet are notified by email regarding selection or non-selection, with a separate notification for each proposal submitted. Automated feedback is provided for proposals designated Not Selected, and additional feedback may be provided at the sole discretion of the DAF. Proposals are received and evaluated by different organizations handled by topic, each on its own schedule, so notification timeframes vary.

The DAF anticipates that all proposals will be evaluated and selections finalized within approximately 90 calendar days of solicitation close. Refrain from contacting the DAF for status before that time. Protests after award should be submitted, as prescribed in FAR 33.106(b) and FAR 52.233-3, to the Air Force SBIR/STTR Contracting Officer and to the individual procuring contracting officer listed on your firm's selection notification. Final reports go to the awarding DAF organization per contract instructions, not directly to the Defense Technical Information Center.

Timeline and What to Do When

The dates

Topic opens: September 23, 2026

Proposal deadline: October 21, 2026, at the time specified in the DoW FY26 SBIR CSO, ordinarily 12:00 p.m. Eastern. Confirm on DSIP.

Selections finalized: within approximately 90 calendar days of close, on or about January 19, 2027

Period of performance: up to 24 months from award

A working backward plan

Before September 23. Decide which single architecture you are submitting, because the open topic rule allows only one proposal per company. Assemble the feasibility package: test data showing detection and tracking of non-RF-emitting Group 1 to 3 UAS at low altitude with track and node location output. Audit your bill of materials against the foreign entity lists. Build the production cost model that gets you under $100,000 at full rate. Begin pursuing signed Government letters of support, since the rubric names them as an indicator on the co-equal top factor. Complete Volume 6 training, verify SAM and DSIP alignment, and send clarifying questions to the DAF SBIR/STTR One Help Desk, which explicitly encourages early inquiries.

September 23 through October 3. Draft Volume 2 in the required order. Write a requirements traceability section that walks each numeric threshold, 1 to 300 and 500 meters, 100 meter node range, 10 kilometer aggregate coverage, sub-$100,000 production cost, IP65, 95 percent humidity, minus 32 to 55 degrees Celsius, anti-tamper, ATO or IATO, Medusa C2 and API control, and states your position on each. Build the milestone schedule early since the TABA task list must track to it.

October 4 through October 12. Build the cost volume by element and fiscal year. Collect signed letters of intent, statements of work, and detailed cost proposals from every consultant and subcontractor. Check your work-performance percentages and the one-half subcontract cost cap. Write the detailed TABA request into Volume 5 if requesting TABA.

October 13 through October 16. Assemble Volume 5, complete the Volume 7 webform, finish the Volume 4 CCR, and run compliance: 35 page limit, 11-point minimum type, one-inch margins, consecutive page numbers, black and white legible graphics, virus-checked PDF, no marketing material, no proprietary content in the abstract or work plan.

October 17 through October 19. Submit and certify in DSIP. Remember that with an open topic, the most recent certified submission is the one evaluated and any earlier one is marked nonresponsive, so certify the version you actually want reviewed.

October 20 through October 21. Buffer only.

Frequently Asked Questions

‍ ‍

What is DAF SBIR topic DAF26BX06-DP027?

‍ ‍

DAF26BX06-DP027 is a Department of the Air Force SBIR Direct to Phase II open topic titled "OPEN, Proliferated Low-Altitude Detection for C-sUAS," released under the DAF 2026 SBIR Commercial Solutions Opening, Release 6. It seeks low-cost networked sensors that detect, track, and identify small, low-altitude, terrain-masked, and RF-silent Group 1 through 3 unmanned aircraft for permanent base defense.

‍ ‍

How much funding is available under DAF26BX06-DP027?

‍ ‍

Up to $2,000,000 for a period of performance up to 24 months. Proposals exceeding either limit will not be considered for evaluation or award. Up to $50,000 in Technical and Business Assistance may be requested in addition to that ceiling.

‍ ‍

When is the proposal deadline?

‍ ‍

The topic closes October 21, 2026. The DAF instructions direct applicants to the DoW FY26 SBIR CSO for the exact submission time, ordinarily 12:00 p.m. Eastern on the close date. Confirm the time on the live DSIP posting.

‍ ‍

When does this topic open?

‍ ‍

September 23, 2026, giving a 29 day submission window.

‍ ‍

How many proposals can my company submit to this topic?

‍ ‍

One. Because this is an open topic, a small business concern may only submit one proposal. If more than one is received from the same concern, only the most recent proposal certified and submitted before the deadline is evaluated, and all prior proposals from that concern for the same open topic are marked nonresponsive.

‍ ‍

What are the detection performance requirements?

‍ ‍

The system must detect targets from 1 meter up to 300 meters as the threshold and 500 meters as the objective off the ground. Individual sensor nodes must detect targets at a horizontal range of at least 100 meters. The nodes must integrate to create at least 10 kilometers of combined linear boundary coverage. Targets are Group 1 through 3 UAS, including non-RF-emitting drones, and the system must distinguish a drone from something that is not a drone.

‍ ‍

What is the cost target for the system?

‍ ‍

The final system must cost less than $100,000 at full-rate production. This is a technical design requirement, separate from the $2,000,000 development award ceiling. Address unit cost, node count, and the production cost path explicitly in your proposal.

‍ ‍

Do size, weight, and power limits apply?

‍ ‍

No. Solutions are strictly for permanent base defense applications, so strict size and weight limitations do not apply and systems can rely on direct or off-grid permanent power. This is a deliberate design freedom, so do not compress your architecture to hit SWaP targets this topic does not impose.

‍ ‍

What environmental and hardening requirements apply in Phase II?

‍ ‍

The hardware must be ruggedized for real-world environmental conditions, demonstrating ingress protection of at least IP65, operability in ambient relative humidity up to 95 percent non-condensing, and temperature tolerances from minus 32 to 55 degrees Celsius. The system must include anti-tamper features for critical components and be capable of receiving an ATO or IATO.

‍ ‍

Does the system have to integrate with a specific command and control system?

‍ ‍

Yes. The system must be able to integrate into the Medusa C2 system or other Air Force directed C2. It must also feature remote node control and be fully controllable via external API commands, and must fuse data from all sensors at a node into a single track providing at least the target's heading plus the absolute location of the detecting node.

‍ ‍

Can I submit a Phase I proposal for this topic?

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No. This is a Direct to Phase 2 topic and Phase I proposals will be rejected.

‍ ‍

What feasibility documentation does this topic require?

‍ ‍

You must have accomplished a Phase I type effort outside the SBIR program and have developed and validated a working prototype tested in a simulated or non-operational relevant environment. Specifically, you must demonstrate your system is capable of detecting and tracking non-RF emitting Group 1 through 3 UAS at low altitudes while outputting basic track and sensor node location data.

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Can I use a prior SBIR award as my feasibility basis?

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No. Feasibility documentation cannot be based upon or logically extend from any prior or ongoing federally funded SBIR or STTR work, and the feasibility effort must have been substantially performed by the applicant or the principal investigator.

‍ ‍

How is this topic evaluated?

‍ ‍

Under three factors. Criteria A, Defense Need, and Criteria B, Technical Approach, are of equal importance and both more important than Criteria C, Commercialization. All criteria other than cost or price, combined, are significantly more important than cost or price. Note this rubric differs from the other four topics in this release, which use a descending order of importance structure.

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Do letters of support help my proposal?

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The Air Force says that while not required, signed letters of support from other Government personnel may be indicators of the appropriateness, relevance, and specificity of an identified Defense Need. Since Defense Need is a co-equal top factor on this topic, pursuing a signed letter from a relevant Government stakeholder is a high-value use of the open period.

‍ ‍

How long can my technical volume be?

‍ ‍

35 pages or slides. Pages in excess will not be considered during evaluations. Type must be no smaller than 11-point on 8.5 by 11 paper with one-inch margins and consecutively numbered pages. Cost proposal attachments and subcontract copies do not count toward the limit.

‍ ‍

Is this topic export controlled?

‍ ‍

The topic does not carry a topic-level ITAR and EAR restriction notice, unlike three other topics in this release. However, all applicants proposing to use foreign nationals must disclose that information regardless of whether the topic is subject to ITAR, and the general export control provisions apply to all projects with military or dual-use applications developing beyond fundamental research. Counter-UAS sensing raises export control questions readily, so form your own view early.

‍ ‍

How much of the work must my company perform?

‍ ‍

The instructions state two thresholds. The Consultants and Subcontractors section requires at least 50 percent of the R/R&D be performed by the proposing firm unless the Contracting Officer approves otherwise in writing. The Performance of Work Requirements section states at least one-third of the Phase II research or analytical effort must be performed by the awardee, measured by direct and indirect costs excluding profit. Separately, all consultant fees, facility leases, and other subcontract or purchase agreements together may not exceed one-half of the total contract price without written Contracting Officer approval. Performing at least half in house satisfies every reading. Deviation requests must be made twice, prior to submission during the open period and again with the initial proposal.

‍ ‍

Does the Company Commercialization Report affect my score?

‍ ‍

No. Completing the CCR as Volume 4 is required, but the DAF states information contained in the CCR will not be considered during proposal evaluations.

‍ ‍

What is TABA and how do I request it?

‍ ‍

Up to $50,000 per Phase II award, in addition to the per-topic ceiling, identified in the Volume 3 Cost Proposal, and splittable as $25,000 on a first SBIR Phase II and $25,000 on a sequential one. The detailed request must be in Volume 5 with provider name, point of contact, unique qualifications, tasks with purpose and objective, and total cost with hours and labor rates, and the task milestone list must track to your milestone payment schedule. Requests that only specify a value in Volume 3 will not be considered.

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Who owns the data and software I develop?

‍ ‍

Rights in technical data including software developed under a SBIR contract generally remain with the contractor. The Government obtains SBIR/STTR data rights in all data developed or generated under the contract for 20 years from contract award, after which the Government has Government purpose rights to the SBIR data.

‍ ‍

Where does this technology transition after Phase II?

‍ ‍

Phase III is transition to AFLCMC/ES and the JIATF-401 counter-UAS marketplace for base defense. Named commercial dual-use applications are airport security, critical infrastructure protection, and border patrol.

‍ ‍

When will I hear about selection?

‍ ‍

The DAF anticipates all proposals evaluated and selections finalized within approximately 90 calendar days of solicitation close, meaning on or about January 19, 2027. The principal investigator and Corporate Official on the cover sheet are notified by email.

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Who do I contact with questions?

‍ ‍

The DAF SBIR/STTR One Help Desk at usaf.team@afsbirsttr.us for general program and proposal preparation questions, and the DAF encourages early requests because late ones constrain its ability to respond. For DSIP submission system issues, dodsbirsupport@reisystems.com. The Air Force SBIR/STTR Contracting Officer is Mr. Daniel J. Brewer at Daniel.Brewer.13@us.af.mil. Address or point of contact changes after submission go to the One Help Desk with the subject line "FY26 SBIR CSO Address Change."

‍ ‍

Positioning Advice for Startups Considering This Topic

‍ ‍

Solve the non-emitting detection problem explicitly, or do not bid. The entire premise of this topic is the drone that gives you nothing to listen for. If your detection stack depends materially on RF signature, your feasibility documentation will not clear the stated bar, which specifically requires demonstrated detection and tracking of non-RF emitting targets.

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Build the proposal around a requirements traceability matrix written as prose. There are roughly a dozen hard numbers and specifications in this topic. Walk each one and state your position: meet, exceed, or path to meet with the risk named. Evaluators on a specification-heavy topic reward the proposal that makes verification easy.

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Engineer to the cost target from the start. Under $100,000 at full-rate production for a system covering 10 kilometers of linear boundary is the hardest constraint here, and it interacts with everything. It rules out expensive per-node sensors and pushes toward modalities and compute that scale cheaply. Show the production cost model, not a prototype cost.

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Exploit the SWaP relief. Permanent base defense with permanent power is a rare gift in this market. Larger apertures, heavier sensors, more onboard compute, and mains or off-grid permanent power are all available to you. A proposal that reads like a tactical system is leaving performance on the table.

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Chase a Government letter of support during the open period. The Air Force told you it counts on the co-equal top factor. Security forces, base defense operations, AFLCMC/ES, and JIATF-401 participants are the relevant voices.

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Differentiate against named alternatives. Criteria B explicitly asks about differentiation from current customer alternatives. Counter-UAS is a crowded field with a lot of fielded and demonstrated systems. Name what is out there, be fair about it, and be specific about where you are different.

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Address the ATO path as a work plan task, not an assertion. Capability to receive an ATO or IATO is a Phase II requirement. Put the accreditation activity in the milestone schedule with the documentation artifacts it produces, and if you need help, note that cybersecurity assistance is an eligible TABA activity.

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Audit your supply chain before you propose. The foreign risk denial criteria name eight specific lists. Sensor and edge compute bills of materials commonly touch suppliers on them. Finding that out during a due diligence review after selection is a bad way to lose an award.

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Pick one architecture. The one-proposal-per-open-topic rule means internal debates get settled before submission, not by submitting both and letting the Government choose.

DAF SBIR DAF26BX06-DV026: Ground and Air Launched Drone Swarms Create a Self-Protecting Perimeter Using Autonomous AI

Quick Answer

DAF26BX06-DV026 is a Department of the Air Force SBIR Direct to Phase II topic under the DAF 2026 SBIR Commercial Solutions Opening, Release 6. The Air Force wants to take autonomous drone swarm technology that already works in the commercial world, adapt it to launch from high-altitude mobility aircraft such as the C-130 and KC-135, and prove it can establish an autonomous monitoring and defense perimeter on the ground. Awards are up to $2,000,000 for a period of performance up to 24 months, with a 35 page technical volume limit. The topic opens September 23, 2026 and closes October 21, 2026, submitted only through the Defense SBIR/STTR Innovation Portal.

This is a Direct to Phase II topic, which means no Phase I awards will be made and you cannot bootstrap your way in. You must already have a working swarm system deployed in demanding real-world environments, and you must be able to document that with deployment records, autonomous coordination metrics, and sensor integration data. The Air Force says so directly: traditional Phase I feasibility studies investigating the basic principles of swarm networking or autonomous flight are considered redundant. Your baseline technology needs to sit at Technology Readiness Level 5 or higher at project start, and the target at the end of Phase II is TRL 7.

Topic At a Glance

Topic number: DAF26BX06-DV026

Title: Ground and Air Launched Drone Swarms Create a Self-Protecting Perimeter Using Autonomous AI

Solicitation: Department of the Air Force 2026 SBIR Commercial Solutions Opening (CSO), Release 6, Direct to Phase II

Program type: Direct to Phase II (D2P2), no Phase I awards for this topic

Award maximum value: $2,000,000

Award maximum duration: 24 months

Technical volume page limit: 35 pages or slides

OUSD (R&E) Critical Technology Area: Applied Artificial Intelligence (AAI)

Component Technology Priority Areas: Trusted AI and Autonomy; Integrated Network System-of-Systems; Advanced Computing and Software

Projected CMMC level requirement: Level 2 (Self)

Export control status: Restricted under ITAR 22 CFR Parts 120-130 and EAR 15 CFR Parts 730-774

Starting technology maturity expected: TRL 5 or more

Target technology maturity at Phase II completion: TRL 7

Topic open date: September 23, 2026

Proposal deadline: October 21, 2026, at the time stated in the DoW FY26 SBIR CSO

Selection timeline: Evaluations and selections finalized within approximately 90 calendar days of solicitation close, meaning on or about January 19, 2027

Submission portal: DSIP at dodsbirsttr.mil

Keywords: autonomous drones, AI-driven swarm, air-launched effects, perimeter defense, secure communications, mobility asset protection, Agile Combat Employment, high-altitude deployment, mobility launch platforms, dual-use, swarm technology, force protection

Note on the deadline time. The DAF instructions direct applicants to the DoW FY26 SBIR CSO for the proposal submission deadline date and time rather than restating it. DoW SBIR CSO deadlines are ordinarily 12:00 p.m. Eastern on the close date. Confirm the exact time on the live DSIP topic posting before you plan your final day, and do not assume you have until midnight.

What the Air Force Is Actually Looking For

The operational problem

Mobility Air Forces aircraft are the logistical backbone of the Department of War. They are also high-value, relatively vulnerable assets that operate in contested environments. Separately, forward operating bases need to improve their security posture. The Air Force sees one technology that addresses both: a drone swarm that can be launched from a mobility aircraft, survive the launch, fly autonomously, and then establish a monitoring and defense perimeter on the ground.

The framing matters for how you write. This is not a drone development topic. It is an adaptation and integration topic. The Air Force states plainly that the fundamental scientific and technical merit of coordinating multiple uncrewed aerial systems through artificial intelligence has already been established by the private sector. What has not been done is making that work at operational altitudes, off a mobility airframe, over encrypted military communications, to Air Force operational standards.

The immediate Phase II objective

The stated immediate objective is to propose methods for and demonstrate the deployment and autonomous operation of a multi-agent swarm from high-altitude mobility launch platforms, while simultaneously demonstrating the swarm's dual-use capability to establish an autonomous monitoring and defense perimeter.

A critical research and development component of this phase focuses on proposing and developing secure, encrypted military communication architectures that meet Department of the Air Force operational standards. Read that as a hard requirement rather than a nice-to-have. Replacing your existing commercial data links with secure military communications is named as one of the three specified technical goals.

The three specified technical goals

The topic lists three capability demonstrations that validate the functional requirements:

First, the system should integrate secure, encrypted military communications, replacing readily available data links to ensure secure command and control that aligns with Department of the Air Force standards.

Second, the swarm should demonstrate the capability to safely deploy from mobility platforms at operational altitudes.

Third, the artificial intelligence software should be adapted to seamlessly transition from aerial deployment into a coordinated flight pattern and autonomously execute a perimeter defense monitoring route.

What is deliberately out of scope

This is unusual and worth reading twice. The Air Force says the approach deliberately avoids prescribing specific end-state payloads, so that flexible, innovative integration of various electronic or advanced sensing effects can happen in subsequent operational phases based on evolving warfighter requirements.

In other words, do not build your proposal around a specific kill chain, jammer, or exotic sensor package. The Air Force wants the foundational architecture proven: high-altitude deployment, secure networking, and autonomous baseline behavior. A proposal that spends its pages on a novel payload is answering a question the Air Force did not ask.

Proposed methods named in the topic

The topic names two proposed method areas: upgrading readily available communication links to integrate secure military protocols, and developing the autonomous behaviors necessary to seamlessly transition from aerial deployment to ground-based perimeter defense.

Operating parameters that the Air Force wants demonstrated include secure communication integration and deployment capabilities under operational conditions, deployments at operational altitudes that simulate operational Mobility Air Forces scenarios, and validation of the swarm's ability to autonomously monitor and defend a designated perimeter using onboard visual and thermal sensors.

The desired R&D outcome

A military-adapted prototype capable of demonstrating dual-use capabilities in an operational environment at TRL 7. The named use cases are organic intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance plus self-protection for Mobility Air Forces operating in contested airspace, and providing forward operating locations with an instantly deployable, autonomous perimeter monitoring system.

The Feasibility Requirement, Which Is Where Most Proposals Will Fail

Direct to Phase II inverts the usual SBIR sequence. Instead of proposing to establish feasibility, you must prove you already did, outside the SBIR program. The Air Force will not review a proposal that fails this test, and it applies the test before technical merit is considered.

The two absolute rules

Rule one: the feasibility work must have been substantially performed by the applicant or the principal investigator. Work someone else did does not qualify.

Rule two: feasibility documentation cannot be based upon, or logically extend from, any prior or ongoing federally funded SBIR or STTR work. This authority exists specifically for companies that matured technology outside the SBIR pipeline. If your swarm capability came out of a previous SBIR or STTR award, you are not eligible to use it as your feasibility basis here.

The DAF states it will not consider the proposal if the applicant fails to demonstrate technical merit and feasibility have been established, or if the feasibility documentation does not support substantial performance by the applicant or the principal investigator. Note that feasibility documentation can be included as part of Volume 5.

What this specific topic accepts as proof

The topic is more concrete than most about what feasibility looks like, which is a gift. Use their categories as your section headings.

Readily available deployment records. Verifiable data or reports detailing active use of the proposed swarm software and hardware in relevant environments. The examples given are testing or use alongside state or federal fire agencies and municipal police departments. This documentation should indicate the system has progressed from controlled laboratory testing to validation in relevant environments.

Autonomous coordination metrics. Technical reports or system logs demonstrating the software's capability to autonomously control a multi-agent swarm without continuous, manual piloting of individual nodes. Named examples include data on mesh network stability, dynamic task allocation among drones, and collision avoidance algorithms operating in chaotic environments such as airspace obscured by smoke or complex urban terrain.

Sensor integration and tracking data. Documentation showing integration of visual and thermal (EO/IR) payloads, and the software's ability to autonomously use those sensors to detect, track, and relay data on designated targets or points of interest.

The Air Force says that providing this documentation demonstrates the baseline technology sits at a minimum TRL of 5 or 6, establishing that the foundational feasibility traditionally explored in Phase I has already been achieved through iterative development.

The practical read

The ideal applicant for this topic has flown swarms for wildland firefighting or law enforcement, has logs and after-action data from those deployments, and has EO/IR integration already working. If you have that, you are in a strong position and the writing job is largely documentation. If you do not, no amount of proposal quality will fix it, and your effort is better spent elsewhere.

Funding Allowance and Cost Structure

Award ceiling

Up to $2,000,000 across up to 24 months. The topic index carries an unambiguous warning: proposals in excess of this amount will not be considered for evaluation or award, and proposals in excess of this duration will not be considered for evaluation or award.

One nuance the DAF adds that is worth understanding. In the evaluation section, the DAF states that any per-award or per-topic funding caps are budgetary estimates only, and more or less funding may become available. It also states that multiple procurements are planned and anticipated, each proposal is a separate procurement evaluated on its own merit, and the Government may award all, some, or none of the proposals. Funding decisions are made with complete disregard to the other awards under the same topic. Do not calibrate your proposal against an imagined competitor.

Contract type and fee

Generally firm-fixed-price contracts are appropriate for Phase II awards. In accordance with the SBA SBIR/STTR Policy Directive, Phase II contracts must include profit or fee. This differs from how some applicants approach cost-type work, so build fee in.

Technical and Business Assistance

The DAF will provide up to $50,000 per Phase II award for TABA, in addition to the per-topic award total, identified in the Volume 3 Cost Proposal. Applicants may elect to use half of the allocation, $25,000, on a first SBIR Phase II award and the other half on a sequential SBIR Phase II award.

TABA funding can only be used for the activities and purposes in 15 U.S.C. 638(q)(1)(A) through (E). Eligible activities include access to a network of scientists and engineers, assistance with product sales, intellectual property protections, cybersecurity assistance, market research, market validation, development of regulations and manufacturing plans, and access to technical and business literature through online databases. Those activities must serve one of these purposes: making better technical decisions, solving technical problems arising during the project, minimizing technical risks, developing and commercializing new commercial products and processes including IP protections, and screening for potential foreign involvement in technology development or commercialization activities.

The compliance trap is specific and unforgiving. A TABA request creditable to a provider must include the provider name, the provider point of contact with email and phone, an explanation of the provider's unique qualifications, the tasks the provider will perform including purpose and objective, and total provider cost with hours and labor rates. Blended or average rates are acceptable. The task milestone list must track to the milestone payment schedule otherwise provided by the applicant. If instead you are using TABA to hire new staff, augment staff, or direct staff into training, you must provide names and positions, the business need or training to be provided, the number of employees involved, and their qualifications or the detailed need for training, plus total staff or training cost, hours, and labor rates.

Most important: the detailed TABA request must appear in Volume 5 Supporting Documents. TABA requests that only specify a value in the Volume 3 Cost Proposal will not be considered.

Cost volume requirements

The DAF wants a detailed cost proposal broken out by individual cost element and by contractor fiscal year, in sufficient detail to determine the basis for estimates and the purpose, necessity, and reasonableness of each. Cost proposal attachments do not count toward page limits.

Direct labor: identify key personnel by name where possible, and labor category otherwise, with direct labor hours, labor overhead or fringe, and actual hourly rates for each individual.

Direct cost materials: itemized list of types, quantities, prices and purpose. For planned computer or software purchases, expect to provide manufacturer, price quotes, proposed use, and support for the need.

Other direct costs: specialized services such as machining or milling, special test and analysis, and temporary use or lease of specialized facilities or equipment, with usage hours, rates, sources, and justification. Leased hardware requires a lease versus purchase rationale.

Special tooling, special test equipment, and material: must be advantageous to the Government in the Contracting Officer's opinion and relate directly to the effort, and should not be items an applicant would ordinarily possess in the normal course of business.

Subcontracts: supported with copies of subcontract agreements that adequately describe the work and cost bases, including a statement of work, assigned personnel, hours and rates, materials, and proposed travel. A letter from a subcontractor agreeing to perform at a fixed price is expressly not sufficient. The prime must accomplish price analysis of proposed subcontractor costs.

Consultants: a separate agreement letter for each stating the service, hours required, and hourly rate, plus a short resume.

Travel: each effort should include at a minimum a kickoff or interim meeting. Justify destinations, trips, travelers, airfare, per diem, lodging, and ground transportation against the Joint Travel Regulation.

Indirect costs: indicate proposed rate bases, identify the specific rates and allocation bases, and provide rates and applications per fiscal year across the anticipated performance period. Do not propose composite rates.

Non-SBIR governmental or private investment is allowed but not required, and will not be a proposal evaluation factor.

A significant procedural point: if no exceptions are taken to an applicant's proposal, the Government may award a contract without exchanges. Your initial proposal should therefore contain your best terms from a cost, price, and technical standpoint. Do not hold anything back for a negotiation that may never happen.

The two work-performance rules, and a tension worth asking about

The DAF instructions contain two statements about how much work you must perform yourself, and they do not obviously agree.

In the Consultants and Subcontractors section, the instructions state that in accordance with the SBA SBIR Policy Directive, a minimum of 50 percent of the R/R&D must be performed by the proposing firm unless otherwise approved in writing by the Contracting Officer.

In the Performance of Work Requirements section, the instructions state that for Phase II, a minimum of one-third of the research or analytical effort must be performed by the awardee, measured by both direct and indirect costs, not including profit.

Separately, the instructions cap the proposed total of all consultant fees, facility leases or usage fees, and other subcontract or purchase agreements at one-half of the total contract price unless approved in writing by the Contracting Officer.

The conservative course is to plan on performing at least half the R/R&D in house and keeping all outside costs under half the contract price, which satisfies every reading. If your teaming structure cannot meet that, note the deviation process: requests for Performance of Work deviations must be made twice, first prior to submission during the topic open period, and again as part of the initial proposal submission. The DAF will not consider these requests before proposal submission opens. Given the ambiguity, this is a good question for the DAF SBIR/STTR One Help Desk early in the open period.

Where the work must be performed

All R/R&D must be performed in the United States by the small business and its team members. Based on rare and unique circumstances, the DAF may approve a particular portion of the work to be performed or obtained outside the United States, and the awarding Funding Agreement officer must approve each specific condition in writing. Applicants seeking that approval must request it with the initial proposal submission.

Export Control, Which Is Not Optional on This Topic

The technology in this topic is restricted under ITAR 22 CFR Parts 120-130 and EAR 15 CFR Parts 730-774. That has direct staffing consequences.

Offerors must disclose any proposed use of foreign nationals, their countries of origin, the type of visa or work permit held, and the statement of work tasks intended for accomplishment by those individuals. The topic warns that foreign nationals proposed to perform on this topic may be restricted due to the technical data under U.S. export control laws.

The instructions define a foreign national as any person who is not a citizen or national of the United States, not a lawful permanent resident, and not a protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b. All applicants proposing to use foreign nationals must follow the FY26 SBIR CSO and disclose regardless of whether the topic is subject to ITAR.

Where the topic area is subject to export control, foreign national individuals who are permitted to participate are limited to work in the public domain. Further, tasks assigned must not be capable of assimilation into an understanding of the project's overall objectives, which the instructions note prevents foreign persons from acting in key positions such as Principal Investigator or Senior Engineer.

For projects with military or dual-use applications developing beyond fundamental research, the contractor must comply with all U.S. export control laws, is responsible for obtaining appropriate licenses or approvals including for deemed exports of hardware, technical data, and software, must obtain export licenses before using foreign persons including where work is performed on-site at a Government installation, is responsible for regulatory record keeping associated with licenses and exemptions, and must ensure these provisions apply to its subcontractors.

If you are asserting export-controlled status, a certified DD Form 2345 Militarily Critical Technical Data Agreement, or evidence of application submission, belongs in Volume 5. DD Form 2345 approval will be required if the proposal is selected for award.

Proposal Structure: The Seven Volumes

Formatting rules

Type no smaller than 11-point on standard 8.5 by 11 paper, one-inch margins, pages consecutively numbered. Note this differs from Army SBIR instructions, which permit 10-point, so do not reuse an Army-formatted document without checking.

Proposals should be direct, concise, and informative. Applicants are discouraged from including promotional and non-programmatic items, and if included, such material counts toward the page limit. Marketing material will not be evaluated and should not be included.

The technical volume limit for this topic is 35 pages or slides. Pages in excess of that count will not be considered by the Government in evaluations. Preferred submission format is PDF, and graphics must be distinguishable in black and white. Virus-check all submissions.

Volume 6 Fraud, Waste, and Abuse training must be completed before proposal submission. DSIP will not allow submission until the training is complete and certified. The DAF recommends completing submission early, since site traffic is heavy prior to solicitation close and causes system lag. The DAF will not be responsible for proposals not completely submitted prior to the deadline due to system inaccessibility unless advised by DoW, and will not accept alternative means of submission outside DSIP.

Volume 1, Cover Sheet

Completed per DSIP instructions. The technical abstract should include a brief description of program objectives, a description of the effort, anticipated benefits, and commercial applications of the proposed research, plus a list of keywords and terms. The technical abstract of each successful proposal will be submitted to the Office of the Secretary of War for publication, so it must not contain proprietary or classified information. If selected for funding, the technical abstract and discussion of anticipated benefits will be publicly released.

Volume 2, Technical Volume

Include the following items in the order provided.

Table of contents, located immediately after the cover sheet.

Glossary of acronyms and abbreviations used in the proposal.

Milestone identification: a program schedule with all key milestones identified.

Identification and significance of the problem or opportunity: briefly reference the specific technical problem or opportunity to be pursued.

Phase II technical objectives: detail the specific objectives of the Phase II work and describe the technical approach and methods to be used in meeting them, including an assessment of potential commercial application for each objective.

Work plan: a separate and distinct part of the proposal package, divided from the technical proposal by a page break, beginning on a new page. It must contain a summary description of the technical methodology and task description in broad enough detail to provide contractual flexibility. Do not include proprietary information, because if the proposal is selected the work plan will be incorporated into the resulting contract by reference. The recommended format is 1.0 Objective, a brief overview of the specialty area explaining purpose and expected outcome; 2.0 Scope, a concise description of the work including technology area, goals, and major milestones, with task development and deliverables as the key elements, consistent with section 4.0; 3.0 Background, identifying applicable specifications, standards, and other documents, constraints to understanding requirements, relationships to previous, current, or future operations, and techniques previously determined ineffective; and 4.0 Task/Technical Requirements, detailed individual task descriptions developed in orderly progression with sufficient detail to establish overall program requirements and goals, segregated into major tasks in separately numbered paragraphs. Each numbered major task should delineate work by subtask. The work plan must contain every task to be accomplished in definite, realistic, and clearly stated terms. Use "shall" for binding provisions, "should" or "may" for a declaration or purpose, and "will" when no contractor requirement is involved.

Deliverables: clearly describe the specific sample or prototype hardware and software to be delivered, plus data deliverables, schedules, and quantities. Be aware of the possible unique item identification requirement under DFARS 252.211-7003 for hardware. If hardware or software will be developed but not delivered, provide an explanation. At minimum, all Phase II contracts require Scientific and Technical Reports. Rights in technical data including software developed under a SBIR contract generally remain with the contractor, and the Government obtains SBIR/STTR data rights in all data developed or generated under the contract for 20 years commencing at contract award, after which the Government has Government purpose rights to the SBIR data. The Final Report's first page is a single-page project summary identifying the work's purpose, briefly describing the effort accomplished, and listing potential result applications; that summary may be published by DoW and must contain no proprietary or classified information. Status reports are due quarterly at a minimum. The Air Force may require additional reporting including software documentation and users' manuals, engineering drawings, operation and maintenance documentation, safety hazard analysis when the project results in partial or total development and delivery of hardware, and updates to commercialization results.

Related work: describe significant activities directly related to the proposed effort, including previous programs conducted by the principal investigator, proposing firm, consultants, or others, and their application to the proposed project. Describe how these activities interface with the proposed project and discuss planned coordination with outside sources. List any applicant-identified subject matter experts regardless of affiliation, with comments regarding the applicant's knowledge of the state of the art in the specific approach proposed. Describe previous work not directly related but similar, giving a short description, the client for whom the work was performed including an individual to be contacted and phone number, and the date of completion.

Commercialization potential: the DoW requires a commercialization plan with the Phase II proposal, specifically addressing what the first planned product to incorporate the proposed technology is, who the probable customers are and the estimated market size, how much money is needed to bring the technology to market and how it will be raised, whether the firm has the necessary marketing expertise and if not how it will compensate, and who the probable competitors are and what price or quality advantage is anticipated. The plan should briefly describe commercialization potential for the project's anticipated results and plans to exploit it. Commercial potential is evidenced by the existence of private sector or non-SBIR governmental funding sources demonstrating commitment to Phase II efforts and results, the existence of Phase III follow-on commitments for the research subject, and other indicators of commercial technology potential including the firm's commercialization strategy. If awarded, the awardee must periodically update commercialization results via SBA, at completion of the effort and when submitting a new SBIR/STTR proposal to DoW; firms not submitting a new proposal will be asked for annual updates after completion. Note that the Commercialization Plan and the Company Commercialization Report are distinct documents.

Relationship with future R/R&D efforts: state the anticipated results of the proposed approach, specifically addressing plans for Phase III if any, and discuss the significance of the D2P2 effort in providing a basis for the Phase III effort if planned.

Key personnel: identify all key personnel with information directly related to education, experience, and citizenship. A technical resume for the principal investigator including publications must be included. Concise resumes for subcontractors and consultants are useful. Identify all non-U.S. citizens expected to be involved as direct employees, subcontractors, or consultants, and for those individuals provide countries of origin, type of visa or work permit held, and the tasks they are anticipated to perform. The principal investigator's primary employment must be with the small business at the time of award and during the entire period of performance, where primary employment means more than one-half of the PI's time is spent in the small business's employ, which precludes full-time employment with another entity. Only one principal investigator or project manager can be designated per proposal.

Facilities and equipment: describe instrumentation and physical facilities necessary and available to carry out the effort. Justify equipment to be purchased, with detail in the cost proposal. State whether proposed performance locations meet environmental laws and regulations of federal, state, and local governments for airborne emissions, waterborne effluents, external radiation levels, outdoor noise, solid and bulk waste disposal practices, and handling and storage of toxic and hazardous materials.

Consultants and subcontractors: private companies, consultants, or universities may be involved and all should be described in detail and included in the cost proposal. Signed copies of all consultant or subcontractor letters of intent must be attached, briefly stating the contribution or expertise being provided. Include statements of work and detailed cost proposals, and information regarding unique qualifications. Subcontract copies and supporting documents do not count against the page limit. Identify any subcontractor or consultant foreign citizens.

Prior, current, or pending support of similar proposals or awards: while it is permissible with proper notification to submit identical proposals or proposals containing a significant amount of essentially equivalent work for consideration under numerous federal program solicitations, it is unlawful to enter into contracts or grants requiring essentially equivalent effort. Any potential for that situation must be disclosed before award. If this proposal is substantially the same as another submitted previously, currently, or in the process of being funded by another federal agency, DoW component, or the DAF, indicate so on the cover sheet and provide the agency names and addresses, submission or award dates, proposal titles, PI names and titles, solicitation titles and numbers and dates, contract numbers if awarded, and the applicable topics for each proposal or award. If the section does not apply, state so in the proposal and certify on the cover sheet, "No prior, current, or pending support for proposed work."

Volume 3, Cost Volume

Covered above under funding. Cost proposal information will be treated as proprietary.

Volume 4, Company Commercialization Report

Completion of the CCR in DSIP is required. Note a meaningful difference from Army SBIR practice: information contained in the CCR will not be considered by the DAF during proposal evaluations. It is a compliance item here, not a scoring input.

Volume 5, Supporting Documents

May be required if applicable: DD Form 2345 for export-controlled topics, which applies to this topic; Verification of Eligibility of Small Business Joint Ventures, which is Attachment 3 to the DoW SBIR FY26 CSO; and Technical Data Rights Assertions if asserting data rights restrictions.

Required of all proposal submissions: feasibility documentation. D2P2 proposals require a comprehensive, detailed effort description and should demonstrate sufficient technical progress or problem-solving results to warrant more extensive RDT&E. Developing technologies with commercial and military potential is described as extremely important, and the DAF is particularly seeking proposals emphasizing dual-use applications and commercialization. The applicant must provide information enabling the agency to make the 15 U.S.C. 638(cc) determination of scientific and technical feasibility and merit. Feasibility efforts detailed must have been substantially performed by the applicant or the PI. If technology in the feasibility documentation is subject to intellectual property rights, the applicant must provide IP rights assertions, and must provide a short summary for each item asserted with less than unlimited rights describing the restriction's nature and the intellectual property intended for use in the proposed research.

If appropriate, include a reference or works cited list as the last page. Do not include marketing material.

Volume 6, Fraud, Waste, and Abuse Training

Material is in the Volume 6 section of the DSIP proposal submission module and must be thoroughly reviewed once per year to proceed with submission. Complete this before you need it.

Volume 7, Disclosures of Foreign Affiliations or Relationships to Foreign Countries

Small business concerns must complete the webform in Volume 7 of the DSIP proposal submission. The webform version will not be accepted as a PDF supporting document in Volume 5, and previous versions of the form must not be uploaded to Volume 5.

How Your Proposal Will Be Evaluated

The process

D2P2 proposals are evaluated on a competitive basis by subject matter expert scientists, engineers, or other technical personnel. Confidential proposal and evaluation information will be protected to the greatest extent possible. Proposals will be disqualified and not evaluated if the Phase I equivalency documentation does not establish the proposed technical approach's feasibility and technical merit.

Selections are based on a determination of the overall technical value of each proposal and an evaluation of the cost volume, for selection of the proposals most advantageous to the Government. Where technical evaluations are essentially equal in merit, cost or price will be considered in determining successful applicants. All evaluation criteria other than cost or price, when combined, are significantly more important than cost or price.

The criteria for this topic

DAF26BX06-DV026 is evaluated under the criteria set that applies to DV026, DV511, DV512, and DV513, in descending order of importance.

Criteria A, most important: the soundness, technical merit, and innovation of the proposed approach and its incremental progress toward topic or subtopic solution, and the qualifications of the proposed principal and key investigators, supporting staff, and consultants. This includes whether the proposed cost elements are realistic for the work to be performed, reflect a clear understanding of the requirements, and are consistent with the unique methods of performance and materials described in the technical proposal.

Criteria B, second: the degree of mission impact and the urgency of the identified need, the specificity of the defense requirement addressed, and the adequacy of the proposed effort in fulfilling the research topic or subtopic solution.

Criteria C, third: the potential for commercial application in the Government or private sector and the benefits expected to accrue from that commercialization.

Two things follow. First, cost realism is inside Criteria A, the most heavily weighted factor, not a separate cost evaluation. A technically strong proposal with a cost volume that does not match the described methods will be marked down on the top criterion. Second, mission impact and urgency sit above commercialization here, which is the reverse of the Army rubric weighting. Your Criteria B argument should be specific: which Mobility Air Forces problem, whose problem it is, and why now.

Foreign risk evaluation

The DAF will evaluate all small business concerns submitting under this release on whether the concern presents a security risk, using the due diligence process required under 15 U.S.C. 638(vv), disclosures required under 15 U.S.C. 638(g) and (o), and coordination with the intelligence community as defined in section 3 of the National Security Act of 1947, federal law enforcement, and other counterintelligence capabilities.

The risk-based assessment covers cybersecurity practices, patent analysis, employee analysis, foreign ownership of the concern including financial ties and obligations covering surety, equity, and debt obligations of the concern and its employees to a foreign country, person, or entity, foreign affiliations of a covered individual, owner, or other key personnel with an entity in a foreign country of concern, investment relationships with an individual or entity in a foreign country of concern, technology licensing agreements or joint ventures including joint venture like agreements with an individual or entity in a foreign country of concern, and business relationships between a covered individual, owner, or other key personnel and an individual or entity in a foreign country of concern.

The DAF will also assess proposals using open-source analysis and analytical tools for nondisclosures of information set forth in 15 U.S.C. 638(g)(13) or 15 U.S.C. 638(o)(17), and examine any relationship of the concern to any entity or individual on the lists in 15 U.S.C. 638(g)(16)(D) and 638(o)(20)(D).

If the DAF assesses that a concern has security risks, it may either create a plan to mitigate them or decide not to select the proposal based on a totality of the review.

Award denial is mandatory under 15 U.S.C. 638(g)(16) or 638(o)(20) if the DAF determines the concern has an owner or covered individual who is party to a malign foreign talent recruitment program; has a business entity, parent company, or subsidiary located in the People's Republic of China or another foreign country of concern; has an owner or covered individual with a foreign affiliation with a research institution located in the PRC or another foreign country of concern; or has a security risk connecting the concern, including any affiliates, to an entity or individual on the UFLPA Entity List, the Non-SDN Chinese Military-Industrial Complex Companies List, the Section 889 Prohibition List, the Section 1260H list of Chinese Military Companies, the Military End User List, the Entity List, the FCC List of Equipment and Services, or the Withhold Release Orders and Findings List. The DAF also will not award if the concern has a security risk with a primary source that is classified, or a security risk the DAF determines warrants denial.

Applicants must disclose under penalty of perjury the representations, attestations, and certifications required under 15 U.S.C. 638(g)(13) and 638(o)(17), fulfilled by completing Volume 7. A written statement with any substantial changes to the foreign disclosure form must be provided to the awarding agency within 30 days of any changes while on a project for the DAF.

If an award is denied on these grounds, the DAF will as appropriate and in a manner that does not compromise security provide notification advising the small business of the determination, the basis for it, and a statement that denial does not prohibit eligibility for an award in a subsequent cycle.

Ownership and support contractors

Small business concerns owned in majority part by multiple venture capital operating companies, hedge funds, or private equity funds are eligible to submit applications or receive awards for DAF topics.

Proposals may be handled for administrative purposes only by support contractors, which may include APEX, Peerless Technologies, Engineering Services Network, HPC-COM, Mile Two, REI Systems, MacB (an Alion company), Montech, Oasis, Astrion/Oasis, and Infinite Management Solutions. Only Government employees and technical personnel from the FFRDCs MITRE and Aerospace Corporation working under contract to provide technical support to Air Force Life Cycle Management Center and Space Force may evaluate proposals. All support contractors are bound by non-disclosure agreements. Concerns about any of these contractors go to the DAF SBIR/STTR Contracting Officer.

Status, feedback, and protests

The principal investigator and the Corporate Official indicated on the cover sheet will be notified by email regarding selection or non-selection. Small businesses receive a notification for each proposal submitted, so read each carefully and note the proposal number and topic number referenced.

Automated feedback will be provided for proposals designated Not Selected. Additional feedback may be provided at the sole discretion of the DAF.

Proposals submitted to the DAF are received and evaluated by different organizations, handled by topic, and each organization operates within its own schedule for evaluation and selection, so notification timeframes will vary. If contacted regarding one proposal submission, it is not necessary to request information about additional submissions.

The DAF anticipates that all proposals will be evaluated and selections finalized within approximately 90 calendar days of solicitation close. Refrain from contacting the DAF for proposal status before that time. Protests after award should be submitted, as prescribed in FAR 33.106(b) and FAR 52.233-3, to the Air Force SBIR/STTR Contracting Officer and to the individual procuring contracting officer listed on your firm's selection notification.

Final reports go to the awarding DAF organization per contract instructions. Companies do not submit final reports directly to the Defense Technical Information Center.

Timeline and What to Do When

The dates

Topic opens: September 23, 2026

Proposal deadline: October 21, 2026, at the time specified in the DoW FY26 SBIR CSO, ordinarily 12:00 p.m. Eastern. Confirm on DSIP.

Selections finalized: within approximately 90 calendar days of close, on or about January 19, 2027

Period of performance: up to 24 months from award

A working backward plan

Before September 23. This window is for assembling feasibility evidence, not writing. Pull your deployment records from fire agency or law enforcement work into a usable form. Extract the autonomous coordination logs: mesh stability, dynamic task allocation, collision avoidance in degraded visual environments. Package your EO/IR integration and tracking data. Confirm which of your people are U.S. persons under the definition in the instructions and identify any export control constraints on your team. Start the DD Form 2345 process if you do not already hold one, since approval will be required at award. Complete Volume 6 training. Verify SAM registration and DSIP account alignment. Contact the DAF SBIR/STTR One Help Desk with clarifying questions, and note the DAF explicitly encourages early questions because late ones constrain its ability to respond.

September 23 through October 3. Draft Volume 2 in the required order. The work plan is a separate document with a page break, written in contract language with shall, should, may, and will used deliberately, and with no proprietary content since it becomes part of the contract by reference. Build the milestone schedule first, because the TABA task milestone list must track to your milestone payment schedule.

October 4 through October 12. Build the cost volume by element and by fiscal year. Collect signed letters of intent from every consultant and subcontractor, with statements of work and detailed cost proposals. Check your work-performance percentages against the 50 percent R/R&D and one-half subcontract cost thresholds. Write the detailed TABA request into Volume 5 if you are requesting TABA.

October 13 through October 16. Assemble Volume 5, complete the Volume 7 webform, confirm the CCR in Volume 4, and run a compliance pass: 35 page limit, 11-point minimum type, one-inch margins, consecutive page numbers, graphics legible in black and white, PDF virus-checked, no marketing material, no proprietary information in the abstract or the work plan.

October 17 through October 19. Submit in DSIP and certify. The DAF explicitly warns about system lag from heavy traffic near close and disclaims responsibility for incomplete submissions caused by inaccessibility.

October 20 through October 21. Buffer only.

Frequently Asked Questions

‍ ‍

What is DAF SBIR topic DAF26BX06-DV026?

‍ ‍

DAF26BX06-DV026 is a Department of the Air Force SBIR Direct to Phase II topic titled "Ground and Air Launched Drone Swarms Create a Self-Protecting Perimeter Using Autonomous AI," released under the DAF 2026 SBIR Commercial Solutions Opening, Release 6. It seeks to adapt mature commercial autonomous drone swarm technology for launch from high-altitude mobility aircraft and for autonomous ground perimeter defense.

‍ ‍

How much funding is available under DAF26BX06-DV026?

‍ ‍

Up to $2,000,000 for a period of performance up to 24 months. Proposals exceeding either limit will not be considered for evaluation or award. Up to $50,000 in Technical and Business Assistance may be requested in addition to that ceiling.

‍ ‍

When is the proposal deadline?

‍ ‍

The topic closes October 21, 2026. The DAF instructions point to the DoW FY26 SBIR CSO for the exact submission time, which is ordinarily 12:00 p.m. Eastern on the close date. Confirm the time on the live DSIP topic posting rather than assuming an end-of-day deadline.

‍ ‍

When does this topic open?

‍ ‍

September 23, 2026, giving a 29 day submission window.

‍ ‍

Can I submit a Phase I proposal for this topic?

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No. This is a Direct to Phase II topic and no Phase I awards are anticipated. You must document that a prior Phase I type effort established feasibility, and that effort cannot have been performed under a prior or ongoing federally funded SBIR or STTR award.

‍ ‍

What feasibility documentation does this topic require?

‍ ‍

Three categories are named. Readily available deployment records showing verifiable active use of your swarm software and hardware in relevant environments, such as work alongside state or federal fire agencies or municipal police departments. Autonomous coordination metrics from technical reports or system logs showing autonomous control of a multi-agent swarm without continuous manual piloting, including mesh network stability, dynamic task allocation, and collision avoidance in chaotic environments. Sensor integration and tracking data showing EO/IR payload integration and autonomous detection, tracking, and data relay.

‍ ‍

What technology readiness level do I need to start?

‍ ‍

The Air Force expects the core readily available technology to sit at TRL 5 or more at project start, and states that the feasibility documentation demonstrates a minimum TRL of 5 or 6. The target at the end of the Phase II effort is TRL 7, a military-adapted system prototype demonstrated under operational conditions.

‍ ‍

Can I use a prior SBIR award as my feasibility basis?

‍ ‍

No. Feasibility documentation cannot be based upon or logically extend from any prior or ongoing federally funded SBIR or STTR work. The Direct to Phase II authority exists for companies that matured technology outside the SBIR pipeline.

‍ ‍

Does the Air Force want me to propose a specific payload?

‍ ‍

No. The topic deliberately avoids prescribing specific end-state payloads so that electronic or advanced sensing effects can be integrated in later operational phases based on evolving requirements. Focus your proposal on high-altitude deployment, secure military communications integration, and autonomous baseline behavior.

‍ ‍

Is this topic export controlled?

‍ ‍

Yes. The technology is restricted under ITAR 22 CFR Parts 120-130 and EAR 15 CFR Parts 730-774. You must disclose any proposed foreign nationals with their countries of origin, visa or work permit type, and assigned statement of work tasks, and the topic warns those individuals may be restricted from performing. A certified DD Form 2345, or evidence of application, belongs in Volume 5, and DD Form 2345 approval will be required if selected for award.

‍ ‍

Can foreign nationals work on this project?

‍ ‍

Only in limited ways. Where the topic area is subject to export control, permitted foreign national participants are limited to work in the public domain, and assigned tasks must not be capable of assimilation into an understanding of the project's overall objectives. The instructions note this prevents foreign persons from acting in key positions such as Principal Investigator or Senior Engineer.

‍ ‍

How long can my technical volume be?

‍ ‍

35 pages or slides for this topic. Pages in excess will not be considered during evaluations. Type must be no smaller than 11-point on 8.5 by 11 paper with one-inch margins and consecutively numbered pages. Cost proposal attachments and subcontract copies do not count toward the limit.

‍ ‍

How is my proposal evaluated?

‍ ‍

Under three criteria in descending order of importance. Criteria A covers soundness, technical merit, and innovation of the approach, incremental progress toward a solution, the qualifications of key personnel, and whether the proposed cost elements are realistic and consistent with the technical proposal. Criteria B covers degree of mission impact, urgency of the identified need, specificity of the defense requirement, and adequacy of the effort. Criteria C covers commercial application potential. All criteria other than cost or price, combined, are significantly more important than cost or price.

‍ ‍

Is cost evaluated separately?

‍ ‍

Cost realism sits inside Criteria A, the most important factor, so a cost volume inconsistent with your described methods hurts your top-weighted score. Separately, where technical evaluations are essentially equal in merit, cost or price will be considered in determining successful applicants.

‍ ‍

How much of the work must my company perform?

‍ ‍

The instructions state two thresholds. The Consultants and Subcontractors section requires a minimum of 50 percent of the R/R&D be performed by the proposing firm unless the Contracting Officer approves otherwise in writing. The Performance of Work Requirements section states a minimum of one-third of the research or analytical effort for Phase II must be performed by the awardee, measured by direct and indirect costs excluding profit. Separately, all consultant fees, facility leases, and other subcontract or purchase agreements together may not exceed one-half of the total contract price without written Contracting Officer approval. Planning to perform at least half the R/R&D in house satisfies every reading; if you cannot, ask the DAF SBIR/STTR One Help Desk early and follow the deviation request process.

‍ ‍

How do I request a performance of work deviation?

‍ ‍

Requests must be made twice, first prior to submission during the topic open period, and again as part of the initial proposal submission. The DAF will not consider these requests before proposal submission.

‍ ‍

Does the Company Commercialization Report affect my score?

‍ ‍

No. Completing the CCR as Volume 4 is required, but the DAF states that information contained in the CCR will not be considered during proposal evaluations. This differs from Army SBIR practice, where the CCR is considered.

‍ ‍

What is TABA and how do I request it?

‍ ‍

Technical and Business Assistance is up to $50,000 per Phase II award, in addition to the per-topic ceiling, identified in the Volume 3 Cost Proposal. You may split it, using $25,000 on a first SBIR Phase II and $25,000 on a sequential SBIR Phase II. The detailed request must be in Volume 5, including provider name, point of contact, unique qualifications, tasks with purpose and objective, and total cost with hours and labor rates, and the task milestone list must track to your milestone payment schedule. TABA requests that only specify a value in Volume 3 will not be considered.

‍ ‍

Who owns the data and software I develop?

‍ ‍

Rights in technical data including software developed under a SBIR contract generally remain with the contractor. The Government obtains SBIR/STTR data rights in all data developed or generated under the contract for 20 years from contract award, after which the Government has Government purpose rights to the SBIR data.

‍ ‍

Do Phase II contracts include profit?

‍ ‍

Yes. Generally firm-fixed-price contracts are appropriate for Phase II awards, and in accordance with the SBA SBIR/STTR Policy Directive, Phase II contracts must include profit or fee.

‍ ‍

Will I be able to negotiate after submitting?

‍ ‍

Possibly not. If no exceptions are taken to your proposal, the Government may award a contract without exchanges. Your initial proposal should contain your best terms from a cost, price, and technical standpoint.

‍ ‍

Are venture-backed companies eligible?

‍ ‍

Yes. Small business concerns owned in majority part by multiple venture capital operating companies, hedge funds, or private equity funds are eligible to submit applications or receive awards for DAF topics.

‍ ‍

When will I hear about selection?

‍ ‍

The DAF anticipates all proposals will be evaluated and selections finalized within approximately 90 calendar days of solicitation close, meaning on or about January 19, 2027. The principal investigator and Corporate Official on the cover sheet are notified by email, with a separate notification for each proposal submitted.

‍ ‍

Will I get feedback if not selected?

‍ ‍

Automated feedback is provided for proposals designated Not Selected. Additional feedback may be provided at the sole discretion of the DAF.

‍ ‍

What is the commercial market for this technology?

‍ ‍

The topic names several. Interagency partners including NOAA seek high-altitude deployment capability to safely launch swarms into hurricanes and atmospheric rivers for real-time weather data collection. Commercially, the ruggedized secure swarm capability can be expanded for advanced disaster response, large-scale search and rescue, and commercial aviation monitoring. The Air National Guard application for Domestic Operations, including rapid wide-area sensor coverage to locate survivors during natural disasters and persistent autonomous border surveillance, is also named.

‍ ‍

Who do I contact with questions?

‍ ‍

For general information about the DAF SBIR/STTR program and proposal preparation instructions, contact the DAF SBIR/STTR One Help Desk at usaf.team@afsbirsttr.us. The DAF encourages applicants to request clarifying information as early as possible, since late requests constrain its ability to respond. For DSIP electronic submission system issues, contact dodsbirsupport@reisystems.com. The Air Force SBIR/STTR Contracting Officer is Mr. Daniel J. Brewer at Daniel.Brewer.13@us.af.mil. If your company mailing address, email addresses, or points of contact change after submission, notify the One Help Desk with the subject line "FY26 SBIR CSO Address Change."

‍ ‍

Positioning Advice for Startups Considering This Topic

‍ ‍

Qualify yourself honestly on feasibility first. This topic has a narrow ideal applicant: a company with a fielded autonomous swarm, real deployment history in a demanding civil mission, EO/IR already integrated, and no SBIR lineage on that technology. If any of those four is missing, read the other four topics in this release before you commit a proposal team.

‍ ‍

Lead with the deployment record, not the vision. The single strongest asset you can put in front of these evaluators is verifiable operational data from fire or law enforcement work. Quantify it: number of sorties, swarm sizes, environmental conditions, autonomy percentage, intervention rates. Vague claims of maturity read as absence of evidence.

‍ ‍

Treat secure military communications as the core R&D. Of the three specified technical goals, this is the one most likely to be genuinely hard and most likely to separate serious proposals. Name the approach, the encryption and waveform path, the standards you are targeting, and the risks. If you have a partner for this, get their letter of intent and statement of work in early.

‍ ‍

Do not propose a payload. The Air Force said explicitly that it is avoiding end-state payload prescription. Respect that boundary and spend the pages on architecture, launch survivability, and autonomous transition behavior.

‍ ‍

Make the launch problem concrete. High-altitude release from a C-130 or KC-135 involves surviving the launch environment, achieving controlled autonomous flight after release, and doing it at operational altitudes. Address the airworthiness and integration path, and note that the topic mentions Phase III involves finalizing airworthiness certifications with the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center Mobility Directorate.

‍ ‍

Use the transition evidence the topic hands you. The topic states transition planning is actively underway, that the project team is engaging AMC Futures and the Chief Scientist to champion an Initial Capabilities Document based on Phase II capability demonstration data, and that ARCWERX is assisting in identifying follow-on acquisition vehicles. That is a named transition pathway. Reference it and show how your Phase II deliverables feed an Initial Capabilities Document.

‍ ‍

Write Criteria B as a mission argument, not a technology argument. Mission impact and urgency outrank commercialization in this rubric. Contested logistics, Agile Combat Employment, and base defense are the operative concepts. The topic cites AMC Commander statements on contested logistics and adaptive capabilities. Ground your urgency claim in that language.

‍ ‍

Get the cost volume consistent with the technical volume. Cost realism is inside the top-weighted criterion. If your work plan says you will run flight test campaigns at operational altitudes, your travel, test range, and airframe integration costs need to show up and be justified.

‍ ‍

Build the dual-use case around the named analogs. NOAA hurricane sampling, disaster response, large-scale search and rescue, commercial aviation monitoring, and Air National Guard Domestic Operations are all in the topic text. Commercialization is Criteria C, so it is not where you win, but a thin answer here is an unnecessary loss.

Army STTR ARM26TX06-NV003: Agentic-AI, Schema-Driven Decision Management for Auditable Studies and Acquisition Decisions

Quick Answer

ARM26TX06-NV003 is a U.S. Army STTR Phase I topic released under the Department of the Army 2026 STTR Program Commercial Solutions Opening (CSO), Release 6. The Army is asking small businesses, working in formal partnership with a research institution, to prove out a "decision-as-a-program" capability: an agentic AI system built on a formal decision schema that turns messy engineering and acquisition questions into structured, auditable, signer-ready Decision Packages. Phase I awards are up to $300,000 for a period of performance of 1 to 6 months. The topic opens September 23, 2026 and closes October 21, 2026, with proposals certified in the Defense SBIR/STTR Innovation Portal (DSIP) no later than 12:00 p.m. ET on the close date.

The single most important thing to understand about this topic is that it is the STTR version of an Army topic that also exists as an SBIR topic under number ARM26BX06-NV012. The technical scope, the funding ceiling, the period of performance, and the evaluation rubric are the same. What differs is the program: STTR requires you to partner with a research institution and to divide the work with that partner according to statutory minimums. If you do not have a university or federal laboratory partner lined up, the SBIR twin is the door you want. If you do have one, and especially if the principal investigator sits on the academic side, this is the better fit.

Topic At a Glance

‍ ‍

Topic number: ARM26TX06-NV003

‍ ‍

Title: Agentic-AI, Schema-Driven Decision Management for Auditable Studies and Acquisition Decisions

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Program: STTR, Small Business Technology Transfer

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Solicitation: Department of the Army 2026 STTR Program, Commercial Solutions Opening (CSO), Component-Specific Proposal Instructions, Release 6

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Agency: U.S. Army, under the Department of War (DoW) STTR program

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Phase offered: Phase I (Feasibility) only

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Award ceiling: Up to $300,000

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Period of performance: 1 to 6 months

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Contract type: FAR-based, firm-fixed-price, with payments tied to measurable milestones or deliverables

‍ ‍

Research institution partner: Required, as a condition of the STTR program

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OUSD (R&E) Critical Technology Area: Applied Artificial Intelligence (AAI)

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Component Technology Priority Areas: Trusted AI and Autonomy; Information Systems

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Projected CMMC level requirement: Level 1

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Submission portal: DSIP at dodsbirsttr.mil

‍ ‍

Topic open date: September 23, 2026

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Proposal deadline: October 21, 2026 at 12:00 p.m. ET

‍ ‍

DSIP Topic Q&A closes: October 7, 2026, two weeks prior to the close date

‍ ‍

Selection notification: Within 90 days of the topic close date, meaning on or about January 19, 2027

‍ ‍

SBIR companion topic: ARM26BX06-NV012, same title and scope, no research institution partner required

‍ ‍

Keywords: Agentic AI, Digital Engineering, schema-driven Decision Management, acquisition decisions, AI LLM

‍ ‍

A note on the topic number. The Release 6 topic index lists this topic as ARM26TX06-NV003, while the header on the topic description page carries a typographical variant. Use the number shown on the live DSIP topic posting, and confirm it before you submit, since the topic number goes in your technical volume header on every page.

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What Makes This an STTR and Not an SBIR

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This is the part worth getting right before you invest any writing time.

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STTR is a distinct program from SBIR, authorized under the same statute but with different structural requirements. The defining requirement is the research institution partnership. An STTR award is a collaboration between a small business concern and a research institution, typically a university, a federally funded research and development center, or a qualifying nonprofit research organization. The partnership is not optional and it is not a subcontract of convenience. It is the point of the program.

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Two consequences follow, and both come from the STTR statute and the SBA SBIR/STTR Policy Directive rather than from the Army component instructions themselves. First, the work must be divided between the small business and the research institution according to statutory minimums, with the small business performing at least 40 percent of the work and the research institution performing at least 30 percent, measured as a percentage of the total effort. Second, the principal investigator may be primarily employed by either the small business or the research institution. That second point is spelled out in the Army instructions, which state that the primary employment of the Principal Investigator or Project Manager must be with the small business concern, or with the research institution in the case of STTR, at the time of award and during the conduct of the project.

‍ ‍

Because the exact terms, definitions, and the required written allocation-of-rights agreement live in the DoW 2026 STTR Program CSO and the SBA Policy Directive rather than in the Army component-specific instructions, read those documents alongside this topic. The Army instructions are explicit that they supplement, and in some cases supersede, the DoW CSO, but they do not restate the STTR partnership mechanics.

‍ ‍

One eligibility difference is worth flagging carefully. The Army SBIR component instructions for Release 6 include a section addressing small businesses that are majority-owned in part by multiple venture capital operating companies, hedge funds, or private equity funds, confirming those firms are eligible to submit and receive SBIR awards provided they complete a joint venture eligibility certification. The Army STTR component instructions for the same release do not contain that section. The majority venture-capital ownership authority is an SBIR-specific provision of the statute. If your company is majority-owned by multiple VC, hedge fund, or private equity firms, verify your STTR eligibility against 13 CFR 121.702 and the SBA SBIR/STTR Policy Directive before you commit to this topic, because your answer under STTR may differ from your answer under SBIR. Note that the Verification of Eligibility of Small Business Joint Ventures document still appears on the STTR conditional Volume 5 list.

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If you are choosing between the two topics, the practical decision tree is short. No research institution partner means go SBIR. A strong university or laboratory partner whose people and instruments you actually need, or a principal investigator whose primary employment is academic, means go STTR. A partner you would be adding only to qualify for STTR means go SBIR, because a thin partnership shows up in the Technical Team and Technical Approach scoring.

‍ ‍

What the Army Is Actually Looking For

‍ ‍

The technical content of this topic is identical to its SBIR twin. Everything below comes from the topic description in the Release 6 STTR instructions.

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The core objective

‍ ‍

The Army wants proof of a decision-as-a-program capability. In plain terms, that means taking a complex engineering or acquisition question, one that today gets answered through slide decks, spreadsheets, email threads, and tribal knowledge, and turning it into a structured, machine-readable, auditable decision artifact that a decision authority can actually sign. The stated goal is to do this faster and with higher confidence than the status quo.

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The emphasis is on proof by demonstration, not a full product build. Phase I is not the place to promise a shipping platform. It is the place to show that the schema plus the agentic layer works on real decision problems, both point-in-time trade studies and long-horizon acquisition decision programs, with traceability, robustness, and human control intact.

‍ ‍

The three technical objectives

‍ ‍

Objective one: a unified representation. The Army wants a single decision model that supports two very different shapes of work. The first is the single-episode trade study, a bounded comparison of options against criteria. The second is the multi-episode "decision program," a long-running decision with refresh cycles as evidence and assumptions change over time. The topic specifically calls for context engineering for the ground vehicle domain, implemented through knowledge graphs and semantic layers that capture domain-specific relationships, constraints, and requirements. The system is expected to integrate data from Digital Engineering (DE) tools such as SysML 2.0 and UML, pulling from digital threads and digital twins to provide a unified view of system models across the product lifecycle.

‍ ‍

Objective two: agentic capabilities with human control. The AI layer must produce structured artifacts and reproducible outputs. Reproducibility is called out explicitly, which is a strong signal that nondeterministic, unauditable model output alone will not satisfy this topic. The agentic system is expected to perform structured elicitation into the formal model, generate decision workflow plans, and execute evaluation runs with clear "what flips the decision" logic. It is also expected to automate validation of technical documents, models, and outputs against standards and requirements, while maintaining predictable behavior consistent with established human-AI interaction guidance.

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Objective three: explicit bias checks, risks, and assumptions. The schema must be extended so that bias checks, risks, and assumptions become first-class, testable objects rather than prose buried in a report. The purpose is decision readiness: the ability to assess whether a decision is actually ready for sign-off before it is signed, and to responsibly refresh it when conditions change. Semantic understanding is expected to keep consistency across digital engineering artifacts and enable traceable decision rationale.

‍ ‍

Phase I desired outcomes

‍ ‍

The topic lists three Phase I outcomes:

‍ ‍

1. A decision schema that makes objectives, options, constraints, assumptions, risks, and bias checks first-class objects.

2. Agentic AI that performs structured elicitation into the formal model, generates decision workflow plans, and executes reproducible evaluation runs with clear "what flips the decision" logic.

3. Two end-to-end demonstrations showing the approach scales from point-in-time trade studies to long-horizon program decisions with refresh cycles as evidence and assumptions change.

‍ ‍

Two demonstrations, not one. That is a concrete, checkable requirement and a common place where proposals lose points by being vague.

‍ ‍

Where this goes in Phase II

‍ ‍

The Army is explicit that the DoW already has multiple contractors building AI and LLM tools for core warfighter purposes, but very little effort has gone toward an AIgentic decision intelligence capability that supports accelerated commercial acquisition or longer lead traditional development. That gap is the reason this topic exists.

‍ ‍

In Phase II, the expectation is that the successful contractor develops a combined AIgentic and AI/LLM decision intelligence workflow capability, exercised on two real cases provided from PAE Maneuver Ground and PAE Fires. The resulting software platform is to be modeled and developed as a commercial open-source platform usable by both the DoW and commercial enterprises for Product Design and Development (PDD) and acquisition.

‍ ‍

The topic names the current COTS baseline directly: DAOSoft, which provides an open capability with an advanced structured decision and trade study capability plus a partially developed AI/LLM decision intelligence workflow. The Army states it is looking for any and all ideas that can extend or replace current acquisition capabilities and is agnostic to all current solutions. It is also agnostic as to which developed AI commercial package fulfills the addition of AIgentics to current AI/LLM for continuous acquisition.

‍ ‍

The Phase II prototype is expected to be immediately useful, with follow-on Phase III contracts anticipated for individual customer installation, described by the Army as similar to current best practice deployment of large ERP systems from SAP and Oracle.

‍ ‍

For an STTR team, the open-source and platform expectations in Phase II deserve an early conversation with your research institution's technology transfer office. Who owns what, what gets published, and what can be released under an open-source license are questions that get much harder to answer after award than before.

‍ ‍

Phase III dual use

‍ ‍

The named commercial analog is the vehicle design process in the automotive industry. The Army notes the workflow can be relatively similar to the vehicle design process for the Army, with some different considerations. For a startup, this is a useful signal: the commercialization argument writes itself around complex-system product development and capital program decision-making outside defense.

‍ ‍

Reference cited in the topic

‍ ‍

The topic cites one reference, an SAE Mobilus paper: "Concept execution AI agentic decision intelligence framework product planning concept development," 2025-01-0455, at saemobilus.sae.org.

‍ ‍

Funding Allowance and What You Can Add On Top

‍ ‍

Base award

‍ ‍

Phase I under this topic is up to $300,000 for 1 to 6 months. Award funding guideline and period of performance limitations are established per topic, and the solicitation is blunt about this: proposals exceeding these limitations will be deemed unresponsive. Do not propose $325,000 and do not propose nine months.

‍ ‍

Remember that this single ceiling covers both partners. The $300,000 is the total award, split between your small business and your research institution according to the STTR work allocation. That constrains scope more than it does under SBIR, because you are funding two organizations with two different indirect rate structures out of the same pool. Build the budget early and check it against the statutory work split before you finalize the technical approach.

‍ ‍

The number of awards depends on funds availability. The Army reserves the right to award none, one, or more than one contract under any topic. Awards are FAR-based, firm-fixed-price, with payments tied to measurable milestones or deliverables agreed to by the Government. Milestone schedules are used to monitor technical progress, mitigate technical and cost risk, and address awardee cash flow needs. The Contracting Officer retains the right to negotiate contract type and price.

‍ ‍

Technical and Business Assistance (TABA)

‍ ‍

TABA is additional money on top of the award ceiling. For Phase I, the Army may provide up to $6,500 per project. For Direct to Phase II projects, up to $50,000. TABA is not guaranteed and depends on the Government's review of the requested services and available TABA budget.

‍ ‍

There are two options and the paperwork differs:

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Option 1, Army-preferred vendor. Up to $6,500 per Phase I project. If you use the Army's preferred provider, the TABA cost does not need to be included in your DSIP Cost Volume (Volume 3). If approved, funding goes directly to the Army's preferred provider. Participation is voluntary and application instructions come after contract award. Commonly requested services include customized market research and strategy, intellectual property support, CMMC compliance, DCAA compliance, and communications and marketing. Intellectual property support is worth a look for an STTR team specifically, given the allocation-of-rights work that comes with a research institution partnership.

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Option 2, firm-selected vendor. You may contract TABA services through one or more TABA providers, or use the funding to hire new or augment staff, or to have staff conduct or participate in training activities consistent with 15 U.S.C. 638(q)(1). If you choose your own provider, the proposed TABA amount must be included in the DSIP Cost Volume (Volume 3) and details of the TABA request must be included in Supporting Documents (Volume 5).

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Critical TABA compliance points:

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TABA funding will be denied if the costs are omitted from the initial proposal submission, or if proposed TABA costs exceed $6,500 per Phase I project.

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TABA costs cannot include any profit or fee for the proposer.

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TABA costs cannot be factored into the calculation of general and administrative expenses (G&A).

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The amount is based on the original contract period of performance and does not apply to period of performance extensions or enhancements.

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The TABA provider cannot be your firm or any affiliated entity, and TABA costs must be directly related to the provider's services, excluding indirect costs, profit, or fees passed through by your company.

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The rationale statement in Volume 5 is limited to two pages and must include the provider name, point of contact with email and phone, an explanation of the provider's suitability and qualifications, an outline of specific tasks, and total provider cost with number of hours and labor rates. A blended or average rate is acceptable.

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Phase II Enhancement

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The Department of the Army may provide a Phase II awardee with up to $500,000 in matching SBIR funding on a dollar-for-dollar basis if the performer obtains a commitment of non-SBIR/STTR funding from a DoW component, another federal agency, or a commercial investor. The enhancement effort must develop, deliver, and integrate a technology or product into a program within a DoW component, federal agency, or the commercial sector. Enhancement requests are subject to approval by the Army SBIR/STTR Program's Source Selection Authority, successful negotiations, and funding availability. Enhancement funding is typically applied to an active Phase II award through a contract modification, with additional scope of work and period of performance commensurate with the total funding received.

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For a startup, this matters at the strategy level: a credible non-dilutive path exists from a $300,000 Phase I to a Phase II with up to $500,000 in matched enhancement, then Phase III installation contracts.

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Timeline and Key Dates

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The dates that matter

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Topic opens for submission: September 23, 2026

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DSIP Topic Q&A closes: October 7, 2026

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Deadline for administrative questions to the Army: October 6, 2026, which is 15 days prior to closing

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Proposal deadline: October 21, 2026 at 12:00 p.m. ET

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Selection or non-selection notification: on or about January 19, 2027, within 90 days of close

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Start of Work Meeting, if awarded: within 30 calendar days after contract award

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Note that the proposal deadline is noon Eastern, not end of day. That is 11:00 a.m. Central, 10:00 a.m. Mountain, and 9:00 a.m. Pacific on October 21. Teams on the West Coast routinely lose proposals to this detail.

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The sequence in detail

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Pre-release period, before September 23, 2026. The topic sits in pre-release on DSIP. During pre-release, topic author names, phone numbers, and email addresses are published with the topic on the DSIP Topics and Topic Q&A page. This is the only window for direct contact with the topic author, and once the topic opens on September 23 that door closes.

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Topic open, September 23, 2026. The topic opens for proposal submission in DSIP.

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DSIP Topic Q&A window, closing October 7, 2026. Topic Q&A opens on the pre-release date and closes two weeks prior to the topic close date. All questions and answers are posted publicly on a non-attribution basis. Answers are generally posted within seven business days and are also emailed directly to the person who asked. Because answers can take seven business days, a question submitted on October 7 may not be answered until roughly October 16, leaving you only a few days to act on it. Ask early.

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Administrative question deadline, October 6, 2026. General questions about Army STTR Program administration and the Army component-specific proposal instructions should be submitted as soon as possible, and no later than 15 days prior to solicitation closing, to usarmy.SBIRSTTR@army.mil.

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Proposal deadline, October 21, 2026 at 12:00 p.m. ET. Complete proposals must be certified and submitted in DSIP by this time. Proposals cannot be submitted after the deadline and will not be accepted or evaluated.

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Selection or non-selection notification, on or about January 19, 2027. Within 90 days of the topic close date, by email to the Corporate Official listed on the proposal cover sheet, sent from the Army SBIR/STTR Program Office mailbox.

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Start of Work Meeting, within 30 calendar days after contract award. Held at your facility unless another location is designated in the contract.

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Periodic reviews. Monthly, bi-monthly, or quarterly review meetings as specified in the contract.

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Final Report of Inventions and Subcontracts. DD Form 882, due within six months after completion of the contracted work.

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Planning note: the Army warns that proposals should be submitted as early as possible to avoid delays caused by high traffic near closing. The Department of the Army is not responsible for missed submissions due to system latency or inaccessibility. A proposal sitting in "In Progress" or "Ready to Certify" status is not submitted, even if every volume has been uploaded before the close date.

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A working backward schedule for an STTR team

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The 29 day window is tighter for STTR than for SBIR, because a second institution has to move with you. University contracting offices do not work on startup timelines.

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Now through September 22. Contact your research institution's sponsored programs office immediately and tell them the deadline. Ask what they need from you and how long their internal review takes, because that answer sets your real deadline, not October 21. Confirm your SAM registration is active and that your DSIP profile matches it. Get every team member a DSIP account. Complete the annual Volume 6 Fraud, Waste and Abuse training. Reach the topic author during pre-release while direct contact is still allowed.

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September 23 through September 30. Settle the work split with your partner on paper, in percentages, and confirm it satisfies the STTR minimums. Get the research institution's budget and indirect rates in writing. Run Army customer discovery interviews. Draft the technical approach and lock down which two demonstrations you will propose.

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October 1 through October 7. Complete a full technical volume draft. Submit any remaining questions through DSIP Topic Q&A before it closes on October 7. Circulate the draft to your research institution partner for their sign-off on anything describing their scope, their people, or their facilities.

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October 8 through October 14. Build the combined Cost Volume with substantiating documentation from both organizations. Assemble every Volume 5 attachment, including the two page Non-Proprietary Work Plan, the foreign citizens list or the statement that none are involved, and Key Personnel with the principal investigator's technical resume. Complete the Volume 7 foreign affiliations web form. If your research institution requires institutional signature on anything, this is the week it has to happen.

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October 15 through October 17. Compliance pass. Verify the seven page limit, 10-point minimum type, one inch margins, page numbering, and headers with company name, topic number, and DSIP proposal number. Confirm the PDF is searchable, unlocked, unencrypted, and virus checked.

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October 18 through October 19. Upload everything to DSIP and execute the corporate official certification. Confirm the status is no longer "In Progress" or "Ready to Certify."

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October 20 through October 21. Buffer only. Do not plan to use these days.

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Eligibility and Registrations You Need Before You Can Submit

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You must be a Small Business Concern (SBC) meeting all eligibility requirements in 13 CFR 121.702 and the SBA SBIR/STTR Policy Directive, and you must have a qualifying research institution partner as required by the STTR program.

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System for Award Management (SAM). You must be registered and active in SAM in accordance with FAR Provision 52.204-7, both when submitting and at time of award. Proposals from firms failing this may be deemed unresponsive. You may only submit using your legal business name or a DBA name as indicated in the SAM registration for the provided Unique Entity Identifier (UEI). A DBA used on an offer must be registered and linked to your current, active SAM registration. Firms that are debarred, suspended, proposed for debarment, or voluntarily excluded are excluded from award, and the Army will not consent to subcontracts with such contractors.

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DSIP registration. DSIP is the official portal. Proposals submitted by any other means will be disregarded. Every individual who will prepare or submit must have an individual DSIP user account. Register as early as possible. Your DSIP account profile must correlate with your SAM registration, including the 5-digit CAGE code, 12-digit UEI, legal business name, DBA name, and physical address. Failure to correlate this information, or to submit required certifications, may significantly delay funding agreement award or become grounds for cancellation of the funding agreement.

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Principal Investigator employment. The primary employment of the Principal Investigator or Project Manager must be with the SBC, or with the Research Institution in the case of STTR, at the time of award and during the conduct of the proposed project. This flexibility is one of the real advantages of the STTR path for teams built around an academic investigator.

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Research institution partnership documents. The written agreement between the small business and the research institution, including the allocation of intellectual property rights, is governed by the DoW 2026 STTR Program CSO and the SBA SBIR/STTR Policy Directive. Confirm what has to be in place at proposal time versus at award, because the answer drives your schedule.

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Proposal Structure: What You Actually Submit

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Army component-specific instructions supplement and in some cases supersede the DoW 2026 STTR Program CSO. Where they conflict, the Army instructions take precedence.

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Volume 1, Proposal Coversheet

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Prepared in DSIP in accordance with the DoW solicitation.

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Volume 2, Technical Volume

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Format requirements, and the solicitation states that submissions failing to conform shall be deemed unresponsive:

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Single Adobe Acrobat PDF, searchable text format, including graphics. PDFs that cannot be opened using Adobe Acrobat products may be rejected. Perform a virus check before uploading. Do not lock, password protect, or encrypt the file. Do not include or embed active graphics such as videos or moving pictures.

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Page limit for Phase I: seven pages, including all key sections. The limit applies to the entire Technical Volume as uploaded to DSIP. At the Government's discretion, pages that clearly do not substantiate or contribute to the technical approach, such as a cover sheet or table of contents, may be excluded from the count. Any appendices or supplemental content that expand upon the required content do count toward the seven pages. You may allocate the pages across sections however you want.

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Layout: number all pages consecutively. No type smaller than 10-point, standard 8.5 by 11 inch paper, one-inch margins including the header. The header on each page, which may sit inside the one-inch margin, should contain the proposing SBC's name, the topic number, and the DSIP assigned proposal number from the cover sheet.

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General: graphics are strongly encouraged throughout. For plots and charts, include title, caption, axes labels, and scale. Avoid jargon and define all technical terms. Use the compress pictures feature to reduce file size.

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Required section order for Phase I:

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1. Introduction

2. Army Benefits

3. Technical Approach

4. Programmatic Potential

5. Commercial Potential

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These sections map one-to-one onto the Phase I evaluation rubric in Appendix A. Your Volume 2 must also be consistent with the Non-Proprietary Work Plan you upload in Volume 5.

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Seven pages is not much room to describe a two-organization project. The research institution's role has to be established economically, inside the Technical Approach and Technical Team narrative, and it has to read as integral rather than bolted on. Detailed resumes belong in Volume 5, not here.

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What each section needs, in the Army's own framing:

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Introduction. A clear, concise description of what your innovation does or will do, and where you are in your evolution. Make clear its intended impact on the Army. Evaluators should "get it" after reading this.

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Army Benefits. Identified Army use cases, the solution's advantages, and the potential level and scale of impact. If you are unsure how an Army end user would benefit, provide an analogous use case so evaluators can connect the dots. Three rubric prompts: Alignment, argue your innovation aligns with this topic's priorities as defined in the solicitation. Solution's Advantages, prove customers will choose you given limited resources and many choices, and account for indirect substitutes as well as direct competitors. Solution's Impact, the Army seeks higher-risk, high-impact solutions through STTR, not engineering changes or incremental improvements.

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Technical Approach. Details and supporting data on how you will solve the problem, key elements of your approach, the technical team, and risks with mitigation plans. Use data to substantiate that your risk mitigation plans are credible, attributed to reliable, credible sources. Rubric prompts: Scientific Feasibility, Enabling Technologies (do the required enabling technologies introduce added risk), Technical Team, Technical Risk and Mitigation Plans, and Data Quality.

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Programmatic Potential. Where your company is today, what will be accomplished under this STTR effort with Army customer discovery, and the risks and mitigations for transitioning beyond STTR funding into a contract with an Army or integration with an Army system. Rubric prompts: Project Milestone Schedule, Army Customer Discovery and Validation (are you "getting out of the building" and do you have formal or informal customer validation), and Army Transition Pathways (what is the next type of deal you aim to make with the Army after this award).

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Commercial Potential. The commercial market the DoW can build upon, your past success, and future potential. Rubric prompts: R&D to Product Revenue (has your team transitioned R&D into products with actual product revenue, which the Army defines as directly selling a solution rather than selling consulting, services, or research activities), Competitive Edge (why will you win, something your team does very well that is difficult to match, such as protected IP, unmatched relevant experience, a novel business model, or network effects), and Other People's Money (the non-DoW commercial market case).

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Volume 3, Cost Volume

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Cost and duration limits are detailed in the topic. Options are not anticipated at this time; if an option is identified in the topic posting, Base and Option costs must be separated and clearly identified. All proposed costs must be accompanied by documentation substantiating how the cost was derived. Failure to include supporting documentation may delay award, since the Contracting Officer will have to request it. Failure or refusal to provide documentation may result in dissolution of the contract action.

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For STTR, the cost volume carries the work split. Your research institution's costs, rates, and effort have to be substantiated the same way yours are, and the resulting allocation has to satisfy the STTR minimums. Ask your partner's sponsored programs office for a formal budget with their federally negotiated rates rather than an estimate.

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Volume 4, Company Commercialization Report

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Required for prior SBIR/STTR awardees. Information in the CCR will be considered during proposal evaluation.

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Volume 5, Supporting Documents

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This is where proposals most often die on compliance. The solicitation states plainly that a completed proposal submission in DSIP does not indicate that the mandatory supporting documents have been uploaded. Failure to upload any mandatory document as a separate attachment will result in the proposal being deemed administratively non-compliant and unresponsive. Unresponsive proposals are un-awardable and may be excluded from technical evaluation entirely.

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Mandatory items, uploaded as separate attachments:

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1. Non-Proprietary Work Plan. Two page limit. A summary based on the Volume 2 technical approach, outlining technical objectives, key milestones, and deliverables. It serves as the basis for performance requirements in the final contract and must be written for a public, technically literate audience with no sensitive or proprietary information.

2. List of Foreign Citizens. Identify any foreign nationals or dual citizens expected to be involved as a direct employee, subcontractor, consultant, or Research Institution. Provide a single PDF with a listing of citizenships, countries of origin, type of visa or work permit, and an explanation of anticipated level of involvement. If no foreign nationals will be involved, substitute a statement to that effect. The Army specifically warns that small businesses often incorrectly assume everyone with dual citizenship or a work permit is automatically permitted to work on SBIR/STTR projects and fail to identify them. Failure to provide this may significantly delay selection or award.

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This item deserves extra attention on an STTR proposal. Research institution personnel are named in the requirement, and university laboratories commonly include graduate students and postdoctoral researchers who are foreign nationals. Ask your partner for a complete roster of everyone who will touch the project, with citizenship and visa status, early enough that it does not become a last-week scramble.

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3. Key Personnel. Identify all key personnel with information on education and experience. A technical resume for the Principal Investigator, including publications if any, must be included. Resumes for other technical staff, subcontractors, and consultants are useful and may also be included. On an STTR, this is where your research institution investigators and their publication records belong.

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If applicable, also submit: SBIR/STTR Funding Agreement Certification; Verification of Eligibility of Small Business Joint Ventures; Assertion of use, release, or disclosure restriction per DFARS 252.227-7017; DD Form 2345 Military Critical Technical Data Agreement for ITAR-subject actions; SBC-selected details of TABA request; and other documentation such as letters of support. The Army may also accept cost/pricing information and other items only as specified in the topic. Anything else submitted will be disregarded, including promotional and non-project material.

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The assertion of use, release, or disclosure restriction is worth real thought on an STTR, since data rights questions get more complicated when a university's prior work and background IP are in the mix. A letter of support from your research institution partner is also an appropriate use of the "other documentation" slot.

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Volume 6, Fraud, Waste and Abuse Training

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Material is in the Volume 6 section of the DSIP proposal submission module and must be thoroughly reviewed once per year to proceed with proposal submission.

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Volume 7, Disclosures of Foreign Affiliations or Relationships to Foreign Countries

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A web form. PDF uploads are no longer accepted. Disclosure does not mean automatic denial, but failure to complete the form completely and accurately may render the proposal administratively non-compliant and unresponsive.

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Per 15 U.S.C. 638(vv), 15 U.S.C. 638(g)(13), and the SBA SBIR/STTR Policy Directive, disclosures must consider subcontractors, subsidiaries, joint ventures, consultants, and their employees across four categories: foreign affiliations, including any subsidiary, parent company, or joint venture based in, funded by, or with a foreign affiliation with any foreign country of concern; contractual or financial obligations with a foreign entity, and the Army notes that a subcontracting agreement is by definition a contractual and financial obligation; related entities, meaning any foreign business entity, offshore entity, or entity outside the United States related to the SBC; and covered individuals, meaning anyone who contributes in a substantive, meaningful way to the scientific development or execution of the project, regardless of title or Key Personnel designation, whether employed by the prime, a subcontractor, a consultant, or a partnering Research Institution.

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That last clause names partnering research institutions explicitly. Your partner's foreign collaborations, foreign funding, and foreign-affiliated personnel are inside the scope of what the Army will assess. Have that conversation with your partner before you fill out the form, not after.

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How Your Proposal Will Be Evaluated

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The process

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Initial screening for responsiveness, timeliness, and SBC eligibility. Responsiveness means failing any material requirement of the solicitation, including compulsory terms and conditions, makes the proposal unresponsive. Timeliness means received on or before the due date and prior to the established set time. Assessment of responsiveness and eligibility may continue during technical evaluation and even after selection.

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National security and foreign risk assessment. The Army conducts a foreign risk evaluation review of every proposal, referencing the 2026 Department of War SBIR/STTR Foreign Risk Evaluation Program Common Decision Matrix dated 08 July 2026. The Army states it relies on statutory authority rather than non-regulatory guidance documents, and that the matrix is illustrative and non-exhaustive. The Army's assessment is not limited to the factors or countries listed. It evaluates the Volume 7 Foreign Disclosure and all areas identified under 15 U.S.C. 638(vv), including cybersecurity practices, patent analysis, employee analysis including subcontractor employee foreign affiliations, foreign ownership, financial ties and obligations, and employee ties to foreign entities. If risks are identified, the Army decides at its sole discretion and case by case whether they can be adequately mitigated. The Army is not required to coordinate with the proposer to develop a mitigation plan and is not obligated to disclose specific findings. Where risks cannot be effectively mitigated, the proposal may be removed from consideration regardless of technical evaluation results.

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Technical evaluation. Proposals passing initial screening receive a technical evaluation against the criteria in Appendix A, reviewed by a cadre of subject matter expert evaluators using the weighted rubric. Proposals are assessed on their own individual merit against the stated criteria, not against each other. Because foreign risk assessment runs in parallel, the Army reserves the right to pause, suspend, or entirely forego technical evaluation, and pausing does not create any right to a mitigation period. Designated support contractors, bound by non-disclosure agreements, may review submissions for evaluation purposes; submitting a response constitutes assent to that.

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Other assessment considerations. Under RFO FAR 25.502, the Government will eliminate any offeror that is unacceptable for reasons other than price, including use of prohibited sources. Proposers and subcontractors are strictly prohibited from using products or services listed in RFO FAR 40.202, including but not limited to TikTok/ByteDance, Kaspersky, and specific unmanned aircraft systems.

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Selection. Notification within 90 days of topic close. Selected proposals are not guaranteed a contract award, and the selection notice is not an authorization to commit or expend funds. After selection, proposals go to a Contracting Officer for further evaluation and negotiation, which may include representations and certifications, certified or other than certified cost data, and other information. Award happens only when a Contracting Officer signs an award document.

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Feedback. The Army will provide feedback to offerors per the SBA SBIR/STTR Policy Directive, with instructions in the selection decision notice. Offerors are entitled to no more than one feedback per proposal. This is not a FAR Part 15 debriefing, and offerors are neither entitled to nor will receive FAR Part 15 debriefs.

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Phase I scoring weights

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The Phase I Evaluation Criteria v4-0 rubric in Appendix A assigns these weights:

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Introduction, 3 percent

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Army Benefits, 15 percent, covering Alignment, Solution's Advantages, and Solution's Impact

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Technical Approach, 35 percent, covering Scientific Feasibility, Enabling Technologies, Technical Team, Technical Risks and Mitigation Plans, and Data Quality

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Programmatic Potential, 20 percent, covering Project Milestone Schedule, Army Customer Discovery and Validation, and Army Transition Pathway

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Commercial Potential, 25 percent, covering R&D to Product Revenue, Competitive Edge, and Other People's Money

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Proposal Quality, 2 percent, covering Quality of Prose and Images, Charts, Graphics

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Each element is scored Unsatisfactory, Marginal, Satisfactory, or Superior. A few of the distinctions worth internalizing, because they tell you exactly what "Superior" looks like:

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Alignment: Superior is "perfectly aligned with this Army topic's priorities," not merely "aligned."

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Solution's Impact: Satisfactory is "significant improvement vs. the state of the art." Superior is "radical improvement."

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Enabling Technologies: Satisfactory "requires proven technologies." Superior "requires Army-fielded technologies." Marginal "requires emerging, cutting edge technology," and Unsatisfactory "requires nonexistent or unavailable technology." This is a real trap for AI teams. Building on exotic, unproven infrastructure scores you down, not up.

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Technical Team: Superior is "technical people are highly qualified AND have significant experience." Note the conjunction. Satisfactory accepts highly qualified or significantly experienced. This is the criterion where a genuine research institution partnership pays for itself, since the combination of academic credentials and applied delivery experience across two organizations is exactly what the top of this scale describes.

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Army Customer Discovery and Validation: Unsatisfactory is "no customer interviews completed, no validation." Marginal is "a handful of customer interviews completed, no validation." Satisfactory is "extensive interviews completed, early validation beginning to inform transition strategy." Superior is "exhaustive interviews completed, validation informs credible transition strategy." You cannot score well here without having actually talked to Army stakeholders before you submit.

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R&D to Product Revenue: Unsatisfactory is "no evidence of creating product revenue from R&D efforts." Superior is "evidence of R&D yielding product revenue sufficient to fuel this company's growth." Note again the Army's definition of product revenue: directly selling a solution to solve a problem, not selling consulting, services, or research activities.

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Other People's Money: Unsatisfactory "fails to present non-DoD sources for future R&D funding." Superior is "diverse and robust non-DoD sources of future R&D funding."

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Taken together, 45 percent of your score sits in Programmatic Potential plus Commercial Potential. For a research-driven STTR team, that is the warning label on this topic. Nearly half the evaluation is not about the science. It is about whether you have done customer discovery with the Army, whether you have a named next deal, whether you have real product revenue history, and whether you have non-defense money in the picture. Academic strength does not compensate for a thin commercialization case, and the rubric is explicit that consulting and research revenue do not count as product revenue.

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Contract Requirements After Award

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Deliverables. Hardware or prototype deliverables per the topic, if applicable, with possible unique item identification requirements under DFARS 252.211-7003. Data deliverables can take the form of test data, computer software, algorithms, design details, progress reports, technical data, financial or management reports, or any information required by contract to be delivered. Data is ordered using DD Form 1423 Contract Data Requirements Lists (CDRLs) located at Section J, Exhibits of the contract. Each CDRL references a Data Item Description viewable through the Acquisition Streamlining and Standardization Information System (ASSIST).

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All Army SBIR/STTR funding agreements include two CDRL requirements: Status Reports under DID number DI-MGMT-80368A, due at a specified time after award and periodically thereafter (monthly, bi-monthly, or quarterly), and a Scientific and Technical Report under DID number DI-MISC-80711A, a final report delivered per the prepared DD Form 1423. The Army end user may require additional deliverables including software documentation and user manuals, engineering drawings, operation and maintenance documentation, safety hazard analysis, or updated commercialization results.

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Note that computer software and algorithms are named as deliverable data types. For a software topic with a university partner, that makes the data rights and allocation-of-rights conversation a contract-shaping issue, not a formality.

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Meetings. A Start of Work Meeting within 30 calendar days of award, held at your facility unless otherwise designated, to establish mutual understanding of contract terms, conditions, line items, technical requirements, and sequence of events. Then periodic review meetings to report status, accomplishments, difficulties, and progress against planned goals and resources expended.

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Invention reporting. Under FAR 52.227-11 and DFARS 252.227-7039, Phase II contracts require an Interim Report of Inventions and Subcontracts on DD Form 882 twelve months from the date of initial contract award. All Phase I and Phase II contracts require a Final Report of Inventions and Subcontracts on DD Form 882 within six months after completion of the contracted work. STTR awardees must report inventions within two months of the inventor's report to the awardee, and may do so through the Edison Invention Reporting System at iedison.gov. With a research institution partner, make sure both organizations know who is responsible for capturing inventor disclosures.

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Controlled Unclassified Information. Successful firms must comply with CUI DoDI 5200.48. Firms must monitor CUI for aggregation and compilation based on the potential to generate classified information, report the potential classification of aggregated or compiled CUI to the ASA(ALT) Security Manager, and submit unclassified DoW information for review and approval for release in accordance with DoDI 5230.09. CUI records must follow approved mandatory disposition authorities. On a university-partnered project, CUI handling and publication review deserve an explicit plan, since the default academic instinct to publish collides with these obligations.

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CMMC. The projected CMMC level requirement for this topic is Level 1. CMMC compliance support is one of the commonly requested TABA services, which is worth knowing if you are not yet compliant.

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Asking Questions the Right Way

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There are two channels and they have different rules.

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Direct contact with topic authors, pre-release only. During pre-release, topic author names, phone numbers, and email addresses are published with the topic on DSIP. You may contact them by phone or email to ask technical questions about specific solicitation topics. Questions must be limited to specific information related to understanding a particular topic's requirements. You may not ask for advice or guidance on solution approach and may not submit additional material to the topic author. If information from an exchange is deemed necessary for proposal preparation, it will be made available to all parties through DSIP Topic Q&A. After pre-release, no further direct contact is allowed unless the author is responding to a question submitted during pre-release.

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DSIP Topic Q&A. Opens on the pre-release date and closes two weeks prior to the topic close date, meaning October 7, 2026. Written questions and answers are posted on a non-attribution basis for public viewing. Answers are generally posted within seven business days and emailed to the inquirer. Questions are limited to technical information focused on understanding the topic's requirements. Requests for advice on solution approach, or administrative questions about SBIR or STTR program eligibility, proposal or cost structure, page count, budget and duration limitations, or the proposal due date, will not receive a response. Administrative questions go to the component-specific contact instead.

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Once the proposal submission closes, no communication of any kind is allowed with the topic author or through Topic Q&A regarding submitted proposals.

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The Army advises monitoring DSIP frequently throughout the solicitation period for updates and amendments to topics and for new Q&A entries.

Frequently Asked Questions

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What is Army STTR topic ARM26TX06-NV003?

‍ ‍

ARM26TX06-NV003 is an Army STTR Phase I topic titled "Agentic-AI, Schema-Driven Decision Management for Auditable Studies and Acquisition Decisions," released under the Department of the Army 2026 STTR Program Commercial Solutions Opening, Release 6. It seeks a demonstrated decision-as-a-program capability that converts complex engineering and acquisition questions into structured, auditable, signer-ready Decision Packages.

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How much funding is available under ARM26TX06-NV003?

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Phase I awards are up to $300,000 with a period of performance of 1 to 6 months. Up to $6,500 in Technical and Business Assistance funding may be requested in addition to the award ceiling. Proposals exceeding the topic's stated funding and duration limits will be deemed unresponsive. The $300,000 covers the combined effort of the small business and its research institution partner.

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When is the proposal deadline for ARM26TX06-NV003?

‍ ‍

Complete proposals must be certified and submitted in DSIP no later than 12:00 p.m. ET on October 21, 2026. That is noon Eastern, not end of day, which is 11:00 a.m. Central, 10:00 a.m. Mountain, and 9:00 a.m. Pacific. Proposals cannot be submitted after the deadline and will not be accepted or evaluated.

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When does this topic open for proposals?

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The topic opens for proposal submission on September 23, 2026, giving a 29 day submission window that closes October 21, 2026.

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When does the DSIP Topic Q&A window close?

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October 7, 2026, two weeks prior to the topic close date. Since answers are generally posted within seven business days, submit questions well before the cutoff if you need the answer in time to use it.

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What is the difference between this STTR topic and the Army SBIR topic ARM26BX06-NV012?

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The technical scope, funding ceiling, period of performance, and Phase I evaluation rubric are the same. The difference is the program. STTR requires a formal partnership with a research institution and a statutory division of work between the two organizations, and it allows the principal investigator to be primarily employed by either the small business or the research institution. SBIR has no partnership requirement and requires the principal investigator to be primarily employed by the small business.

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Do I need a university partner to apply for ARM26TX06-NV003?

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Yes. The STTR program requires a partnership with a qualifying research institution, which can be a university, a federally funded research and development center, or a qualifying nonprofit research organization. If you do not have a research institution partner, apply to the SBIR companion topic ARM26BX06-NV012 instead.

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What is the required work split between the small business and the research institution?

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Under the STTR program, the small business must perform at least 40 percent of the work and the research institution at least 30 percent, as a percentage of total effort. The governing definitions and requirements are in the DoW 2026 STTR Program CSO and the SBA SBIR/STTR Policy Directive rather than in the Army component-specific instructions, so verify the current terms there.

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Can the principal investigator work at the university rather than my company?

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Yes. The Army instructions state that primary employment of the Principal Investigator or Project Manager must be with the small business concern, or with the Research Institution in the case of STTR, at the time of award and during the conduct of the project. This is one of the meaningful advantages of the STTR path.

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Are venture-backed companies eligible for this STTR topic?

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Verify before you commit. The Army SBIR instructions for Release 6 include a provision confirming that firms majority-owned in part by multiple venture capital operating companies, hedge funds, or private equity funds are eligible for SBIR awards, subject to a joint venture eligibility certification. The Army STTR instructions for the same release do not contain that provision, and the majority venture-capital ownership authority is SBIR-specific under the statute. Check your eligibility against 13 CFR 121.702 and the SBA SBIR/STTR Policy Directive.

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Is Direct to Phase II available for ARM26TX06-NV003?

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No. The Release 6 topic index lists this topic as Phase I (Feasibility). Direct to Phase II proposals may only be submitted where a topic posting explicitly allows them. Phase II proposals may otherwise only be submitted by Phase I awardees, and unsolicited Phase II proposals will be rejected without evaluation.

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How long is the technical volume?

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Seven pages for a Phase I proposal, including all required sections. Appendices and supplemental content count toward the seven pages. Cover sheets and tables of contents may be excluded at the Government's discretion. Minimum 10-point type, 8.5 by 11 inch pages, one-inch margins including the header.

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What are the required sections of the technical volume?

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In this order: Introduction, Army Benefits, Technical Approach, Programmatic Potential, and Commercial Potential. These map directly onto the Phase I evaluation rubric in Appendix A of the Army instructions.

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Where do I submit my proposal?

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Through the Defense SBIR/STTR Innovation Portal (DSIP) at dodsbirsttr.mil. Proposals submitted by any other means will be disregarded. Select Army as your component and ASA(ALT) as your command.

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What registrations do I need before submitting?

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An active SAM registration in accordance with FAR Provision 52.204-7, and individual DSIP user accounts for everyone preparing or submitting the proposal. Your DSIP account profile must match your SAM record, including CAGE code, UEI, legal business name, DBA name, and physical address. Register early, since mismatches can delay or void an award.

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What are the most common ways proposals get disqualified?

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Missing a mandatory Volume 5 attachment, since a completed DSIP submission does not mean supporting documents were uploaded. Failing the technical volume formatting requirements. Exceeding the funding or duration limits. Leaving the proposal in "In Progress" or "Ready to Certify" status instead of certifying it. Incomplete or inaccurate Volume 7 foreign affiliation disclosure. Failing to identify foreign nationals or dual citizens on the project, including research institution personnel.

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Do I have to disclose foreign nationals at my university partner?

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Yes. The List of Foreign Citizens requirement names Research Institutions explicitly, and the Volume 7 covered-individual definition applies to anyone contributing substantively to the project whether employed by the prime, a subcontractor, a consultant, or a partnering research institution. Request a complete roster with citizenship and visa status from your partner early.

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How is the Phase I proposal scored?

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By weighted rubric: Technical Approach 35 percent, Commercial Potential 25 percent, Programmatic Potential 20 percent, Army Benefits 15 percent, Introduction 3 percent, and Proposal Quality 2 percent. Each element is rated Unsatisfactory, Marginal, Satisfactory, or Superior.

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Do I need to talk to Army stakeholders before I submit?

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Effectively yes. Army Customer Discovery and Validation sits inside the 20 percent Programmatic Potential weight, and the rubric scores "no customer interviews completed, no validation" as Unsatisfactory while reserving Satisfactory and Superior for extensive or exhaustive interviews with validation informing a credible transition strategy.

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Can I contact the topic author?

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Only during the pre-release period, meaning before the topic opens on September 23, 2026, when author contact details are published with the topic on DSIP. Questions must be limited to understanding the topic's requirements. You may not ask for advice on your solution approach or send them material. After pre-release, use DSIP Topic Q&A, which closes October 7, 2026.

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When will I hear whether I was selected?

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Within 90 days of the October 21, 2026 close date, so on or about January 19, 2027. Notification goes by email to the Corporate Official listed on your proposal cover sheet. A selection notice is not a contract and is not authorization to commit or expend funds.

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Will I get a debrief if I am not selected?

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You will get feedback, not a debrief. The Army provides feedback per the SBA SBIR/STTR Policy Directive, with instructions in the selection decision notice, and offerors are entitled to no more than one feedback per proposal. Competitive procedures here are governed by the SBIR/STTR Policy Directive, so FAR Part 15 debriefings are not available.

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What kind of contract will I receive?

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A FAR-based, firm-fixed-price contract, with payments tied to measurable milestones or deliverables agreed to with the Government. The Contracting Officer retains the right to negotiate contract type and price.

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What is TABA and how do I get it?

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Technical and Business Assistance is funding provided in addition to the award ceiling, up to $6,500 per Phase I project, for services such as market research, IP support, CMMC compliance, DCAA compliance, and marketing. You can use an Army preferred vendor, in which case the cost stays out of your Cost Volume, or your own provider, in which case the cost must be in Volume 3 and a two-page rationale must be in Volume 5. TABA is denied if the costs are omitted from the initial submission or exceed the cap.

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What happens after Phase II?

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The Army anticipates follow-on Phase III contracts for individual customer installation, comparable to how large ERP deployments from SAP and Oracle are rolled out. Separately, the Army Phase II Enhancement Policy may provide up to $500,000 in matching funding on a dollar-for-dollar basis against committed non-SBIR/STTR funding from a DoW component, another federal agency, or a commercial investor.

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What CMMC level does this topic require?

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The projected requirement is CMMC Level 1. CMMC compliance assistance is one of the frequently requested TABA services if you need help getting there.

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Are there prohibited technologies I need to avoid?

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Yes. Proposers and their subcontractors are strictly prohibited from using products or services listed in RFO FAR 40.202, including but not limited to TikTok/ByteDance, Kaspersky, and specific unmanned aircraft systems. Offerors using prohibited sources will be eliminated.

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Who do I contact with administrative questions?

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Email usarmy.SBIRSTTR@army.mil for questions about Army STTR Program administration and the Army component-specific proposal instructions, no later than 15 days prior to solicitation closing, which is October 6, 2026. For DSIP portal problems, email DoDSBIRSupport@reisystems.com during normal operating hours, Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. ET. The Army SBIR/STTR Office is at 2530 Crystal Drive, Suite 11192, Arlington, Virginia 22202.

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Positioning Advice for Startups Considering This Topic

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Everything that applies to the SBIR twin applies here, plus a set of considerations specific to running a two-organization proposal.

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Decide honestly which program fits. The STTR partnership requirement is a feature if your research institution brings people, instruments, datasets, or methods you cannot replicate, and a liability if it is decoration. Evaluators read Technical Team and Technical Approach closely, and a partner with no defined role is visible.

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Make the partnership do work in the narrative. Name what the research institution contributes that you cannot: the semantic modeling expertise, the knowledge graph work, the evaluation methodology, access to a laboratory or a corpus. Then show the seam, meaning how their contribution integrates with what you build. A proposal that reads as two projects stapled together scores worse than a single-organization proposal.

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Start the institutional clock immediately. Sponsored programs offices have their own internal deadlines, often a week or more before the sponsor deadline, and they control whether your budget and any required agreements arrive on time. Call them before you write anything.

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Resolve intellectual property early. Phase II envisions a commercial open-source platform, Phase III envisions installation contracts, and the deliverables include computer software and algorithms. Your partner's technology transfer office will have views on all of that. Better to hear them in September than during contract negotiation.

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Lead with reproducibility and auditability, not model capability. The word "auditable" is in the topic title. "Reproducible outputs," "traceability," "human control," and "predictable behavior" all appear in the description. The differentiator is not a better model, it is a governed system where a decision authority can see why the answer is the answer and what would change it.

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Build the "what flips the decision" logic explicitly. This phrase appears verbatim in the Phase I desired outcomes. If your proposal does not have a named capability that answers it, you are leaving a scoring element on the table.

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Plan for two demonstrations, and make them structurally different. One point-in-time trade study, one multi-episode decision program with a refresh cycle. Naming both, with distinct data and distinct evaluation runs, directly satisfies a stated Phase I outcome.

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Speak ground vehicle. The topic calls for context engineering specifically for the ground vehicle domain through knowledge graphs and semantic layers. Generic decision-support framing will read as misaligned, and Alignment is scored.

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Ground yourself in Digital Engineering standards. SysML 2.0 and UML are named. Digital threads and digital twins are named. Interoperability across DE tools is an explicit expectation.

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Use proven, ideally Army-fielded, enabling technologies. The rubric penalizes emerging or cutting-edge dependencies and rewards Army-fielded ones. This is where academic instincts can cut against you, since novelty is the currency of research and proven maturity is the currency of this rubric. Frame the novelty in the schema and the governance, not in the underlying infrastructure.

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Do not let the research strength mask a weak commercialization case. Commercial Potential is 25 percent, and the Army defines product revenue as directly selling a solution, explicitly excluding consulting, services, and research activities. Sponsored research funding is not product revenue and grant funding is not "other people's money" in the sense the rubric means. The automotive vehicle design analog in the Phase III dual-use paragraph is handed to you. Use it.

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Do the customer discovery now. Programmatic Potential is 20 percent and the top of the scale requires exhaustive interviews with validation that informs a credible transition strategy. PAE Maneuver Ground and PAE Fires are named in the Phase II text, which tells you exactly where the Phase II cases will come from and therefore who is worth talking to during pre-release.

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Position against, or alongside, DAOSoft. The Army names the current COTS baseline and states it is agnostic and open to any and all ideas that extend or replace current acquisition capabilities. That is an invitation to make a clear-eyed competitive argument, including against indirect substitutes, which the Solution's Advantages criterion explicitly asks about.

Army SBIR ARM26BX06-NV012: Agentic-AI, Schema-Driven Decision Management for Auditable Studies and Acquisition Decisions

Quick Answer

ARM26BX06-NV012 is a U.S. Army SBIR Phase I topic released under the Department of the Army 2026 SBIR Program Commercial Solutions Opening (CSO), Release 6. The Army is asking small businesses to prove out a "decision-as-a-program" capability: an agentic AI system, built on a formal decision schema, that turns messy engineering and acquisition questions into structured, auditable, signer-ready Decision Packages. Phase I awards are up to $300,000 for a period of performance of 1 to 6 months. The topic opens for proposals on September 23, 2026 and closes on October 21, 2026. Proposals are submitted only through the Defense SBIR/STTR Innovation Portal (DSIP), and complete proposals must be certified in DSIP no later than 12:00 p.m. ET on October 21, 2026. This is a Phase I feasibility topic, so Direct to Phase II is not available under this topic number.

That gives you a 29 day submission window and, working back from the close date, roughly two weeks from open before the DSIP Topic Q&A channel closes on October 7, 2026.

Topic At a Glance

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Topic number: ARM26BX06-NV012

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Title: Agentic-AI, Schema-Driven Decision Management for Auditable Studies and Acquisition Decisions

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Solicitation: Department of the Army 2026 SBIR Program, Commercial Solutions Opening (CSO), Component-Specific Proposal Instructions, Release 6

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Agency: U.S. Army, under the Department of War (DoW) SBIR/STTR program

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Phase offered: Phase I (Feasibility) only

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Award ceiling: Up to $300,000

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Period of performance: 1 to 6 months

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Contract type: FAR-based, firm-fixed-price, with payments tied to measurable milestones or deliverables

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OUSD (R&E) Critical Technology Area: Applied Artificial Intelligence (AAI)

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Component Technology Priority Areas: Trusted AI and Autonomy; Information Systems

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Projected CMMC level requirement: Level 1

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Submission portal: DSIP at dodsbirsttr.mil

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Topic open date: September 23, 2026

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Proposal deadline: October 21, 2026 at 12:00 p.m. ET

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DSIP Topic Q&A closes: October 7, 2026, two weeks prior to the close date

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Selection notification: Within 90 days of the topic close date, meaning on or about January 19, 2027

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Keywords: Agentic AI, Digital Engineering, schema-driven Decision Management, acquisition decisions, AI LLM

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What the Army Is Actually Looking For

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The core objective

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The Army wants proof of a decision-as-a-program capability. In plain terms, that means taking a complex engineering or acquisition question, one that today gets answered through slide decks, spreadsheets, email threads, and tribal knowledge, and turning it into a structured, machine-readable, auditable decision artifact that a decision authority can actually sign. The Army's stated goal is to do this faster and with higher confidence than the status quo.

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The emphasis in the topic language is on proof by demonstration, not a full product build. Phase I is not the place to promise a shipping platform. It is the place to show that the schema plus the agentic layer works on real decision problems, both point-in-time trade studies and long-horizon acquisition decision programs, with traceability, robustness, and human control intact.

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The three technical objectives

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Objective one: a unified representation. The Army wants a single decision model that supports two very different shapes of work. The first is the single-episode trade study, a bounded comparison of options against criteria. The second is the multi-episode "decision program," a long-running decision with refresh cycles as evidence and assumptions change over time. The topic specifically calls for context engineering for the ground vehicle domain, implemented through knowledge graphs and semantic layers that capture domain-specific relationships, constraints, and requirements. The system is expected to integrate data from Digital Engineering (DE) tools such as SysML 2.0 and UML, pulling from digital threads and digital twins to provide a unified view of system models across the product lifecycle.

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Objective two: agentic capabilities with human control. The AI layer must produce structured artifacts and reproducible outputs. Reproducibility is called out explicitly, which is a strong signal: nondeterministic, unauditable LLM output alone will not satisfy this topic. The agentic system is expected to perform structured elicitation into the formal model, generate decision workflow plans, and execute evaluation runs with clear "what flips the decision" logic. It is also expected to automate validation of technical documents, models, and outputs against standards and requirements, while maintaining predictable behavior consistent with established human-AI interaction guidance.

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Objective three: explicit bias checks, risks, and assumptions. The schema must be extended so that bias checks, risks, and assumptions become first-class, testable objects rather than prose buried in a report. The purpose is decision readiness: the ability to assess whether a decision is actually ready for sign-off before it is signed, and to responsibly refresh it when conditions change. Semantic understanding is expected to keep consistency across digital engineering artifacts and enable traceable decision rationale.

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Phase I desired outcomes

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The topic lists three Phase I deliverable outcomes:

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1. A decision schema that makes objectives, options, constraints, assumptions, risks, and bias checks first-class objects.

2. Agentic AI that performs structured elicitation into the formal model, generates decision workflow plans, and executes reproducible evaluation runs with clear "what flips the decision" logic.

3. Two end-to-end demonstrations showing the approach scales from point-in-time trade studies to long-horizon program decisions with refresh cycles as evidence and assumptions change.

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Two demonstrations, not one. That is a concrete, checkable requirement and a common place where proposals lose points by being vague.

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Where this goes in Phase II

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The Army is explicit that the DoW already has multiple contractors building AI and LLM tools for core warfighter purposes, but very little effort has gone toward an AIgentic decision intelligence capability that supports accelerated commercial acquisition or longer lead traditional development. That gap is the reason this topic exists.

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In Phase II, the expectation is that the successful contractor develops a combined AIgentic and AI/LLM decision intelligence workflow capability, exercised on two real cases provided from PAE Maneuver Ground and PAE Fires. The resulting software platform is to be modeled and developed as a commercial open-source platform usable by both the DoW and commercial enterprises for Product Design and Development (PDD) and acquisition.

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The topic names the current COTS baseline directly: DAOSoft, which provides an open capability with an advanced structured decision and trade study capability plus a partially developed AI/LLM decision intelligence workflow. The Army states it is looking for any and all ideas that can extend or replace current acquisition capabilities and is agnostic to all current solutions. The Army is also agnostic as to which developed AI commercial package fulfills the addition of AIgentics to current AI/LLM for continuous acquisition.

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The Phase II prototype is expected to be immediately useful, with follow-on Phase III contracts anticipated for individual customer installation, described by the Army as similar to current best practice deployment of large ERP systems from SAP and Oracle.

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Phase III dual use

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The named commercial analog is the vehicle design process in the automotive industry. The Army notes the workflow can be relatively similar to the vehicle design process for the Army, with some different considerations. For a startup, this is a useful signal: the commercialization argument writes itself around complex-system product development and capital program decision-making outside defense.

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Reference cited in the topic

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The topic cites one reference, an SAE Mobilus paper: "Concept execution AI agentic decision intelligence framework product planning concept development," 2025-01-0455, at saemobilus.sae.org.

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Funding Allowance and What You Can Add On Top

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Base award

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Phase I under this topic is up to $300,000 for 1 to 6 months. Award funding guideline and period of performance limitations are established per topic, and the solicitation is blunt about this: proposals exceeding these limitations will be deemed unresponsive. Do not propose $325,000 and do not propose nine months.

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The number of awards depends on funds availability. The Army reserves the right to award none, one, or more than one contract under any topic. Awards are FAR-based, firm-fixed-price, with fixed price payments tied to measurable milestones or deliverables agreed to by the Government. Milestone schedules are used to monitor technical progress, mitigate technical and cost risk, and address awardee cash flow needs. The Contracting Officer retains the right to negotiate contract type and price.

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Technical and Business Assistance (TABA)

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TABA is additional money on top of the award ceiling. For Phase I, the Army may provide up to $6,500 per project. For Direct to Phase II projects, up to $50,000. TABA is not guaranteed and depends on the Government's review of the requested services and available TABA budget.

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There are two options and the paperwork differs:

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Option 1, Army-preferred vendor. Up to $6,500 per Phase I project. If you use the Army's preferred provider, the TABA cost does not need to be included in your DSIP Cost Volume (Volume 3). If approved, funding goes directly to the Army's preferred provider. Participation is voluntary and application instructions come after contract award. Commonly requested services include customized market research and strategy, intellectual property support, CMMC compliance, DCAA compliance, and communications and marketing.

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Option 2, firm-selected vendor. You may contract TABA services through one or more TABA providers, or use the funding to hire new or augment staff, or to have staff conduct or participate in training activities consistent with 15 U.S.C. 638(q)(1). If you choose your own provider, the proposed TABA amount must be included in the DSIP Cost Volume (Volume 3) and details of the TABA request must be included in Supporting Documents (Volume 5).

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Critical TABA compliance points:

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TABA funding will be denied if the costs are omitted from the initial proposal submission, or if proposed TABA costs exceed $6,500 per Phase I project.

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TABA costs cannot include any profit or fee for the proposer.

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TABA costs cannot be factored into the calculation of general and administrative expenses (G&A).

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The amount is based on the original contract period of performance and does not apply to period of performance extensions or enhancements.

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The TABA provider cannot be your own firm or any affiliated entity.

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The rationale statement in Volume 5 is limited to two pages and must include the provider name, point of contact with email and phone, an explanation of the provider's suitability and qualifications, an outline of specific tasks, and total provider cost with number of hours and labor rates. A blended or average rate is acceptable.

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Phase II Enhancement

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Looking further out, the Department of the Army may provide a Phase II awardee with up to $500,000 in matching SBIR funding on a dollar-for-dollar basis if the performer obtains a commitment of non-SBIR/STTR funding from a DoW component, another federal agency, or a commercial investor. The enhancement effort must develop, deliver, and integrate a technology or product into a program within a DoW component, federal agency, or the commercial sector. Enhancement requests are subject to approval by the Army SBIR/STTR Program's Source Selection Authority, successful negotiations, and funding availability. Enhancement funding is typically applied to an active Phase II award through a contract modification, with additional scope of work and period of performance commensurate with the total funding received.

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For a startup, this matters at the strategy level: a credible non-dilutive path exists from a $300,000 Phase I to a Phase II with up to $500,000 in matched enhancement, then Phase III installation contracts.

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Timeline and Key Dates

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The dates that matter

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Topic opens for submission: September 23, 2026

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DSIP Topic Q&A closes: October 7, 2026

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Deadline for administrative questions to the Army: October 6, 2026, which is 15 days prior to closing

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Proposal deadline: October 21, 2026 at 12:00 p.m. ET

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Selection or non-selection notification: on or about January 19, 2027, within 90 days of close

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Start of Work Meeting, if awarded: within 30 calendar days after contract award

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Note that the proposal deadline is noon Eastern, not end of day. That is 11:00 a.m. Central, 10:00 a.m. Mountain, and 9:00 a.m. Pacific on October 21. Teams on the West Coast routinely lose proposals to this detail.

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The sequence in detail

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Pre-release period, before September 23, 2026. The topic sits in pre-release on DSIP. During pre-release, topic author names, phone numbers, and email addresses are published with the topic on the DSIP Topics and Topic Q&A page. This is the only window for direct contact with the topic author, and once the topic opens on September 23 that door closes.

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Topic open, September 23, 2026. The topic opens for proposal submission in DSIP.

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DSIP Topic Q&A window, closing October 7, 2026. Topic Q&A opens on the pre-release date and closes two weeks prior to the topic close date. All questions and answers are posted publicly on a non-attribution basis. Answers are generally posted within seven business days and are also emailed directly to the person who asked. Because answers can take seven business days, a question submitted on October 7 may not be answered until roughly October 16, leaving you only a few days to act on it. Ask early.

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Administrative question deadline, October 6, 2026. General questions about Army SBIR Program administration and the Army component-specific proposal instructions should be submitted as soon as possible, and no later than 15 days prior to solicitation closing, to usarmy.SBIRSTTR@army.mil.

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Proposal deadline, October 21, 2026 at 12:00 p.m. ET. Complete proposals must be certified and submitted in DSIP by this time. Proposals cannot be submitted after the deadline and will not be accepted or evaluated.

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Selection or non-selection notification, on or about January 19, 2027. Within 90 days of the topic close date, by email to the Corporate Official listed on the proposal cover sheet, sent from the Army SBIR/STTR Program Office mailbox.

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Start of Work Meeting. Held virtually within 30 calendar days after contract award, unless another location is designated in the contract.

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Periodic reviews. Monthly, bi-monthly, or quarterly review meetings as specified in the contract.

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Final Report of Inventions and Subcontracts. DD Form 882, due within six months after completion of the contracted work.

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Planning note: the Army warns that proposals should be submitted as early as possible to avoid delays caused by high traffic near closing. The Department of the Army is not responsible for missed submissions due to system latency or inaccessibility. A proposal sitting in "In Progress" or "Ready to Certify" status is not submitted, even if every volume has been uploaded before the close date.

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A working backward schedule

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If you are starting from scratch, here is a realistic way to use the 29 days.

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Now through September 22. Confirm your SAM registration is active and that your DSIP profile matches it exactly. Get every team member a DSIP account. Complete the annual Volume 6 Fraud, Waste and Abuse training. Identify the topic author during pre-release and get your requirements questions asked while direct contact is still allowed.

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September 23 through September 30. Run Army customer discovery interviews. This is the single highest leverage activity available to you and it cannot be faked in the writing. Draft the technical approach and lock down which two demonstrations you will propose.

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October 1 through October 7. Complete a full technical volume draft. Submit any remaining questions through DSIP Topic Q&A before it closes on October 7.

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October 8 through October 14. Build the Cost Volume with substantiating documentation. Assemble every Volume 5 attachment, including the two page Non-Proprietary Work Plan, the foreign citizens list or the statement that none are involved, and Key Personnel with the PI technical resume. Complete the Volume 7 foreign affiliations web form.

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October 15 through October 17. Compliance pass. Verify the seven page limit, 10-point minimum type, one inch margins, page numbering, and headers with company name, topic number, and DSIP proposal number. Confirm the PDF is searchable, unlocked, unencrypted, and virus checked.

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October 18 through October 19. Upload everything to DSIP and execute the corporate official certification. Confirm the status is no longer "In Progress" or "Ready to Certify."

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October 20 through October 21. Buffer only. Do not plan to use these days.

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Eligibility and Registrations You Need Before You Can Submit

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You must be a Small Business Concern (SBC) meeting all eligibility requirements in 13 CFR 121.702 and the SBA SBIR/STTR Policy Directive.

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System for Award Management (SAM). You must be registered and active in SAM in accordance with FAR Provision 52.204-7, both when submitting and at time of award. Proposals from firms failing this may be deemed unresponsive. You may only submit using your legal business name or a DBA name as indicated in the SAM registration for the provided Unique Entity Identifier (UEI). A DBA used on an offer must be registered and linked to your current, active SAM registration. Firms that are debarred, suspended, proposed for debarment, or voluntarily excluded are excluded from award, and the Army will not consent to subcontracts with such contractors.

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DSIP registration. DSIP is the official portal. Proposals submitted by any other means will be disregarded. Every individual who will prepare or submit must have an individual DSIP user account. Register as early as possible. Your DSIP account profile must correlate with your SAM registration, including the 5-digit CAGE code, 12-digit UEI, legal business name, DBA name, and physical address. Failure to correlate this information, or to submit required certifications, may significantly delay funding agreement award or become grounds for cancellation of the funding agreement.

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Venture capital, hedge fund, and private equity ownership. SBCs owned in majority part by multiple venture capital operating companies, hedge funds, or private equity funds are eligible to submit and receive awards under the Army SBIR Program. All applicants that are majority-owned by multiple VCOC, HF, or PEF and are submitting to an Army topic must complete the Verification of Eligibility of Small Business Joint Ventures certification before submitting, and must include that certification with the submission.

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Principal Investigator employment. The primary employment of the Principal Investigator or Project Manager must be with the SBC at the time of award and during the conduct of the proposed project.

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Proposal Structure: What You Actually Submit

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Army component-specific instructions supplement and in some cases supersede the DoW 2026 SBIR Program CSO. Where they conflict, the Army instructions take precedence.

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Volume 1, Proposal Coversheet

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Prepared in DSIP in accordance with the DoW solicitation.

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Volume 2, Technical Volume

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Format requirements, and the solicitation states that submissions failing to conform shall be deemed unresponsive:

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Single Adobe Acrobat PDF, searchable text format, including graphics. PDFs that cannot be opened using Adobe Acrobat products may be rejected. Perform a virus check before uploading. Do not lock, password protect, or encrypt the file. Do not include or embed active graphics such as videos or moving pictures.

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Page limit for Phase I: seven pages, including all key sections. The limit applies to the entire Technical Volume as uploaded to DSIP. At the Government's discretion, pages that clearly do not substantiate or contribute to the technical approach, such as a cover sheet or table of contents, may be excluded from the count. Any appendices or supplemental content that expand upon the required content do count toward the seven pages. You may allocate the pages across sections however you want.

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Layout: number all pages consecutively. No type smaller than 10-point, standard 8.5 by 11 inch paper, one-inch margins including the header. The header on each page, which may sit inside the one-inch margin, should contain the proposing SBC's name, the topic number, and the DSIP assigned proposal number from the cover sheet.

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General: graphics are strongly encouraged throughout. For plots and charts, include title, caption, axes labels, and scale. Avoid jargon and define all technical terms. Use the compress pictures feature to reduce file size.

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Required section order for Phase I:

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1. Introduction

2. Army Benefits

3. Technical Approach

4. Programmatic Potential

5. Commercial Potential

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These sections map one-to-one onto the Phase I evaluation rubric in Appendix A. Your Volume 2 must also be consistent with the Non-Proprietary Work Plan you upload in Volume 5.

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What each section needs, in the Army's own framing:

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Introduction. A clear, concise description of what your innovation does or will do, and where you are in your evolution. Make clear its intended impact on the Army. Evaluators should "get it" after reading this.

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Army Benefits. Identified Army use cases, the solution's advantages, and the potential level and scale of impact. If you are unsure how an Army end user would benefit, provide an analogous use case so evaluators can connect the dots. Three rubric prompts: Alignment, argue your innovation aligns with this topic's priorities as defined in the solicitation. Solution's Advantages, prove customers will choose you given limited resources and many choices, and account for indirect substitutes as well as direct competitors. Solution's Impact, the Army seeks higher-risk, high-impact solutions through SBIR, not engineering changes or incremental improvements.

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Technical Approach. Details and supporting data on how you will solve the problem, key elements of your approach, the technical team, and risks with mitigation plans. Use data to substantiate that your risk mitigation plans are credible, attributed to reliable, credible sources. Rubric prompts: Scientific Feasibility, Enabling Technologies (do the required enabling technologies introduce added risk), Technical Team, Technical Risk and Mitigation Plans, and Data Quality.

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Programmatic Potential. Where your company is today, what will be accomplished under this SBIR effort with Army customer discovery, and the risks and mitigations for transitioning beyond SBIR funding into a contract with an Army or integration with an Army system. Rubric prompts: Project Milestone Schedule, Army Customer Discovery and Validation (are you "getting out of the building" and do you have formal or informal customer validation), and Army Transition Pathways (what is the next type of deal you aim to make with the Army after this award).

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Commercial Potential. The commercial market the DoW can build upon, your past success, and future potential. Rubric prompts: R&D to Product Revenue (has your team transitioned R&D into products with actual product revenue, which the Army defines as directly selling a solution rather than selling consulting, services, or research activities), Competitive Edge (why will you win, something your team does very well that is difficult to match, such as protected IP, unmatched relevant experience, a novel business model, or network effects), and Other People's Money (the non-DoW commercial market case).

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Volume 3, Cost Volume

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Cost and duration limits are detailed in the topic. Options are not anticipated at this time; if an option is identified in the topic posting, Base and Option costs must be separated and clearly identified. All proposed costs must be accompanied by documentation substantiating how the cost was derived. Failure to include supporting documentation may delay award, since the Contracting Officer will have to request it. Failure or refusal to provide documentation may result in dissolution of the contract action.

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Volume 4, Company Commercialization Report

‍ ‍

Required for prior SBIR/STTR awardees. Information in the CCR will be considered during proposal evaluation.

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Volume 5, Supporting Documents

‍ ‍

This is where proposals most often die on compliance. The solicitation states plainly that a completed proposal submission in DSIP does not indicate that the mandatory supporting documents have been uploaded. Failure to upload any mandatory document as a separate attachment will result in the proposal being deemed administratively non-compliant and unresponsive. Unresponsive proposals are un-awardable and may be excluded from technical evaluation entirely.

‍ ‍

Mandatory items, uploaded as separate attachments:

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1. Non-Proprietary Work Plan. Two page limit. A summary based on the Volume 2 technical approach, outlining technical objectives, key milestones, and deliverables. It serves as the basis for performance requirements in the final contract and must be written for a public, technically literate audience with no sensitive or proprietary information.

2. List of Foreign Citizens. Identify any foreign nationals or dual citizens expected to be involved as a direct employee, subcontractor, consultant, or Research Institution. Provide a single PDF with a listing of citizenships, countries of origin, type of visa or work permit, and an explanation of anticipated level of involvement. If no foreign nationals will be involved, substitute a statement to that effect. The Army specifically warns that small businesses often incorrectly assume everyone with dual citizenship or a work permit is automatically permitted to work on SBIR/STTR projects and fail to identify them. Failure to provide this may significantly delay selection or award.

3. Key Personnel. Identify all key personnel with information on education and experience. A technical resume for the Principal Investigator, including publications if any, must be included. Resumes for other technical staff, subcontractors, and consultants are useful and may also be included.

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If applicable, also submit: SBIR/STTR Funding Agreement Certification; Verification of Eligibility of Small Business Joint Ventures; Assertion of use, release, or disclosure restriction per DFARS 252.227-7017; DD Form 2345 Military Critical Technical Data Agreement for ITAR-subject actions; SBC-selected details of TABA request; and other documentation such as letters of support. The Army may also accept cost/pricing information and other items only as specified in the topic. Anything else submitted will be disregarded, including promotional and non-project material.

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Volume 6, Fraud, Waste and Abuse Training

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Material is in the Volume 6 section of the DSIP proposal submission module and must be thoroughly reviewed once per year to proceed with proposal submission.

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Volume 7, Disclosures of Foreign Affiliations or Relationships to Foreign Countries

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A web form. PDF uploads are no longer accepted. Disclosure does not mean automatic denial, but failure to complete the form completely and accurately may render the proposal administratively non-compliant and unresponsive.

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Per 15 U.S.C. 638(vv), 15 U.S.C. 638(g)(13), and the SBA SBIR/STTR Policy Directive, disclosures must consider subcontractors, subsidiaries, joint ventures, consultants, and their employees across four categories: foreign affiliations, including any subsidiary, parent company, or joint venture based in, funded by, or with a foreign affiliation with any foreign country of concern; contractual or financial obligations with a foreign entity, and the Army notes that a subcontracting agreement is by definition a contractual and financial obligation; related entities, meaning any foreign business entity, offshore entity, or entity outside the United States related to the SBC; and covered individuals, meaning anyone who contributes in a substantive, meaningful way to the scientific development or execution of the project, regardless of title or Key Personnel designation, whether employed by the prime, a subcontractor, a consultant, or a partnering Research Institution.

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How Your Proposal Will Be Evaluated

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The process

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Initial screening for responsiveness, timeliness, and SBC eligibility. Responsiveness means failing any material requirement of the solicitation, including compulsory terms and conditions, makes the proposal unresponsive. Timeliness means received on or before the due date and prior to the established set time. Assessment of responsiveness and eligibility may continue during technical evaluation and even after selection.

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National security and foreign risk assessment. The Army conducts a foreign risk evaluation review of every proposal, referencing the 2026 Department of War SBIR/STTR Foreign Risk Evaluation Program Common Decision Matrix dated 08 July 2026. Importantly, the Army states it relies on statutory authority rather than non-regulatory guidance documents, and that the matrix is illustrative and non-exhaustive. The Army's assessment is not limited to the factors or countries listed. It evaluates the Volume 7 Foreign Disclosure and all areas identified under 15 U.S.C. 638(vv), including cybersecurity practices, patent analysis, employee analysis including subcontractor employee foreign affiliations, foreign ownership, financial ties and obligations, and employee ties to foreign entities. If risks are identified, the Army decides at its sole discretion and case by case whether they can be adequately mitigated. The Army is not required to coordinate with the proposer to develop a mitigation plan and is not obligated to disclose specific findings. Where risks cannot be effectively mitigated, the proposal may be removed from consideration regardless of technical evaluation results.

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Technical evaluation. Proposals passing initial screening receive a technical evaluation against the criteria in Appendix A, reviewed by a cadre of subject matter expert evaluators using the weighted rubric. Proposals are assessed on their own individual merit against the stated criteria, not against each other. Because foreign risk assessment runs in parallel, the Army reserves the right to pause, suspend, or entirely forego technical evaluation, and pausing does not create any right to a mitigation period. Designated support contractors, bound by non-disclosure agreements, may review submissions for evaluation purposes; submitting a response constitutes assent to that.

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Other assessment considerations. Under RFO FAR 25.502, the Government will eliminate any offeror that is unacceptable for reasons other than price, including use of prohibited sources. Proposers and subcontractors are strictly prohibited from using products or services listed in RFO FAR 40.202, including but not limited to TikTok/ByteDance, Kaspersky, and specific unmanned aircraft systems.

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Selection. Notification within 90 days of topic close. Selected proposals are not guaranteed a contract award, and the selection notice is not an authorization to commit or expend funds. After selection, proposals go to a Contracting Officer for further evaluation and negotiation, which may include representations and certifications, certified or other than certified cost data, and other information. Award happens only when a Contracting Officer signs an award document.

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Feedback. The Army will provide feedback to offerors per the SBA SBIR/STTR Policy Directive, with instructions in the selection decision notice. This is not a FAR Part 15 debriefing, and offerors are neither entitled to nor will receive FAR Part 15 debriefs.

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Phase I scoring weights

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The Phase I Evaluation Criteria v4-0 rubric in Appendix A assigns these weights:

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Introduction, 3 percent

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Army Benefits, 15 percent, covering Alignment, Solution's Advantages, and Solution's Impact

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Technical Approach, 35 percent, covering Scientific Feasibility, Enabling Technologies, Technical Team, Technical Risks and Mitigation Plans, and Data Quality

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Programmatic Potential, 20 percent, covering Project Milestone Schedule, Army Customer Discovery and Validation, and Army Transition Pathway

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Commercial Potential, 25 percent, covering R&D to Product Revenue, Competitive Edge, and Other People's Money

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Proposal Quality, 2 percent, covering Quality of Prose and Images, Charts, Graphics

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Each element is scored Unsatisfactory, Marginal, Satisfactory, or Superior. A few of the distinctions worth internalizing, because they tell you exactly what "Superior" looks like:

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Alignment: Superior is "perfectly aligned with this Army topic's priorities," not merely "aligned."

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Solution's Impact: Satisfactory is "significant improvement vs. the state of the art." Superior is "radical improvement."

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Enabling Technologies: Satisfactory "requires proven technologies." Superior "requires Army-fielded technologies." Marginal "requires emerging, cutting edge technology," and Unsatisfactory "requires nonexistent or unavailable technology." This is a real trap for AI startups. Building on exotic, unproven infrastructure scores you down, not up.

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Army Customer Discovery and Validation: Unsatisfactory is "no customer interviews completed, no validation." Marginal is "a handful of customer interviews completed, no validation." Satisfactory is "extensive interviews completed, early validation beginning to inform transition strategy." Superior is "exhaustive interviews completed, validation informs credible transition strategy." You cannot score well here without having actually talked to Army stakeholders before you submit.

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R&D to Product Revenue: Unsatisfactory is "no evidence of creating product revenue from R&D efforts." Superior is "evidence of R&D yielding product revenue sufficient to fuel this company's growth." Note again the Army's definition of product revenue: directly selling a solution to solve a problem, not selling consulting, services, or research activities.

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Other People's Money: Unsatisfactory "fails to present non-DoD sources for future R&D funding." Superior is "diverse and robust non-DoD sources of future R&D funding."

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Taken together, 45 percent of your score sits in Programmatic Potential plus Commercial Potential. For a deep-tech AI team, that means nearly half the evaluation is not about your architecture. It is about whether you have done customer discovery with the Army, whether you have a named next deal, whether you have real product revenue history, and whether you have non-defense money in the picture.

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Contract Requirements After Award

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Deliverables. Hardware or prototype deliverables per the topic, if applicable. Data is ordered using DD Form 1423 Contract Data Requirements Lists (CDRLs) located at Section J, Exhibits of the contract. Each CDRL references a Data Item Description viewable through the Acquisition Streamlining and Standardization Information System (ASSIST).

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All Army SBIR/STTR funding agreements include two CDRL requirements: Status Reports under DID number DI-MGMT-80368A, due at a specified time after award and periodically thereafter (monthly, bi-monthly, or quarterly), and a Scientific and Technical Report under DID number DI-MISC-80711A, a final report delivered per the prepared DD Form 1423. The Army end user may require additional deliverables including software documentation and user manuals, engineering drawings, operation and maintenance documentation, safety hazard analysis, or updated commercialization results.

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Meetings. A Start of Work Meeting within 30 calendar days of award, held virtually at your facility unless otherwise designated, to establish mutual understanding of contract terms, conditions, line items, technical requirements, and sequence of events. Then periodic review meetings to report status, accomplishments, difficulties, and progress against planned goals and resources expended.

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Invention reporting. Under FAR 52.227-11 and DFARS 252.227-7039, Phase II contracts require an Interim Report of Inventions and Subcontracts on DD Form 882 twelve months from the date of initial contract award. All Phase I and Phase II contracts require a Final Report of Inventions and Subcontracts on DD Form 882 within six months after completion of the contracted work. SBIR awardees must report inventions within two months of the inventor's report to the awardee, and may do so through the Edison Invention Reporting System at iedison.gov.

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Controlled Unclassified Information. Successful firms must comply with CUI DoDI 5200.48. Firms must monitor CUI for aggregation and compilation based on the potential to generate classified information, report the potential classification of aggregated or compiled CUI to the ASA(ALT) Security Manager, and submit unclassified DoW information for review and approval for release in accordance with DoDI 5230.09. CUI records must follow approved mandatory disposition authorities.

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CMMC. The projected CMMC level requirement for this topic is Level 1. CMMC compliance support is one of the commonly requested TABA services, which is worth knowing if you are not yet compliant.

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Asking Questions the Right Way

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There are two channels and they have different rules.

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Direct contact with topic authors, pre-release only. During pre-release, topic author names, phone numbers, and email addresses are published with the topic on DSIP. You may contact them by phone or email to ask technical questions about specific solicitation topics. Questions must be limited to specific information related to understanding a particular topic's requirements. You may not ask for advice or guidance on solution approach and may not submit additional material to the topic author. If information from an exchange is deemed necessary for proposal preparation, it will be made available to all parties through DSIP Topic Q&A. After pre-release, no further direct contact is allowed unless the author is responding to a question submitted during pre-release.

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DSIP Topic Q&A. Opens on the pre-release date and closes two weeks prior to the topic close date. Written questions and answers are posted on a non-attribution basis for public viewing. Answers are generally posted within seven business days and emailed to the inquirer. Questions are limited to technical information focused on understanding the topic's requirements. Requests for advice on solution approach, or administrative questions about SBIR eligibility, proposal or cost structure, page count, budget and duration limitations, or the proposal due date, will not receive a response. Administrative questions go to the component-specific contact instead.

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Once the proposal submission closes, no communication of any kind is allowed with the topic author or through Topic Q&A regarding submitted proposals.

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The Army advises monitoring DSIP frequently throughout the solicitation period for updates and amendments to topics and for new Q&A entries.

Frequently Asked Questions

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What is Army SBIR topic ARM26BX06-NV012?

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ARM26BX06-NV012 is an Army SBIR Phase I topic titled "Agentic-AI, Schema-Driven Decision Management for Auditable Studies and Acquisition Decisions," released under the Department of the Army 2026 SBIR Program Commercial Solutions Opening, Release 6. It seeks a demonstrated decision-as-a-program capability that converts complex engineering and acquisition questions into structured, auditable, signer-ready Decision Packages.

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How much funding is available under ARM26BX06-NV012?

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Phase I awards are up to $300,000 with a period of performance of 1 to 6 months. Up to $6,500 in Technical and Business Assistance funding may be requested in addition to the award ceiling. Proposals exceeding the topic's stated funding and duration limits will be deemed unresponsive.

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What is the period of performance for this Army SBIR Phase I?

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One to six months. Do not propose a longer schedule, because exceeding the stated period of performance limitation makes a proposal unresponsive.

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When is the proposal deadline for ARM26BX06-NV012?

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Complete proposals must be certified and submitted in DSIP no later than 12:00 p.m. ET on October 21, 2026. Note that this is noon Eastern, not end of day, which is 11:00 a.m. Central, 10:00 a.m. Mountain, and 9:00 a.m. Pacific. Proposals cannot be submitted after the deadline and will not be accepted or evaluated.

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When does this topic open for proposals?

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The topic opens for proposal submission on September 23, 2026, giving a 29 day submission window that closes October 21, 2026.

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When does the DSIP Topic Q&A window close?

‍ ‍

October 7, 2026, two weeks prior to the topic close date. Since answers are generally posted within seven business days, submit questions well before the cutoff if you need the answer in time to use it.

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Is Direct to Phase II available for ARM26BX06-NV012?

‍ ‍

No. The topic index for Release 6 lists this topic as Phase I (Feasibility). Direct to Phase II proposals may only be submitted where a topic posting explicitly allows them. Phase II proposals may otherwise only be submitted by Phase I awardees, and unsolicited Phase II proposals will be rejected without evaluation.

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How long is the technical volume?

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Seven pages for a Phase I proposal, including all required sections. Appendices and supplemental content count toward the seven pages. Cover sheets and tables of contents may be excluded at the Government's discretion. Minimum 10-point type, 8.5 by 11 inch pages, one-inch margins including the header.

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What are the required sections of the technical volume?

‍ ‍

In this order: Introduction, Army Benefits, Technical Approach, Programmatic Potential, and Commercial Potential. These map directly onto the Phase I evaluation rubric in Appendix A of the Army instructions.

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Where do I submit my proposal?

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Through the Defense SBIR/STTR Innovation Portal (DSIP) at dodsbirsttr.mil. Proposals submitted by any other means will be disregarded. Select Army as your component and ASA(ALT) as your command.

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What registrations do I need before submitting?

‍ ‍

An active SAM registration in accordance with FAR Provision 52.204-7, and individual DSIP user accounts for everyone preparing or submitting the proposal. Your DSIP account profile must match your SAM record, including CAGE code, UEI, legal business name, DBA name, and physical address. Register early, since mismatches can delay or void an award.

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What are the most common ways proposals get disqualified?

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Missing a mandatory Volume 5 attachment, since a completed DSIP submission does not mean supporting documents were uploaded. Failing the technical volume formatting requirements. Exceeding the funding or duration limits. Leaving the proposal in "In Progress" or "Ready to Certify" status instead of certifying it. Incomplete or inaccurate Volume 7 foreign affiliation disclosure. Failing to identify foreign nationals or dual citizens on the project.

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How is the Phase I proposal scored?

‍ ‍

By weighted rubric: Technical Approach 35 percent, Commercial Potential 25 percent, Programmatic Potential 20 percent, Army Benefits 15 percent, Introduction 3 percent, and Proposal Quality 2 percent. Each element is rated Unsatisfactory, Marginal, Satisfactory, or Superior.

‍ ‍

Do I need to talk to Army stakeholders before I submit?

‍ ‍

Effectively yes. Army Customer Discovery and Validation sits inside the 20 percent Programmatic Potential weight, and the rubric scores "no customer interviews completed, no validation" as Unsatisfactory while reserving Satisfactory and Superior for extensive or exhaustive interviews with validation informing a credible transition strategy.

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Can I contact the topic author?

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Only during the pre-release period, meaning before the topic opens on September 23, 2026, when author contact details are published with the topic on DSIP. Questions must be limited to understanding the topic's requirements. You may not ask for advice on your solution approach or send them material. After pre-release, use DSIP Topic Q&A, which closes October 7, 2026.

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When will I hear whether I was selected?

‍ ‍

Within 90 days of the October 21, 2026 close date, so on or about January 19, 2027. Notification goes by email to the Corporate Official listed on your proposal cover sheet. A selection notice is not a contract and is not authorization to commit or expend funds.

‍ ‍

What kind of contract will I receive?

‍ ‍

A FAR-based, firm-fixed-price contract, with payments tied to measurable milestones or deliverables agreed to with the Government. The Contracting Officer retains the right to negotiate contract type and price.

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Can venture-backed or private-equity-owned companies apply?

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Yes. Small businesses majority-owned in part by multiple venture capital operating companies, hedge funds, or private equity funds are eligible under the Army SBIR Program. Those applicants must complete the Verification of Eligibility of Small Business Joint Ventures certification before submitting and include it with the submission.

‍ ‍

What is TABA and how do I get it?

‍ ‍

Technical and Business Assistance is funding provided in addition to the award ceiling, up to $6,500 per Phase I project, for services such as market research, IP support, CMMC compliance, DCAA compliance, and marketing. You can use an Army preferred vendor, in which case the cost stays out of your Cost Volume, or your own provider, in which case the cost must be in Volume 3 and a two-page rationale must be in Volume 5. TABA is denied if the costs are omitted from the initial submission or exceed the cap.

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What happens after Phase II?

‍ ‍

The Army anticipates follow-on Phase III contracts for individual customer installation, comparable to how large ERP deployments from SAP and Oracle are rolled out. Separately, the Army Phase II Enhancement Policy may provide up to $500,000 in matching SBIR funding on a dollar-for-dollar basis against committed non-SBIR funding from a DoW component, another federal agency, or a commercial investor.

‍ ‍

What CMMC level does this topic require?

‍ ‍

The projected requirement is CMMC Level 1. CMMC compliance assistance is one of the frequently requested TABA services if you need help getting there.

‍ ‍

Are there prohibited technologies I need to avoid?

‍ ‍

Yes. Proposers and their subcontractors are strictly prohibited from using products or services listed in RFO FAR 40.202, including but not limited to TikTok/ByteDance, Kaspersky, and specific unmanned aircraft systems. Offerors using prohibited sources will be eliminated.

‍ ‍

Who do I contact with administrative questions?

‍ ‍

Email usarmy.SBIRSTTR@army.mil for questions about Army SBIR Program administration and the Army component-specific proposal instructions, no later than 15 days prior to solicitation closing, which is October 6, 2026. For DSIP portal problems, email DoDSBIRSupport@reisystems.com during normal operating hours, Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. ET. The Army SBIR/STTR Office is at 2530 Crystal Drive, Suite 11192, Arlington, Virginia 22202.

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Positioning Advice for Startups Considering This Topic

‍ ‍

This topic rewards a specific profile. Read the rubric backward and it becomes clear.

‍ ‍

Lead with reproducibility and auditability, not model capability. The word "auditable" is in the topic title. "Reproducible outputs," "traceability," "human control," and "predictable behavior" all appear in the description. The differentiator here is not a better model, it is a governed system where a decision authority can see why the answer is the answer and what would change it.

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Build the "what flips the decision" logic explicitly. This phrase appears verbatim in the Phase I desired outcomes. If your proposal does not have a named capability that answers it, you are leaving a scoring element on the table.

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Plan for two demonstrations, and make them structurally different. One point-in-time trade study, one multi-episode decision program with a refresh cycle. Naming both, with distinct data and distinct evaluation runs, directly satisfies a stated Phase I outcome.

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Speak ground vehicle. The topic calls for context engineering specifically for the ground vehicle domain through knowledge graphs and semantic layers. Generic decision-support framing will read as misaligned, and Alignment is scored.

‍ ‍

Ground yourself in Digital Engineering standards. SysML 2.0 and UML are named. Digital threads and digital twins are named. Interoperability across DE tools is an explicit expectation.

‍ ‍

Use proven, ideally Army-fielded, enabling technologies. The rubric penalizes emerging or cutting-edge dependencies and rewards Army-fielded ones. If your stack needs something exotic, say how you have de-risked it, or design that dependency out.

‍ ‍

Do the customer discovery now. Programmatic Potential is 20 percent and the top of the scale requires exhaustive interviews with validation that informs a credible transition strategy. PAE Maneuver Ground and PAE Fires are named in the Phase II text, which tells you exactly where the Phase II cases will come from and therefore who is worth talking to during pre-release.

‍ ‍

Bring commercial revenue and non-defense money. Commercial Potential is 25 percent, and the Army's definition of product revenue excludes consulting, services, and research. The automotive vehicle design analog is handed to you in the Phase III dual-use paragraph. Use it.

‍ ‍

Position against, or alongside, DAOSoft. The Army names the current COTS baseline and states it is agnostic and open to any and all ideas that extend or replace current acquisition capabilities. That is an invitation to make a clear-eyed competitive argument, including against indirect substitutes, which the Solution's Advantages criterion explicitly asks about.

‍ ‍

Take the open-source expectation seriously. Phase II envisions a commercial open-source platform used by both the DoW and commercial enterprises. If your business model depends on a closed core, work out now how it reconciles with that expectation and address it in Commercial Potential.

FDA RFA-FD-25-020: Clinical Studies of Orphan Products Addressing Unmet Needs of Rare Diseases (R01)

The Short Answer

RFA-FD-25-020 is an FDA grant that pays for rare disease clinical trials. It provides up to $650,000 in total costs per year for up to four years, and up to $900,000 per year if you use an innovative or efficient trial design. The money is non-dilutive, meaning you give up no equity and no intellectual property. Applications are due October 20, 2026 and October 19, 2027, and the opportunity expires May 31, 2028.

The program is run by the FDA Office of Orphan Products Development (OOPD), not by the NIH, even though you apply through Grants.gov and eRA Commons. FDA uses its own Objective Review Process, its own page limits, and its own review criteria.

Small businesses and for-profit companies are explicitly eligible, and companies win these awards regularly. More on that below.

RFA-FD-25-020 At A Glance

• Funding opportunity number: RFA-FD-25-020

• Title: Reissue of RFA-FD-23-001, Clinical Studies of Orphan Products Addressing Unmet Needs of Rare Diseases (R01 Clinical Trials Required)

• Agency: U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Office of Orphan Products Development (OOPD)

• Activity code: R01 Research Project Grant

• Assistance Listing Number: 93.103

• Clinical trial status: Required. FDA will only accept applications proposing clinical trials.

• Award ceiling, standard: $650,000 total costs per year, years 1 through 4

• Award ceiling with innovative design justification: $900,000 total costs per year, years 1 through 4

• Maximum project period: 4 years

• Maximum possible total award: $3,600,000

• Cost sharing or matching: Not required

• Application types allowed: New, Renewal, Resubmission, Revision

• Next application deadline: October 20, 2026, by 11:59 PM Eastern Time

• Final application deadline: October 19, 2027, by 11:59 PM Eastern Time

• Resubmission-only deadlines: May 18, 2027 and May 16, 2028

• Opportunity expiration date: May 31, 2028

• Late applications: Not accepted under any circumstances

• Appeals of review outcome: Not accepted

• Foreign organizations: Eligible

Why Startups and Small Companies Should Pay Attention

The R01 label makes founders assume this is an academic-only program. It is not, and the award history proves it.

Under the immediately preceding version of this opportunity, RFA-FD-23-001, FDA funded roughly twenty distinct clinical trial projects. Four of those projects went to for-profit companies rather than universities or hospitals. Based on NIH RePORTER records, those company awards include:

• Ophirex, Inc. (California). Development of intravenous varespladib, a phospholipase A2 inhibitor, for snakebite envenoming. Approximately $2.89 million in cumulative reported funding across fiscal years 2023 through 2025.

• Extend Biosciences, Inc. (Massachusetts). A Phase 2 study of EXT608 in adults with hypoparathyroidism, conducted under IND 146180. Approximately $1.8 million in cumulative reported funding, with annual budgets of roughly $899,800, effectively at the top of the funding ceiling.

• Palvella Therapeutics, Inc. (Pennsylvania). SELVA, a multicenter Phase 3 baseline-controlled study of PTX-022 in microcystic lymphatic malformations. Approximately $1.13 million in cumulative reported funding across fiscal years 2024 and 2025.

• Targeted Therapy Technologies, LLC (New Jersey). A Phase II expanded access clinical trial in retinoblastoma. $1.3 million in cumulative reported funding across fiscal years 2024 and 2026.

Together, those four companies pulled in roughly $7.1 million from a single issue of this opportunity. That is close to one in five funded projects going to industry.

This is not new behavior at OOPD either. Under earlier issues of the same program, DNAtrix, Inc. won multi-year support for a Phase 2a study of DNX-2401 in glioblastoma, and Fibrocell Technologies, Inc. won multi-year support for a Phase 1/2 study of FCX-007 in recessive dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa. Companies have been winning orphan products clinical trials grants for a decade.

Three additional reasons this program fits a clinical-stage company unusually well:

1. None of the SBIR eligibility constraints apply. There is no 500-employee size standard, no requirement that the principal investigator be primarily employed by your company, no 51 percent United States ownership test, and no Phase I before Phase II sequencing. If your company can run the trial, you can apply.

2. Indirect costs are available even without a negotiated rate. If your organization has never established a federal indirect cost rate, FDA allows a de minimis rate of 10 percent of modified total direct costs. Most early-stage companies have no negotiated rate, and most assume that means zero overhead recovery.

3. The award is a regulatory asset, not just cash. OOPD holds regulatory milestone meetings with awardees and monitors progress toward approval. An FDA office is actively invested in your product reaching the market.

What FDA Is Actually Looking For

The purpose of RFA-FD-25-020 is to fund clinical trials that evaluate safety and efficacy in support of a new indication or a change in labeling for a product treating a rare disease or condition. That phrase is the center of gravity of the entire program. FDA is not funding discovery science, target validation, mechanism studies, or device engineering. FDA is funding the human trial data that moves a product closer to an approved label.

The problem FDA is trying to solve

There are more than 10,000 known rare diseases affecting roughly 30 million Americans, and only a few hundred of those diseases have approved treatments. The Orphan Products Grants Program has funded clinical trial research since 1983, and more than 80 of the studies it has funded have gone on to facilitate marketing approval of a rare disease product. That is the outcome FDA is buying with this money.

What is in scope

• Clinical trials in any phase of development, meaning Phase 1, Phase 2, and Phase 3 are all eligible

• Drugs, biologics, medical devices, and medical foods

• Studies of already approved products being evaluated for a new orphan indication

• Studies assessing multiple rare diseases at once, provided prevalence data is supplied for each disease

• Diagnostics and vaccines, but only where the United States population receiving them is fewer than 200,000 people per year

What FDA specifically rewards

Read the announcement closely and four preferences show up over and over. Applications that hit these read as responsive. Applications that ignore them read as academic proposals that wandered into the wrong program.

1. Efficient use of existing infrastructure. FDA wants you to plug into clinical trial networks, data standardization platforms, patient registries, electronic medical records, and CTSAs rather than building everything from scratch. Show that you are not reinventing infrastructure that already exists.

2. Genuine collaboration across stakeholders. FDA repeatedly names the combination of industry, academia, and patient organizations. A company applicant partnered with academic trial sites and a disease foundation is the archetype this program was written for.

3. Early and ongoing patient engagement. This is a scored review criterion in its own right, not a box to check. FDA wants documented evidence that patients and caregivers shaped the protocol design, the data elements, the feasibility assessment, and the data sharing approach. You also need to show how you reduced patient and caregiver burden, including impact on daily living. Letters from patients, caregivers, or patient organizations describing that engagement are required.

4. Innovative and efficient trial designs. This is where the extra $250,000 per year lives. FDA will consider additional funding for applications proposing seamless or adaptive designs that compress trial phases into one continuous trial, basket trials, umbrella trials, or platform trials that test multiple drugs or multiple diseases on common infrastructure. FDA will also consider it for innovative use of data modeling and simulation to study safety and efficacy. FDA strongly recommends engaging a review division about these approaches before you submit, through a preIND meeting, an INTERACT meeting, or another mechanism.

The rare disease definition you must document

FDA considers a product potentially eligible if it is indicated for a disease or condition with a prevalence of fewer than 200,000 people in the United States. For acute diseases lasting less than one year, the annual incidence must be fewer than 200,000 per year. You must document this in a dedicated subsection of your Rationale, using the exact heading "Rare Disease Population/Prevalence," with prevalence calculations and citations.

Orphan subsets of a non-rare disease can qualify, but only if you can explain, based on a characteristic of the product such as mechanism of action, toxicity profile, or prior clinical experience, why the product would be limited to that subset. An orphan subset argument cannot be based on unmet need alone or on how you would prefer to study or market the product. If you already hold OOPD orphan drug designation for the product and disease, include the designation number and date.

Funding Allowance in Detail

Annual budget caps

• Year 1: $650,000 total costs

• Year 2: $650,000 total costs

• Year 3: $650,000 total costs

• Year 4: $650,000 total costs

• Standard four-year maximum: $2,600,000 total costs

These are total costs, meaning direct plus indirect combined. This is the single most misread line in the announcement. Applicants who budget $650,000 in direct costs and then add overhead on top are over budget before review begins.

The innovation supplement

Applications proposing qualifying innovative and efficient trial approaches may request up to an additional $250,000 in total costs per year, raising the ceiling to $900,000 total costs per year for up to four years, or $3,600,000 across the full project period.

To access it you must submit a clear description and justification, limited to three pages, showing how you meet the innovative design requirements. That justification goes in the appendix, and the request must also be reflected in the budget request. FDA reviews the additional funding annually. Applications that request the supplement without meeting the requirements may be asked to reduce their budget.

Indirect costs

• If you request indirect costs, you must attach a copy of your most recent federal indirect cost rate or F&A agreement to the Research and Related Other Project Information component as line 12, Other Attachments.

• If you have never established an indirect cost rate and have no negotiated federal agreement, a de minimis rate of 10 percent of modified total direct costs is allowed. Modified total direct costs include direct salaries and wages, applicable fringe, materials and supplies, services, travel, and the first $25,000 of each subaward. It excludes equipment, capital expenditures, patient care charges, rental costs, tuition remission, scholarships, participant support costs, and any portion of a subaward above $25,000.

• Foreign and international organizations are funded at a fixed 8 percent of modified total direct costs.

Other budget rules

• Cost sharing is not required.

• Applications requesting multiple years must submit a separate detailed budget and narrative justification for each year.

• You must disclose other funds contributed to the study by any source, including your own company, both before and during the FDA funding period. Provide amounts, sources, and whether the funds are secured. Keep this separate from the FDA request justification.

• No award funds may pay any individual at a salary rate above Executive Level II of the Federal Executive Pay Scale.

• Awards provide one year of support with three additional recommended years contingent on annual appropriations, availability of funds, and satisfactory performance. Continuation also depends on enrollment progress, adequate product supply, and compliance with IND or IDE regulatory requirements.

Timeline and Key Dates

Recurring annual cycle

• Optional Letter of Intent: September 21, 2026, then September 20, 2027

• New application due dates: October 20, 2026, then October 19, 2027, both by 11:59 PM Eastern Time

• Resubmission-only due dates: May 18, 2027, then May 16, 2028

• Scientific merit review, new applications: February and March of 2027 and 2028

• Scientific merit review, resubmissions: June of 2027 and 2028

• Earliest project start date: July 2026 for the first cycle, with later cycles following the same pattern

• Opportunity expiration: May 31, 2028

The deadline before the deadline

The date that actually controls your timeline is not the application due date. It is the IND or IDE submission date.

Your protocol and all other required regulatory documents must be submitted to the applicable FDA IND or IDE review division a minimum of 30 days before the grant application deadline. For the October 20, 2026 cycle, that means the protocol needs to be with the review division on or before September 20, 2026.

The IND must be active, meaning not on clinical hold and not exempted, or the IDE must be approved, for your grant application to qualify for review. Miss this and the application is non-responsive regardless of scientific merit.

A realistic backward-planning schedule for an October cycle

• 6 to 8 months out: Request a preIND or INTERACT meeting if you plan to propose an innovative trial design, or if your regulatory path is unsettled.

• 4 to 6 months out: Confirm SAM.gov, UEI, eRA Commons, and Grants.gov registrations. Registration can take six weeks or longer, and failure to register in time is not an accepted excuse for late submission. Principal investigator eRA Commons accounts alone can take two weeks.

• 3 to 4 months out: Finalize the protocol, lock clinical sites, and begin collecting the three required categories of letters of support.

• 30 days plus before the deadline: Submit the final protocol to your IND or IDE. The version you submit to FDA in the grant application must be the same version submitted to the IND or IDE.

• 3 to 4 weeks out: Complete the Research Strategy, the innovation supplement justification if applicable, and the Data Management and Sharing Plan.

• 1 week out: Submit. Grants.gov and eRA Commons both run error checks, and any errors must be corrected and a changed or corrected application submitted before the deadline. A corrected application filed after the deadline is late, and late applications are not accepted.

Registration checklist

• System for Award Management (SAM) registration, active and renewed at least annually, which generates your Unique Entity Identifier and a CAGE code. Foreign organizations need an NCAGE code instead.

• eRA Commons accounts with at least one Signing Official and at least one Program Director or Principal Investigator. If the same person is both PI and Signing Official, they need two distinct accounts.

• Grants.gov registration, which requires active SAM registration first.

Who Is Eligible

Eligible organizations include:

• Public, state controlled, and private institutions of higher education

• Nonprofits with and without 501(c)(3) status

• Small businesses

• For-profit organizations other than small businesses

• State, county, city, township, and special district governments

• Federally recognized and non-federally recognized tribal governments and Native American tribal organizations

• Federal governments and United States territories or possessions

• Independent school districts, public housing authorities, faith-based and community-based organizations, and regional organizations

• Non-domestic, non-United States entities, and non-domestic components of United States organizations

Principal investigator requirements:

• Any individual with the skills, knowledge, and resources to carry out the research may serve as PD/PI.

• FDA expects an established investigator in the relevant scientific area who can provide both administrative and scientific leadership.

• Every PD/PI must hold an eRA Commons account, and the Commons ID must appear in the Credential field of the Senior/Key Person Profile. Omitting it causes the application to be rejected.

• Multiple PDs/PIs are allowed. One must be designated the Contact PI in item 14 of the SF424 (R&R). Multi-PI applications must include a Multiple PD/PI Leadership Plan covering governance, communication, decision-making on scientific direction, and conflict resolution.

• With multiple institutions, one must be the prime and all others must be funded through subcontracts, with their budgets attached to the Research and Related Subaward Budget Attachment form.

You may submit more than one application, provided each is scientifically distinct. FDA will not accept duplicate or highly overlapping applications under review at the same time.

Application Structure and Required Content

Page limits

FDA does not follow NIH page limitation guidelines or NIH review criteria. For this NOFO, the Research Strategy is limited to 12 pages. A resubmission adds a one-page Introduction addressing the prior Summary Statement.

Required Research Strategy sections

Your Research Strategy must contain these five sections, in this order, because they map directly onto the scored review criteria:

1. Rationale

2. Study Design including Data Quality and Interpretability

3. Inclusion of Patient Input

4. Investigator(s), Infrastructure, and Financial Resources

5. Ability to Advance the Current Field

Required subsections with mandated headings

Three subsections must appear under specific headings. Reviewers look for these headings literally.

• Under Rationale: "Rare Disease Population/Prevalence", documenting that the United States prevalence or incidence meets the rare disease threshold, with calculations and citations.

• Under Rationale: "Support of Product Development", explaining how the study will help support product approval or supply essential data for product development. If you propose multiple products or multiple diseases, describe how you intend to proceed with development, potentially across multiple sponsors.

• Under Study Design: "Study Monitoring Plan", describing your monitoring approach, whether a Data and Safety Monitoring Board, a Study Monitoring Committee, or an Independent Medical Monitor. Name the parties responsible, what will be monitored, the frequency, and the individual and study stopping guidelines.

Required letters of support

Letters of support do not go in the Research Strategy. They are uploaded to line 9 of the PHS 398 Research Plan form. Three categories are required:

1. Study sites. Leaders of the clinical research institutions conducting the study describe site support, resources, study infrastructure, and an estimate of how many patients with the target disease would be eligible.

2. Product availability. Evidence that the product is available to you in the form and quantity the trial needs. A current supplier letter is acceptable. If supply negotiations are underway but not final, submit a letter saying so. Verification of adequate supply is required before an award is made.

3. Patient engagement. Current letters from patients, caregivers, or patient organizations describing early and ongoing engagement in trial design.

Required appendices

• The full final protocol, specifically the version submitted to the IND or IDE

• Informed consent forms, assent forms, and any other information given to subjects, compliant with 21 CFR 50.25

• The innovative and efficient trial approach justification, limited to three pages, if you are requesting additional funding

• For resubmissions, the previous OOPD Summary Statement, with an optional point-by-point rebuttal

Do not use the appendix to get around page limits.

Other required elements

• A Data Management and Sharing Plan is required for all applications regardless of direct cost level, attached in the Other Plan(s) slot.

• At least one human subjects study record using the PHS Human Subjects and Clinical Trials Information form.

• The IND or IDE number and the date the final protocol version was submitted must appear with the project title on the face page of the application.

• If the IND or IDE sponsor is not the listed principal investigator, a letter from the sponsor permitting access to the IND or IDE must be submitted both in the IND or IDE and in the grant application.

How Applications Are Reviewed

Review happens in two stages.

Stage one, responsiveness screening. FDA grants management and program staff review every application against nine program responsiveness criteria. Applications found non-responsive receive notice that they will not be reviewed at all. The criteria include proposing a clinical trial that provides safety or efficacy data for a rare disease, using the generic name of the product, requesting no more than four years, documenting rare disease prevalence, explaining how the trial supports a new indication or labeling change, meeting the IND and IDE requirements under 21 CFR 312 for drugs and biologics or 21 CFR 812 for devices, providing the required appendices and letters, and complying with page and formatting limits.

Only medical foods that do not require premarket approval and devices classified as non-significant risk are exempt from the IND and IDE requirement. Non-significant risk device applicants must include a letter from the FDA Center for Devices and Radiological Health confirming the classification.

Stage two, objective review. Responsive applications go to an FDA Objective Review Committee of subject matter experts, which assigns an overall impact score reflecting the likelihood the project will exert a sustained and powerful influence on the field. FDA experts may be consulted on whether the study will generate data that could contribute to product approval. Funding decisions are made by the Commissioner of Food and Drugs or a designee, based on scientific and technical merit, availability of funds, and relevance to program priorities.

Every application receives a written critique. Appeals of objective review are not accepted for this NOFO.

Note that reviewers are told an application does not need to be strong in every category, and that a project which is not innovative in itself may still be essential to advance a field. The relative importance of strengths and weaknesses matters more than the count.

Additional items reviewers assess without separate scores

• Study timeline, including start-up activities, enrollment rate, follow-up, use of existing resources for efficiency, and contingency plans for enrollment shortfalls

• Protections for human subjects, across risk, adequacy of protection, potential benefits, importance of knowledge gained, and data and safety monitoring

• Biohazards

• Resource sharing plans

• Authentication of key biological and chemical resources

• Whether the budget and requested period of support are fully justified and reasonable

Common Reasons Good Science Loses This Grant

• The protocol was not submitted to the IND or IDE division at least 30 days before the deadline, or the IND is on clinical hold or exempted.

• The version of the protocol in the grant application does not match the version submitted to the IND or IDE.

• Budget built as $650,000 in direct costs, with indirect costs stacked on top, blowing the total cost cap.

• Prevalence documented in prose without the mandated "Rare Disease Population/Prevalence" heading, or without calculations and citations.

• Patient engagement described as an intention rather than evidenced with letters from patients, caregivers, or patient organizations.

• No letter confirming product availability in the form and quantity the trial requires.

• The innovation supplement requested without a three-page appendix justification meeting the stated design requirements.

• SAM, eRA Commons, or Grants.gov registration incomplete at the deadline, which is never an accepted reason for a late submission.

• Missing eRA Commons ID in the Credential field of the Senior/Key Person Profile, which causes outright rejection.

• Submitting close to the deadline, hitting Grants.gov or eRA Commons errors, and correcting them after 11:59 PM Eastern. Late is late.

Frequently Asked Questions

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What is RFA-FD-25-020?

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RFA-FD-25-020 is a Notice of Funding Opportunity from the FDA Office of Orphan Products Development that funds clinical trials of orphan products in support of a new indication or a change in labeling for a rare disease or condition. It is a reissue of RFA-FD-23-001 and uses the R01 activity code.

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How much money can I get from RFA-FD-25-020?

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Up to $650,000 in total costs per year for up to four years, which is $2.6 million maximum. If you propose a qualifying innovative or efficient trial design and justify it in a three-page appendix, you may request up to an additional $250,000 per year, raising the ceiling to $900,000 per year and $3.6 million across four years. All figures are total costs, meaning direct plus indirect combined.

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When are RFA-FD-25-020 applications due?

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New applications are due October 20, 2026 and October 19, 2027, both by 11:59 PM Eastern Time. Resubmission-only deadlines are May 18, 2027 and May 16, 2028. Optional letters of intent are requested by September 21, 2026 and September 20, 2027. The opportunity expires May 31, 2028. Late applications are not accepted.

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Can a small business or startup apply for RFA-FD-25-020?

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Yes. Small businesses and for-profit organizations are explicitly listed as eligible applicants. Under the previous issue of this opportunity, RFA-FD-23-001, roughly one in five funded projects went to for-profit companies, including Ophirex, Extend Biosciences, Palvella Therapeutics, and Targeted Therapy Technologies. Earlier issues funded companies including DNAtrix and Fibrocell Technologies.

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Is RFA-FD-25-020 an SBIR grant?

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No. This is an R01 research project grant, not an SBIR or STTR award. That means none of the SBIR eligibility restrictions apply. There is no small business size standard, no requirement that the principal investigator be primarily employed by the applicant company, no United States ownership percentage test, and no Phase I prerequisite. Companies of any size may apply.

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Do I need an active IND or IDE to apply?

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In almost all cases, yes. The protocol and all other required documents must be submitted to the applicable FDA IND or IDE review division at least 30 days before the grant application deadline. The IND must be active, meaning not on clinical hold and not exempted, or the IDE must be approved, for the application to qualify for review. The only exceptions are medical foods that do not require premarket approval and medical devices classified as non-significant risk, which need a letter from the Center for Devices and Radiological Health confirming the classification.

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What counts as a rare disease for this grant?

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For chronic diseases, a prevalence of fewer than 200,000 people in the United States. For acute diseases lasting less than one year, an annual incidence of fewer than 200,000 per year. Diagnostics and vaccines qualify only if the United States population receiving them is fewer than 200,000 people per year. Orphan subsets of non-rare diseases may qualify if a product characteristic such as mechanism of action or toxicity profile justifies limiting use to that subset.

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Which clinical trial phases are eligible?

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All of them. RFA-FD-25-020 supports clinical trials in Phase 1, Phase 2, and Phase 3 of product development, as long as the trial evaluates safety or efficacy in support of a new indication or a change in labeling.

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What kinds of products are eligible?

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Drugs, biologics, medical devices, and medical foods indicated for rare diseases or conditions. Already approved products being studied for a new orphan indication are eligible. Diagnostics and vaccines are eligible under the population limits described above.

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What are the innovative trial designs that unlock extra funding?

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Seamless and adaptive designs that compress trial phases into one continuous trial, plus basket, umbrella, and platform trials that test multiple drugs or multiple diseases on shared infrastructure. Innovative use of data simulation and modeling to study safety and efficacy also qualifies. FDA strongly recommends discussing these approaches with the relevant review division before applying, through a preIND or INTERACT meeting.

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Is cost sharing or matching required?

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No. RFA-FD-25-020 does not require cost sharing. You must still disclose other funds contributed to the study from any source, including your own company, with amounts, sources, and whether the funds are secured.

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Can I get indirect costs if my company has no negotiated federal rate?

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Yes. If your organization has never established an indirect cost rate and has no negotiated federal agreement, FDA allows a de minimis rate of 10 percent of modified total direct costs. If you do have a negotiated rate, attach the agreement to the Research and Related Other Project Information component as line 12, Other Attachments. Foreign organizations are funded at a fixed 8 percent.

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How long is the Research Strategy?

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Twelve pages for this NOFO. FDA does not follow NIH page limitation guidelines. Resubmissions add a one-page Introduction addressing the prior Summary Statement.

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Can foreign organizations apply?

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Yes. Non-domestic, non-United States entities are eligible, as are non-domestic components of United States organizations. Foreign components are allowed. Indirect costs for foreign and international organizations are capped at 8 percent of modified total direct costs.

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Can I submit more than one application?

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Yes, provided each application is scientifically distinct. FDA will not accept duplicate or highly overlapping applications under review at the same time, and will not accept a new application submitted before the summary statement issues from an overlapping prior application.

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Can I appeal if my application is not funded?

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No. Appeals of objective review are not accepted for applications submitted under this NOFO. The decision not to award, or to award at a particular funding level, is discretionary and not subject to appeal. You may, however, submit a resubmission application at a resubmission-only deadline, provided your prior application received a numeric score and does not require an IND protocol amendment before resubmission.

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Is this funding dilutive?

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No. This is a federal grant, not an investment. You give up no equity, no board seats, and no intellectual property rights. It is non-dilutive capital that also puts an FDA office in the position of tracking your product toward approval.

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How is FDA review different from NIH review?

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FDA uses its own Objective Review Process rather than NIH peer review, applies its own page limits rather than NIH page limitation guidelines, and applies its own review criteria. Applications are still submitted through Grants.gov and tracked in eRA Commons, and FDA still applies HHS grants policy, which is why the announcement reads like an NIH opportunity in places. When FDA program-specific instructions conflict with the general application guide, follow the FDA instructions.

‍ ‍

Who do I contact at FDA about this opportunity?

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Scientific and programmatic questions go to Katherine Needleman, Director of the Orphan Products Grants Program at OOPD, at katherine.needleman@fda.hhs.gov or 301-796-8660. Letters of intent go to OOPD_CTGrants@fda.hhs.gov. Peer review and grants management questions go to Patrick Johnson at the FDA Office of Acquisitions and Grants Services, at Patrick.Johnson@fda.hhs.gov. FDA encourages applicants to resolve responsiveness questions before submitting.

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What To Do Next

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If you have a rare disease product with a protocol at or near IND or IDE stage, the October cycle is winnable and the competition is smaller than founders assume. The gating item is regulatory, not scientific: the protocol has to be with the FDA review division 30 days before the application deadline.

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Where most companies lose this grant is not the science. It is the responsiveness screen, the total cost math, the patient engagement evidence, and the letters of support. Those are all solvable with enough runway.

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BW&CO helps deep tech, biotech, and medtech companies win non-dilutive federal funding, with more than $350 million in funding secured for clients to date. If you are evaluating RFA-FD-25-020, we can assess fit against your regulatory timeline and build the application strategy around it.

NIH Blueprint MedTech Translator (PAR-25-383): The Complete Startup Guide to the UG3/UH3 Medical Device Funding Opportunity

What is the NIH Blueprint MedTech Translator program?

The NIH Blueprint MedTech Translator (PAR-25-383) is a milestone-driven UG3/UH3 cooperative agreement that funds medical device companies and academic innovators to take a novel device from late preclinical development through FDA regulatory clearance to conduct a clinical study, and then through that first clinical study in humans. It is one of the few federal programs that pays for the expensive, unglamorous middle of device development: GLP large animal safety testing, design verification and validation, biocompatibility, cybersecurity, quality systems, IDE preparation, and the first-in-human trial itself.

Two things make it unusual. First, application budgets are not capped. Second, NIH pays a network of contract research organizations and expert consultants directly, outside your budget, so a startup gets prototyping, bench testing, animal studies, regulatory consulting, reimbursement strategy, IP counsel, and clinical trial support at no cost to the award.

The funding is non-dilutive. You keep your equity and you keep your intellectual property.

Next application deadline: September 28, 2026. Subsequent deadlines run through January 28, 2028.

Blueprint MedTech Translator at a glance

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Here are the core facts a founder needs before deciding whether to pursue this opportunity.

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• Funding Opportunity Number: PAR-25-383

• Title: Blueprint MedTech Translator (UG3/UH3, Clinical Trial Optional)

• Agency: National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services

• Activity code: UG3/UH3 Exploratory/Developmental Phased Award Cooperative Agreement

• Announcement type: Reissue of PAR-21-315

• Posted: June 17, 2025

• Expiration: January 29, 2028

• Award budget: not limited, but must reflect the actual needs of the project

• Cost sharing: not required

• Project period: UG3 phase up to four years, UH3 phase up to four years, five years total maximum

• Application types allowed: New, Resubmission, Revision

• Clinical trial: Optional at the UG3 stage, required in the UH3 stage

• Letter of intent: encouraged, not required

• Assistance Listing Numbers: 93.853, 93.372, 93.213, 93.279, 93.866, 93.273, 93.286, 93.242, 93.865, 93.121, 93.867

• Program email: Blueprint-MedTech@nih.gov

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Which NIH Institutes and Centers participate in Blueprint MedTech?

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Ten Institutes and Centers participate, and your device must address a disease or disorder within the mission of at least one of them. The Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research may co-fund awards.

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• Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative

  • There is a need to help transition BRAIN Initiative-relevant technologies from early device development to first-in-human studies. Projects that fit the following categories can be submitted through the Blueprint MedTech Program. BRAIN will support the following efforts coming into the BP MedTech UG3/UH3 funding opportunity:

  • Projects developing novel invasive neurostimulation devices for the human central nervous system (CNS).

  • Projects developing novel invasive brain recording devices for the human CNS.

  • Projects developing novel non-invasive brain stimulation devices for the human CNS. These devices should aim to achieve brain stimulation resolution of sub-millimeter at the cortical surface and depth. These approaches may incorporate electromagnetic, mechanical, or combination biological and device means (e.g., optogenetics).

• National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research (NCMRR)

  • The National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research within NICHD supports assistive and rehabilitation technology to improve the function of people with physical disabilities. NICHD will only accept applications related to the mission of the National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research.

• Helping to End Addiction Long-term (HEAL) Initiative

  • Through Notice of Special Interest NOT-NS-24-075, the NIH HEAL Initiative encourages the development and translation of novel neurotechnologies, funded through the Helping to End Addiction Long-term (HEAL) Initiative and overseen by the NIH Blueprint MedTech program. Academic institutions and Small Business Concerns (SBCs) are encouraged to submit grant applications that propose non-clinical development and validation activities for subsequent clinical feasibility studies of medical devices for the diagnosis and treatment of pain and opioid use disorder (OUD). Applications supporting the development and translation of groundbreaking neurotechnologies that fit within the mission of the HEAL Initiative are encouraged.

• National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH)

  • The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) supports the development and validation of technologies that can facilitate the integration of complementary and integrative health approaches to enhance diagnosis, prevention, or treatment of diseases and/or associated symptoms, or promotion of well-being and whole person health relevant to the nervous and neuromuscular systems. In addition, NCCIH supports the integration of technologies with multisystem studies to understand the connections and interactions across systems involving the brain and the rest of the nervous system such as interoception, and/or the impact of multi-component interventions on multisystem connections and interactions in pre-clinical models or human subjects. NCCIH will not support clinical efficacy studies or pivotal trials of an intervention.

  • Complementary health approaches include a broad range of practices and interventions that are not typically part of conventional medical care. They can be classified by their primary therapeutic input, including nutritional (e.g., special diets, dietary supplements, herbs, probiotics, and microbial-based therapies), psychological (e.g., meditation, hypnosis, music-based interventions, relaxation therapies), physical (e.g., acupuncture, massage, chiropractic manipulation, other force-based manipulations, or devices related to these approaches), or a combination of psychological and physical (e.g., yoga, tai chi, dance therapies, some forms of art therapy such as music-based interventions).

• National Eye Institute (NEI)

  • The National Eye Institute is requesting applications for the development of FDA Class III medical devices, as well as invasive ocular implants and prosthetics (retinal or cortical) that can stimulate retinal or cortical neurons to produce visual percepts. NEI is not interested in projects focused on developing diagnostic/imaging devices or assistive devices through this program.

• National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB)

  • The mission of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) is to transform, through technology development, our understanding of disease and its prevention, detection, diagnosis, and treatment. NIBIB may support the development of broadly applicable products, where the disease or organ being targeted is used as an initial model and could be adapted to other indications in the future. Before contacting NIBIB, applicants should first discuss the initial target with the Institute and/or Center on this page that is most relevant to the disease(s) being addressed by the proposed product.

• National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR)

  • Development of technologies for oral somatosensory or autonomic nerve stimulation to enable diagnosis and/or treatment of motor and sensory conditions, such as bruxism, sleep apnea, temporomandibular/facial pain, swallowing reflex, salivary gland production, and other dental, oral, and craniofacial related conditions and disorders related to the nervous system. These technologies can include the integration of intra- and extra-oral sensors and relevant treatment delivery mechanisms controlled by software systems that allow capture, analysis and display of target biosignatures including but not limited to neural activity.

  • Biofeedback & multimodal neurofeedback technologies for treatment of facial nerve disorders, as well as neurological (e.g., trigeminal neuralgia, peripheral neuropathy associated with Sjogren’s syndrome, burning mouth syndrome) and non-neurological (e.g., vascular/muscular, immune) facial pain. These technologies can include wearable and embeddable devices as well as virtual or augmented reality technology to address acute and chronic conditions.

  • Development, validation and testing of novel technologies to promote prevention and treatment of orofacial and craniofacial nerve injuries, including nerve regeneration.

  • Development, validation and testing of technologies that improve the accuracy and validity of dental, oral or craniofacial clinical pain measurements.

• National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)

  • NIMH is specifically interested in novel brain stimulation/modulation technologies (invasive or noninvasive) for use in the treatment of psychiatric disorders, or in targeting specific domains of clinical functioning across psychiatric disorders, when appropriate (see RDOC). Devices capable of both recording and stimulating neural activity, with the ability for closed-loop control are also of interest (including synchronizing dense behavioral quantification with neural data); these devices should be able to demonstrate clear capability to record oscillations of interest to mental health applications. Devices can target specific age ranges, including vulnerable populations (pediatric, geriatric). Note: Animal studies to assess “efficacy” must follow NIMH criteria. Please contact NIMH staff above to ensure your project fits NIMH priorities, prior to application submission.

• Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR)

• National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS)

• National Institute on Aging (NIA)

  • NIA, as the primary federal agency for aging and Alzheimer’s Disease and related dementias (AD/ADRD) research, supports the development and application of innovative technology for early diagnosis and treatment of age-related disorders and AD/ADRD.

• National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)

  • NIAAA’s mission is to generate and disseminate fundamental knowledge about the adverse effects of alcohol on health and well-being and to apply that knowledge to improve diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of alcohol-related problems, including alcohol use disorder (AUD), across the life span. NIAAA is interested in wearable devices that can monitor blood alcohol concentration in real time, non-invasive methods for the treatment of fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) in children and adults, and in the treatment of AUD.

• National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)

  • NIDA will support applications aiming to develop novel medical devices intended for use in the diagnosis of, or in the cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of Substance Use Disorder (e.g., Opioid Use Disorder, Stimulant Use Disorder). See the NIDA Mission for additional details.

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Projects may also fall under the NIH BRAIN Initiative (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) or the HEAL Initiative (Helping to End Addiction Long-term). A Notice of Special Interest, NOT-NS-24-075, specifically invites HEAL-aligned diagnostic and therapeutic device applications through this NOFO.

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Each participating Institute publishes its own interest statement with additional requirements, clinical study limitations, and budget guidance. Reading the interest statement for your target Institute before you write anything is not optional in practice. Two applications with identical technology can succeed or fail on Institute fit alone.

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How much funding can a startup receive from Blueprint MedTech Translator?

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There is no published budget cap. NIH states that application budgets are not limited but need to reflect the actual needs of the proposed project, and that applicants should propose a budget that is reasonable and appropriate for completion of the research.

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That freedom comes with four practical rules that shape every Blueprint MedTech budget.

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Rule one: your budget covers only your own work. Application budgets should only cover work performed by the Program Director or Principal Investigator and their staff. NIH pays Blueprint MedTech contractors and consultants directly for their work, so those expenses must not appear in your budget. This is the single most common budgeting error on this NOFO. Startups accustomed to SBIR budgeting will instinctively line-item a CRO for large animal work or a regulatory consultant for the pre-submission, and both belong outside the budget here.

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Rule two: requests of $500,000 or more in direct costs in any single year require advance permission. If you plan to request $500,000 or more in direct costs in any year, excluding consortium facilities and administrative costs, you must contact a Scientific or Research Contact at least six weeks before submitting and follow NIH policy on acceptance for review of applications requesting $500,000 or more. Skipping this step can cost you the cycle.

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Rule three: funding may be throttled to $100,000 until FDA weighs in. Applicants who do not already have sufficiently relevant FDA feedback covering all planned activities will be expected to obtain it as the first milestone of the award. Until FDA feedback is received and is consistent with the likely success of the regulatory path to market and the overall device development plan, funding may be restricted to a maximum of $100,000 in direct costs. If FDA feedback contradicts the plan in the application, program staff will evaluate the concerns and the change of scope required, and any remaining funds from the original award will not be released.

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Rule four: budgets are negotiated, not simply awarded. As a cooperative agreement, milestones and budget are negotiated with NIH program staff before award, and the budget for the UH3 clinical phase is renegotiated at the transition point.

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Because Institute-specific budget expectations vary widely, contacting the program officer at your target Institute is the only reliable way to calibrate the number.

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What free resources does the Blueprint MedTech program provide?

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This is the part founders consistently undervalue. Beyond the cash award, Blueprint MedTech participants get streamlined access to NIH-funded service providers and contract research organizations that NIH pays for directly. The program provides:

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• Design optimization, prototype development, and pilot-scale manufacturing

• Bench and safety testing

• Biocompatibility, sterilization, and large animal testing

• Clinical study advising and clinical trial support, including medical monitoring

• Commercialization planning and business development

• Regulatory, quality system, and reimbursement support

• Legal support and intellectual property protection

• Access to industry expert mentors and meetings with an external oversight committee

• Planning resources for concept development, team building, and needs assessment

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For a seed-stage medtech company, the in-kind value of GLP large animal safety studies, biocompatibility panels, and regulatory consulting can rival or exceed the cash award.

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Applicants are required to submit a Resource Checklist attachment identifying which of these resources they intend to use. NIH encourages a specific statement along these lines: "If selected for funding, we expect that the following resources will be made available to this project by the Blueprint MedTech program. Since the program will provide these resources at no cost, this application does not request any labor or budget associated with these resources."

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What is NIH actually looking for in a Blueprint MedTech application?

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NIH is looking for a device that is nearly finished, aimed at a real clinical gap, backed by real data, and blocked mainly by the cost of regulatory-grade testing and a first clinical study.

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More precisely, the program wants novel medical device technologies that advance patient care toward new or improved therapeutics or diagnostics that are safe and effective. Responsive applications propose devices expected to be regulated by the FDA that present first-of-its-kind technologies, new safety questions, or new regulatory questions. Applications may also refine existing technologies toward a new intended use or use in a novel setting, for example translating a neuromodulation device approved only for healthcare settings into a home-use device.

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Expected regulatory pathway

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Proposed devices and indications will likely follow the De Novo or Premarket Approval (PMA) pathways. Devices that fit an existing 510(k) pathway may still be accepted, but only if the application demonstrates clear clinical and technological innovation beyond the state of the art of existing FDA-cleared predicates. Such devices should reasonably be expected to provide new clinically meaningful diagnostic or therapeutic options, or to improve the benefit-risk profile of a treatment or diagnostic through substantial safety innovations.

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Device maturity requirements

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Devices within scope of this program must meet at least one of three conditions:

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1. The device is very close to the final system and is manufactured using very close to the same manufacturing process as the device that will be marketed or studied in a larger clinical trial after this project, or

2. The device has received Pre-Submission feedback from the FDA, or

3. The device requires early feasibility clinical data to inform the final device design or manufacturing processes.

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Entry criteria

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For entry into the program, projects should have all three of the following:

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• Comprehensive supporting data based on bench, in vitro, and in vivo models representative of the intended patient population and indication

• One or more clinically meaningful device outcome measures identified with input from key stakeholders including clinicians, patients, and caregivers, supported by literature

• A compelling case for a successful IDE submission for a Significant Risk study, or IRB approval for a Non-Significant Risk study, by the end of the UG3 phase

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For novel devices, proof-of-concept data on device function is required, obtained using a prototype close to the final device design anticipated for clinical testing, ideally tested in an in vivo animal model representative of the intended patient population. For first-in-human studies, preliminary human data is not required.

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A note on market size

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NIH explicitly states that the market for these device categories may be small compared with other markets, and that applications should not be penalized for a comparatively smaller market provided the market is sustainable. NIH supports research for both rare and high incidence disorders within its mission. This is a meaningful opening for rare disease device companies that struggle to raise venture capital on total addressable market alone.

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How does the UG3 and UH3 phased structure work?

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Every project must have two phases, and every project starts in the UG3 phase. The UH3 phase is not guaranteed. Transition happens only after NIH administrative review.

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UG3 phase: get to an IDE or IRB approval

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The UG3 phase supports the translational device work needed to obtain an IDE and IRB approval for a Significant Risk clinical study, or IRB approval for a Non-Significant Risk study. Duration depends on project maturity at entry and the specific indication, and ranges from one to four years.

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Activities appropriate to the UG3 phase include:

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• Non-GLP animal studies to develop surgical techniques, optimize therapeutic or diagnostic parameters, and refine device design ahead of GLP testing

• Bench-top and animal testing to demonstrate compliance with FDA Recognized Standards

• GLP-compliant large animal safety testing of an implanted device

• Activities to become current Good Manufacturing Practice (cGMP) compliant

• Activities to bring development under Design Control and Quality Systems

• Usability and acceptability studies

• Device, software, firmware, and cybersecurity design verification and validation

• Development of packaging, connectors, and accessories needed for translation

• Regulatory activities including FDA pre-submission meetings, IDE submission, Humanitarian Device Exemption, Request for Risk Designation, 513(g) submission, and Breakthrough Device Designation

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UH3 phase: run the clinical study

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The UH3 phase supports a clinical study leading to one of three outcomes: a marketing application, if the study is sufficiently powered to demonstrate safety and effectiveness for regulatory approval; a larger clinical study that will lead to a marketing application; or use of the clinical experience to inform device design decisions. The UH3 phase can last up to four years.

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The clinical study must provide information about device function or final design that cannot practically be obtained through additional bench or animal work, because of the novelty of the device or its intended use.

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Activities appropriate to the UH3 phase include:

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• Optimization of device design with respect to human functional anatomy

• Identification of the simplest, most reliable, and most cost-effective device configuration for advanced clinical studies and eventual market approval

• Studies of key physiological variables that may affect device function in humans

• Initial device safety assessments, but only in conjunction with obtaining enabling data about device design or function

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What determines whether you transition from UG3 to UH3?

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Program staff conduct an administrative review, with possible input from independent consultants. The decision rests on:

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• Successful achievement of the defined UG3 milestones

• The competitive landscape

• Programmatic priorities and current portfolio balance

• For Significant Risk studies, documentation of final or conditional IDE approval from FDA

• IRB approvals

• Submission of the final clinical protocol and supporting documents to NIH for administrative review, and NIH notification of approval

• Agreement on updated timeline, milestones, and budget for the clinical study

• Availability of funds

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NIH is direct about the implication: expectations align with industry norms for advancing devices through the development pipeline, and an inherent rate of attrition is possible within this program. Not every UG3 award becomes a UH3 award. Build your company plan accordingly.

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Why milestones decide the outcome of a Blueprint MedTech award

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Blueprint MedTech is a milestone-driven cooperative agreement, which means milestones are not a formality in the application. They are the operating contract for the award.

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Each Specific Aim in the application should have at least one milestone associated with it. Each milestone should tie to tangible deliverables that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. NIH treats milestones as go or no-go decision points where significant uncertainty for the project is resolved. Applicants are advised to include aims, milestones, and deliverables addressing both technical and commercial feasibility.

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Two milestones are effectively mandatory in Year 1:

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• For projects that need non-clinical testing to support an IDE, an FDA pre-submission meeting with NIH program staff in attendance must be a Year 1 milestone. FDA feedback from that meeting must clearly indicate that the proposed non-clinical testing plan is sufficient to support a successful IDE submission by the end of the UG3 phase.

• For projects requiring non-clinical testing to support an IRB Non-Significant Risk designation, preliminary communication with the IRB about what non-clinical testing will be necessary must be a Year 1 milestone.

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After award, NIH program staff evaluate progress toward milestones every year and recommend whether further funds should be released. If a project does not meet its milestones, funding may be discontinued. Continued funding also depends on the overall robustness of the entire data package, overall progress, portfolio balance and program priorities, the competitive landscape, and availability of funds.

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Milestones are negotiated with NIH program staff before award and are written into the Notice of Award. In rare, well-justified cases, future-year milestones may be renegotiated based on data obtained during the previous year.

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Blueprint MedTech Translator deadlines and timeline

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Applications are due by 5:00 PM local time of the applicant organization. When a due date falls on a weekend or federal holiday, the deadline moves automatically to the next business day.

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Upcoming due dates and review cycles

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September 28, 2026 submission. Scientific merit review March 2027. Advisory Council review May 2027. Earliest project start July 2027.

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January 28, 2027 submission. Scientific merit review July 2027. Advisory Council review October 2027. Earliest project start December 2027.

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May 28, 2027 submission. Scientific merit review November 2027. Advisory Council review January 2028. Earliest project start April 2028.

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September 28, 2027 submission. Scientific merit review March 2028. Advisory Council review May 2028. Earliest project start July 2028.

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January 28, 2028 submission. Scientific merit review July 2028. Advisory Council review October 2028. Earliest project start December 2028. This is the final due date before the NOFO expires on January 29, 2028.

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The same dates apply to new, resubmission, and revision applications. There are no AIDS-related deadlines for this opportunity.

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The timeline you should actually plan against

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Count backward from the deadline, not forward from today.

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• Twelve weeks before the due date: contact NIH program staff at your target Institute. NIH states that when possible, applicants should contact program staff at least twelve weeks before a receipt date. Early contact is how you learn whether your indication fits, what the Institute expects on clinical study design, and what budget range is realistic.

• Six weeks before the due date: if you are requesting $500,000 or more in direct costs in any year, this is your hard deadline for contacting a Scientific or Research Contact.

• Six weeks or more before the due date: begin System for Award Management registration if you are not already registered. NIH warns that registration can take six weeks or more, and that failure to complete registrations in advance is not a valid reason for late submission.

• Two weeks before the due date: eRA Commons accounts can take up to two weeks to obtain. Every Program Director or Principal Investigator needs one, and their eRA Commons ID must appear in the Credential field of the Senior/Key Person Profile form.

• Several days before the due date: submit early. Errors found during the Grants.gov and eRA Commons validation process must be corrected and a changed or corrected application resubmitted on or before the due date and time.

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Add roughly nine to ten months from submission to earliest award start. A September 2026 submission that succeeds starts in July 2027.

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Who is eligible to apply for Blueprint MedTech Translator?

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Eligibility is broad, and startups are explicitly welcome. Individuals, institutions, and businesses developing their own devices, or that already have established collaborations with device manufacturers, may apply directly.

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Eligible organizations include:

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• Higher education institutions, both public and private

• Nonprofits with and without 501(c)(3) status

• For-profit organizations, including small businesses

• Local, state, county, city, township, and special district governments

• Federally recognized and other Native American tribal governments and organizations

• Eligible agencies of the federal government

• U.S. territories and possessions

• Independent school districts, public housing authorities, faith-based and community-based organizations, and regional organizations

• Non-domestic (non-U.S.) entities, including foreign organizations and foreign components of U.S. organizations

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Foreign components as defined in the NIH Grants Policy Statement are allowed.

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What this means for a venture-backed startup

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Three points matter for founders comparing this to SBIR and STTR.

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First, this is not an SBIR or STTR program. The SBIR ownership and size restrictions do not apply here, so majority venture-owned and larger private companies that have aged out of SBIR eligibility can still compete.

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Second, cost sharing is not required.

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Third, an organization may submit more than one application as long as each is scientifically distinct. NIH will not accept duplicate or highly overlapping applications under review at the same time.

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Required registrations

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All registrations must be complete before the application is submitted:

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• System for Award Management (SAM), which must be renewed at least annually and which assigns a CAGE code for domestic organizations

• NATO Commercial and Government Entity (NCAGE) code for foreign organizations, in lieu of a CAGE code

• Unique Entity Identifier (UEI), issued through the SAM registration process, which must match the identifier in eRA Commons

• eRA Commons, requiring at least one Signing Official and at least one Program Director or Principal Investigator account. If the PI is also the Signing Official, two distinct accounts are required.

• Grants.gov, which requires an active SAM registration first

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Applications may be submitted through NIH ASSIST, Grants.gov Workspace, or an institutional system-to-system solution.

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What attachments does a Blueprint MedTech application require?

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This NOFO has an unusually heavy set of required attachments with strict page limits. Missing or oversized attachments cause withdrawal without review. Treat this list as a compliance checklist.

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Required attachments

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• Needs Assessment, three pages maximum, filed as "Needs Assessment.pdf"

• IP Strategy, three pages maximum, filed as "IP Strategy.pdf"

• Gantt Chart, one page maximum, filed as "Gantt.pdf"

• Long-term Care Plan for Patients, three pages maximum, filed as "Long-term Care.pdf"

• Resource Checklist, three pages maximum, filed as "Resource Checklist.pdf"

• UG3 Milestone Plan, included in the Research Strategy

• UH3 Milestone Plan, attached at Section 2.7 Study Timeline in the PHS Human Subjects and Clinical Trials Information form

• Team Management Plan, two pages maximum, attached at Section 3.5

• Data Safety and Monitoring Plan, attached at Section 3.3

• Data Management and Sharing Plan, required regardless of direct costs requested

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Optional attachments with enforced page limits

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Exceeding these limits also causes withdrawal.

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• Schematics, two pages maximum, filed as "Schematics.pdf"

• IRB Communications, five pages maximum, filed as "IRB Communications.pdf"

• FDA Communications, ten pages maximum including a one-page summary, submitted only in Section 4.5.a or as post-submission material. Pre-submissions themselves should not be included.

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What goes in the harder attachments

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Needs Assessment. Establish performance requirements with clear, quantifiable metrics. Identify significant issues faced by patients, clinicians, caregivers, and customers. Critically evaluate primary or secondary data used to identify deficiencies in current capabilities. Describe the beneficiaries and how their needs were identified. Distinguish wants from needs. Describe how finite resources will be deployed. Identify human factors and ergonomics incorporated into the design.

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IP Strategy. Describe the IP landscape around your device, including known constraints such as restrictions under transfer or sharing agreements, your own prior filings and publications, and similar patented or marketed technologies. If you are using technology your institution does not own, address anything that could constrain your freedom to operate, and include a letter from the IP owner stating whether they will provide the technology, any limits on studies performed with it, agreement on public disclosure of results including negative results, and whether an agreement is already in place. Give filing dates, patent types, application status, and USPTO links for relevant filings, and describe future filing plans. Academic applicants should prepare this with their technology transfer office.

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Long-term Care Plan for Patients. Describe anticipated care needs of participants after the trial ends that relate to their participation, such as continued device access, device maintenance, and explant. Consider post-trial scenarios including device or trial failure, success, regulatory approval options, and a manufacturer decision to discontinue the product. Then describe the actual plan, which may include explant of indwelling devices, surgical removal of batteries and capping exposed metals from leads and IS-1 connectors, manufacturer-supported device maintenance for responders, or manufacturer support for compassionate use exemption filings. Address post-trial obligations including hardware and software maintenance and device-related medical expenses.

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Team Management Plan. Define team structure and relationships, illustrated with an organizational chart. Describe governance, communication plans, decision processes for scientific direction and intellectual property, and conflict resolution procedures. Address authorship policies and decisions about what to publish, consistent with the interests of commercial partners. The plan must establish and name a Scientific Steering Group of senior and key team members that meets regularly. If organizations are partnering, the Scientific Steering Group must include representatives from each. Technology transfer officials are encouraged to be members.

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Neuroethics section. Within Protection of Human Subjects, describe ethical considerations related to the design and conduct of the study, for example therapeutic misconception where research is ancillary to a clinical procedure or offers no prospect of participant benefit, and the long-term implications of the study, such as psychosocial or legal implications of predictive biomarkers for pre-symptomatic individuals. Reference the Neuroethics Guiding Principles for the NIH BRAIN Initiative.

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Letters of support

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Include letters from consultants, contractors, and collaborators. Academic applicants must include a letter from the technology transfer official managing the project's IP. Multi-institution projects need a letter from each institution clarifying how IP will be shared or managed. Collaborations with private entities need a letter stating whether the entity will provide the device or technology, limits on studies, limits on data sharing, and whether licensing agreements are in place. CRO and CMO letters may summarize test results but should not contain detailed results of all testing, and generally run two pages maximum.

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What makes a Blueprint MedTech application non-responsive?

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Non-responsive applications are withdrawn and never reviewed. There are three categories.

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Activities that make an application non-responsive

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• Animal model development. All in vivo models must be established, characterized, and available to the applicant.

• Projects focused on technologies for augmentation of healthy individuals

• Delayed-onset clinical studies

• Device technologies not regulated by the FDA

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Omissions that make an application non-responsive

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• Specific Aims that do not cover activities for both the UG3 and UH3 phases

• Failure to plan a delayed-start clinical study or trial in the UH3 phase, including all required supporting documentation

• Missing any required attachment listed above

• Missing a UH3 Milestone Plan

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Formatting failures that make an application non-responsive

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• Any required or optional attachment that exceeds its page limit

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Note the distinction NIH draws between delayed onset and delayed start. A delayed-start study is one that can be described in full but will not begin immediately, which is exactly what the UH3 phase requires. A delayed-onset study is one that cannot yet be described, and those are not accepted.

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How is a Blueprint MedTech application reviewed?

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Applications are evaluated for scientific and technical merit by an appropriate Scientific Review Group under NIH peer review policy, using the revised NIH review framework that took effect for due dates on or after January 25, 2025.

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Reviewers consider three factors. Factors 1 and 2 each receive a separate factor score, and all three inform the overall impact score.

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Factor 1: Importance of the Research (Significance and Innovation)

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Reviewers assess whether the work addresses an important gap, solves a critical problem, or creates a valuable conceptual or technical advance, and whether it applies novel concepts, methods, or technologies.

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Specific to this NOFO, reviewers evaluate:

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• Whether there is a significant advantage over all existing clinically available approaches for the same indication, regardless of class, including drugs, biologics, and competing devices

• Whether the device reduces a known serious adverse event, a known device failure mode, or a use-related hazard or error, or improves the safety of another device or intervention

• For devices improving on earlier generations, whether the advantages are justified and whether the changes are likely to succeed where the predecessor did not

• Whether proof-of-concept data for a novel device was obtained with a prototype close to the final design

• Whether the device and its capabilities are described in enough detail to judge appropriateness for the proposed clinical study

• Whether the approach, targets, and patient population are justified

• Whether there are adequate plans to engage FDA early

• Whether the Needs Assessment incorporates input from patients, clinicians, and caregivers on device performance requirements, and identifies beneficiaries and their needs

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Factor 2: Rigor and Feasibility (Approach)

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Reviewers assess whether the work will produce unbiased, reproducible, robust data, whether design and controls are sound, whether sample size is sufficient and justified, and whether the studies can be done within the proposed timeframe.

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Specific to this NOFO, reviewers evaluate:

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• Whether the regulatory plan is reasonable in terms of the path to market and FDA data requirements for the applicable standard, meaning reasonable assurance of safety and effectiveness for PMA or substantial equivalence for 510(k)

• Whether the estimated timeline for clinical adoption reflects feasible benchmarks

• Whether and how key stakeholders will be engaged at each step

• Whether the project plan and timeline make an IDE at the end of the UG3 phase, or IRB approval for a Non-Significant Risk study, likely

• Whether neuroethical concerns are adequately addressed

• Whether any large animal safety study uses GLP and the final device design, or whether a clear reason it is unnecessary is provided, such as an FDA communication

• Whether the Long-term Care Plan anticipates key patient needs, is reasonable, and addresses financial liability for injury, device removal, device revision, and management of indwelling devices

• Whether the Gantt chart provides sufficient detail and demonstrates feasible plans

• Whether milestones are timely, robust, and tied to clear quantitative go or no-go criteria

• Whether milestone timelines are realistic, inclusive of necessary steps, and free of unnecessary ones

• Whether milestones reflect planned regulatory requirements such as FDA pre-submission meetings and IDE submission

• Whether potential challenges and solutions are presented, including strategies for enrollment shortfalls

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Factor 3: Expertise and Resources (Investigators and Environment)

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Reviewers assess investigator background and training, the leadership plan for multiple-PI applications, and institutional resources. Specific to this NOFO, reviewers evaluate whether the selection of Blueprint MedTech resources is adequately justified, whether team governance is appropriate, and whether the Scientific Steering Group members are appropriate and constitute an interdisciplinary team.

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Additional considerations

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Reviewers also consider, without scoring, the IP Strategy attachment, including whether IP landscape issues and barriers are addressed, whether known constraints could impede device development, whether filing plans are well described, and whether IP sharing across multiple institutions is adequately addressed. Human subjects protections, vertebrate animals, biohazards, authentication of key resources, and budget and period of support are also considered.

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After peer review

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Applications may undergo a committee process in which only those with the highest merit, generally the top half under review, are discussed and scored. Recommended applications then receive a second level of review by the appropriate national Advisory Council or Board. Funding decisions weigh scientific and technical merit, availability of funds, and relevance to program priorities.

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What does the cooperative agreement mean for your company?

‍ ‍

A cooperative agreement is not a grant you receive and then execute independently. NIH program staff have substantial programmatic involvement beyond normal stewardship. Founders should understand what they are signing up for.

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What you retain

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• Custody of and all rights to the data and technology developed under the award, subject to government rights of access consistent with HHS, PHS, and NIH policy

• Responsibility for defining objectives and approaches, planning, conducting, analyzing, interpreting, publishing, and sharing results

• The right and encouragement to pursue patent protection

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The program strongly encourages recipients and their collaborators to obtain and retain IP developed around the device during the project period, and to identify and foster relationships with licensing and commercialization partners early.

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What NIH expects from you

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• Developing and proposing rigorous milestones

• Progress reports complete enough to include experimental design, assumptions, results, interpretations, and a conclusion on whether milestones were met. If program staff request raw data, you agree to provide it.

• Participation in virtual progress meetings with NIH staff at least twice a year

• Communicating regulatory meeting dates and agendas to NIH program staff and inviting their participation

• Sharing CRO study reports, meeting minutes and data packages, letters, and other FDA communications, and providing IDE or IND numbers and ClinicalTrials.gov registration numbers

• Providing regulatory and clinical documents required for administrative review

• Verifying the clinical study follows Good Clinical Practices and Institute-specific data and safety monitoring guidelines

• Collaborating and communicating effectively with NIH service contractors

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What NIH does

‍ ‍

NIH program staff provide input on milestones and recommend their finalization, assess progress toward milestones, recommend whether further funds should be released, participate with your team in meetings with regulatory agencies, and may consult independent specialists under confidentiality agreements to protect intellectual property. In rare, well-justified cases, program staff may add critical experiments as additional milestones, sometimes with additional NIH funds.

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A Program Officer handles normal stewardship, but the Associate Division Director overseeing the program makes final decisions on project continuation, a second level of approval designed to mitigate perceived bias. Disagreements can be escalated through other Associate Division Directors to the Institute Director. A formal Dispute Resolution Panel process exists for scientific or programmatic disagreements. Final NIH decisions regarding a discontinuation are not appealable.

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Quality and compliance requirements

‍ ‍

Use of Design Control and Quality Systems processes to the degree specified by FDA is required. Intermediate steps such as design reviews, design verification, design validation, and design transfer should appear in annual milestones where appropriate, along with IDE submission. NIH recognizes the required degree varies substantially by device, and encourages applicants to discuss this with FDA and regulatory consultants before submitting so the extent of the requirement is clearly defined and verifiable in the application.

‍ ‍

Applicants should consider Quality System requirements at the IDE stage when planning device development activities, and should follow Institute-specific guidelines and policies for monitoring clinical research when forming a data and safety monitoring plan.

‍ ‍

How to build a competitive Blueprint MedTech application

‍ ‍

Six moves separate funded applications from withdrawn ones.

‍ ‍

Call the program officer first, not last. NIH says twelve weeks before the deadline. This program is a negotiated partnership, and the negotiation starts before you write. Program staff will tell you whether your indication fits their Institute's mission, what clinical study requirements apply, and what budget is realistic. The Institute contact list is published on the Blueprint MedTech website.

‍ ‍

Get FDA feedback before you submit if you possibly can. Pre-submission feedback is encouraged rather than required, but the alternative is a Year 1 milestone and a possible $100,000 funding restriction until FDA responds. Applications that arrive with approved pre-submission minutes showing FDA agreement on the non-clinical testing plan are substantially stronger and start faster.

‍ ‍

Write your milestones like an operating plan, not a research schedule. Every Specific Aim needs at least one milestone. Every milestone needs quantitative go or no-go criteria. Cover technical, regulatory, and commercial feasibility. These become the terms of your award and the basis of every annual funding decision.

‍ ‍

Build the whole application around one Institute's mission and one indication. Your device may have several uses. The application must focus on a disease or disorder within the mission of a participating Institute, and the target patient population and intended use should drive both device design and the proposed clinical activities.

‍ ‍

Treat the attachment checklist as a go or no-go gate. Five required other attachments, two milestone plans, a team management plan, a DSMP, and a data management and sharing plan, each with page limits that are enforced by withdrawal rather than by a request to fix. Assign an owner and a deadline to each one.

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Budget only your own work, and claim the free resources explicitly. Leave NIH-paid contractors and consultants out of the budget, name the Blueprint MedTech resources you will use in the Resource Checklist, and justify why you are not using the ones you skipped.

Frequently asked questions about the Blueprint MedTech Translator (PAR-25-383)

‍ ‍

What is the deadline for PAR-25-383?

‍ ‍

The next application deadline is September 28, 2026. Additional deadlines follow on January 28, 2027, May 28, 2027, September 28, 2027, and January 28, 2028. All applications are due by 5:00 PM local time of the applicant organization. The NOFO expires January 29, 2028.

‍ ‍

How much money can I request from Blueprint MedTech Translator?

‍ ‍

There is no budget cap. NIH states that application budgets are not limited but must reflect the actual needs of the proposed project. If you request $500,000 or more in direct costs in any single year, you must contact a Scientific or Research Contact at least six weeks before submitting and follow NIH policy on acceptance of applications requesting $500,000 or more.

‍ ‍

Can a startup or small business apply to Blueprint MedTech Translator?

‍ ‍

Yes. For-profit organizations, including small businesses, are explicitly eligible. Individuals, institutions, and businesses developing their own devices, or that already have established collaborations with device manufacturers, are welcome to apply directly. Foreign organizations are also eligible.

‍ ‍

Is Blueprint MedTech an SBIR or STTR program?

‍ ‍

No. Blueprint MedTech Translator is a UG3/UH3 cooperative agreement, not an SBIR or STTR award. SBIR ownership and company size restrictions do not apply, so companies that are majority venture-owned or otherwise ineligible for SBIR can compete here. Note that Blueprint MedTech also offers companion SBIR opportunities, so confirm which mechanism fits your company with program staff.

‍ ‍

Do I need FDA feedback before applying?

‍ ‍

Not strictly, but it matters a great deal. Applicants are encouraged, though not required, to consult FDA through a Pre-Submission meeting. If you do not have sufficiently relevant FDA feedback covering all planned activities at the time of application, obtaining it becomes your first milestone, and funding may be restricted to a maximum of $100,000 in direct costs until FDA feedback consistent with your regulatory path and development plan is received.

‍ ‍

How long does a Blueprint MedTech award last?

‍ ‍

The UG3 phase may run up to four years and the UH3 phase may run up to four years, but the total combined project period may not exceed five years. UG3 duration depends on how mature the project is at entry and on the specific indication, and can be as short as one year.

‍ ‍

Is the UH3 clinical phase guaranteed?

‍ ‍

No. All projects start in the UG3 phase. Only UG3 projects that meet defined criteria are eligible to transition after an NIH administrative review that considers milestone achievement, the competitive landscape, programmatic priorities and portfolio balance, IDE and IRB approvals, the final clinical protocol, agreement on updated timeline and budget, and availability of funds. NIH states plainly that an inherent rate of attrition is possible.

‍ ‍

What is the difference between a Significant Risk and Non-Significant Risk study here?

‍ ‍

A Significant Risk study requires an Investigational Device Exemption from FDA before the clinical study can begin, so the UG3 phase must deliver an IDE. A Non-Significant Risk study does not require an IDE, so the UG3 phase must deliver IRB approval instead. Your milestone plan, regulatory milestones, and non-clinical testing plan differ accordingly.

‍ ‍

What kinds of devices are in scope?

‍ ‍

Devices expected to be regulated by FDA that present first-of-its-kind technology, new safety questions, or new regulatory questions, and that address a disease or disorder within the mission of a participating Institute or Center or the BRAIN or HEAL Initiatives. Devices refining existing technology for a new intended use or a novel setting, such as moving a clinic-only neuromodulation device to home use, are also responsive. Expected pathways are De Novo or PMA, with 510(k) devices accepted only when innovation clearly exceeds the state of the art of existing cleared predicates.

‍ ‍

What will make my application be rejected without review?

‍ ‍

Four activity categories are non-responsive: animal model development, technologies for augmentation of healthy individuals, delayed-onset clinical studies, and device technologies not regulated by FDA. Applications are also withdrawn for missing Specific Aims that cover both phases, missing a planned delayed-start UH3 clinical study, missing any required attachment, missing a UH3 Milestone Plan, or exceeding any attachment page limit.

‍ ‍

Do I have to include a clinical trial?

‍ ‍

The NOFO is Clinical Trial Optional at the application stage, but in practice the structure requires a clinical study in the UH3 phase. Applications must include Specific Aims covering both phases and a delayed-start clinical study or trial planned in the UH3 phase with all required supporting documentation.

‍ ‍

What free services does Blueprint MedTech provide, and do they come out of my budget?

‍ ‍

Blueprint MedTech provides design optimization, prototype development and pilot-scale manufacturing, bench and safety testing, biocompatibility and large animal studies, clinical support, business development, regulatory and quality systems support, legal and IP support, and expert consultants. NIH pays these contractors and consultants directly, so those costs must not be included in your application budget. You identify what you plan to use in the required Resource Checklist attachment.

‍ ‍

Who owns the intellectual property?

‍ ‍

You do. Recipients retain custody of and all rights to data and technology developed under the award, subject to government rights of access consistent with HHS, PHS, and NIH policy. The program strongly encourages recipients and collaborators to obtain and retain IP developed around the device, and expects Principal Investigators to work closely with technology transfer officials on royalty agreements, patent filings, and commercialization plans.

‍ ‍

Is cost sharing required?

‍ ‍

No. This NOFO does not require cost sharing as defined in the NIH Grants Policy Statement.

‍ ‍

Can I submit more than one application?

‍ ‍

Yes, provided each application is scientifically distinct. NIH will not accept duplicate or highly overlapping applications under review at the same time, and will not accept a new application submitted before the summary statement issues from an overlapping application under review.

‍ ‍

Is a letter of intent required?

‍ ‍

No. A letter of intent is not required, is not binding, and does not enter into review, but NIH asks prospective applicants to submit one so staff can estimate review workload. Send it to Blueprint-MedTech@nih.gov with the descriptive title, PI names and contact information, other key personnel, participating institutions, and the funding opportunity number and title.

‍ ‍

How long does it take to get funded?

‍ ‍

Roughly nine to ten months from submission to earliest possible start. A September 28, 2026 submission goes to scientific merit review in March 2027, Advisory Council review in May 2027, and has an earliest start date of July 2027.

‍ ‍

Does a small market hurt my application?

‍ ‍

No. NIH states directly that the market for these device types may be small compared with other markets, that applications should not be penalized for a comparatively smaller market provided the market is sustainable, and that NIH supports research for both rare and high incidence disorders within its mission. For rare and ultra-rare diseases where commercialization is challenging, NIH encourages applicants to discuss alternative strategies with Scientific and Research staff.

‍ ‍

How much NIH involvement should I expect after award?

‍ ‍

Substantial. Expect virtual progress meetings with NIH staff at least twice a year, NIH participation in your FDA meetings, sharing of CRO reports and FDA communications with program staff, annual milestone evaluations that determine whether further funds are released, and the possibility that program staff request raw data. Milestones are negotiated before award and written into the Notice of Award.

‍ ‍

What registrations do I need and how early should I start?

‍ ‍

You need active SAM, UEI, eRA Commons, and Grants.gov registrations, plus an NCAGE code if you are a foreign organization. NIH warns that SAM registration can take six weeks or more and eRA Commons accounts up to two weeks. All registrations must be complete before submission, and incomplete registration is not a valid excuse for a late application.

‍ ‍

Who do I contact at NIH about Blueprint MedTech?

‍ ‍

The program email is Blueprint-MedTech@nih.gov. Institute-specific scientific contacts include Nick Langhals at NINDS, Leonardo Angelone at NIDA, Erin Burke Quinlan at NCCIH, Tony Douglas Gover and Paekgyu Lee at NEI, Elizabeth Powell at NIAAA, Eunyoung Kim at NIMH, Michael Wolfson at NIBIB, and Melissa Ghim at NIDCR. NIH recommends contacting program staff at least twelve weeks before a receipt date.

‍ ‍

Key NIH contacts for PAR-25-383

‍ ‍

Program email for all inquiries and letters of intent: Blueprint-MedTech@nih.gov

‍ ‍

Scientific and research contacts

‍ ‍

• Nick Langhals, PhD, NINDS, 301-496-1779, Blueprint-MedTech@nih.gov

• Leonardo Angelone, PhD, NIDA, Blueprint-MedTech@nih.gov

• Erin Burke Quinlan, PhD, NCCIH, 301-451-0636, erin.quinlan@nih.gov

• Tony Douglas Gover, NEI, 301-529-7370, tony.gover@nih.gov

• Paekgyu Lee, NEI, 301-435-8164, paek.lee@nih.gov

• Elizabeth Powell, PhD, NIAAA, 301-443-0786, elizabeth.powell3@nih.gov

• Eunyoung Kim, PhD, NIMH, 301-496-3513, eunyoung.kim@nih.gov

• Michael Wolfson, NIBIB, 301-451-4778, michael.wolfson@nih.gov

• Melissa M. Ghim, PhD, NIDCR, ghimm@mail.nih.gov

‍ ‍

Application submission support

‍ ‍

• eRA Service Desk, 301-402-7469 or 866-504-9552

• General NIH grants information, GrantsInfo@nih.gov, 301-480-7075

• Grants.gov customer support, 800-518-4726, support@grants.gov

‍ ‍

Is Blueprint MedTech Translator right for your company?

‍ ‍

This program is a strong fit if you have a device that works, data that proves it works, a clear FDA pathway, and a funding gap between your last preclinical result and your first patient. It is a poor fit if your animal model is not yet established, your device is not FDA regulated, your technology targets enhancement of healthy people, or you cannot yet describe the clinical study you intend to run.

‍ ‍

The application is demanding. Between the two milestone plans, five required attachments with hard page limits, a needs assessment grounded in stakeholder input, an IP strategy prepared with counsel, a long-term patient care plan, and a team management plan naming a Scientific Steering Group, this is a substantially heavier lift than a standard R01 or SBIR submission. It also rewards the work: uncapped budgets, free access to CROs and regulatory consultants, and a federal partner with an interest in getting your device to market.

‍ ‍

BW&CO helps deep tech, biotech, and medtech founders win non-dilutive federal funding. We have helped clients secure more than $350 million in funding across NIH, NSF, DoD, NASA, DOE, and ARPA-H. If you are evaluating Blueprint MedTech Translator for the September 28, 2026 deadline or a later cycle, the first step is a mission-fit conversation with the right Institute, and the second is an honest read on whether your data package clears the entry criteria.

NIH Highlighted Topic: Building Health through Multidomain Resilience Research from Molecules to Communities

Highlighted Topic 117 | Participating ICOs: NHLBI, NCCIH, NCI, NIA, NIAAA, NIMHD, OBSSR, ODP, ODS, ORWH, THRO | Posted August 28, 2026 | Expires August 25, 2028 | Apply through the NIH SBIR parent announcement (PA-27-100) or the NIH STTR parent announcement (PA-27-102).

Executive Summary

NIH has designated multidomain resilience research as a formal Highlighted Topic, with eleven Institutes, Centers, and Offices publishing their own areas of interest, spanning cardiopulmonary health, cancer, aging, alcohol use, minority health and health disparities, integrative health, dietary supplements, women's health, autoimmunity, disease prevention, behavioral science, and tribal health.

The framing is a genuine inversion of how most biomedical research is funded. Rather than asking why people get sick, NIH is asking why some people do not get sick despite carrying known risk. NHLBI illustrates it with four cases that make the concept concrete: hypertension without stroke, full recovery after heart valve surgery, preserved lung function despite tobacco exposure, and the interplay of resilience with sickle cell disease exacerbation such as vaso-occlusive crises. Resilience, in NIH's working definition, is a living system's capacity to resist, recover, adapt, or grow from challenges or stressors, tracked over time across interconnected individual, community, and environmental systems.

NIH also says plainly what has been holding the field back: heterogeneous definitions, models, and measures. That diagnosis is the opportunity. The named high-priority research areas are developing and refining resilience measures and metrics, data interoperability, mechanistic understanding of protective and restoring factors distinct from disease-risk reduction, and identifying biomarkers that reflect or predict resilience. Three of those four are measurement and infrastructure problems, which is to say they are product problems.

For a small business, the concentrated openings are validated resilience measurement instruments and digital assessments, biomarker panels that predict recovery capacity rather than disease risk, controlled-perturbation and challenge-recovery testing protocols paired with longitudinal monitoring hardware, multisystem phenotyping analytics, and data interoperability and federated analysis platforms. NIA in particular asks for dynamic resilience measures using controlled perturbations and longitudinal monitoring, plus advanced analytics for multisystem resilience phenotyping, which reads as an instrument-plus-software specification rather than a research question.

There is no dedicated funding and no separate application. A Highlighted Topic is a priority signal, not a Notice of Funding Opportunity. You apply through the standard NIH SBIR or STTR omnibus and compete in the normal pool, and NIH states that applying in a Highlighted Topic area will not affect referral or review. NIMHD states it may dedicate available funds to this topic area and may give special consideration to meritorious applications in it. NCCIH states it may give special consideration. The other participating ICOs make no such statement.

One structural trap to notice immediately. Of the eleven participating ICOs, five do not award grants: OBSSR, ODP, ODS, ORWH, and THRO. Two of those five, ODS and ORWH, published the most commercially concrete interests on the entire page, dietary supplement resilience biomarkers and federated data platforms respectively. Your application still has to land on the mission of one of the six that write checks: NHLBI, NCCIH, NCI, NIA, NIAAA, or NIMHD.

Under the current SBIR parent announcement, standard budget guidelines run up to $323,090 for Phase I and up to $2,153,927 for Phase II, and NIA is approved to exceed both. The next standard receipt dates are September 5, 2026, January 5, 2027, and April 5, 2027, and the topic stays live through August 25, 2028.

A Quick Note on the NIH SBIR and STTR Program

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The NIH, CDC, and FDA SBIR and STTR programs are the largest source of non-dilutive early-stage funding for health, biomedical, and life science technology in the United States. NIH alone sets aside well over a billion dollars a year. Awards are grants, not investments. No equity, no repayment, no board seat.

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The program runs in phases. Phase I funds proof of concept and feasibility. Phase II funds the substantive research and development that turns a validated concept into a product. Fast-Track combines both in one application, and Direct to Phase II lets companies that have already established feasibility skip Phase I. Phase IIB and the Commercialization Readiness Pilot extend funding for late-stage work such as validation, scale-up, and regulatory submissions. Applicants must be for-profit U.S. small businesses with 500 or fewer employees and majority U.S. ownership.

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For the complete breakdown of the NIH SBIR and STTR program, including all budget caps by Institute, clinical trial policies, eligibility mechanics, review criteria, and the full timeline, see our full executive summary here: NIH, CDC and FDA Parent SBIR Grant (PA-27-100).

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Everything below is specific to this Highlighted Topic.

‍ ‍

What Is a Highlighted Topic, and How Is It Different From a Funding Opportunity?

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A Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) is a solicitation. It has an announcement number, its own application package, its own review criteria, and usually its own set-aside funding. You apply to it directly.

‍ ‍

A Highlighted Topic is a published statement of scientific priority maintained centrally by NIH. It has no application package and no guaranteed funding. You cannot apply to it. You apply through a broad opportunity such as the SBIR or STTR parent announcement, and the topic tells you what the participating ICOs want to fund inside their existing budgets.

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NIH is explicit about how this works:

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• Apply through an appropriate parent announcement or other broad NIH opportunity.

• Reach out early to the listed scientific contacts to discuss alignment.

• If an ICO chooses to dedicate funding to a topic, the amount depends on available funds, the number of meritorious applications, and competing priorities.

• Applying in a Highlighted Topic area will not affect NIH referral or review of your application.

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NIH reviews each topic annually for continued alignment and Institutes can post or retire topics at any time, so verify the topic is still live before each cycle you plan to submit in.

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There is no notice number to enter in the Agency Routing Identifier field, unlike the older Notice of Special Interest model. Make the alignment explicit in your cover letter and Specific Aims, and confirm handling with your target Institute's program officer before you submit.

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In this particular topic, the map matters more than usual. Resilience is not a study section. There is no established review culture for it, six different Institutes could plausibly claim the same project, and NIH has openly acknowledged the field lacks harmonized terminology. That combination means the Institute you land at will substantially determine how your application is read.

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What Are They Looking For? A Detailed Overview

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The Stated Purpose

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The topic aims to accelerate rigorous, reproducible, interdisciplinary resilience science to promote health and well-being across the lifespan and across populations. NIH describes resilience mechanisms as operating across scales and domains to maintain health, enabling prevention and recovery from chronic and acute disease despite known risk factors.

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The focus is research on:

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• Protective pathways and their biological mechanisms that maintain physiological function throughout the life course

• Harmonized terminology

• Standardized protocols

• Validated measures and biomarkers

• Implementation science to optimize evidence-based interventions, including lifestyle interventions, across populations

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NIH specifically names children, tribal communities, and groups at risk for health disparities as populations of interest.

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How NIH Defines Resilience

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NIH uses a broad definition: a living system's capacity to resist, recover, adapt, or grow from challenges or stressors, with outcomes tracked over time across interconnected individual, community, and environmental systems. NIH attributes this framing to Brown and colleagues, 2023.

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Those four verbs are not interchangeable and they are worth treating as a menu. Resistance means the stressor lands and nothing breaks. Recovery means function returns to baseline. Adaptation means the system reorganizes to a new functional state. Growth means it ends up better than before. A well-constructed application picks one and measures it, rather than gesturing at resilience generally.

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The Background Problem NIH Wants Solved

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NIH states that resilience spans whole-person systems, integrating molecular, cellular, physiological, and psychological levels within social communities and environmental contexts, and that translating this multiscale, multidomain nature has been limited by heterogeneous definitions, models, and measures.

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The named high-priority research areas follow directly from that:

‍ ‍

• Developing and refining resilience measures and metrics

• Data interoperability

• Advancing mechanistic understanding of protective and restoring factors distinct from disease-risk reduction

• Identifying biomarkers that reflect or predict resilience

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The Structural Requirement That Decides Most Applications

‍ ‍

This is the single most actionable sentence in the topic, and it functions as a checklist. NIH states that aligned applications would:

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1. Define the challenge or stressor

2. Define the system or systems

3. Define the resilience response or outcome

4. Include at least one domain of analysis, preferably across domains, to accelerate translation into implementable prevention, treatment, and recovery strategies

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Applications that skip step one are the most common failure mode in resilience science. Without a specified stressor there is no resilience to measure, only cross-sectional association. If you write to this topic, name the stressor explicitly and early, and design so that it is either naturally occurring and documented or experimentally applied.

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The Distinction That Separates Real Responsiveness From Repackaging

‍ ‍

Note carefully the phrase "distinct from disease-risk reduction." NIH is drawing a line, and reviewers will apply it.

‍ ‍

Lowering someone's blood pressure reduces disease risk. Understanding why a hypertensive person never has a stroke is resilience. Reducing tobacco exposure reduces risk. Understanding why some heavy smokers preserve lung function is resilience. A number of companies will reframe an existing risk-reduction product as resilience-promoting for this cycle. That reframing is visible, and it will be scored accordingly. The test is whether your work explains or enhances maintenance of health in the continued presence of risk rather than removal of the risk.

‍ ‍

A Methodological Signal Worth Reading Twice

‍ ‍

Both NIA and ODS ask for controlled perturbations and challenge-recovery designs with repeated measures. That is a design requirement, not a stylistic preference. A stressor is applied or occurs, and the system is measured before, during, and after. Cross-sectional designs cannot capture resist, recover, adapt, or grow, because all four are trajectories.

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For a company, this is actually favorable. Challenge-recovery designs with longitudinal monitoring are exactly where instrumentation, wearables, remote monitoring, and analytics create value, and they are exactly what a purely observational cohort study cannot deliver.

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Participating Institutes and Centers That Award Grants

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National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI)

‍ ‍

NHLBI is interested in studies that:

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• Use data science and precision health to define individual heart, lung, blood, and sleep health signatures, including resilience metrics, stressors, tipping points, trajectories, and longitudinal outcomes across resistance, recovery, adaptation, and growth

• Leverage large biomedical resources including NHLBI-funded cohort studies, Trans-omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed), Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery (RECOVER), All of Us, and LungMap

• Identify mechanisms that preserve, enhance, or restore homeostasis under stress and explain sustained health despite known risk, with the examples of hypertension without stroke, full recovery after heart valve surgery, preserved lung function despite tobacco exposure, and the interplay of resilience with sickle cell disease exacerbation such as vaso-occlusive crises

• Integrate multidomain exposures and biopsychosocial factors such as mindfulness, belief systems, and optimism, alongside community engagement, and include all populations within the NHLBI mission

‍ ‍

Contact: NHLBI Highlighted Topics (nhlbihighlightedtopics@mail.nih.gov).

‍ ‍

The resource-leverage bullet is the most useful thing on this page for a cash-constrained company. Building and validating analytics on TOPMed, RECOVER, All of Us, or existing NHLBI cohorts means you are not funding new cohort collection out of a Phase I budget. That is the difference between a fundable aim and an unfundable one at $323,090, and it also gives your validation claims a credibility that a small proprietary dataset never will. The phrase "tipping points" is worth noticing too, since it points toward early-warning and state-transition detection, which is a defensible product category.

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National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH)

‍ ‍

NCCIH is interested in research advancing understanding of resilience as a whole-person, multilevel process that informs strategies for health promotion, disease prevention, recovery, and overall well-being across the lifespan. Areas of interest:

‍ ‍

• Identifying, validating, and promoting modifiable protective pathways and factors contributing to resilience across molecular, cellular, physiological, behavioral, psychological, social, and environmental domains

• How complementary and integrative health approaches, lifestyle, and environmental factors affect the biological and behavioral mechanisms that enhance capacity to resist, recover, adapt, or grow

• Mechanistic research to identify and validate measures and biomarkers of resilience, and to generate evidence supporting implementation of effective resilience-promoting strategies across populations and settings

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NCCIH states it may give special consideration to support meritorious applications in this topic area.

‍ ‍

Contacts: Erin Burke Quinlan, PhD and Jennifer Baumgartner (NCCIHDERFunding@nih.gov).

‍ ‍

NCCIH matters disproportionately here for a reason that is not obvious from the topic page. Its standing small business portfolio already covers nutritional and natural products including dietary supplements and botanicals, psychological approaches such as meditation and music-based interventions, physical approaches including devices, and combined approaches such as yoga and tai chi. That makes NCCIH the natural funding home for several categories of resilience product that no other participating Institute would readily take, and the only one of the six signaling a preference alongside NIMHD.

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National Cancer Institute (NCI)

‍ ‍

NCI seeks projects advancing mechanistic understanding and interventions across cancer biology, prevention, and control, particularly studies that:

‍ ‍

• Develop, refine, or validate multilevel measures, biomarkers, and resilience signatures to defined stressors across cancer risk, tumor initiation, progression, treatment, and survivorship

• Identify protective factors and mechanisms enabling resistance to malignant transformation or favorable outcomes despite genetic, environmental, behavioral, or biological risk, including but not limited to DNA repair, immune surveillance, microbiome and host interactions, epigenetic stability, inflammation resolution, and metabolic adaptability

• Use advanced analytics in large, diverse longitudinal cohorts, and mechanistic studies in patients, human tissues, or model systems, to design, test, or implement interventions and strategies for risk stratification, early detection, prevention behaviors, treatment tolerance, and survivorship

‍ ‍

Contact: NCI Resilience HT Team (NCIResilienceHTTeam@mail.nih.gov).

‍ ‍

Note the phrase "resilience signatures to defined stressors." NCI has embedded the stressor requirement into its own bullet. Note also treatment tolerance, which is the most immediately commercial item in NCI's list: predicting which patients will tolerate a given regimen is a risk-stratification product with an obvious buyer, and it is framed here as resilience rather than toxicity prediction.

‍ ‍

National Institute on Aging (NIA)

‍ ‍

NIA's interests, as they relate to resilience in older individuals:

‍ ‍

• Development and validation of dynamic resilience measures using controlled perturbations and longitudinal monitoring

• Advanced analytics for multisystem resilience phenotyping

• The impact of age, early-life, psychosocial, and other factors on changes in neurobiological, molecular, cellular, physiological, social, and behavioral resilience mechanisms; how these factors individually and interactively influence severity of and recovery from stressors; and how dysregulation or modulation of these mechanisms, particularly in those with multiple contributors to impaired resilience, shapes aging-related clinical endpoints

• Shared and tissue-specific pathways and mechanisms of inter-organ or system-level coordination

• Mechanisms underlying sex differences

• Therapeutic targets for, and mechanisms by which, interventions improve resilience and preserve or restore clinical outcomes in representative populations

‍ ‍

Contact: Stacy Carrington-Lawrence, PhD (stacy.carrington-lawrence@nih.gov).

‍ ‍

NIA's first two bullets are the clearest product specifications in the entire topic. A validated perturbation protocol plus a monitoring modality plus an analytic layer that outputs a multisystem resilience phenotype is a commercial instrument, not a research finding. NIA also carries the most favorable budget ceilings of any participating Institute, discussed below.

‍ ‍

National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)

‍ ‍

NIAAA seeks research on mechanisms shaping alcohol use, alcohol-related outcomes, recovery, and resilience across biological, behavioral, psychological, social, and environmental levels, and states that priority goes to reproducible studies that identify protective pathways and biomarkers, explain heterogeneity, and inform prevention and intervention. Named areas:

‍ ‍

• Longitudinal lifespan cohort studies using multimodal AI to integrate biological, behavioral, and environmental data and identify resilience to alcohol use disorder and alcohol harms, including resistance, recovery, and adaptation, and influences such as inter-brain synchrony, social enrichment, peer context, sleep, and community and environmental factors

• Reverse translational and New Approach Methodologies studies of cellular, molecular, and circuit mechanisms that promote resilience despite alcohol risk exposure

• Integrative multiomic studies of heterogeneity in resilience to alcohol use disorder, emphasizing protective pathways, validated biomarkers, and standardized, reproducible measures

‍ ‍

Contacts: Laura Kwako (laura.kwako@nih.gov) and Miri Gitik (miri.gitik@nih.gov).

‍ ‍

NIAAA's standing small business priorities already include biosensors and wearables for real-time monitoring, digital health and telehealth platforms, diagnostic tools and biomarkers, and advanced data analytics using machine learning on large health datasets. The overlap with this topic's multimodal AI and biomarker bullets is close to exact, which makes NIAAA one of the more mechanically straightforward routes for a data or sensor company.

‍ ‍

National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD)

‍ ‍

NIMHD supports solutions-oriented biological, behavioral, clinical, and population science research focused on resilience among populations with health disparities, including:

‍ ‍

• Identifying novel biological, behavioral, social, and environmental mechanisms that shape resilience across the life course, and elucidating pathways that buffer or mitigate stress-related health effects

• Developing measures, biomarkers, and scalable interventions that generalize across populations and community contexts

• Applying community-engaged, systems science, data science, and translational approaches to advance resilience research and its real-world impact

• Examining epigenetic processes, vagal nerve function, and environmental and biological interactions to identify mechanisms and clinical targets for resilience

• Investigating relationships between psychological resilience and the onset, severity, and progression of health events, as well as recovery duration, quality, and long-term outcomes

‍ ‍

NIMHD states it may dedicate available funds to support applications in this Topic area, depending on availability of funds, the number of meritorious applications, and competing ICO priorities, and separately that it may give special consideration to meritorious applications in this topic area.

‍ ‍

Contact: Rada Dagher, PhD, MPH (Rada.dagher@nih.gov).

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NIMHD is the only ICO in this topic making both statements, which makes it the strongest signal on the page. The word scalable in its second bullet is doing real work: NIMHD is asking for interventions that generalize and deploy, which is a commercial requirement rather than an academic one. Vagal nerve function is also named explicitly, which is a specific and measurable physiological target with existing device and wearable pathways.

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Participating Offices That Do Not Award Grants

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Five participating ICOs cannot fund your application. Their published interests are still worth reading, because they tell you what NIH leadership is prioritizing and because a well-aimed application can be responsive to an office's interest while being funded by an Institute. But you must land on an Institute's mission.

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Office of Dietary Supplements (ODS). ODS seeks research on how dietary supplements, meaning oral interventions of vitamins, minerals, natural products, botanicals, fatty acids, proteins, amino acids, or other bioactive food constituents, affect physiological, metabolic, cognitive, and immune resilience across the lifespan. Studies using repeated measures and challenge-recovery designs to test whether supplements help resist, recover, adapt, or grow after aging-related, infectious, metabolic, psychosocial, or environmental stressors are emphasized. Specific interests include elucidating biological mechanisms or protective pathways through which supplements influence adaptive responses to physiological stressors; identifying and validating supplement exposure biomarkers associated with maintenance or recovery of physiological function, resistance to defined stressors, or adaptive capacity; and developing and validating ways to measure resilience in a dietary supplementation context. Contact: Adam J. Kuszak, PhD (ods-funding@od.nih.gov).

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This is the most product-specific section on the entire NIH page, and ODS has no money. If you are a supplement, botanical, or nutraceutical company, the practical route is almost always NCCIH, whose small business program explicitly covers nutritional and natural products, or NIA if the framing is aging and older adults. Talk to ODS for scientific alignment, then talk to NCCIH or NIA about who would actually fund it.

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Office of Research on Women's Health (ORWH). ORWH is interested in projects that advance resilience research across the life course relevant to women's health, including pregnancy, menopause, and aging; incorporate sex as a biological variable in resilience mechanisms, measures, biomarkers, and trajectories; and address sex differences in multidomain resilience, including through computational models, to support rigorous, generalizable prevention, treatment, and recovery strategies. Contact: Marquitta White, MS, PhD (orwhinfo@nih.gov).

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The Office of Autoimmune Disease Research within ORWH (OADR-ORWH) is interested in the role of stressors on early immune changes in the prodromal phase of autoimmunity; resilience as an immunopreventative strategy for autoimmune disease; and utilizing federated data platforms to enhance pattern recognition in complex multiomic datasets, enabling deeper insight into the multimodal drivers of autoimmune disease pathogenesis and co-occurring autoimmune diseases. Contact: Victoria Shanmugam, MBBS, FRCP, FACR, CCD (oadrinfo@nih.gov).

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The federated data platform bullet is a software specification, and prodromal autoimmunity is a diagnostics opportunity. Neither office can fund it. Sex differences in resilience mechanisms is a named NIA interest as well, which gives you a funding route for the ORWH angle.

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Office of Disease Prevention (ODP). For this topic, ODP is particularly interested in projects testing interventions to promote health and well-being in individuals, families, communities, or populations facing biological, social, economic, or environmental challenges, and encourages research enhancing protective factors across the life course to prevent disease and disability, improve well-being, and reduce long-term disease burden. Contact: Valerie Robinson, PhD, MPhil, MHA (valerie.robinson@nih.gov).

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Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR). Participating, with Janine Simmons, MD, as contact (OBSSRNews@mail.nih.gov).

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Tribal Health Research Office (THRO). Participating, with Sheila Caldwell, PhD (throinfo@od.nih.gov) and Christopher Barnhart, PhD (christopher.barnhart@nih.gov) as contacts. Note that the topic's purpose statement names tribal communities explicitly as a population of interest.

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Where Does a Small Business Actually Fit?

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Be honest with yourself here: this is the most research-heavy of NIH's current Highlighted Topics, and a large share of what it describes belongs in an R01 rather than an SBIR. Mechanistic biology in model systems, secondary analysis of existing cohorts for scientific insight, and epidemiological characterization are not products. NIH SBIR and STTR awards fund research and development toward a commercially viable product or service.

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That said, NIH named measures, metrics, biomarkers, and data interoperability as high-priority areas, and those are all things that get built and sold. The genuine openings:

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Validated resilience measurement instruments. NIH says the field is limited by heterogeneous measures and asks for harmonized terminology, standardized protocols, and validated measures. A validated, licensable instrument, whether a clinical assessment, a digital measure, or a scored composite, is a real product with a real market, and NCCIH, NIMHD, NIA, and NCI all ask for measure development independently. Whoever produces the instrument the field standardizes on owns a durable position.

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Controlled perturbation and challenge-recovery testing systems. NIA's leading bullet, and echoed by ODS. A standardized stressor protocol plus a monitoring modality plus a scoring output is an instrument. This is the clearest hardware and software opportunity in the topic.

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Multisystem phenotyping analytics. NIA asks for advanced analytics for multisystem resilience phenotyping. NHLBI asks for health signatures including resilience metrics, tipping points, and trajectories. NIAAA asks for multimodal AI integrating biological, behavioral, and environmental data. Three Institutes, one product category.

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Biomarker panels that predict recovery rather than risk. NIH asks for biomarkers that reflect or predict resilience. This is a distinct diagnostic category from disease-risk biomarkers, and the clinical use cases are concrete: who will tolerate this treatment, who will recover from this surgery, who will decompensate under this stressor. NCI names treatment tolerance directly. NHLBI names recovery after heart valve surgery.

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Remote monitoring and wearables for longitudinal trajectory capture. Resist, recover, adapt, and grow are all trajectories, and trajectories require repeated measurement. Continuous monitoring is the enabling technology, and NIAAA's standing portfolio already funds wearables and biosensors.

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Data interoperability and federated analysis platforms. NIH names data interoperability as a high-priority area, and OADR-ORWH names federated data platforms specifically. Software with a plausible route to institutional customers.

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Scalable intervention delivery. NIMHD asks for scalable interventions that generalize across populations and community contexts, and it is the Institute most likely to dedicate funds. Digital and community-deployable intervention platforms fit here.

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Supplement and natural product mechanisms and exposure biomarkers. ODS's full list, funded through NCCIH or NIA.

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Vagal nerve function measurement or modulation. Named explicitly by NIMHD, with existing device and wearable pathways.

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What Will Not Work

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A risk-reduction product relabeled as resilience. Covered above, and it is the single most predictable failure here. NIH drew the line explicitly with the phrase "distinct from disease-risk reduction."

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A wellness or mindfulness app with no defined stressor and no measurement. NIH's structural requirement is to define the challenge or stressor, the system, and the resilience outcome. An application that cannot name its stressor is not responsive, regardless of how well the intervention is described.

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A cross-sectional study. All four resilience outcomes are trajectories. If your design measures once, it cannot detect resistance, recovery, adaptation, or growth.

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A measure with no validation plan. The field's problem is that everyone has a measure and none of them agree. Producing another unvalidated instrument adds to the problem NIH is trying to solve. Validation against an independent criterion is the whole value proposition.

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Two Strategic Notes

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Use the existing data assets. NHLBI explicitly invites leveraging TOPMed, RECOVER, All of Us, LungMap, and NHLBI cohorts. NCI asks for advanced analytics in large, diverse longitudinal cohorts. NIAAA asks for longitudinal lifespan cohort studies. For a small business, this is the difference between a feasible Phase I and an impossible one, because you can develop and validate an analytic or a measure without funding primary data collection. It also strengthens the generalizability claim that reviewers will otherwise attack.

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STTR deserves a hard look. NIH describes this topic as inherently interdisciplinary across molecular, cellular, physiological, psychological, social, community, and environmental levels, and NIMHD asks for community-engaged approaches. Very few small companies hold that range internally. Under STTR, a formal collaboration with a university or nonprofit research institution is required, at least 40 percent of the work is performed by the small business and at least 30 percent by the research institution, and the Principal Investigator may be primarily employed by either organization. If you need an academic cohort, a validated psychometric bench, or a community-engaged research partner to be credible, PA-27-102 is often the stronger application.

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How Much Funding Would I Receive?

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There is no funding amount attached to the Highlighted Topic itself. Budgets come from the parent announcement and from the Institute that funds you.

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Under the current NIH SBIR and STTR parent announcements, standard guidelines provide:

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• Phase I: up to $323,090, typically over one to two years

• Phase II: up to $2,153,927, typically over two to three years

• Fast-Track: Phase I and Phase II in a single application and review

• Direct to Phase II: available under SBIR for companies that have already established feasibility

• Phase IIB (PA-27-101): follow-on funding beyond Phase II

• Commercialization Readiness Pilot: late-stage, milestone-driven support, with amounts varying by Institute

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Cost sharing is not required.

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NIA Carries the Best Ceilings in This Topic

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Among the six participating Institutes that award grants, NIA holds approval to exceed the standard caps in both of its lanes:

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• Up to $700,000 for Phase I and $3 million for Phase II for Alzheimer's disease and AD-related dementia projects

• Up to $500,000 for Phase I and $2.5 million for Phase II for other projects within the NIA mission space

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That second line is easy to miss and it matters. A resilience-in-aging project that has nothing to do with dementia still carries a Phase I ceiling roughly 55 percent above standard and a Phase II ceiling about 16 percent above standard. Given that NIA also published the two most product-shaped bullets in the entire topic, dynamic resilience measures using controlled perturbations and multisystem resilience phenotyping analytics, the combination of scope fit and budget headroom makes NIA worth a conversation even if aging is not your primary framing.

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NCI supports CRP projects up to the SBA statutory maximum of $4,191,495, plus up to $500,000 for technical assistance. NIMHD operates under standard caps but is the only participating ICO signaling both possible dedicated funds and special consideration.

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Full Institute-by-Institute budget detail is in our NIH SBIR program executive summary.

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What Could I Use the Funding For?

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Funds support research and development toward a commercially viable product or service aligned with the mission of a participating Institute. Allowable costs include personnel, materials, instrument and device development, assay development, software development, validation studies, analysis of existing datasets, intellectual property protection, and other direct R&D expenses.

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Phase II, Phase IIB, and CRP funds may additionally cover scale-up, multi-site validation, regulatory preparation, and commercialization activities.

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Clinical trial policy depends on the Institute. Among the participating Institutes that award grants, NCI, NHLBI, NIA, and NIMHD accept clinical trials through their small business programs, and several accept them through Phase IIB as well. Policy for NCCIH and NIAAA under the current parent announcement should be confirmed directly with program staff before you design around it. Note that challenge-recovery and controlled-perturbation studies in human participants may or may not meet the NIH definition of a clinical trial depending on design, and that determination affects which announcement track and which forms apply. This is a specific question worth putting to your program officer in writing.

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What Is the Timeline?

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Highlighted Topic dates

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• Posted: August 28, 2026

• Expires: August 25, 2028

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SBIR and STTR standard receipt dates (PA-27-100 and PA-27-102)

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• September 5, 2026. This falls on a Saturday, and Labor Day is Monday, September 7, so submissions are accepted through Tuesday, September 8, 2026.

• January 5, 2027

• April 5, 2027

• September 5, 2027, which falls on a Sunday before Labor Day, so that cycle effectively closes Tuesday, September 7, 2027

• January 5, 2028

• April 5, 2028

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Because the topic expires on August 25, 2028, April 5, 2028 is the last standard receipt date inside the active window, giving you six cycles in total. The September 2028 date falls just outside it. All applications are due by 5:00 PM local time of the applicant organization.

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Review and award timeline for the September 2026 cycle

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• Scientific merit review: November 2026

• Advisory council review: January 2027

• Earliest project start date: April 2027

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Review and award timeline for the January 2027 cycle

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• Scientific merit review: March 2027

• Advisory council review: May 2027

• Earliest project start date: July 2027

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Review and award timeline for the April 2027 cycle

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• Scientific merit review: July 2027

• Advisory council review: August 2027

• Earliest project start date: December 2027

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A policy change that matters for planning. NIH tightened its late application policy under NOT-OD-26-064, effective for due dates on or after May 25, 2026. Small business applications no longer receive the discretionary late submission window. Submit early enough to resolve eRA Commons validation errors before the deadline.

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Practical planning guidance. Budget at least twelve weeks of lead time before your target due date, and more if your federal registrations are not complete. SAM.gov, UEI, the SBA Company Registry, eRA Commons, and Grants.gov registrations can take four to six weeks on their own and must all be finished before you can submit. For a first-time applicant, expect 120 to 200 hours of total effort.

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Two topic-specific timing items. If your plan depends on access to an existing NIH data resource such as TOPMed, RECOVER, or All of Us, start the data access request early, since approval processes have their own timelines and reviewers will want evidence that access is secured rather than hoped for. And if your design involves community-engaged research, which NIMHD asks for, community partnership agreements and letters with defined roles cannot be assembled in the final two weeks.

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Who Is Eligible to Apply?

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Eligibility comes from the parent announcement, not from the topic. Applicants must be U.S. small business concerns that are:

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• Organized for profit with a place of business located in the United States

• At or below 500 employees, including affiliates

• More than 50 percent owned and controlled by U.S. citizens or permanent resident aliens, by qualifying U.S. entities, or by a combination

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For STTR, the company must also have a formal collaboration with a U.S. research institution, with at least 40 percent of the work performed by the small business and at least 30 percent by the research institution.

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Foreign organizations are not eligible, and foreign subawards and subcontracts are not permitted.

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Are There Restrictions I Should Know About?

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• Only U.S. small business concerns are eligible; foreign organizations are not.

• Applications involving foreign subawards or subcontracts will not be considered for funding.

• Your application must be relevant to the mission of a participating Institute or Center that awards grants. For this topic that means NHLBI, NCCIH, NCI, NIA, NIAAA, or NIMHD. OBSSR, ODP, ODS, ORWH, and THRO do not award grants.

• Duplicate or highly overlapping applications submitted under multiple HHS announcements are not permitted.

• Companies must satisfy applicable SBA performance benchmark requirements, including the Phase I to Phase II transition rate benchmark and the Phase II commercialization rate benchmark for companies with substantial award histories.

• Phase I generally requires at least 67 percent of the research effort to be performed by the small business; Phase II at least 50 percent. Consultant and contractual arrangements in Phase I are generally limited to roughly 33 percent of the total amount requested, which is a real constraint if your design leans heavily on an academic cohort or a community partner. STTR is the cleaner structure in that case.

• Additional national security, foreign relationship, and foreign ownership disclosure requirements apply and may result in denial of award. The 2026 SBIR and STTR reauthorization tightened foreign risk management and due diligence review, and that screening now sits inside the review critical path.

• Cost sharing is not required.

• Applying under a Highlighted Topic does not change referral or review, and does not guarantee that funds have been set aside.

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What Kind of Application Is Likely to Win Here?

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NIH reviews small business applications on Significance, Investigators, Innovation, Approach, and Environment, with commercialization potential specifically evaluated for Phase II and Fast-Track. Within this topic, five things separate competitive applications.

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One: you named the stressor. NIH gave the structure explicitly: define the challenge or stressor, the systems, and the resilience response or outcome, and include at least one domain of analysis. Most weak resilience applications fail at the first item. Put the stressor in your Specific Aims page, not buried in the approach.

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Two: you picked one of the four verbs and measured it. Resistance, recovery, adaptation, and growth are different phenomena with different measurement requirements. Specificity here reads as rigor. Gesturing at resilience generally reads as vagueness.

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Three: you are not doing risk reduction in a new coat. NIH said "distinct from disease-risk reduction." Your work should explain or enhance maintained health in the continued presence of risk.

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Four: you picked the right Institute, and you picked it before writing. Six Institutes could plausibly claim a resilience measurement product, and five participating offices cannot fund it at all. This topic has more misrouting risk than any other current Highlighted Topic. Email the named contact, describe the technology in a paragraph, and ask whether it fits and which mechanism they would suggest. For supplement and natural product work specifically, ask ODS about science and NCCIH or NIA about funding.

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Five: your validation plan is the centerpiece, not an afterthought. NIH's stated problem is heterogeneous measures and lack of reproducibility, and NIAAA states outright that priority goes to reproducible studies. Whatever you build, the aim that matters is the one where you validate it against an independent criterion in a population that looks like the intended market.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the NIH multidomain resilience Highlighted Topic a funding opportunity I can apply to directly?

No. An NIH Highlighted Topic is a published statement of scientific priority, not a Notice of Funding Opportunity. There is no application package and no separate deadline. Small businesses apply through a broad NIH opportunity, which means the SBIR parent announcement PA-27-100 or the STTR parent announcement PA-27-102.

How does NIH define resilience for this topic?

NIH defines resilience broadly as a living system's capacity to resist, recover, adapt, or grow from challenges or stressors, with outcomes tracked over time across interconnected individual, community, and environmental systems. NIH attributes this framing to Brown and colleagues, 2023. The four outcomes are distinct: resistance means function is maintained through the stressor, recovery means function returns to baseline, adaptation means the system reorganizes to a new functional state, and growth means it ends up better than before.

What does NIH require an aligned application to include?

NIH states that aligned applications would define the challenge or stressor, define the system or systems, define the resilience response or outcome, and include at least one domain of analysis, preferably across domains, in order to accelerate translation into implementable prevention, treatment, and recovery strategies. Failing to specify the stressor is the most common way a resilience application loses responsiveness.

How much funding is available under this Highlighted Topic?

The topic itself carries no funding amount. Standard SBIR guidelines provide up to $323,090 for Phase I and up to $2,153,927 for Phase II. Among the participating Institutes, NIA holds approval to exceed those caps, allowing up to $700,000 for Phase I and $3 million for Phase II on Alzheimer's disease and AD-related dementia projects, and up to $500,000 for Phase I and $2.5 million for Phase II for other projects in its mission space. NCI supports Commercialization Readiness Pilot projects up to the SBA statutory maximum of $4,191,495 plus up to $500,000 for technical assistance.

Does applying under this Highlighted Topic improve my chances of being funded?

Not in review. NIH states that applying in a Highlighted Topic area will not affect referral or review of applications. NIMHD states it may dedicate available funds to this topic area and may give special consideration to meritorious applications in it, and NCCIH states it may give special consideration. The other participating ICOs make no such statement. The main advantage is informational.

Which NIH Institutes and Centers participate, and which ones can actually fund my application?

Eleven ICOs participate. Six award grants: NHLBI, NCCIH, NCI, NIA, NIAAA, and NIMHD. Five do not: OBSSR, ODP, ODS, ORWH including the Office of Autoimmune Disease Research, and THRO. Your application must be relevant to the mission of at least one of the six that award grants.

I work on dietary supplements and the Office of Dietary Supplements published detailed interests. Can ODS fund my SBIR?

No. ODS does not award grants, despite publishing the most product-specific interests in this topic, including supplement exposure biomarkers and challenge-recovery designs testing whether supplements help resist, recover, adapt, or grow. The practical route is NCCIH, whose small business program explicitly covers nutritional and natural products including botanicals, or NIA if the framing is aging and older adults. Discuss science with ODS and funding with NCCIH or NIA.

What are the application deadlines?

The topic is open from August 28, 2026 through August 25, 2028. SBIR and STTR standard receipt dates are September 5, 2026, January 5, 2027, April 5, 2027, September 5, 2027, January 5, 2028, and April 5, 2028. Because the topic expires in August 2028, April 5, 2028 is the last standard receipt date inside the active window. September 5, 2026 falls on a Saturday before Labor Day, so that cycle accepts submissions through Tuesday, September 8, 2026, and September 5, 2027 falls on a Sunday before Labor Day, so that cycle closes Tuesday, September 7, 2027. All applications are due by 5:00 PM local time of the applicant organization.

What is the difference between resilience research and disease-risk reduction?

NIH explicitly asks for mechanistic understanding of protective and restoring factors distinct from disease-risk reduction. Lowering a risk factor reduces exposure to risk. Resilience explains or enhances maintained health in the continued presence of risk. NHLBI's examples make the distinction concrete: hypertension without stroke, preserved lung function despite tobacco exposure, and full recovery after heart valve surgery. Repackaging an existing risk-reduction product as resilience-promoting is visible to reviewers.

What kinds of resilience projects fit NIH SBIR rather than a research grant?

The strongest small business fits are validated resilience measurement instruments, controlled perturbation and challenge-recovery testing systems paired with longitudinal monitoring, multisystem phenotyping analytics, biomarker panels that predict recovery capacity rather than disease risk, remote monitoring and wearables for trajectory capture, data interoperability and federated analysis platforms, scalable intervention delivery, supplement and natural product exposure biomarkers, and vagal nerve function measurement or modulation. Mechanistic biology in model systems and secondary cohort analysis for scientific insight generally belong in an R01 instead.

Can I use existing NIH datasets instead of collecting new data?

Yes, and NIH encourages it. NHLBI explicitly invites leveraging its cohort studies, TOPMed, RECOVER, All of Us, and LungMap. NCI asks for advanced analytics in large, diverse longitudinal cohorts. For a Phase I budget this is often the difference between a feasible and an infeasible aim, and it strengthens generalizability claims. Start data access requests early, because approval has its own timeline and reviewers want evidence access is secured.

Why do NIA and ODS emphasize controlled perturbations and challenge-recovery designs?

Because resistance, recovery, adaptation, and growth are all trajectories, and a cross-sectional measurement cannot capture a trajectory. A stressor must be applied or occur, with the system measured before, during, and after. For companies this is favorable, since instrumentation, wearables, remote monitoring, and analytics are precisely what these designs require and precisely what an observational cohort cannot deliver.

Should my company apply for SBIR or STTR?

Choose SBIR if your company performs the majority of the research and your Principal Investigator is primarily employed by the company. Choose STTR if the project depends on a formal collaboration with a university or nonprofit research institution. Because NIH describes this topic as inherently interdisciplinary across molecular, physiological, psychological, social, community, and environmental levels, and because NIMHD asks for community-engaged approaches, STTR is frequently the stronger structural fit. Phase I SBIR generally limits consultant and contractual arrangements to roughly 33 percent of the total requested, which constrains designs that lean heavily on academic or community partners.

Can I run a clinical trial with this funding?

It depends on the Institute. Among the participating Institutes that award grants, NCI, NHLBI, NIA, and NIMHD accept clinical trials through their small business programs, and several accept them through Phase IIB as well. Confirm NCCIH and NIAAA policy directly with program staff. Note also that challenge-recovery and controlled-perturbation studies in human participants may or may not meet the NIH definition of a clinical trial depending on design, and that determination affects which forms and which track apply, so put the question to your program officer in writing.

Who is eligible to apply?

For-profit U.S. small business concerns with 500 or fewer employees including affiliates, more than 50 percent owned and controlled by U.S. citizens or permanent residents or by qualifying U.S. entities. Foreign organizations are not eligible, and foreign subawards and subcontracts are not permitted. STTR additionally requires a formal collaboration with a U.S. research institution.

How long will it take me to prepare an application?

For a first-time applicant, expect 120 to 200 hours in total. Start at least twelve weeks before your target due date. Federal registrations across SAM.gov, UEI, the SBA Company Registry, eRA Commons, and Grants.gov can take four to six weeks on their own and must be complete before you can submit.

What happens if I submit late?

It will not be accepted. NIH tightened its late application policy for due dates on or after May 25, 2026, and small business applications no longer receive the discretionary late submission window.

Could this Highlighted Topic be withdrawn before it expires?

Possibly. NIH reviews each Highlighted Topic annually for continued alignment with agency priorities, and Institutes can post and retire topics at any time. The posted expiration date is August 25, 2028, but verify the topic is still live before each cycle you plan to submit in.

How Can BW&CO Help?

BW&CO is a non-dilutive federal funding advisory firm. We have helped clients secure more than $350 million in federal funding, and this topic is a good example of where advisory work earns its keep: eleven participating ICOs, only six of which can fund anything, the two most product-specific bullet lists belonging to offices with no money, a definitional line between resilience and risk reduction that reviewers will enforce, and one Institute quietly carrying budget ceilings well above the standard caps.

We can:

• Identify the right Institute and mechanism for your technology, including routing supplement, natural product, women's health, autoimmune, and federated data platform concepts to an Institute that can actually fund them.

• Structure the application around NIH's own checklist, so the stressor, the system, the resilience outcome, and the domains of analysis are unmistakable on the Specific Aims page.

• Triple your likelihood of success through proven strategy and insider-aligned proposal development.

• Reduce your time spent on the proposal by 50 to 80 percent, so your team stays on the technology.

• Structure academic, cohort, and community partnerships so they strengthen the application without breaching the outsourcing limits.

NIH Highlighted Topic: Wastewater-Based Epidemiology as a Tool for Monitoring Environmental Chemicals, Medications, Drugs, and Pathogenic Exposures

Highlighted Topic 103 | Participating ICOs: NIEHS, NIAID, NIDA | Posted August 27, 2026 | Expires August 27, 2028 | Apply through the NIH SBIR parent announcement (PA-27-100) or the NIH STTR parent announcement (PA-27-102).

Executive Summary

NIH has designated wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) as a formal Highlighted Topic, with NIEHS, NIAID, and NIDA each publishing their own areas of interest. Of the Highlighted Topics NIH has posted to date, this is one of the most product-shaped. Nearly every gap NIH names is a hardware, assay, or software problem rather than an open scientific question, which makes it unusually well suited to SBIR and STTR applicants rather than to academic investigators alone.

The premise is straightforward. Wastewater is a continuous, population-scale biological and chemical sample that nobody has to consent to, travel for, or remember to provide. NIH points out that it can indicate exposure to pesticides, plasticizers, personal care products, heavy metals, industrial releases, emerging contaminants, and disaster-related spills and fires, and that beyond pathogens it can also detect medications and drug metabolites. Compared with human biomonitoring, which requires collecting blood or urine from individuals, WBE is non-invasive and cost-effective, and it scales across both geography and time in a way individual sampling never will.

What NIH says is missing is the engineering and the standards layer. The named challenges are sampling variability driven by where and when samples are collected, analytical methods, data integration and statistical modeling, and data interpretation, meaning how a detection in wastewater actually correlates with real-world human exposure and what it implies for public health. NIH also names best practices, communication of findings, and ethical and privacy considerations as important open questions.

For a company, that list reads like a product roadmap: autosamplers and passive samplers that reduce variability, validated multi-residue chemical panels, molecular assays for targets that current methods miss, normalization and back-calculation methods that turn a concentration into a defensible population estimate, and data infrastructure that lets utilities, health departments, and labs actually share results.

The three participating Institutes divide the space cleanly. NIEHS wants chemical and environmental exposure work, including assay and biomarker development and bringing WBE to small and rural systems. NIAID wants pathogen and genomic epidemiology methods, human versus animal signal separation, and assays for chlorine-resistant protozoan parasites and cysts. NIDA wants substance use and overdose surveillance, emerging substance identification, and triangulation with other drug use data sources.

There is no dedicated funding and no separate application. A Highlighted Topic is a priority signal, not a Notice of Funding Opportunity. You apply through the standard NIH SBIR or STTR omnibus and compete in the normal pool, and NIH states that applying in a Highlighted Topic area will not affect referral or review. NIEHS states it may give special consideration to meritorious applications in this topic area. NIAID and NIDA make no such statement for this topic.

Under the current SBIR parent announcement, standard budget guidelines run up to $323,090 for Phase I and up to $2,153,927 for Phase II. One caveat matters specifically here: certain NIEHS program areas carry substantially lower caps, and that is discussed below. The next standard receipt dates are September 5, 2026, January 5, 2027, and April 5, 2027, and the topic stays live through August 27, 2028.

A Quick Note on the NIH SBIR and STTR Program

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The NIH, CDC, and FDA SBIR and STTR programs are the largest source of non-dilutive early-stage funding for health, biomedical, and life science technology in the United States. NIH alone sets aside well over a billion dollars a year. Awards are grants, not investments. No equity, no repayment, no board seat.

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The program runs in phases. Phase I funds proof of concept and feasibility. Phase II funds the substantive research and development that turns a validated concept into a product. Fast-Track combines both in one application, and Direct to Phase II lets companies that have already established feasibility skip Phase I. Phase IIB and the Commercialization Readiness Pilot extend funding for late-stage work such as validation, manufacturing scale-up, and regulatory submissions. Applicants must be for-profit U.S. small businesses with 500 or fewer employees and majority U.S. ownership.

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For the complete breakdown of the NIH SBIR and STTR program, including all budget caps by Institute, clinical trial policies, eligibility mechanics, review criteria, and the full timeline, see our full executive summary here: NIH, CDC and FDA Parent SBIR Grant (PA-27-100).

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Everything below is specific to this Highlighted Topic.

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What Is a Highlighted Topic, and How Is It Different From a Funding Opportunity?

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A Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) is a solicitation. It has an announcement number, its own application package, its own review criteria, and usually its own set-aside funding. You apply to it directly.

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A Highlighted Topic is a published statement of scientific priority maintained centrally by NIH. It has no application package and no guaranteed funding. You cannot apply to it. You apply through a broad opportunity such as the SBIR or STTR parent announcement, and the topic tells you what the participating Institutes want to fund inside their existing budgets.

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NIH is explicit about how this works in practice:

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• Apply through an appropriate parent announcement or other broad NIH opportunity.

• Reach out early to the listed scientific contacts to discuss alignment.

• If an ICO chooses to dedicate funding to a topic, the amount depends on available funds, the number of meritorious applications, and competing priorities.

• Applying in a Highlighted Topic area will not affect NIH referral or review of your application.

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NIH also notes that Institutes can post new topics at any time and that each topic is reviewed annually for continued alignment with agency priorities. Topics do get retired. If you are building a multi-year federal funding plan around one, verify it is still live before each cycle.

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What the topic buys you is intelligence, not scoring advantage. Three Institutes have written down what they would fund in this space and named the program staff to call. In a field as new as WBE, where there is no established study section culture and no obvious default Institute, that mapping is worth more than a modest scoring bump. The most common way a strong WBE application fails is landing at the wrong Institute, because a chemical exposure project reviewed by pathogen reviewers, or vice versa, tends to score as out of scope rather than as weak.

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There is no notice number to enter in the Agency Routing Identifier field for a Highlighted Topic, unlike the older Notice of Special Interest model. Make the alignment explicit in your cover letter and Specific Aims, and confirm handling with your target Institute's program officer before you submit.

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What Are They Looking For? A Detailed Overview

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The Stated Purpose

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The topic encourages research on wastewater-based epidemiology approaches for understanding exposure to environmental contaminants, medications, drugs, and pathogens at the community level. That last phrase is the whole framing. This is not about diagnosing individuals. It is about characterizing populations.

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Why NIH Considers This Worth Prioritizing

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NIH's background statement makes four arguments, and each one is a section of your significance narrative if you write here.

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Wastewater is a broader signal than most people assume. NIH lists pesticides, plasticizers, personal care products, heavy metals, industrial releases, emerging contaminants, and disaster-related spills and fires as detectable exposures. It also states plainly that while wastewater has been used to detect pathogens, it can also detect medications and drug metabolites. If your mental model of WBE is still SARS-CoV-2 surveillance, this topic is considerably wider than that.

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It solves a real limitation of human biomonitoring. Individual biomonitoring requires collecting blood or urine from people. WBE is non-invasive and cost-effective, and it evaluates community exposure patterns across large populations both geographically and over time. That produces insight into community health and behavior that individual sampling cannot practically deliver at scale.

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It requires convergence. NIH describes WBE as combining advanced analytical chemistry, molecular biology, and epidemiological approaches, and notes that it inherently involves data sharing and collaboration across many scientific disciplines. This is an explicit invitation to build interdisciplinary teams, and it is one reason STTR deserves a hard look here.

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The unsolved problems are technical. This is the part to read closely, because it is where the fundable product work lives.

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The Named Technical Gaps

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NIH groups the open challenges into four clusters. Read these as product requirements.

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Sampling variability. Driven by sample location and timing of sample collection. This is the single most cited weakness in the WBE literature, and it is a hardware and protocol problem. Grab samples misrepresent diurnal patterns. Composite sampling helps but adds cost and complexity. Sample location within a sewer network determines what population you actually measured. Passive samplers, flow-proportional autosamplers, in-line sensors, and sample stabilization chemistry all sit directly on this gap.

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Analytical methods. Detection and quantification of targets that current methods handle poorly, in a matrix that is actively hostile to analysis. Wastewater is chemically complex, biologically active, and variable hour to hour. Recovery, matrix effects, degradation between collection and analysis, and limits of detection at environmentally relevant concentrations are all live problems.

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Data integration and statistical modeling. Turning measurements into population-level estimates requires normalization for flow, population size, in-sewer degradation, and per-capita excretion assumptions. Every one of those introduces uncertainty, and the field has not standardized any of them.

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Data interpretation. NIH states the question directly: how does detection in wastewater correlate with real-world human exposure, and what are the public health implications? This is the validation gap, and it is why parallel clinical and wastewater studies show up in NIAID's list. Any company selling a WBE product will eventually be asked to defend the inferential chain from a concentration in a pipe to a claim about a population.

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NIH additionally names best practices, communication of findings, and ethical and privacy issues as important considerations. Do not treat that as boilerplate. In a field where results can be attributed to a neighborhood, a building, or an institution, the ethics section of a WBE application carries real weight, and NIDA explicitly asks for research analyzing those implications.

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Participating Institutes and What Each One Wants

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Only three Institutes participate in this topic, which makes Institute selection simpler than usual but also raises the stakes on getting it right. Your application will be assigned to one, that Institute's budget will pay for it, and its priorities will decide whether it gets funded after review.

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National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS)

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NIEHS is the chemical and environmental exposure home for this topic, and it is the only participating Institute signaling any preference. NIEHS encourages multidisciplinary collaborations and partnerships with public health experts, epidemiologists, analytical chemists, and experts in contaminant fate and transport.

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Stated areas of interest:

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• WBE studies to identify known and emerging environmental contaminants impacting community health

• WBE to identify the origins of contaminants and quantify contaminant contribution to disease

• Studies promoting multi-level assessment of sewer networks at various scales, including single and multiple wastewater treatment plants, neighborhoods, and individual buildings

• Technology and methodology development to advance WBE, including biomarkers for monitoring community health and assays for detection and quantification of chemical exposures

• Creation and incorporation of data infrastructure and standardized protocols for WBE collaboration

• Increasing community awareness and bringing WBE to small-serving communities such as rural systems

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NIEHS states it may give special consideration to support meritorious applications in this topic area.

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ICO scientific contacts: Danielle Carlin, PhD, DABT (danielle.carlin@nih.gov); Yuxia Cui, PhD (yuxia.cui@nih.gov); Heather Henry, PhD (heather.henry@nih.gov).

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Two of these bullets are unusually direct invitations to small businesses. "Technology and methodology development, including biomarkers and assays for detection and quantification of chemical exposures" is a description of a product. So is "data infrastructure and standardized protocols." And the small-serving and rural communities bullet is a market-access argument that most competitors will ignore, which makes it a differentiator: the small utility that serves 3,000 people cannot afford a research-grade LC-MS workflow, and a low-cost, low-skill, ruggedized approach has both public health value and a genuinely underserved commercial market.

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National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)

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NIAID owns the pathogen side. Stated areas of interest:

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• Genomic epidemiology method development to better detect and track microbes, predict microbial case surges, analyze and share WBE metadata and data, integrate WBE data across platforms, and identify novel applications for secondary analyses of WBE data

• Development of clearer methods to distinguish human versus animal and agricultural signals, and One Health integration

• Using WBE to study microbe biology, including transmission, evolution, and persistence

• Parallel clinical and WBE studies analyzing the contribution of microbes identified in the environment to human disease

• Development of novel assays and laboratory methods for detection and quantification of protozoan parasites and cysts that resist chlorination

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ICO scientific contacts: Brooke Bozick, PhD (brooke.bozick@nih.gov); M. "Kate" Bradford Plimack, PhD (kate.plimack@nih.gov).

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Two of these are exceptionally well-defined product problems. Human versus animal signal discrimination is a discrete, solvable technical question with immediate commercial value, because it determines whether a positive result triggers a public health response or gets written off as agricultural runoff, and no standardized solution has been adopted. Chlorine-resistant protozoan parasites and cysts, meaning organisms in the Cryptosporidium and Giardia class, is an even tighter specification: NIAID has essentially named the analyte class and the failure mode of existing methods. If you have an assay platform that concentrates and detects environmental cysts, this bullet was written for you.

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Note also that NIAID's standing small business portfolio already funds diagnostics and prevention strategies across bacterial, fungal, viral, and parasitic targets, so a WBE assay application does not require NIAID to stretch its mission.

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National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)

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NIDA frames its interest around public health response rather than measurement for its own sake. NIDA is interested in WBE research that supports community and public health responses to substance use and overdose, and it makes two participation requests that function as near-requirements:

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• Applicants are encouraged to partner with local or state public health agencies to ensure public health relevance and the ability to respond to identified hotspots and outbreaks.

• Applicants are encouraged to engage people who may be affected by the research or the reporting of results, including people who use drugs and other community members.

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Stated areas of interest:

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• Tracking patterns of substance use or exposures, including illicit drugs, medications for opioid use disorder, and naloxone

• Identifying emerging substances

• Examining links between substances detected in wastewater and community-level health outcomes such as fatal and non-fatal overdose

• Triangulating WBE with other drug use data sources to inform public health surveillance and response

• Analyzing the ethical implications of wastewater surveillance of substance use and misuse detection

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ICO scientific contact: MeLisa Creamer (melisa.creamer@nih.gov).

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The naloxone and medications-for-OUD bullet is worth pausing on. Most WBE drug work measures consumption of illicit substances. NIDA is also asking about measuring treatment and harm reduction penetration, which is a fundamentally different and largely unbuilt product: a community-level indicator of whether interventions are actually reaching people. That is a metric health departments and payers would plausibly buy, and almost nobody is selling it.

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NIDA's standing small business priorities already include forensic testing technologies for identifying emerging drugs and diagnostic tools for detection and quantification of drug exposure, both of which map onto this topic without any stretching.

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Where Does a Small Business Actually Fit?

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More cleanly here than in most Highlighted Topics. NIH SBIR and STTR awards fund research and development toward a commercially viable product or service, and this topic's gaps are largely instrumentation, assay, and software gaps. The strongest fits:

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Sampling hardware and sample stabilization. Flow-proportional and passive samplers, in-sewer deployable devices, cold-chain-free preservation chemistry, and sampling designs that let a single device characterize a neighborhood rather than a whole treatment plant. NIEHS explicitly asks for multi-level sewer network assessment down to the building scale, which is a hardware and deployment problem before it is a science problem.

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Analytical assays and panels. Multi-residue chemical panels for pesticides, plasticizers, personal care products, heavy metals, and emerging contaminants. Molecular panels for pathogens. Concentration and detection methods for chlorine-resistant protozoan cysts, which NIAID names specifically. Assays for drug metabolites and for medications including buprenorphine, methadone, and naloxone.

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Field-deployable and decentralized testing. Everything above, but cheap enough and simple enough for a rural utility or a small health department to run without a PhD analytical chemist. NIEHS's small-serving communities bullet is the funding hook, and the addressable market is large and structurally underserved.

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Normalization, modeling, and interpretation software. Turning a concentration into a defensible population estimate is the field's central unsolved problem and it is pure software plus validation. This is the highest-margin, lowest-capital entry point in the topic, and NIH names it twice, under data integration and statistical modeling and again under data interpretation.

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Data infrastructure and interoperability. NIEHS asks for data infrastructure and standardized protocols for WBE collaboration. NIAID asks for the ability to analyze and share WBE metadata, integrate data across platforms, and enable secondary analyses. That is a platform specification written by two Institutes independently.

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Human versus animal source attribution. NIAID's One Health bullet. A validated discrimination method is a component that every other WBE product would want to license.

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Biomarkers of community health. NIEHS asks for biomarkers for monitoring community health, which is broader than contaminant measurement and largely undefined. This is the most scientifically speculative bullet in the topic and correspondingly the most defensible if you have real preliminary data.

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Surveillance-to-response platforms. NIDA's framing is explicit that measurement without response capability is not the goal. A system that detects an emerging substance and routes an actionable alert to a health department, with the ethical and privacy architecture built in rather than bolted on, addresses NIDA's stated interest directly.

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What Will Not Work

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Three failure modes are predictable here.

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A surveillance service with no technology development. Running existing assays on new samples in a new city is a service business, not research and development. SBIR reviewers will identify it immediately. The innovation has to be in the method, the instrument, the model, or the platform.

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A COVID-era pathogen dashboard repositioned. A number of companies built SARS-CoV-2 wastewater dashboards and are looking for a second act. Reviewers in this space have seen that pitch. If the underlying technology is a data pipeline that ingests third-party lab results, the innovation claim is thin unless the modeling and interpretation layer is genuinely novel and validated.

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Measurement with no validation against human exposure. NIH names data interpretation as a core gap. An application that produces numbers without addressing what those numbers mean for actual human exposure is answering the easy half of the question.

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Two Structural Considerations

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Partnering with a health department cuts both ways. NIDA encourages partnership with local or state public health agencies, and NIEHS encourages partnerships with public health experts and epidemiologists. Those partnerships are genuinely necessary for credibility and for site access. They also consume your outsourcing allowance: under SBIR, Phase I generally requires at least 67 percent of the research effort to be performed by the small business and Phase II at least 50 percent, and consultant plus contractual arrangements in Phase I are generally capped around 33 percent of the total requested. Structure the partnership as site access, sample provision, and advisory input rather than as a large subaward, or move to STTR where the collaboration allowance is built into the mechanism.

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STTR is often the better vehicle here. NIH describes WBE as inherently requiring analytical chemistry, molecular biology, and epidemiology together, plus data sharing across disciplines. Few small companies hold all of that in house. Under STTR, a formal collaboration with a university or nonprofit research institution is required, at least 40 percent of the work is performed by the small business and at least 30 percent by the research institution, and the Principal Investigator may be primarily employed by either organization. For a company that needs an academic environmental epidemiologist or a university analytical core to be credible, PA-27-102 is frequently the stronger application. One exception is noted in the funding section below.

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How Much Funding Would I Receive?

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There is no funding amount attached to the Highlighted Topic itself. Budgets come from the parent announcement you apply through and from the Institute that funds you.

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Under the current NIH SBIR and STTR parent announcements, standard guidelines provide:

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• Phase I: up to $323,090, typically over one to two years

• Phase II: up to $2,153,927, typically over two to three years

• Fast-Track: Phase I and Phase II in a single application and review

• Direct to Phase II: available under SBIR for companies that have already established feasibility

• Phase IIB (PA-27-101): follow-on funding beyond Phase II

• Commercialization Readiness Pilot: late-stage, milestone-driven support, with amounts varying by Institute

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Cost sharing is not required.

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The NIEHS Budget Caveat You Need to Check First

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This matters more in this topic than almost anywhere else in the NIH portfolio, because NIEHS is the most natural home for chemical-focused WBE work and NIEHS applies reduced caps to two of its program areas.

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NIEHS caps its Superfund Research Program topics at $200,000 for Phase I, $1.25 million for Phase II, and $300,000 for CRP. Its Worker Training Program topics are capped at $100,000, Phase I only. Both of those NIEHS programs accept SBIR applications only, not STTR.

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The Superfund Research Program focuses on detection and remediation technologies for hazardous substances relevant to Superfund and other contaminated sites. A WBE project framed around detecting industrial releases, heavy metals, disaster-related spills, or site-associated contaminants could plausibly be routed there, and the difference between the standard cap and the SRP cap is more than $900,000 in Phase II. It also removes STTR as an option, which changes your whole team structure.

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This is a five-minute email to a program officer that can reshape the entire application. Ask directly whether your project would be handled under general NIEHS mission or under the Superfund Research Program before you build a budget.

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NIAID and NIDA both operate under the standard caps and both accept STTR.

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Full Institute-by-Institute budget detail is in our NIH SBIR program executive summary.

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What Could I Use the Funding For?

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Funds support research and development toward a commercially viable product or service aligned with the mission of a participating Institute. Allowable costs include personnel, materials, prototype fabrication, assay development, instrument builds, field deployment and validation studies, method comparison work, software development, intellectual property protection, and other direct R&D expenses.

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Phase II, Phase IIB, and CRP funds may additionally cover scale-up, manufacturing, validation at multiple sites, regulatory preparation, and commercialization activities.

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For most WBE projects, human subjects considerations are lighter than founders expect. Wastewater collected at a treatment plant or sewer node is generally not individually identifiable and is typically not treated as human subjects research, though that determination belongs to your IRB and your Institute, not to you. Where it changes is in the parallel clinical and wastewater studies NIAID names, which do involve human participants and human specimens, and in any building-level or institution-level sampling where results could be attributed to a small identifiable group. If your design includes either, raise it with program staff early, because it affects which forms you file and how the application is reviewed.

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What Is the Timeline?

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Highlighted Topic dates

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• Posted: August 27, 2026

• Expires: August 27, 2028

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SBIR and STTR standard receipt dates (PA-27-100 and PA-27-102)

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• September 5, 2026. This falls on a Saturday, and Labor Day is Monday, September 7, so submissions are accepted through Tuesday, September 8, 2026.

• January 5, 2027

• April 5, 2027

• September 5, 2027, which falls on a Sunday before Labor Day, so that cycle effectively closes Tuesday, September 7, 2027

• January 5, 2028

• April 5, 2028

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Because the topic expires on August 27, 2028, April 5, 2028 is the last standard receipt date that falls inside the active window. That gives you six cycles in total. All applications are due by 5:00 PM local time of the applicant organization.

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Review and award timeline for the September 2026 cycle

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• Scientific merit review: November 2026

• Advisory council review: January 2027

• Earliest project start date: April 2027

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Review and award timeline for the January 2027 cycle

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• Scientific merit review: March 2027

• Advisory council review: May 2027

• Earliest project start date: July 2027

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Review and award timeline for the April 2027 cycle

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• Scientific merit review: July 2027

• Advisory council review: August 2027

• Earliest project start date: December 2027

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A policy change that matters for planning. NIH tightened its late application policy under NOT-OD-26-064, effective for due dates on or after May 25, 2026. Small business applications no longer receive the discretionary late submission window. Submit early enough to resolve eRA Commons validation errors before the deadline, not after.

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Practical planning guidance. Budget at least twelve weeks of lead time before your target due date, and more if your federal registrations are not complete. SAM.gov, UEI, the SBA Company Registry, eRA Commons, and Grants.gov registrations can take four to six weeks on their own and must all be finished before you can submit anything. For a first-time applicant, expect 120 to 200 hours of total effort on a competitive submission.

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One WBE-specific timing note: if your project requires access to a sewer network, a treatment plant, or a health department's data, secure those agreements and letters of support before you start writing. Utility and municipal approvals move on their own schedule, and a missing site access letter is a common reason otherwise strong environmental applications lose points on Environment and Approach.

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Who Is Eligible to Apply?

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Eligibility comes from the parent announcement, not from the topic. Applicants must be U.S. small business concerns that are:

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• Organized for profit with a place of business located in the United States

• At or below 500 employees, including affiliates

• More than 50 percent owned and controlled by U.S. citizens or permanent resident aliens, by qualifying U.S. entities, or by a combination

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For STTR, the company must also have a formal collaboration with a U.S. research institution, with at least 40 percent of the work performed by the small business and at least 30 percent by the research institution. Note again that NIEHS Superfund Research Program and Worker Training Program topics accept SBIR only.

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Foreign organizations are not eligible, and foreign subawards and subcontracts are not permitted.

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Are There Restrictions I Should Know About?

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• Only U.S. small business concerns are eligible; foreign organizations are not.

• Applications involving foreign subawards or subcontracts will not be considered for funding. WBE has an active international research community, and collaborations that would be natural scientifically are not permissible under this mechanism.

• Your application must be relevant to the mission of a participating Institute. For this topic that means NIEHS, NIAID, or NIDA.

• Duplicate or highly overlapping applications submitted under multiple HHS announcements are not permitted.

• Companies must satisfy applicable SBA performance benchmark requirements, including the Phase I to Phase II transition rate benchmark and the Phase II commercialization rate benchmark for companies with substantial award histories.

• Phase I generally requires at least 67 percent of the research effort to be performed by the small business; Phase II at least 50 percent. Consultant and contractual arrangements in Phase I are generally limited to roughly 33 percent of the total amount requested.

• Additional national security, foreign relationship, and foreign ownership disclosure requirements apply and may result in denial of award. The 2026 SBIR and STTR reauthorization tightened foreign risk management and due diligence review, and that screening now sits inside the review critical path.

• Cost sharing is not required.

• Applying under a Highlighted Topic does not change referral or review, and does not guarantee that funds have been set aside.

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What Kind of Application Is Likely to Win Here?

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NIH reviews small business applications on Significance, Investigators, Innovation, Approach, and Environment, with commercialization potential specifically evaluated for Phase II and Fast-Track. Within this topic, five things separate competitive applications.

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One: you picked the right Institute before you started writing. Three Institutes with genuinely different scopes means the same instrument can be three different applications. A sampler validated on pesticides is NIEHS. The same sampler validated on protozoan cysts is NIAID. Validated on fentanyl analogs it is NIDA. Email the named contact, describe the technology in a paragraph, ask whether it fits and which mechanism they would suggest. It is the highest-return hour you will spend, and for NIEHS it is also how you find out which budget cap applies.

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Two: you addressed a named gap rather than a general capability. NIH gave you the list: sampling variability, analytical methods, data integration and modeling, data interpretation, best practices, communication, and ethics. An application that maps its aims onto those specific gaps is visibly responsive. One that describes a general WBE platform is not.

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Three: you have real validation data, ideally against an independent measure. The interpretation gap is the field's credibility problem. Applications that show their wastewater signal tracking something externally verifiable, whether clinical case counts, prescription data, overdose records, or paired human biomonitoring, are answering the question reviewers actually have.

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Four: you brought the partners. All three Institutes ask for collaboration in some form, and NIDA asks twice, for public health agency partnership and for engagement with affected community members including people who use drugs. Letters of support from partners with no defined role in the research plan are transparent to reviewers. Give each partner a named function, specific deliverables, and where appropriate a line in the budget.

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Five: you took ethics and privacy seriously as design, not as compliance. NIH names ethical and privacy issues in the background, and NIDA lists analyzing the ethical implications of wastewater surveillance as a fundable area in its own right. Building-level and institution-level sampling can attribute drug use to an identifiable group, and that has already generated public controversy in the field. An application that has thought through spatial resolution limits, data governance, and how findings get communicated is stronger on Approach and considerably more commercially credible, because your eventual customers will ask the same questions

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the NIH wastewater-based epidemiology Highlighted Topic a funding opportunity I can apply to directly?

No. An NIH Highlighted Topic is a published statement of scientific priority, not a Notice of Funding Opportunity. There is no application package and no separate deadline. Small businesses apply through a broad NIH opportunity, which means the SBIR parent announcement PA-27-100 or the STTR parent announcement PA-27-102.

How much funding is available under this topic?

The topic itself carries no funding amount. Standard SBIR guidelines provide up to $323,090 for Phase I and up to $2,153,927 for Phase II. One exception matters here: NIEHS caps Superfund Research Program topics at $200,000 for Phase I, $1.25 million for Phase II, and $300,000 for CRP, and caps Worker Training Program topics at $100,000 for Phase I only. Both of those NIEHS programs accept SBIR only, not STTR. Confirm with NIEHS program staff which program area would handle your project before building a budget.

Does applying under this Highlighted Topic improve my chances?

Not in review. NIH states that applying in a Highlighted Topic area will not affect referral or review of applications. NIEHS states it may give special consideration to meritorious applications in this topic area. NIAID and NIDA make no such statement for this topic. The real advantage is informational: three Institutes have documented what they want to fund and named the program staff to contact.

Which NIH Institutes participate in the wastewater-based epidemiology Highlighted Topic?

Three: the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). NIEHS covers chemical and environmental contaminant exposure, NIAID covers pathogens and genomic epidemiology, and NIDA covers substance use and overdose surveillance.

What are the deadlines?

The topic is open from August 27, 2026 through August 27, 2028. SBIR and STTR standard receipt dates are September 5, 2026, January 5, 2027, April 5, 2027, September 5, 2027, January 5, 2028, and April 5, 2028. Because the topic expires in August 2028, April 5, 2028 is the last standard receipt date inside the active window. September 5, 2026 falls on a Saturday before Labor Day, so that cycle accepts submissions through Tuesday, September 8, 2026, and September 5, 2027 falls on a Sunday before Labor Day, so that cycle closes Tuesday, September 7, 2027. All applications are due by 5:00 PM local time of the applicant organization.

What specific technical problems is NIH asking companies to solve?

NIH names four clusters of challenges: sampling variability driven by sample location and timing of collection; analytical methods; data integration and statistical modeling; and data interpretation, meaning how detection in wastewater correlates with real-world human exposure and what it implies for public health. NIH also names best practices, communication of findings, and ethical and privacy issues as important considerations. Each of those is a defensible basis for an SBIR aim.

Can wastewater-based epidemiology detect more than pathogens?

Yes, and NIH says so explicitly. The topic states that wastewater can indicate exposure to pesticides, plasticizers, personal care products, heavy metals, industrial releases, emerging contaminants, and disaster-related spills and fires, and that while it has been used to detect pathogens it can also detect medications and drug metabolites. The topic is considerably broader than pathogen surveillance.

Who is eligible to apply?

For-profit U.S. small business concerns with 500 or fewer employees including affiliates, more than 50 percent owned and controlled by U.S. citizens or permanent residents or by qualifying U.S. entities. Foreign organizations are not eligible, and foreign subawards and subcontracts are not permitted. STTR additionally requires a formal collaboration with a U.S. research institution.

Should my company apply for SBIR or STTR?

Choose SBIR if your company performs the majority of the research and your Principal Investigator is primarily employed by the company. Choose STTR if the project depends on a formal collaboration with a university or nonprofit research institution. Because NIH describes WBE as requiring analytical chemistry, molecular biology, and epidemiology together, STTR is frequently the stronger structural fit. The exception is NIEHS Superfund Research Program and Worker Training Program topics, which accept SBIR only.

Is wastewater sampling considered human subjects research?

Usually not, but the determination is not yours to make. Wastewater collected at a treatment plant or sewer node is generally not individually identifiable and is typically not treated as human subjects research. That changes for the parallel clinical and wastewater studies NIAID names, which involve human participants and specimens, and for building-level or institution-level sampling where results could be attributed to a small identifiable group. Raise either scenario with program staff and your IRB early.

Do I need a partnership with a utility or health department?

Not formally required, but effectively yes for most designs. NIDA encourages partnering with local or state public health agencies and engaging affected community members including people who use drugs. NIEHS encourages partnerships with public health experts, epidemiologists, analytical chemists, and contaminant fate and transport experts. Beyond responsiveness, you need site access to collect samples. Secure those agreements before you begin writing, because municipal approvals move on their own schedule and a missing site access letter costs points on Environment and Approach.

How do partnerships interact with the SBIR work allocation rules?

Carefully. Phase I generally requires at least 67 percent of the research effort to be performed by the small business and Phase II at least 50 percent, and consultant plus contractual arrangements in Phase I are generally limited to roughly 33 percent of the total requested. Structure agency and academic partnerships as site access, sample provision, data sharing, and advisory input rather than as large subawards, or use STTR where a substantial research institution role is built into the mechanism.

What kinds of wastewater projects are unlikely to be funded?

Three patterns predictably fail. A surveillance service that runs existing assays on new samples in new locations is a service business rather than research and development. A repositioned COVID-era dashboard that ingests third-party lab results has a thin innovation claim unless the modeling and interpretation layer is genuinely novel. And measurement work that produces numbers without addressing what they mean for real human exposure answers only the easy half of the question NIH asked.

How long will it take me to prepare an application?

For a first-time applicant, expect 120 to 200 hours in total. Start at least twelve weeks before your target due date. Federal registrations across SAM.gov, UEI, the SBA Company Registry, eRA Commons, and Grants.gov can take four to six weeks on their own and must be complete before you can submit.

What happens if I submit late?

It will not be accepted. NIH tightened its late application policy for due dates on or after May 25, 2026, and small business applications no longer receive the discretionary late submission window.

Could this topic be withdrawn before it expires?

Possibly. NIH reviews each Highlighted Topic annually for continued alignment with agency priorities, and Institutes can post and retire topics at any time. The posted expiration date is August 27, 2028, but verify the topic is still live before each cycle you plan to submit in.

How Can BW&CO Help?

BW&CO is a non-dilutive federal funding advisory firm. We have helped clients secure more than $350 million in federal funding, and wastewater-based epidemiology sits at exactly the kind of intersection we handle well: an emerging measurement field with real hardware and software product opportunities, three possible Institute sponsors with meaningfully different scopes, one buried budget cap that can cost you $900,000 if you find it late, and partnership requirements that interact awkwardly with SBIR work allocation rules.

We can:

• Identify the right Institute and mechanism for your technology, and determine before you write whether NIEHS would handle your project under general mission or under the Superfund Research Program, which decides both your budget ceiling and whether STTR is available.

• Triple your likelihood of success through proven strategy and insider-aligned proposal development.

• Reduce your time spent on the proposal by 50 to 80 percent, so your team stays on the technology.

• Structure utility, health department, and academic partnerships so they strengthen the application without breaching the outsourcing limits.

NIH Highlighted Topic: Catalyzing Interdisciplinary Research on HIV-Associated Co-occurring Conditions

Highlighted Topic 99 | Lead Office: NIH Office of AIDS Research (OAR) | Posted July 28, 2026 | Expires July 28, 2028 | Apply through the NIH SBIR parent announcement (PA-27-100) or the NIH STTR parent announcement (PA-27-102).

Executive Summary

NIH has designated HIV-associated co-occurring conditions as a formal Highlighted Topic, and sixteen NIH Institutes, Centers, and Offices have attached their own stated interests to it. For a small business, this is one of the most cross-cutting priority signals NIH has published in the HIV space, because it opens the door to funding from cancer, cardiopulmonary, aging, metabolic, mental health, substance use, oral health, musculoskeletal, and integrative health budgets at the same time, all through a single application to the standard SBIR or STTR omnibus.

The science being requested is a shift in framing. Antiretroviral therapy has turned HIV into a manageable chronic condition, and the unsolved problem is no longer viral suppression. It is that people with HIV develop comorbidities earlier, carry more of them at once, experience treatment-related toxicities, and navigate mental health, substance use, and structural barriers that disease-specific care models were never designed to handle. NIH wants to fund work that treats those conditions as an interconnected system rather than a list of separate diseases, and it wants that work to reach patients through care models that actually get implemented.

For companies, the commercially relevant openings are concentrated in a handful of places: multi-condition risk prediction and early screening, point-of-care and decentralized diagnostics for comorbidities and coinfections, digital therapeutics and adherence technologies that address HIV alongside substance use or mental health, biomarkers of accelerated aging and organ injury, drug interaction and polypharmacy decision support, and platforms that let a single clinic deliver integrated care without adding staff.

There is no dedicated pot of money and no separate application form. A Highlighted Topic is a priority signal, not a Notice of Funding Opportunity. You apply through the normal NIH SBIR or STTR omnibus, you compete against every other small business application in that cycle, and NIH states plainly that applying in a Highlighted Topic area will not affect how your application is referred or reviewed. What the topic does give you is unusually specific intelligence about what sixteen ICOs want to buy, plus named program staff to call before you write a word. Two participating Institutes, NHLBI and NIDA, state they may dedicate funds to this topic area, and three, NCCIH, NIDA, and NIDCR, state they may give special consideration to meritorious applications in it.

Under the current SBIR parent announcement, standard budget guidelines run up to $323,090 for Phase I and up to $2,153,927 for Phase II, with several Institutes approved to exceed those caps. The next standard receipt dates are September 5, 2026, January 5, 2027, and April 5, 2027, and the topic stays live through July 28, 2028.

One timing change matters more here than almost anywhere else in the NIH portfolio: HHS eliminated dedicated AIDS-specific SBIR and STTR due dates for applications due on or after May 25, 2026. HIV-focused companies that built their calendars around the legacy AIDS cycles need to rebuild them around the standard September, January, and April dates.

A Quick Note on the NIH SBIR and STTR Program

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The NIH, CDC, and FDA SBIR and STTR programs are the largest source of non-dilutive early-stage funding for health, biomedical, and life science technology in the United States. NIH alone sets aside well over a billion dollars a year. Awards are grants, not investments. There is no equity, no repayment, and no board seat.

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The program runs in phases. Phase I funds proof of concept and feasibility. Phase II funds the substantive research and development that turns a validated concept into a product. Fast-Track combines both in a single application, and Direct to Phase II lets companies that have already established feasibility skip Phase I entirely. Phase IIB and the Commercialization Readiness Pilot extend funding for late-stage work such as clinical validation, manufacturing scale-up, and regulatory submissions. Applicants must be for-profit U.S. small businesses with 500 or fewer employees and majority U.S. ownership.

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For the complete breakdown of the NIH SBIR and STTR program, including all budget caps by Institute, clinical trial policies, eligibility mechanics, review criteria, and the full timeline, see our full executive summary here: NIH, CDC and FDA Parent SBIR Grant (PA-27-100).

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Everything below is specific to this Highlighted Topic.

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What Is a Highlighted Topic, and How Is It Different From a Funding Opportunity?

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This distinction trips up nearly every first-time applicant, so it is worth being precise.

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A Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) is a solicitation. It has an announcement number, its own application package, its own review criteria, and in most cases its own set-aside funding. You apply to it directly.

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A Highlighted Topic is a published statement of scientific priority maintained centrally by NIH. It has no application package. It has no guaranteed funding. You cannot apply to it. Instead, you apply through a broad opportunity such as the SBIR or STTR parent announcement, and the topic tells you what the participating Institutes and Centers currently want to fund inside their existing budgets.

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NIH is explicit about the practical consequences:

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• Apply through an appropriate parent announcement or other broad NIH opportunity.

• Reach out early to the listed scientific contacts to discuss alignment.

• If an ICO chooses to dedicate funding to a topic, the amount depends on available funds, the number of meritorious applications, and competing priorities.

• Applying in a Highlighted Topic area will not affect NIH referral or review of your application.

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That last point is the one to internalize. The topic does not give you a scoring advantage. What it gives you is a map. Sixteen ICOs have each written down, in their own words, what they would fund in this space and who to call about it. That intelligence is worth considerably more than a modest scoring bump, because the single most common reason strong small business applications fail at NIH is misalignment with the Institute that ends up holding the application.

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Highlighted Topics replaced the older Notice of Special Interest (NOSI) model for this purpose. If you have applied to NIH before and are looking for a notice number to enter into the Agency Routing Identifier field, there is not one for a Highlighted Topic. The practical approach is to make the alignment explicit in your cover letter and in your Specific Aims, and to confirm handling with the program officer at your target Institute before you submit.

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What Are They Looking For? A Detailed Overview

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The Core Scientific Problem

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NIH frames the problem in terms that any founder in this space will recognize from the clinic.

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Antiretroviral therapy transformed HIV into a manageable chronic condition. But people with HIV still face high risk and early onset of comorbidities, adverse effects from ART itself, and a set of medical, psychosocial, and structural challenges that are tangled together rather than separable. The burden extends beyond people living with HIV: NIH specifically calls out HIV-exposed but uninfected children, who may carry elevated risks of immune, metabolic, and developmental problems compared with unexposed peers, particularly in low and middle-income settings.

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The stated knowledge gaps are where the fundable work lives:

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Mechanistic gaps. How do HIV, ART, and psychosocial stressors interact to drive the early onset and progression of comorbidities? This is the question underneath accelerated aging, chronic inflammation, and immune activation.

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Shared-pathway gaps. Many comorbidities intersect and share risk factors before diverging into disease-specific trajectories. NIH gives two examples directly: metabolic syndrome raising risk for diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and chronic kidney disease at once; and certain coinfections raising cancer risk. The implication is a real product thesis. If you can identify or intervene on a shared upstream factor, you address multiple outcomes with one technology, and that is a much stronger commercial story than a single-indication tool.

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Model gaps. Traditional disease-specific models do not capture shared factors, and they do not capture the multilevel determinants that decide whether an intervention actually gets implemented in a real health system.

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Care delivery gaps. NIH wants whole-person care that links infectious diseases, endocrinology, psychiatry, nursing, pharmacy, and community health, with emphasis on early screening, lifestyle-based prevention, and sustained engagement in HIV care, all while accounting for local context and health system constraints.

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The Stated Purpose

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The topic aims to catalyze interdisciplinary research on HIV-associated co-occurring conditions and to expand multidisciplinary teams that can develop and deliver preventive strategies improving health and quality of life across the lifespan. Three emphases are named:

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1. Shared factors and multi-organ effects, to inform early preventive strategies.

2. Implementation science approaches to identify barriers and facilitators, optimize multidisciplinary care, and deliver scalable, sustainable care models.

3. Multidisciplinary teams with multiple Program Directors and Principal Investigators holding complementary expertise, cross-NIH alignment, and use of existing NIH resources.

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Meaningful community engagement is strongly encouraged throughout.

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Alignment With the Make America Healthy Again Initiative

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This topic is being issued as part of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) initiative, and NIH lists the specific MAHA workstreams it aligns with. This matters strategically, because it tells you which vocabulary and which framings currently carry institutional weight. The named alignments include:

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• The NIH MAHA Chronic Disease Initiative, which aligns existing NIH chronic disease research and aims to generate actionable results for diseases arising in childhood and adulthood.

• The Whole-Person-Health approach to chronic disease prevention, including metabolic health at all stages of life.

• Prescribing patterns and impact on mental health, including evaluation of prescription patterns and overprescription trends.

• Food for Health, studying food and lifestyle interventions and their effect on outcomes and cost.

• Nutrition, including dietary patterns that support metabolic health and precision nutrition.

• The oral health and systemic disease connection, including oral microbiome relationships with gut health and immune function.

• The Gut Microbiome Research Initiative, on the microbiome's role in chronic disease development and progression.

• Longitudinal research for chronic disease prevention, leveraging existing NIH cohorts including All of Us, ABCD, HBCD, and ECHO.

• Clinical trial networks, strengthening existing networks through engagement with large public and private hospital systems including the VA.

• Mental health and addiction research, with focus areas including screen time in children and adolescents.

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If your technology touches metabolic health, nutrition, the microbiome, polypharmacy, or prevention, there is language here you should be borrowing.

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Participating Institutes, Centers, and Offices, and What Each One Wants

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This is the section to read closely. Your application will be assigned to one Institute, that Institute's budget will pay for it, and that Institute's priorities will determine whether it gets funded after review. Below is what each participating ICO has stated for this topic.

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Office of AIDS Research (OAR), lead office. OAR is interested in facilitating interdisciplinary research, including implementation science, to advance understanding of the common factors underlying HIV-associated co-occurring conditions, supporting early prevention, integrated whole-person care, and improved health and quality of life across the lifespan. OAR does not award grants. Your application must be relevant to at least one participating Institute or Center that does. OAR is the central scientific contact for the topic overall, and Geetanjali Bansal, PhD, is the ICO scientific contact.

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National Cancer Institute (NCI). NCI wants to advance understanding of the risks, development, progression, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer in people with HIV, and to test and implement bundled cancer and HIV interventions. NCI notes that people with HIV have increased incidence of certain cancers, are diagnosed at earlier ages and higher stages, have worse overall and cancer-specific survival, and are less likely to receive cancer treatment. Named example topics: characterizing how HIV infection contributes to the development and pathogenesis of HIV-related tumors; discovering and developing new biomarkers, diagnostics, and therapeutics to improve prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and outcomes; and identifying factors that drive cancer disparities for people with HIV, including work to improve adoption, implementation, and sustainment of effective interventions. Contact: Rebecca Liddell Huppi, PhD.

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National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI). NHLBI is interested in mechanisms and pathways behind HIV-associated heart, lung, blood, and sleep (HLBS) comorbidities, and in interventions that improve care, including implementation research. Stated priorities: combined effects of aging, HIV, and ART on HLBS conditions; aging- and HIV-related changes in hematopoiesis, including hematopoietic stem cells and their niche; the impact of sleep deficiency and sleep-disordered breathing on HIV-associated cardiopulmonary and cardiometabolic disease; vascular contributions to cognitive impairment and dementia; implementation strategies that improve uptake and sustainability of evidence-based HLBS interventions; mechanistic studies to reduce the effects of HIV and aging on HLBS comorbidities, including traditional risk factors and sex differences; and novel methods to detect subclinical HIV-related HLBS conditions plus strategies to mitigate clinical disease. NHLBI states it may dedicate available funds to applications in this topic area, subject to funds, the number of meritorious applications, and competing priorities.

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National Institute on Aging (NIA). NIA supports projects addressing HIV-associated co-occurring conditions in midlife and older age, spanning the NIH Stage Model from basic science (Stage 0) through intervention development and refinement (Stage 1) to implementation (Stage V). Areas of interest: the etiologies and pathogenesis of these conditions, including the roles of chronic immune activation and antiretroviral and other drug toxic effects; optimizing medications, care coordination, and behavioral and social interventions to improve outcomes, function, and quality of life; and developing, testing, implementing, and scaling evidence-based interventions that address poor outcomes. Contact: Marcel E. Salive, MD, MPH.

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National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). NIDA seeks interdisciplinary research on how drug use, addiction, and HIV interact across the lifespan. Named examples: how HIV, ART, and polysubstance use affect brain function, behavior, mood, sleep, pain, and cognition; molecular, neurochemical, cellular, and circuit functions underpinning HIV and co-occurring substance use disorders; shared pathways linking substance use, HIV, stress, trauma, and mental health conditions; individual and community factors affecting HIV prevention, care engagement, and ART adherence, with focus on improving access in underserved populations; integrated interventions addressing HIV, SUD, HCV, and co-occurring mental health conditions; and basic, clinical, and translational research on treatment of SUD and overdose in people with HIV. NIDA states it may dedicate available funds to this topic area and may give special consideration to meritorious applications in it.

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National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). NIMH is interested in interdisciplinary biological and behavioral approaches to the neuropsychiatric mechanisms behind central nervous system comorbidities in people with HIV across the lifespan; how HIV biology, treatment exposures, and psychosocial burden converge on shared pathways driving neurocognitive and mental health disorders, in order to inform early intervention and scalable whole-person care models; and multidisciplinary implementation research identifying barriers to neurocognitive and mental health diagnosis and treatment in people with HIV, with emphasis on community engagement and sustainable care delivery. Contacts: Vasudev Rao, MBBS, MS, and Teri Senn, PhD. Note that NIMH's standing small business program already names technologies addressing basic, behavioral, and implementation science related to people living with HIV as an interest area, which makes it an unusually natural home for an SBIR application under this topic.

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National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). NIAID is interested in coinfections affecting people with HIV across the lifespan, from infant through adult, and encourages multidisciplinary applications addressing the impact of stigma and other intersecting behavioral, biological, and health system factors on diagnosis, prevention, and treatment. The named coinfections are tuberculosis, viral hepatitis, and sexually transmitted infections. Contact: Robin E. Huebner, PhD, MPH.

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National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK). NIDDK supports basic, clinical, and implementation science examining the impact of HIV on organs, tissues, and biological systems, including person-oriented comorbidity research. Priorities include enteropathy and gastrointestinal homeostasis; liver diseases and viral hepatitis coinfections; digestive diseases, nutrition, obesity, diabetes, and related complications; and kidney, urologic, and hematologic diseases that may present differently or follow altered clinical courses in the context of HIV. On the clinical side, NIDDK wants work that improves implementation and delivery of evidence-based care and develops strategies to improve HIV diagnosis and progression. Studies addressing social, behavioral, and environmental factors influencing HIV and comorbidities in diabetes, digestive, and kidney disease are named as high priority, particularly regarding disease severity and treatment adherence. Contacts: Deepak Nihalani, Khoa Nguyen, and Minnjuan Flournoy Floyd.

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National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). NIAAA notes that heavy alcohol use, including alcohol use disorder, interacts with both behavioral risk and organ pathophysiology in people living with HIV, accelerating physiological and physical vulnerability, affecting medication adherence and toxicities, and complicating care. Research should improve understanding of the pathophysiology of alcohol-associated comorbidities; develop biomedical and behavioral approaches to restore alcohol-induced organ dysfunction; and implement interventions addressing alcohol and associated mental health, substance use, comorbidities, coinfections, and complications in vulnerable populations. Named complications include cardiovascular disease, metabolic disorders, neurocognitive impairment, and cellular and immune dysfunction. Contact: Kendall Bryant, PhD.

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National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH). NCCIH supports research on complementary and integrative health approaches for symptom management in people living with HIV, framing HIV as a chronic multisystem condition with complex symptoms including pain, fatigue, and neurocognitive and mental health challenges that suit a Whole Person Health approach. Priorities: testing complementary and integrative interventions such as mind-body approaches and natural products to address symptom clusters and improve function and quality of life; elucidating biological, behavioral, and psychosocial mechanisms including inflammation, neuroimmune, and stress pathways, and identifying biomarkers and patient characteristics; integrating these approaches into HIV care through pragmatic and hybrid effectiveness-implementation studies and scalable delivery models; and evaluating risks such as drug and herb interactions, synthesizing evidence, and developing guidance for informed decision-making. NCCIH states it may give special consideration to meritorious applications in this topic area. Contact: Lanay Mudd, PhD.

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National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR). NIDCR supports interdisciplinary research on shared risk factors influencing the onset and progression of HIV-associated comorbidities in the oral and craniofacial complex across the lifespan. Areas of interest: mechanisms of HIV-related oral disease, including immune dysregulation, inflammation, and ART effects; biological, behavioral, and contextual risk factors linking oral and systemic comorbidities and coinfections, including HPV-associated cancer and metabolic and inflammatory diseases; interdisciplinary preventive, diagnostic, and treatment approaches, including probiotics, mucosal immunity modifiers, early cancer detection, and management of oral and salivary gland complications; and integration of oral health into the multidisciplinary HIV care continuum. NIDCR states it may give special consideration to meritorious applications in this topic area. Contact: NIDCR Division of Extramural Research.

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National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS). NIAMS seeks research on HIV-associated comorbidities affecting the musculoskeletal system, skin, and systemic rheumatic diseases, and encourages studies of how HIV infection, ART, and host or viral factors contribute to early onset, acceleration, or worsening of NIAMS-relevant comorbidities. Named conditions include musculoskeletal pain; muscle diseases such as sarcopenia and cachexia; cartilage degeneration and osteoarthritis; osteoporosis, osteopenia, and fractures; arthritis and other rheumatic diseases; and dermatologic manifestations. NIAMS supports basic, translational, and clinical research characterizing the burden, trajectory, and risk of these conditions across the lifespan, and states that priority is given to implementation science projects that develop, test, and scale multidisciplinary whole-person care models integrating musculoskeletal, rheumatic, and skin health into HIV prevention and treatment settings. Contact: Heiyoung Park, PhD. Important operational note for small businesses: NIAMS does not accept clinical trial applications under the SBIR parent announcement.

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Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). NICHD is listed as a participating ICO with a scientific contact, Sonia Lee, PhD, but has not published a topic-specific scope statement. Given the topic's explicit attention to HIV-exposed uninfected children and to outcomes across the lifespan, pediatric, maternal, and developmental angles are clearly in play, but this is an Institute where a pre-submission conversation is not optional.

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Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR). Participating, with Cathy Maulsby, PhD, as contact. OBSSR does not award grants.

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Office of Disease Prevention (ODP). ODP is particularly interested in innovative prevention research using rigorous study design, measurement, and analysis methods to test interventions, implementation strategies, and multidisciplinary care approaches that prevent co-occurring conditions in people with HIV across the lifespan. ODP does not award grants. Contact: JoyAnn Courtney, PhD.

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Office of Research on Women's Health (ORWH). ORWH is interested in research projects addressing HIV-associated co-occurring conditions in women. ORWH does not award grants. Contact: Balkissa Ouattara, MD, PhD, MPH.

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Tribal Health Research Office (THRO). Participating, with Sheila Caldwell, PhD, and Christopher Barnhart, PhD, as contacts. THRO does not award grants.

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Email addresses for every contact are published on the NIH topic page. Note carefully that five of the sixteen participating ICOs are offices that cannot fund anything. Your application still has to land on the mission of an Institute or Center that writes checks.

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Where Does a Small Business Actually Fit?

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This is the honest part, and it is the question a founder should ask before spending 150 hours on an application.

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A large share of what this topic describes is classic investigator-initiated academic research: mechanistic biology, cohort analyses, implementation science trials in health systems. Much of that is better suited to an R01 than to an SBIR. NIH SBIR and STTR awards fund research and development toward a commercially viable product or service. If the deliverable at the end of your project is a paper and a set of findings rather than something a customer buys, an SBIR reviewer will say so.

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The good news is that this topic contains an unusual density of genuine product opportunities, because "shared factors, multi-organ effects, early screening, and scalable care models" is a description of things that get built and sold. The strongest small business fits:

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Multi-condition risk prediction and early screening. The topic's central scientific bet is that shared upstream factors drive several downstream comorbidities. A validated tool that stratifies risk across cardiometabolic, renal, hepatic, neurocognitive, and oncologic outcomes at once maps directly onto NHLBI, NIDDK, NIA, and NCI interests simultaneously, and onto the MAHA prevention framing.

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Point-of-care and decentralized diagnostics. Coinfection detection for TB, viral hepatitis, and STIs sits squarely in NIAID's stated scope. Oral and salivary diagnostics sit in NIDCR's. Detection of subclinical HLBS disease is a named NHLBI priority.

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Biomarkers of accelerated aging, immune activation, and organ injury. NIA names chronic immune activation and drug toxic effects explicitly. NHLBI names hematopoietic changes. NCCIH names inflammation, neuroimmune, and stress mechanisms plus biomarker identification.

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Digital therapeutics and integrated behavioral health. NIDA's interest in integrated interventions addressing HIV, SUD, HCV, and co-occurring mental health conditions is one of the clearest commercial openings in the entire topic, and NIDA is one of the two Institutes signaling possible dedicated funds. NIMH's interest in scalable whole-person care models points the same direction.

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Adherence, polypharmacy, and interaction safety. ART adherence is named by NIDA. Medication optimization is named by NIA. Drug and herb interaction risk is named by NCCIH. Prescribing patterns are a named MAHA workstream. Clinical decision support that manages ART alongside comorbidity medications and supplements has an unusually broad set of sponsors.

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Care coordination and integration platforms. Nearly every ICO in the topic asks for something that in practice requires software: integrating oral health into the HIV care continuum, integrating musculoskeletal and skin health, bundling cancer and HIV interventions, coordinating care across infectious disease, endocrinology, psychiatry, pharmacy, and community health. Note that NIAMS explicitly prioritizes implementation science for exactly this, which is rare.

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Biosensors and wearables. NIAAA's standing small business priorities already include transdermal and wearable alcohol monitoring, which lands directly on this topic's alcohol and organ dysfunction thread.

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Therapeutics. Treatments targeting shared inflammatory or metabolic pathways, or targeting a specific comorbidity in the HIV context, fit multiple Institutes. This is the longest and most capital-intensive path, and Fast-Track or Direct to Phase II with a clear regulatory strategy is usually the right structure.

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One structural constraint to plan around. The topic repeatedly references low and middle-income settings and global context. The SBIR parent announcement does not permit foreign subawards or subcontracts, and applications involving them will not be considered for funding. If your work is genuinely LMIC-facing, the research plan has to be structured so that the funded work happens domestically, with international relevance argued rather than internationally performed. This is a common and avoidable reason HIV-focused SBIR applications get administratively withdrawn.

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STTR is worth a hard look here. This topic asks for multidisciplinary teams with complementary expertise and meaningful community engagement, which is exactly what the STTR mechanism is built for. Under STTR, a formal collaboration with a university or nonprofit research institution is required, and the Principal Investigator may be primarily employed by either the company or the research partner. For a company that needs an academic HIV clinician, an implementation scientist, or a community-engaged research partner in order to be credible, STTR (PA-27-102) is often the stronger vehicle than SBIR.

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How Much Funding Would I Receive?

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There is no funding amount attached to the Highlighted Topic itself. Budgets are set by the parent announcement you apply through and by the Institute that funds you.

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Under the current NIH SBIR and STTR parent announcements, standard guidelines provide:

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• Phase I: up to $323,090, typically over one to two years

• Phase II: up to $2,153,927, typically over two to three years

• Fast-Track: combines Phase I and Phase II in one application and one review

• Direct to Phase II: available under SBIR for companies that have already established feasibility

• Phase IIB (PA-27-101): follow-on funding beyond Phase II, with budgets that can run substantially larger

• Commercialization Readiness Pilot: late-stage, milestone-driven support, up to the SBA statutory maximum of $4,191,495 at NCI, with amounts varying by Institute

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Several Institutes participating in this topic hold approval to exceed the standard caps. NIA allows up to $700,000 for Phase I and $3 million for Phase II on Alzheimer's disease and AD-related dementias, and up to $500,000 and $2.5 million for other projects in its mission space, which is directly relevant given the topic's inclusion of neurocognitive comorbidity and vascular contributions to dementia. NIGMS allows Phase IIB budgets up to $3 million, or $4 million for Strategic Breakthrough awards involving clinical trials. NCI supports CRP projects up to the statutory maximum plus up to $500,000 for technical assistance.

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Cost sharing is not required. Phase I generally requires at least 67 percent of the research effort to be performed by the small business; Phase II generally requires at least 50 percent.

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Full Institute-by-Institute budget detail is in our NIH SBIR program executive summary.

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What Could I Use the Funding For?

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Funds support research and development toward a commercially viable product or service aligned with the mission of a participating Institute or Center. Allowable costs include personnel, materials, prototype fabrication, assay development, validation studies, testing, intellectual property protection, and other direct R&D expenses.

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Phase II, Phase IIB, and CRP funds may additionally cover scale-up, clinical validation, regulatory preparation including IND and IDE-enabling studies, and commercialization activities.

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Whether you can run a clinical trial depends entirely on which Institute funds you. Most ICOs with a direct clinical mission accept clinical trials, including NCI, NHLBI, NIA, NICHD, NIDA, NIMH, and NIDDK, all of which participate in this topic. NIAMS and NIDCR, which also participate in this topic, do not accept clinical trials under the SBIR parent announcement. If your project involves human subjects, confirm your target Institute's specific policy before you build the research plan around it.

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What Is the Timeline?

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Highlighted Topic dates

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• Posted: July 28, 2026

• Expires: July 28, 2028

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SBIR and STTR standard receipt dates (PA-27-100 and PA-27-102)

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• September 5, 2026. This falls on a Saturday, and Labor Day is Monday, September 7, so submissions are accepted through Tuesday, September 8, 2026.

• January 5, 2027

• April 5, 2027

• The same September, January, and April cycle continues into 2027 and 2028 while the topic remains active. September 5, 2027 falls on a Sunday ahead of Labor Day, so that cycle effectively closes Tuesday, September 7, 2027.

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All applications are due by 5:00 PM local time of the applicant organization.

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Review and award timeline for the September 2026 cycle

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• Scientific merit review: November 2026

• Advisory council review: January 2027

• Earliest project start date: April 2027

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Review and award timeline for the January 2027 cycle

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• Scientific merit review: March 2027

• Advisory council review: May 2027

• Earliest project start date: July 2027

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Review and award timeline for the April 2027 cycle

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• Scientific merit review: July 2027

• Advisory council review: August 2027

• Earliest project start date: December 2027

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Two timing changes that specifically affect HIV-focused applicants

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First, HHS eliminated dedicated AIDS and AIDS-related SBIR and STTR due dates for applications due on or after May 25, 2026. HIV-focused companies previously had access to a separate offset schedule that routed applications into AIDS-specific review. That is gone. You now compete on the standard small business calendar, which makes Institute alignment and cycle selection more consequential than before.

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Second, NIH tightened its late application policy under NOT-OD-26-064, effective for due dates on or after May 25, 2026. Small business applications no longer receive the discretionary late submission window. Plan to submit early enough to resolve eRA Commons validation errors before the deadline, not after it.

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Practical planning guidance. Budget at least twelve weeks of lead time before your target due date, and more if your federal registrations are not already complete. SAM.gov, UEI, SBA Company Registry, eRA Commons, and Grants.gov registrations can take four to six weeks on their own and must be finished before you can submit anything. For a first-time applicant, expect 120 to 200 hours of total effort on a competitive submission.

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Who Is Eligible to Apply?

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Eligibility comes from the parent announcement, not from the topic. Applicants must be U.S. small business concerns that are:

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• Organized for profit with a place of business located in the United States

• At or below 500 employees, including affiliates

• More than 50 percent owned and controlled by U.S. citizens or permanent resident aliens, by qualifying U.S. entities, or by a combination

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For STTR, the company must also have a formal collaboration with a U.S. research institution, with at least 40 percent of the work performed by the small business and at least 30 percent by the research institution.

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Foreign organizations are not eligible, and foreign subawards and subcontracts are not permitted.

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Are There Restrictions I Should Know About?

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• Only U.S. small business concerns are eligible; foreign organizations are not.

• Applications involving foreign subawards or subcontracts will not be considered for funding. This is the single most important constraint to plan around given the topic's global framing.

• Your application must be relevant to at least one participating Institute or Center that awards grants. Five of the participating offices in this topic, OAR, OBSSR, ODP, ORWH, and THRO, do not.

• Clinical trials are not accepted by every Institute. Among the ICOs in this topic, NIAMS and NIDCR do not accept them under the SBIR parent announcement.

• Duplicate or highly overlapping applications submitted under multiple HHS announcements are not permitted.

• Companies must satisfy applicable SBA performance benchmark requirements, including the Phase I to Phase II transition rate benchmark and the Phase II commercialization rate benchmark for companies with substantial award histories.

• Additional national security, foreign relationship, and foreign ownership disclosure requirements apply and may result in denial of award. The 2026 reauthorization tightened foreign risk management and due diligence review, and this screening now sits inside the review critical path rather than beside it.

• Cost sharing is not required.

• Applying under a Highlighted Topic does not change referral or review, and does not guarantee that any funds have been set aside.

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What Kind of Application Is Likely to Win Here?

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NIH reviews small business applications on Significance, Investigators, Innovation, Approach, and Environment, with commercialization potential specifically evaluated for Phase II and Fast-Track. Within this topic, four things separate the competitive applications from the rest.

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One: you picked the right Institute, and you picked it before you started writing. Sixteen ICOs participating means sixteen possible framings of the same technology, and the framing determines which study section reviews you and which budget pays for you. A cardiometabolic risk tool assigned to NHLBI is a different application than the same tool assigned to NIDDK. Email the named contact, describe the technology in a paragraph, and ask directly whether it fits and which mechanism they would suggest. That conversation is free and it is the highest-return hour you will spend.

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Two: you actually addressed shared factors, not one disease. The intellectual center of this topic is that comorbidities in people with HIV intersect and share upstream drivers. An application that addresses a single condition in people with HIV is responsive to that Institute's general mission but not distinctively responsive to this topic. An application that shows how one intervention affects multiple outcomes through a shared mechanism is.

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Three: you took implementation seriously. NIH says outright that traditional disease-specific models insufficiently capture multilevel implementation determinants, and NIAMS goes further by prioritizing implementation science outright. For a company, this translates into concrete asks: who delivers this, in what clinic, paid for by whom, fitting into what workflow, sustained how after the grant ends. Applications that treat adoption as somebody else's problem read as naive here.

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Four: your team is genuinely multidisciplinary, and your community engagement is real. Multiple Program Directors and Principal Investigators with complementary expertise are strongly encouraged. Meaningful community engagement is strongly encouraged. Reviewers in this space are well practiced at spotting a letter of support from a community organization that has no role in the actual research plan.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this a Notice of Funding Opportunity I can apply to directly?

No. This is an NIH Highlighted Topic, which is a published statement of scientific priority rather than a solicitation. There is no application package and no separate deadline. You apply through a broad NIH funding opportunity, and for small businesses that means the SBIR parent announcement PA-27-100 or the STTR parent announcement PA-27-102.

How much funding is available under this Highlighted Topic?

The topic itself carries no funding amount. Your budget is governed by the parent announcement you apply through: under standard guidelines, up to $323,090 for SBIR Phase I and up to $2,153,927 for Phase II, with several Institutes approved to exceed those caps. NHLBI and NIDA both state they may dedicate available funds to this topic area, subject to available funds, the number of meritorious applications, and competing priorities.

Does applying under this Highlighted Topic improve my chances?

Not in review. NIH states that applying in a Highlighted Topic area will not affect referral or review of applications. Three participating ICOs, NCCIH, NIDA, and NIDCR, state they may give special consideration to meritorious applications in this topic area, and two, NHLBI and NIDA, state they may dedicate funds. The real advantage is informational: sixteen ICOs have documented what they want and named the staff to call about it.

What are the deadlines?

The topic is open from July 28, 2026 through July 28, 2028. SBIR and STTR standard receipt dates are September 5, 2026, January 5, 2027, and April 5, 2027, with the cycle continuing while the topic remains active. Because September 5, 2026 falls on a Saturday before Labor Day, that cycle accepts submissions through Tuesday, September 8, 2026. All applications are due by 5:00 PM local time of the applicant organization.

Are there separate AIDS-specific due dates for HIV-related SBIR applications?

Not anymore. HHS eliminated dedicated AIDS and AIDS-related SBIR and STTR due dates for applications due on or after May 25, 2026. HIV-focused companies now submit on the standard small business schedule and compete within it.

Which NIH Institutes participate in this topic?

Sixteen ICOs: the Office of AIDS Research as lead, plus NCCIH, NCI, NHLBI, NIA, NIAAA, NIAID, NIAMS, NICHD, NIDA, NIDCR, NIDDK, NIMH, OBSSR, ODP, ORWH, and THRO. Five of those, OAR, OBSSR, ODP, ORWH, and THRO, are offices that do not award grants, so your application must also be relevant to a participating Institute or Center that does.

Who is eligible to apply?

For-profit U.S. small business concerns with 500 or fewer employees including affiliates, more than 50 percent owned and controlled by U.S. citizens or permanent residents or by qualifying U.S. entities. Foreign organizations are not eligible, and foreign subawards and subcontracts are not permitted.

My work focuses on low and middle-income settings, which the topic specifically mentions. Can SBIR fund that?

Only with careful structuring. The topic references low and middle-income settings and HIV-exposed uninfected children in those settings, but the SBIR parent announcement prohibits foreign subawards and subcontracts. The funded research has to be performed domestically. Global relevance can be argued in the significance and commercialization sections; it cannot be delivered through an international subaward under this mechanism.

Can I run a clinical trial with this funding?

It depends on the Institute. Most participating ICOs with a direct clinical mission accept clinical trials, including NCI, NHLBI, NIA, NICHD, NIDA, NIMH, and NIDDK. NIAMS and NIDCR, both participating in this topic, do not accept clinical trials under the SBIR parent announcement. Confirm your target Institute's policy before designing the project.

Should I apply for SBIR or STTR?

SBIR if your company performs the majority of the research and your Principal Investigator is primarily employed by the company. STTR if the project depends on a formal collaboration with a university or nonprofit research institution. Given that this topic explicitly asks for multidisciplinary teams and community engagement, STTR is often the better structural fit, and STTR allows the Principal Investigator to be primarily employed by either the company or the research partner.

Where do I reference the Highlighted Topic in my application?

Unlike a Notice of Special Interest, a Highlighted Topic has no notice number to enter in the Agency Routing Identifier field. Make the alignment explicit in your cover letter and in your Specific Aims, and confirm handling with the program officer at your target Institute before you submit.

What does NIH mean by "shared factors" and why does it matter commercially?

NIH's point is that many comorbidities in people with HIV intersect and share risk factors before diverging into disease-specific trajectories, using metabolic syndrome raising diabetes, cardiovascular, and kidney disease risk as one example and coinfection-driven cancer risk as another. Commercially this is favorable, because a technology addressing an upstream shared factor has a larger addressable market and a stronger clinical value proposition than a single-indication tool, and it can be framed to fit several Institutes at once.

How long will it take me to prepare an application?

For a first-time applicant, expect 120 to 200 hours in total. Start at least twelve weeks before your target due date. Federal registrations across SAM.gov, UEI, SBA Company Registry, eRA Commons, and Grants.gov can take four to six weeks on their own and must be complete before submission.

What happens if I miss the deadline?

Nothing good. NIH tightened its late application policy for due dates on or after May 25, 2026, and small business applications no longer receive the discretionary late submission window. Build in time to fix validation errors before the deadline rather than after it.

Is this topic connected to a broader federal initiative?

Yes. NIH issued it as part of the Make America Healthy Again initiative, and the topic page names the specific MAHA workstreams it aligns with, including the NIH Chronic Disease Initiative, the Whole-Person-Health approach, prescribing patterns and mental health, Food for Health, nutrition and metabolic health, the oral health and systemic disease connection, the Gut Microbiome Research Initiative, longitudinal cohort research, clinical trial networks, and mental health and addiction research. Framing your significance section in that vocabulary is a low-cost, high-signal move.

How Can BW&CO Help?

BW&CO is a non-dilutive federal funding advisory firm. We have helped clients secure more than $350 million in federal funding, and we specialize in exactly the problem this topic creates: a broad scientific priority with sixteen possible sponsors, no dedicated money, and no obvious front door.

We can:

• Identify the right Institute and the right mechanism for your technology, Phase I, Phase II, Fast-Track, Direct to Phase II, Phase IIB, or CRP, and position you with the program officer who controls that budget.

• Triple your likelihood of success through proven strategy and insider-aligned proposal development.

• Reduce your time spent on the proposal by 50 to 80 percent, so your team stays focused on the technology and the company.

• Structure the research plan so that foreign collaboration, clinical trial sequencing, and registration timelines do not sink an otherwise fundable application.

USSOCOM sUMS-G Rapid Capability Assessment: The Complete Guide for Ground Robotics Companies

Below is a brief summary. Please check the full solicitation before applying (link in resources section).

Quick Answer: What Is the sUMS-G Rapid Capability Assessment?

The sUMS-G Rapid Capability Assessment is an open Call on the Vulcan platform seeking commercially available small-to-medium Uncrewed Ground Systems (UGS) and Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGV) that can contribute to the U.S. Special Operations Command small Uncrewed Multi-Domain Systems (sUMS) Ground Capability Portfolio. The Call opened 16 August 2026 and closes 01 October 2026 at 22:59 CDT. Companies respond by submitting a Scout Card through Vulcan, then completing a structured self-assessment of their system against a small tactical robotic ecosystem architecture. The engagement objective is market research, which means no funding is awarded directly from this Call. Selection can lead to a demonstration invitation and downstream consideration for prototype agreements, Other Transaction Agreements, SBIR or STTR topics, CRADAs, or FAR-based procurement.

The central question the Government is asking is direct: which small-to-medium UGS can solve the identified mission-thread Key Technical Problem and provide a viable capability for the sUMS Ground Capability Portfolio?

If your company builds throwable robots, packable or man-packable UGVs, quadrupeds, tracked or wheeled tactical UGVs, or purpose-built robotic platforms with manipulators, this is the single most important open door into the SOF ground robotics portfolio in fiscal year 2026.

At a Glance

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Call name: sUMS-G Rapid Capability Assessment

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Sponsor: U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), small Uncrewed Multi-Domain Systems (sUMS) Ground Capability Portfolio, aligned to the Program Executive Office for Tactical Information Systems (PEO-TIS) Remote Capabilities program office

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Platform: Vulcan, at vulcan-sof.com, the SOF enterprise technology scouting platform and the front end for Engage SOF (eSOF)

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Engagement objective: Market research

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Open date: 16 August 2026, 23:00 CDT

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Deadline: 01 October 2026, 22:59 CDT

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Submission vehicle: Scout Card, plus a structured self-assessment and supporting evidence

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Funding attached to this Call: None published. This is a market research and assessment engagement, not a solicitation with an award ceiling.

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Classification level: Unclassified only

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Who should respond: Commercial UGS and UGV manufacturers, robotics integrators, autonomy software companies with a hosted platform, payload and manipulator developers with a fielded host vehicle

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What disqualifies you fastest: Submitting a concept, a roadmap, or a future configuration instead of a system you can put on the ground and demonstrate now

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Why This Call Matters More Than a Typical RFI

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USSOCOM validated its ground robotics requirements in March 2026. That validation is the gate that opens formal solicitation activity, and the portfolio lead told industry at SOF Week 2026 that solicitations would flow across the different categories of ground robotic products in the cycle that followed. The Remote Capabilities office also posted a Ground Robotics Element and Team Man Portable Systems capability assessment event on its fiscal year 2026 industry slide. This Call is the market research front end of that activity.

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Two structural facts make the ground portfolio unusual. First, PEO-TIS does not own most of the platforms its sensors ride on, with one stated exception: the ground robotics portfolio, where the office does provide the platform. That makes the ground portfolio a direct platform buyer rather than a payload integrator working through another program office. Second, the office described itself as being in a constant state of market research and running roughly three RFIs per year per system category, moving faster when the operational environment changes. Companies that get into the assessment record now are positioned for the next several cycles, not just this one.

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The buying posture briefed to industry was blunt. The office is looking to field what it selects. In the portfolio lead's framing, if development work is needed, that development work will most likely happen after fielding, usually as software modification or SOF-peculiar adaptation such as marinizing a system for maritime special operations use. The standing guidance to vendors was to bring mature items that are tested, that can be produced and scaled, and that operate in contested environments.

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Translated for a startup: this is a fielding pipeline, not a research program. Maturity beats ambition here.

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The sUMS Ground Capability Portfolio Structure

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The portfolio is organized into categories by size, transportability, and mission role. Understanding which category your system belongs in is the first strategic decision you make, because the Government assesses systems inside a category and against a mission thread, not against the entire robotics market.

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T-0.1, Training and Experimentation. Modular interface and drone docking systems. This category supports modular integration, concepts, and experimentation and does not fit the primary operational portfolio categories. If your product is an interface standard, a docking or launch module, a payload carrier, or a test article that enables integration rather than delivering an operational effect, this is your lane.

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E-0.1, Throwables. Throwable, ruggedized recon and ISR robots. Small spherical or impact-tolerant platforms deployed by hand into a structure, a stairwell, a tunnel, or a vehicle. Assessment attention lands on survivability at impact, self-righting, camera and audio fidelity, and how quickly an operator gets usable video.

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E-0.2, Packable. Compact tracked or wheeled UGVs that fit in a pack. The emphasis is on compactness and rapid deployment without dedicated transport.

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E-0.3, Man-Packable. Crawling and articulated platforms carried by a single operator. Serpentine and segmented designs for confined space, void, tunnel, and rubble access sit here.

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E-1.1, Element-Man-Packable. Quadruped and legged platforms at the element level. Stair climbing, rubble traverse, and payload carriage on legs. This is the fastest-growing commercial segment and the most crowded category in the portfolio, which raises the evidentiary bar rather than lowering it.

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E-1.2, Team-Man-Packable. Team-level, team-packable wheeled or tracked UGVs, typically multi-wheeled platforms carrying mission payloads for a whole team rather than one operator.

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E-2.0, Heavy. Heavy payload, high capacity tracked platforms. Logistics carriage, casualty movement, heavy sensor masts, and breaching or engineering support at scale.

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E-3.0, Dedicated Purpose. Specialized mission platforms with dedicated capability, including manipulator-equipped systems for tasks that a general purpose UGV cannot perform.

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The portfolio banner is scalable, modular, mission ready, and the framing question the Government keeps returning to is the right UGS or UGV for the right mission with the right effect. Your submission is stronger when it names the mission thread it serves and stays in its category, and weaker when it claims to cover four categories at once.

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What the Government Is Actually Looking For

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Available now, not conceptual

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The Call is explicit that vendors should describe the capability actually available for demonstration, not a conceptual or future configuration. This is the single most consequential instruction in the document. A Scout Card that describes a system arriving next year is not a responsive submission, and the assessment structure is designed to surface the difference.

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The complete system, not the chassis

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Responses should clearly identify the system configuration, hardware, software and firmware, payloads, communications, autonomy features, support equipment, and other components included in the proposed capability. Two implications follow. First, the boundaries of what you are offering must be unambiguous, because the Government is assessing a deployable capability rather than a vehicle. Second, everything you omit is read as absent. If the operator control unit, the charging solution, the spares kit, the training materials, and the transit case are part of the capability, list them.

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A structured self-assessment against a defined architecture

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After submission, vendors complete a structured self-assessment based on the small tactical robotic ecosystem architecture developed by Dr. Jon M. Hackett, whose doctoral research addressed small tactical robotics applications and who serves as a program manager in the intelligent robotic autonomous systems space. The assessment characterizes the capability across a defined set of dimensions:

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1. Intended mission

2. Operating environment

3. Human-machine interaction

4. Mobility

5. Power

6. Communications

7. Autonomy

8. Interfaces

9. Supportability

10. Resilience

11. Integration with other systems

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This is not a marketing questionnaire. It is a comparative instrument, and it is the mechanism by which the Government builds an apples-to-apples picture of a fragmented commercial market. Prepare for it before you submit, because your answers become part of the assessment record attached to your Scout Card.

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Practical guidance on the harder dimensions:

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Human-machine interaction. Expect scrutiny on operator workload, one-to-many control, glove and night operation, latency, and whether the operator can reconfigure the system at their own level rather than sending it back to the manufacturer.

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Power. Battery chemistry, standard military battery compatibility, hot swap, charge time, runtime at realistic duty cycles rather than idle, and the logistics footprint required to keep the system running for a multi-day mission.

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Communications. Line of sight and non line of sight performance, mesh and MANET behavior, bandwidth demand, degraded and denied operation, spectrum and waveform details, and behavior on link loss. Contested electromagnetic environments are a stated requirement across the portfolio, not a differentiator.

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Autonomy. Where the autonomy sits, what it does without a link, what degradation looks like, and how it behaves at the edge. USSOCOM has publicly named swarm technology, decentralized control and collective intelligence, and environment-agnostic traversability as capability development areas. Vendor-locked, proprietary vertical autonomy stacks are treated as a liability across the SOF autonomy enterprise.

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Interfaces. This is where deals are won or lost. The command is buying sensors, payloads, radios, and autonomy as interchangeable elements of an architecture, and conformance to published standards is becoming the price of admission. The USSOCOM Modular Payload Standard, managed for the command by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, defines common interfaces and attributes for payloads and hosting platforms, and has expanded from Group 2 UAS to Groups 1 and 3, unmanned surface vessels, and dismounted applications, with a micro variant for smaller systems. The guidance from the command's chief systems engineer for Tactical Information Systems was explicit: adopt common standards, and do not arrive with a proprietary standard that locks the Government out of the interface. Document your mechanical, electrical, and data interfaces. State plainly whether they are open, licensable, or closed.

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Supportability and resilience. Mean time between failure and repair data, field repairability at the operator level, spares and tooling, environmental and ingress protection ratings, temperature range, EMI and EMC test results, transportability, and safety documentation.

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Integration with other systems. Data output formats, message standards, ATAK and common operating picture integration, edge processing, and whether your system can hand off to and receive tasking from other unmanned systems. The stated goal on the sensor side is edge processing with the least amount of data required to make a decision moving forward to the decision point, rather than everything returning to a centralized node.

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Evidence, tiered honestly

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For each material claim, vendors should be prepared to provide supporting evidence: test data, technical documentation, photographs, videos, interface information, safety documentation, or prior demonstration results. The Call requires vendors to clearly distinguish between four claim tiers:

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1. Demonstrated capability

2. Vendor-tested capability

3. Calculated or estimated performance

4. Planned or future capability

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Label every claim to the correct tier. Assessors are reading many submissions in the same category, and the fastest way to lose credibility is to present a calculated figure as a demonstrated one. A submission that is honest about tiers and thin in places reads as trustworthy. A submission that presents everything as demonstrated reads as unverified, and it will be tested at demonstration if you get that far.

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What the Government Will Do With Your Submission

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The Government may use the information and supporting evidence to inform comparative assessment, selection for demonstration, and subsequent marketplace consideration.

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Equally important is what the Call says it does not do. Submission or successful completion of a demonstration does not constitute operational approval, certification, fielding authorization, or a Government commitment to procure the system. Treat a favorable assessment as qualification and visibility inside the SOF enterprise, not as a contract.

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Assessments published in Vulcan become visible to Government users across the SOF and defense enterprise. That is the durable value of a strong submission: a well-evidenced Scout Card with a published Government assessment continues working for you across future Calls, RFIs, and program office searches long after this deadline passes.

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Timeline and Key Dates

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16 August 2026, 23:00 CDT. Call opens on Vulcan. Submissions accepted.

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Now through late September 2026. Build or refresh the Scout Card, assemble the evidence package, resolve export control and data rights questions, and confirm any spectrum authorizations you would need for a live demonstration.

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01 October 2026, 22:59 CDT. Submission deadline. This is a hard cutoff in the platform, and Vulcan has no private or draft state that holds a partial submission past the close.

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Following submission. Vendors complete the structured self-assessment. Expect requests for supporting evidence against material claims.

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After the assessment window. Government comparative assessment and downselection for demonstration. On comparable SOF assessment engagements, published assessments typically reach vendor Scout Cards on the order of twenty business days after an assessment event concludes.

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Downstream. Selection for a demonstration or assessment event, then negotiation of an agreement if the evaluation is favorable.

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Two planning notes. First, the deadline sits one day into fiscal year 2027, which means the assessment and any resulting negotiation activity happens under new-year funding. Second, if your system radiates on any frequency, approval to transmit is required before a demonstration, which may include compliance with FCC Title 47 Part 15 or a Special Temporary Authority. The FCC recommends submitting an STA request 30 to 60 days before an event. Start that clock now rather than after you receive an invitation.

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Funding Allowance: What Money Is and Is Not Attached

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Be clear-eyed here, because this is where companies misread SOF engagements most often.

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This Call carries no published funding ceiling and makes no award. The engagement objective is market research. You are not writing a priced proposal, and there is no dollar figure to size a budget against. What you are buying with your effort is assessment, visibility, and eligibility for the pathways below.

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Where the money actually appears. On SOF assessment engagements, favorably evaluated solutions move into negotiation under one or a combination of the following authorities. This is the standard path forward language used across USSOCOM assessment events run through SOFWERX:

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1. Business to business research and development agreement as a sub-award through the SOFWERX Partnership Intermediary Agreement, under 15 U.S. Code Section 3715

2. Other Transaction Agreement for research or prototype projects, under 10 U.S. Code Sections 4021 and 4022. An award under Section 4022 may result in a follow-on production agreement without additional competition based on successful prototype completion, against prototype criteria determined for each project

3. Procurement for experimental purposes, under 10 U.S. Code Section 4023

4. Cooperative Research and Development Agreement, under 15 U.S. Code Section 3710a

5. Prizes for advanced technology achievements under 10 U.S. Code Section 4025, or prize competitions under 15 U.S. Code Section 3719

6. FAR-based procurement contract

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The Section 4022 prototype-to-production path is the one worth understanding in detail. It is the mechanism by which a successful prototype effort converts into production without recompeting, and it is the reason non-traditional defense companies pursue OTAs rather than waiting for a full and open competition.

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The parallel non-dilutive tracks. A strong showing in this portfolio also sets up funding you pursue on your own initiative rather than waiting to be selected:

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1. USSOCOM SBIR and STTR, including Direct to Phase II, which allows a Phase II award without a prior Phase I when you can document that the feasibility objectives have already been met. For a company with a fielded UGV, Direct to Phase II is frequently the right entry point rather than Phase I

2. Department of War SBIR and STTR release cycles, where SBIR Phase I awards commonly land in the low hundreds of thousands and Phase II awards run into the low millions against the current statutory ceiling, with topic-specific variation

3. The USSOCOM Broad Agency Announcement, a standing mechanism for unsolicited proposals against command interests

4. SOFWERX technical experimentation and assessment events, which run on a white paper submission and review cycle culminating in live assessment with operators in the loop

5. Cross-service and cross-agency opportunities in ground autonomy, including Army and Marine Corps robotics programs and DIU solicitations, where the same evidence package you build for this Call is directly reusable

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Budget the real cost of participation. Submission itself is free. What costs money is being demonstration-ready: shipping and travel to an assessment event, an operator and a maintainer to run the system, spares, a demonstration article you can afford to break, spectrum authorization, and the engineering time to produce interface documentation and test data you may not currently have written down. Companies that win these engagements have that package on the shelf before the Call opens.

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Eligibility and Access Requirements

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Vulcan registration. You need a Vulcan account at vulcan-sof.com, registered with your official organizational email address rather than a personal address. Registration establishes access type as commercial, academic, non-profit, or government, and your organizational affiliation is verified. Set this up first if you do not already have an account, because verification takes time you will not have on 30 September.

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Unclassified only. All submissions must be at the unclassified level. Do not put classified or export-restricted technical detail into a Scout Card. If your differentiator cannot be described unclassified, describe the capability and offer the detail through an appropriate channel.

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U.S. persons and U.S. industry. SOF assessment engagements are routinely restricted to U.S. persons or U.S. industry. Confirm the specific restriction in the Call document before investing.

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Export control. ITAR and export licensing exposure is real for ground robotics with military applications, particularly where foreign nationals are employed on the effort. USSOCOM SBIR practice, for example, requires a firm employing foreign nationals on an ITAR topic to possess an export license to receive an award. Resolve your position before you are asked.

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Cybersecurity. Awardees may need to comply with NIST SP 800-171 for protecting Controlled Unclassified Information in non-federal systems. If you are pre-revenue on defense work, understand this as a cost of doing business downstream rather than a surprise during negotiation.

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Business size. There is no small business set-aside on a market research Call of this type. Startups and large primes are assessed on technical merit inside the same category, which is favorable for a mature small company with a real product and unfavorable for a company selling a roadmap.

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How to Submit

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1. Register or log in at vulcan-sof.com using your organizational email address

2. Navigate to Calls in the top menu and open the Call titled sUMS-G Rapid Capability Assessment

3. Decide whether to submit an existing Scout Card or create a new one. Vulcan lets you tailor elements of a submission to the specific context of each Call without maintaining multiple Scout Cards for the same solution

4. Do not create a duplicate Scout Card for a solution you have already carded. Duplicates will be removed. Tailor the existing card to this Call instead

5. Complete the card with a precise capability description, system boundaries, photographs, video, interface information, applicable tags, technology readiness level, and any Government references

6. Complete the structured self-assessment when prompted

7. Assemble and be ready to provide the supporting evidence package against every material claim

8. Submit before 01 October 2026 at 22:59 CDT. Cards remain editable up to the close, and there is no draft state that survives the deadline

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Questions on the platform itself go to the Vulcan support team at support@vulcan-sof.com.

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The Five Mistakes That Sink Ground Robotics Submissions

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Selling the roadmap. The Call asks for what is available for demonstration. A future configuration described as though it exists fails the assessment and damages credibility for the next Call.

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Category sprawl. Claiming that one platform serves throwable, man-packable, team-packable, and heavy roles at once reads as a company that has not chosen a mission thread. Pick the category where you are strongest and win it.

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Undocumented interfaces. A proprietary interface with no published specification, or an unwillingness to discuss licensing, is now a first-order disqualifier in a portfolio built on modular payload standards.

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Unlabeled claim tiers. Presenting calculated endurance, estimated range, or simulated autonomy performance without labeling it as such is the most common failure mode in structured self-assessments.

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Ignoring supportability. Companies over-invest in mobility demonstration video and under-invest in the mean time between failure data, spares posture, field repair procedures, and safety documentation that determine whether a system can actually be fielded. The office intends to field what it selects, and supportability is what fielding turns on.

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Who Should Respond

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You are a strong fit if you have a fielded or demonstration-ready UGS or UGV in one of the portfolio categories, you can document performance with test data, and you can put an operator and a system in a room in front of an evaluation panel within a few months.

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You are a plausible fit if you build payloads, manipulators, autonomy software, power systems, or comms modules and you can present them integrated on a host platform. Partnering matters here. The command has repeatedly urged vendors to team with one another, because a modular, standards-based architecture rewards integrated, compliant solutions over isolated components.

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You are a poor fit if your system exists as a CAD model, a simulation, or a single hand-built prototype that has never left a controlled environment. Use the time to pursue SBIR, STTR, or BAA funding to reach demonstration maturity, then enter the portfolio at the next assessment cycle.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the deadline for the sUMS-G Rapid Capability Assessment? Submissions close 01 October 2026 at 22:59 CDT. The Call opened 16 August 2026 at 23:00 CDT.

Is there funding attached to this Call? No. The engagement objective is market research, and no funding ceiling is published. Favorably assessed companies may be selected for demonstration and then move into negotiation under a range of authorities including Other Transaction Agreements for prototypes, sub-awards through the SOFWERX Partnership Intermediary Agreement, procurement for experimental purposes, CRADAs, prize authorities, or FAR-based contracts.

How much funding could this eventually lead to? There is no published figure for this Call. Downstream award size depends entirely on the vehicle. Prototype OTAs under 10 U.S. Code Section 4022 can carry follow-on production without recompetition. USSOCOM SBIR Phase II and Direct to Phase II awards typically run into the low millions against the current statutory ceiling. Treat this Call as qualification, and pursue priced funding vehicles in parallel.

What is a Scout Card? A Scout Card is the standard capability submission format on Vulcan. It summarizes and depicts your capability, including a description of what differentiates it, technology readiness level, media, tags, and supporting documentation. Government users across the SOF and defense enterprise can search Scout Cards, and published Government assessments attach to the card.

Can I reuse an existing Scout Card? Yes, and you should. Vulcan allows you to tailor elements of a submission to the specific context of each Call without maintaining multiple cards for the same solution. Do not create a duplicate card for a solution you have already carded, because duplicates will be removed.

What does sUMS stand for? Small Uncrewed Multi-Domain Systems. It is a USSOCOM line of effort covering Group 1 and Group 2 unmanned aerial systems and unmanned ground systems, delivering tactical organic robotic and modular payload solutions to the SOF operator. sUMS-G refers to the ground portion of that portfolio.

Which office runs this? The sUMS portfolio sits under the Remote Capabilities program office within the USSOCOM Program Executive Office for Tactical Information Systems, part of SOF Acquisition, Technology and Logistics. Remote Capabilities holds the mandate for unmanned systems across space, air, ground, and maritime domains.

Do I need to be a small business? No. There is no small business set-aside on this Call. Submissions are assessed on technical merit within a capability category.

Can a non-U.S. company respond? SOF assessment engagements are routinely limited to U.S. persons or U.S. industry, and export control rules apply to systems with military application. Confirm the specific restriction in the Call document before investing effort.

Does my system have to be a complete robot, or can I submit a payload? The Call asks for a capability available for demonstration, described as a complete configuration including hardware, software, payloads, communications, autonomy, and support equipment. A payload or software component is best submitted integrated on a host platform, ideally through a teaming arrangement. The command has actively encouraged vendors to partner rather than pitching isolated components.

What is the structured self-assessment based on? It is based on the small tactical robotic ecosystem architecture developed by Dr. Jon M. Hackett. It characterizes your capability across intended mission, operating environment, human-machine interaction, mobility, power, communications, autonomy, interfaces, supportability, resilience, and integration with other systems.

What evidence do I need? Be prepared to substantiate every material claim with test data, technical documentation, photographs, video, interface information, safety documentation, or prior demonstration results. Each claim must be labeled as demonstrated capability, vendor-tested capability, calculated or estimated performance, or planned or future capability.

Does a successful demonstration mean I have been selected or approved? No. Submission or successful completion of a demonstration does not constitute operational approval, certification, fielding authorization, or a commitment to procure. It qualifies you for comparative assessment, demonstration selection, and marketplace consideration.

How mature does my system need to be? Mature enough to demonstrate now. USSOCOM's stated posture is to field what it selects, with SOF-peculiar development, usually software modification or platform adaptation, occurring after fielding rather than before. Systems that are finicky at the tactical edge are not competitive.

Do standards compliance and open interfaces matter? Substantially. The command is building a modular architecture around the USSOCOM Modular Payload Standard, managed for the command by Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, and it has told industry directly not to arrive with proprietary standards that lock the Government out of the interface. Document your interfaces and be prepared to discuss access.

What if my system transmits on a radio frequency? Any developmental device radiating on a given frequency or band needs prior approval to transmit, which may include FCC Title 47 Part 15 compliance or a Special Temporary Authority. The FCC recommends submitting an STA request 30 to 60 days before an event, so begin that process before you receive a demonstration invitation.

Where do I submit? On the Vulcan platform at vulcan-sof.com, under the Call titled sUMS-G Rapid Capability Assessment. Register with your official organizational email address if you do not have an account.

What happens if I miss the deadline? The Remote Capabilities office described itself as being in a constant state of market research and typically running about three RFIs per year per system category, with additional activity when operational needs shift. A ground robotics assessment event and a small UAS assessment event were both on the fiscal year 2026 and 2027 industry slides. Missing this Call is not fatal, but it delays you by a cycle and cedes the assessment record to competitors in your category.

Get Your Submission Assessed Before the Government Does

The companies that convert SOF assessment engagements into agreements are the ones that walk in with the evidence package already built: labeled claim tiers, documented interfaces, test data behind every number, a clear category, and a named mission thread.

BW&CO helps deep-tech, robotics, autonomy, and dual-use founders position for non-dilutive federal funding and build the technical and strategic packages that agencies act on. Innovation Funding Simplified. More than $350M in funding secured for our clients.

If you are weighing whether your UGS or UGV is ready for the sUMS-G Call, or you want to run a parallel SBIR, STTR, Direct to Phase II, or BAA strategy alongside it, let's talk before the 01 October deadline.

Medical Extraction BAA (MED FCD): Complete Guide for Startups and Small Businesses

Below is a brief summary. Please check the full solicitation before applying (link in resources section).

Quick Answer

The Medical Extraction Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) is an open call from the U.S. Army Medical Future Capability Directorate (MED FCD) for technologies that can retrieve, secure, and move wounded Soldiers out of contested battlefields without exposing rescue personnel to unnecessary risk. It is issued under the broader Army Medical Operational Capabilities for 2040 BAA, submissions are made through the USSOCOM-sponsored Vulcan platform as a Scout Card with a quad chart and white paper, and the call is open on a rolling basis from August 25, 2026 through December 31, 2026 at 10:59 PM CST. One point matters more than any other for planning purposes: MED FCD has stated that it does not currently have the resources or authorization to award or fund contracts under this announcement. This is a visibility, evaluation, and experimentation pathway, not a funded solicitation.

That does not make it low value. It makes it a different kind of asset. Read on for what the Army is actually asking for, how the process works, what it costs you to participate, and how companies convert a MED FCD engagement into real dollars from other parts of the Department.

Quick reference facts

• Opportunity name: Medical Extraction BAA (MED FCD)

• Parent announcement: Army Medical Operational Capabilities for 2040 Broad Agency Announcement

• Sponsoring organization: U.S. Army Medical Capability Future Capability Directorate (MED FCD)

• Higher headquarters: Futures and Concepts Command, U.S. Army Futures Command

• Submission platform: Vulcan (vulcan-sof.com)

• Submission vehicle: Vulcan Scout Card, tailored to this specific Call

• Required attachments: Quad chart and white paper

• Open date: August 25, 2026 at 1:00 PM CDT

• Close date: December 31, 2026 at 10:59 PM CST

• Submission window: Rolling and open ended for the full period, no single due date for the initial submission

• Funding available under this BAA: None. MED FCD states it cannot directly award or fund contracts

• Engagement objectives listed by the Government: FAR acquisition, capability demonstration, technology experimentation, market research

• Number of areas of interest: One, focused on medical extraction in contested environments

• Anticipated next steps for strong submissions: Virtual briefing with MED FCD, invitation to a technology experimentation event, and possible requests for a formal white paper, statement of work, and cost proposal

• Award guarantee: None. Progression through evaluation phases does not imply or guarantee a contract

• Data protections cited: Trade Secrets Act, Economic Espionage Act, FOIA Exemption 4, Executive Order 12600

What is the Medical Extraction BAA?

A Broad Agency Announcement is a standing government invitation for ideas rather than a competition for a fixed pot of money against a fixed statement of work. The Medical Extraction BAA is a focused Call inside the Army Medical Operational Capabilities for 2040 BAA, and its purpose is to find technologies and concepts that help tactical medical units at Army Corps level and below clear the battlefield, meaning the evacuation of the wounded, ill, and injured.

MED FCD uses the announcement to build a picture of what industry can actually deliver, to identify candidates worth putting in front of senior military leadership, and to select technologies for operational demonstration and experimentation. The Government has been unusually direct that it will amend or update its technical focus areas during the active period and may issue a separate call for follow-on white papers at any time, so the scope you see today can shift before December.

Who is MED FCD and why does this BAA exist?

MED FCD is the Army organization responsible for developing medical concepts and requirements for the future force. Future Capability Directorates sit under Futures and Concepts Command within Army Futures Command, and they drive functional transformation by shaping concepts, requirements, and experimentation. The medical directorate, previously known as MED CDID, has long been associated with the Army Medical Center of Excellence at Joint Base San Antonio.

The practical implication for a founder is important. MED FCD is a requirements and concepts organization, not a program executive office and not a contracting activity. It does not buy things. It defines what the Army needs, validates that industry can build it, and hands that evidence to the organizations that do buy things. Companies that understand this distinction write far better submissions, because they stop pitching a sale and start offering proof for a requirement.

The problem statement in plain language

Enemy action in a modern fight is expected to break the evacuation chain. Fires, maneuver, electronic warfare, and contested airspace will slow or stop the movement of casualties to a medical treatment facility. Three things happen as a result. Treatment is delayed. Consumption of medical supplies at forward locations goes up because casualties are held longer, which compounds an already strained resupply problem. And the cumulative effect reduces the return to duty rate while increasing preventable deaths.

Urban terrain makes it worse. Routes are blocked by rubble, craters, and debris. Casualties have to be pulled out of collapsed buildings. Medical units may have to interact with civilian medical infrastructure and handle large numbers of injured civilians and enemy prisoners of war alongside their own wounded.

Layered on top of that is the risk to the rescue team. Today, extracting a non-ambulatory casualty from rugged terrain or a compromised urban area usually means putting multiple healthy Soldiers into the same danger that produced the casualty, often on foot, often slowly, often within observation of the adversary. That is the specific gap this BAA is trying to close.

Detailed overview of what MED FCD is looking for

The announcement contains a single area of interest, and every requirement in it is worth reading as a hard filter on your solution.

MED FCD is seeking innovative technological capabilities to facilitate medical extractions in highly contested environments where maintaining a low operational profile is critical. Proposed solutions must be capable of retrieving and securing ambulatory and non-ambulatory casualties who cannot climb or physically assist in their own loading, which reduces the exposure of accompanying rescue personnel. The system must demonstrate high mobility across rugged, unstructured terrain while maintaining rigorous patient stabilization, and the extraction and transport process must inflict no further harm to the casualty.

The five requirements your submission has to answer directly

1. Self loading without casualty participation. The system has to get an unconscious or immobilized 95th percentile Soldier with full kit off the ground or out of a structure and secured, without that Soldier climbing, gripping, rolling, or helping in any way. This is the single most common place where otherwise strong robotics submissions fail. If your concept assumes the casualty can pull themselves onto a platform, it does not meet the requirement as written.

2. Reduced exposure of rescue personnel. The Government is asking for low profile, automated, or semi autonomous capability. Every Soldier your system removes from the point of injury is a measurable benefit, so quantify it. If current practice requires four Soldiers for eight minutes at the casualty location and your system requires one Soldier for ninety seconds, or none at all, say so in exactly those terms.

3. Low operational profile. Signature management is treated as a critical attribute, not a nice to have. Address visual, acoustic, thermal, and electromagnetic signature. Address behavior in GPS denied and communications degraded conditions, because a system that needs a continuous high bandwidth link to a distant operator is not low profile in an electronic warfare environment.

4. High mobility over unstructured terrain. Rubble, craters, stairs, slopes, mud, snow, doorways, breach points, and the interior of a partially collapsed building. State your ground pressure, obstacle and step height, gap crossing, gradeability, speed with a loaded litter, endurance in hours or kilometers, and how the system is transported to the point of employment.

5. Patient stabilization with no further harm. This is a clinical requirement, not an engineering afterthought. Address spinal motion restriction, immobilization, ride quality and vibration and shock transmitted to the casualty, thermal protection, airway position, tourniquet and dressing integrity during movement, hemorrhage control during transfer, and compatibility with standard litters, SKEDs, and monitoring equipment. Evidence from a clinician, biomechanical data, or cadaveric or manikin testing carries real weight here.

Technology areas that fit this area of interest

The Government notes that its categories provide context rather than a comprehensive list, so adjacent concepts are welcome. Solutions that typically map well include:

• Uncrewed ground vehicles configured for casualty extraction and casualty carry

• Robotic or powered litter systems, including self loading litter and transfer mechanisms

• Autonomous or teleoperated casualty evacuation platforms with a medical payload

• Mechanical casualty retrieval devices such as winch, drag, sled, grapple, and conveyor based loading systems

• Exoskeletons and powered assist devices that let one or two Soldiers move a casualty that would normally take four

• Low signature aerial lift and resupply platforms with validated casualty carriage

• Casualty packaging, immobilization, and litter interface systems designed for machine handling

• Subterranean and collapsed structure retrieval systems

• Casualty location, triage, and tagging sensors that feed the extraction decision

• Autonomy stacks for GPS denied navigation, obstacle negotiation, and human machine teaming with a medic in the loop

• En route patient monitoring, telemedicine, and automated care integrated into the extraction platform

• Power, energy, and thermal management that supports realistic mission endurance

• Modular kits that convert existing tactical vehicles or robotic platforms into casualty carriers

Themes worth weaving into your narrative

MED FCD thinks in concepts, doctrine, and requirements, so the language of the Army medical modernization enterprise helps your submission land. Useful framing includes multi domain operations, prolonged casualty care when evacuation is delayed well beyond the traditional golden hour, return to duty rate, preventable death, Soldier load and burden, the DOTMLPF-P implications of fielding your system, joint interoperability, training burden on a combat medic, sustainment and repairability in the field, and transportability inside existing formations.

Be equally clear about what you do not do. A submission that claims to solve the entire casualty evacuation problem reads as unserious. The BAA states plainly that a white paper attempting to address the whole scope of the technology described will most likely be rejected.

Funding allowance

This section deserves careful attention, because it is the part most often misread.

There is no funding attached to this BAA. MED FCD has stated in the announcement that while it is an integral part of finding technology solutions for Army requirements, it does not currently possess the resources or authorization to directly award or fund contracts. Selected participants may later be asked for formal white papers, technical statements of work, and cost proposals, but the announcement is explicit that progression through those technical assessment phases is solely for evaluation purposes and does not guarantee or imply a future contract award.

No dollar ceiling, floor, or period of performance is published. Because the Government has not specified a dollar range, there is no target award size to design toward. When a rough order of magnitude cost is requested in a white paper, it should be a defensible estimate of what your proposed effort actually costs, consistent with the level of work you are proposing, including profit or fee if any. Do not inflate it to look substantial and do not deflate it to look cheap. An unrealistic ROM is one of the fastest ways to lose credibility with an evaluator who has seen hundreds of these.

What the Government does offer instead of money:

• Direct evaluation of your capability by the Army organization that writes medical requirements

• Virtual briefings with MED FCD for high potential candidates

• Invitations to technology experimentation events where your system is exercised against realistic conditions

• Operational demonstrations facilitated by the directorate

• Exposure of your capability to senior military leadership and joint service partners, explicitly for the purpose of maximizing visibility for potential external government funding

• A persistent Scout Card profile in Vulcan, which remains discoverable by government users across the ecosystem beyond this single call

• Government feedback that can materially sharpen your product roadmap and your future proposals

What participation costs you. Budget realistically for internal engineering and clinical time to prepare the quad chart and white paper, executive time for a virtual briefing, and, if you are selected for experimentation, travel, shipping, prototype hardware, spares, and on site technical personnel. Experimentation events are typically an unfunded expense for the vendor. Companies that treat this as an internal research and development investment tend to be satisfied with the outcome. Companies that treat it as a revenue event tend not to be.

How this becomes real money. A validated requirement plus documented government interest is the raw material for funded pursuits elsewhere in the Department. Common pathways for Army medical extraction technology include Army SBIR and STTR topics and the xTech prize competitions, the Medical Technology Enterprise Consortium and other other transaction authority consortia, U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command broad agency announcements, congressionally directed medical research programs, Defense Health Agency and service SBIR programs, Defense Innovation Unit solicitations, and program office funding once a program of record forms around the requirement. A MED FCD demonstration, a letter of support, or a named government sponsor changes the strength of every one of those applications. If your goal is non dilutive capital, the sequence that works is engagement first, evidence second, funded solicitation third.

Timeline

• August 25, 2026 at 1:00 PM CDT: Announcement opens for submissions

• August 25 through December 31, 2026: Rolling submission window. Scout Cards may be submitted at any time during the period

• Any time during the active period: The Government may amend or update technical focus areas, and may issue a separate call for follow on white papers

• Continuous: MED FCD evaluates submitted Scout Cards against the BAA criteria and contacts high potential candidates

• After initial contact: Virtual briefings and technology experimentation coordination, with possible requests for formal white papers, statements of work, and cost proposals

• December 31, 2026 at 10:59 PM CST: Announcement closes unless amended

Recommended working schedule

Because the call is rolling and evaluation is continuous, earlier submissions get more calendar time in front of evaluators and more opportunity to be matched to an experimentation event. A workable internal schedule looks like this:

• Week 1: Confirm fit against the five hard requirements. Decide which single slice of the problem you are addressing. Register or refresh your Vulcan account

• Week 2: Build or update the Scout Card, gather performance data, capture imagery and video of the system operating

• Week 3: Draft the quad chart and white paper. Have a clinician or former medic review the patient stabilization claims

• Week 4: Internal red team review against the area of interest language line by line, then submit

• Ongoing: Prepare a fifteen minute virtual briefing deck in advance so you can respond to interest within days rather than weeks

Do not wait until December. A submission that arrives in the final week has almost no runway for the briefing and experimentation activity that creates the value.

How to submit, step by step

1. Register on Vulcan at vulcan-sof.com. Vulcan is a technology scouting platform sponsored by USSOCOM and used by organizations across the Department of Defense, including this Army medical directorate. Account setup and validation take time, so start here.

2. Build or select a Scout Card. A Scout Card is a persistent, structured profile of a single solution. If your technology is already in Vulcan, select the existing card rather than creating a new one.

3. Do not create duplicates. The Government is explicit that duplicate Scout Cards for the same solution will be removed. Vulcan allows you to tailor elements of a submission to the context of a specific Call without maintaining multiple cards for the same solution.

4. Tailor the submission to this Call. Use the area of interest language. An evaluator should be able to see the mapping between your capability and the five requirements without hunting for it.

5. Attach the quad chart. PowerPoint is preferred. Word and PDF are acceptable as long as the file opens and reads cleanly.

6. Attach the white paper, following the Section A through D format below. Reference the BAA number in the subject or title of the response. Submit as PDF or Microsoft Word.

7. Submit before the deadline and be ready to respond quickly if MED FCD reaches out. Contact information for the contracting officers is provided to interested companies by MED FCD when they are asked to submit a proposal, so you will not have a named point of contact before that happens.

White paper format

The announcement specifies four sections.

Section A. Title, the technology area of interest you are responding to, period of performance, estimated cost of the task, name and address of the offeror, technical and contracting points of contact, telephone and fax numbers.

Section B. Task objective with a description of the work to be performed.

Section C. Technical summary and proposed deliverables. Include the anticipated period of performance and a rough order of magnitude cost, which is the total cost plus profit or fee if any. This is not a cost proposal and does not include the material that normally accompanies one. Provide a short technical description of the concepts and the plans to accomplish the technical objectives, briefly describe the technologies to be pursued, and identify any independent research and development work already underway in your company that has direct application. Address only the specific part of the BAA you intend to accomplish. A white paper that tries to cover the whole scope will most likely be rejected.

Section D. Quad chart. The quad has to present the capability as a single page snapshot and must visually convey the concept of employment, meaning what the capability will actually accomplish in operational terms, a description of the technical effort needed to get there, the benefit to MED FCD, your technical and management resources, costs, and schedule with major milestones.

Practical guidance on the quad chart

The quad is usually what determines whether anyone reads the white paper. Treat the concept of employment quadrant as the most important real estate on the page and use a real image or a clear graphic of the system moving a casualty in the environment described, not a rendering on a white background. Put numbers on the page. Weight, dimensions, casualty capacity, terrain performance, endurance, current technology readiness level, and the count of Soldiers required at the point of injury with and without your system. Leave the marketing adjectives out entirely.

Intellectual property and proprietary information

The Government acknowledges that information provided in response to this BAA is presented in confidence and may contain trade secret, commercial, or financial information, and it agrees to protect that information from unauthorized disclosure to the maximum extent permitted or required by the Trade Secrets Act at 18 U.S.C. 1905, the Economic Espionage Act at 18 U.S.C. 1831 and following, Freedom of Information Act Exemption 4 at 5 U.S.C. 552(b)(4), Executive Order 12600 covering pre disclosure notification procedures for confidential commercial information, and any other applicable statute or regulation.

Sound practice still applies. Mark proprietary material clearly and consistently on every page and every file. Describe your approach at a level that demonstrates feasibility without disclosing the specific implementation details that constitute your competitive advantage. Confirm export control and International Traffic in Arms Regulations status before you transmit technical data, especially if you have foreign nationals on your engineering team or a foreign parent entity. Keep in mind that a Scout Card is designed to be discoverable by government users across the Vulcan ecosystem, which is a benefit for visibility and a reason to be deliberate about what goes into the card versus what stays in a marked attachment.

Who should respond

This BAA is a strong fit if you are a robotics, autonomy, uncrewed systems, exoskeleton, medical device, or casualty handling company with hardware you can point at, even at low technology readiness level, and if you can absorb the cost of an unfunded engagement in exchange for requirements insight and senior leader visibility. It is a particularly good fit for dual use companies from search and rescue, mining, wildland firefighting, industrial rescue, and civilian emergency medical services, where the physics of moving an incapacitated human through bad terrain is already your core problem.

It is a poor fit if you need a contract award inside the next twelve months to survive, if your concept exists only as a slide deck with no path to a demonstrable prototype, if your solution requires the casualty to assist in loading, or if you cannot support travel and hardware costs for an experimentation event.

Common reasons submissions fail

• Trying to address the entire scope of the announcement instead of one specific slice

• Assuming casualty participation in loading, which contradicts the stated requirement

• Treating patient stabilization as a secondary feature with no clinical evidence behind it

• Ignoring signature management and degraded communications entirely

• A quad chart full of adjectives and no numbers

• No concept of employment, so an evaluator cannot picture the system in use by a real medical unit

• An unrealistic rough order of magnitude cost, in either direction

• Submitting a generic corporate capability statement rather than a tailored response to this Call

• Duplicate Scout Cards, which the Government will remove

• Submitting in the last two weeks, leaving no time for briefing or experimentation

How to convert this engagement into funding

Treat the MED FCD submission as the first move in a sequence rather than the end of one. Submit early and get on the calendar for a virtual briefing. Ask directly, during that briefing, which organizations own the transition path for the capability and whether the directorate can identify a government sponsor. Say yes to experimentation and show up prepared, because performance in front of operators is the evidence that funded solicitations reward. Capture everything that comes out of the engagement, including feedback, performance data, imagery, and any written expression of interest. Then use it. That package strengthens an Army SBIR or STTR proposal, a consortium white paper, an other transaction authority pursuit, a medical research program application, or a direct approach to a program office, and it does so far more than a well written proposal with no government relationship behind it.

Frequently asked questions

Is there funding available under the Medical Extraction BAA?

No. MED FCD has stated that it does not currently possess the resources or authorization to directly award or fund contracts under this announcement. Selection and progression through evaluation phases is for assessment purposes only and does not guarantee or imply a future contract award.

What is the deadline for the Medical Extraction BAA?

The announcement closes on December 31, 2026 at 10:59 PM CST unless it is amended. Submissions opened on August 25, 2026 at 1:00 PM CDT and are accepted on a rolling basis throughout that period.

Who issued the Medical Extraction BAA?

The U.S. Army Medical Capability Future Capability Directorate, known as MED FCD, which sits under Futures and Concepts Command within U.S. Army Futures Command. It is issued as a Call under the Army Medical Operational Capabilities for 2040 Broad Agency Announcement.

What do I have to submit?

A Vulcan Scout Card tailored to this Call, with a quad chart and a white paper attached. The white paper follows a four part format covering administrative data, task objective, technical summary with rough order of magnitude cost, and the quad chart itself.

What is a Vulcan Scout Card?

A Scout Card is a persistent structured profile of a single technology solution inside the Vulcan platform, which is a technology scouting environment sponsored by USSOCOM and used by government organizations across the Department of Defense. The card makes your capability discoverable by government users beyond the specific Call you submit it to, and attachments provide the specificity that a particular Call requires.

Can I submit the same Scout Card to multiple calls?

Yes, and you should. Vulcan lets you tailor elements of a submission to the context of each Call without maintaining multiple cards for the same solution. Duplicate cards for the same solution will be removed.

What technology readiness level does MED FCD expect?

The announcement does not specify a required technology readiness level. Because the objective is evaluation, experimentation, and demonstration, concepts from early prototype through advanced prototype are generally in scope, but you need something more than a paper concept if you want to reach an experimentation event. State your current level honestly and show the path to the next one.

Does my system have to be fully autonomous?

No. The announcement asks for low profile, automated, or semi autonomous capability. Teleoperated and Soldier assisted systems are responsive as long as they reduce the exposure of rescue personnel and can secure a casualty who cannot assist in loading.

Does the system have to handle non ambulatory casualties?

Yes. This is the central requirement. The system must be capable of retrieving and securing both ambulatory and non ambulatory casualties who are unable to climb or physically assist in their own loading. A solution that depends on casualty participation does not meet the stated requirement.

Do I need a security clearance or a government sponsor to submit?

The announcement does not state a clearance requirement for submission. Later experimentation events, particularly classified ones, can require cleared personnel, and government sponsorship becomes relevant as a technology moves into selection and experimentation. Plan for that possibility rather than assuming it.

Are small businesses and startups eligible?

Yes. Broad agency announcements of this type are open to a wide range of respondents, and this Call is explicitly aimed at innovative capability wherever it exists. Small businesses, startups, universities, and nontraditional defense entrants are all appropriate respondents. If you anticipate any future contracting relationship, get your System for Award Management registration, unique entity identifier, and CAGE code in order early.

Can non U.S. companies respond?

Foreign entities should proceed carefully. The announcement does not publish an eligibility restriction, but export control, International Traffic in Arms Regulations, foreign ownership control and influence considerations, and any subsequent contracting action will all shape what is actually possible. Companies with a U.S. subsidiary and U.S. based engineering are in a materially stronger position.

Will my proprietary information be protected?

The Government acknowledges that responses are presented in confidence and commits to protecting trade secret, commercial, and financial information to the maximum extent permitted by the Trade Secrets Act, the Economic Espionage Act, FOIA Exemption 4, and Executive Order 12600. You are still responsible for marking proprietary material clearly and for calibrating how much implementation detail you disclose.

What happens after I submit?

MED FCD evaluates Scout Cards against the BAA criteria on a continuous basis and contacts high potential candidates to coordinate virtual briefings or technology experimentation events. Selected participants may be asked for formal white papers, technical statements of work, and cost proposals. None of this guarantees an award.

How much cost should I put in the rough order of magnitude estimate?

No dollar range is published, so base the number on the actual cost of the specific effort you are proposing, including profit or fee if any, and make sure it is consistent with the scope of work described. The estimate should look like something an engineer built, not something a salesperson chose.

Is it worth responding if there is no money?

For most hardware companies working on casualty movement, yes, provided you go in with the right expectation. You are buying direct access to the organization that writes Army medical requirements, structured feedback on your capability, a chance to demonstrate in front of operators and senior leaders, and a documented government relationship that materially improves your odds in the funded solicitations that follow. You are paying for it with engineering time and, if selected, travel and hardware. Decide that trade deliberately.

How do I find funded opportunities for this technology instead?

Army SBIR and STTR topics, xTech competitions, the Medical Technology Enterprise Consortium and other other transaction authority consortia, U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command announcements, congressionally directed medical research programs, service and Defense Health Agency SBIR programs, and Defense Innovation Unit solicitations all fund technology in this space. Which one fits depends on your maturity, your entity type, and whether you already have a government sponsor.

Can BW&CO help me respond?

Yes. We help deep tech, medtech, and defense adjacent companies decide whether an opportunity like this is worth their time, position the capability against the stated requirement, build the quad chart and white paper, prepare for the government briefing, and sequence the engagement into funded non dilutive pursuits afterward.

Next step

If you are building casualty extraction, robotic mobility, exoskeleton, or en route care technology and want a candid read on whether this BAA is worth your engineering hours, we will tell you straight. BW&CO has helped clients secure more than $350 million in non dilutive funding, and the first conversation is about fit, not a pitch.

Innovation Funding Simplified.

NIH SBIR Phase IIB Strategic Breakthrough Award (PA-27-101): Full Guide for Startups

Below is a brief summary. Please check the full solicitation before applying (link in resources section).

Quick Answer

The NIH SBIR Phase IIB Strategic Breakthrough Award (PA-27-101) provides up to $30,000,000 in follow-on funding to small businesses that have already completed an NIH SBIR or STTR Phase II award and need additional capital to bridge the gap to commercialization, often called the Valley of Death. The award requires companies to secure 100 percent matching funds from a new private investor or another government agency before applying. Standard due dates are September 5, January 5, and April 5 each year, with the next deadline on September 5, 2026. Only prior NIH Phase II recipients are eligible. There is no Phase I step for this award.

What This Funding Opportunity Is

The Phase IIB Strategic Breakthrough Award is a reissue of two earlier NIH funding opportunities, PA-24-245 and PA-24-246, and it exists to solve one specific problem. Many biomedical, MedTech, and life sciences companies finish a strong Phase II award and still face years of additional work before they can commercialize, particularly if their product needs FDA clearance, involves a complex manufacturing process, or targets a small patient population. NIH calls this gap the Valley of Death, and this award is designed to bridge it with a second, larger Phase II style grant.

This is not a new company's first NIH grant. It is a continuation award available only to businesses that already hold or previously held an NIH SBIR or STTR Phase II grant, cooperative agreement, or contract. A company cannot apply for a Phase IIB award without that Phase II history, and the Phase IIB award can only begin after the original Phase II project has ended.

Nineteen NIH institutes, centers, and offices participate in this funding opportunity, including the National Cancer Institute, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, and others. Each participating component reviews applications aligned with its own mission and health research priorities.

Who Should Apply

This opportunity is a strong fit for a company if it can check most or all of the following boxes.

The company is a United States small business concern with 500 or fewer employees, including affiliates, and it already completed or is completing an NIH SBIR or STTR Phase II award.

The company has a product, therapeutic, device, or platform that needs a defined regulatory pathway, such as FDA clearance or approval, and that pathway requires more capital and more time than a standard Phase II budget allows.

The company can demonstrate, or is close to securing, a dollar-for-dollar match of the requested federal funds, drawn from new private capital such as venture investment, or from a non-SBIR federal or state award.

The company is within its first six standard due dates following the end of its Phase II budget period. Waiting longer than that risks losing eligibility for this specific mechanism.

If a company has Phase II results but does not yet have committed matching funds, or needs a smaller amount of technical assistance rather than a full second Phase II award, NIH recommends looking instead at the Commercialization Readiness Pilot Program (CRP) under PAR-27-098, which does not require a third-party match.

Funding Allowance and Budget Limits

Total funding support, meaning direct costs, indirect costs, and fee combined, cannot exceed $30,000,000 for a single Phase IIB Strategic Breakthrough award. Beyond that ceiling, each participating institute or center sets its own budget guideline, and applicants must stay within the guideline for whichever component will review their application. Representative examples include the National Cancer Institute at up to $15,000,000, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute at up to $4,500,000, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism at up to $4,500,000, and most other participating institutes and centers at up to $3,000,000. A handful of components, including the National Eye Institute, the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, and the Office of Research on Women's Health, follow the standard SBA guideline rather than a fixed dollar figure.

The award period cannot exceed four years. Applicants should propose a project length that realistically matches the scope of the remaining development and commercialization work, not simply the maximum allowed.

Every dollar of federal funding requested must be matched by an equal dollar of third-party funding. This 100 percent match is a hard requirement under the Small Business Innovation and Economic Security Act, and it is one of the most heavily weighted factors in review. Matching funds must come from new private capital, such as another company, a venture capital firm, or another private investor, from a new government award other than a Phase I or Phase II SBIR or STTR grant, or from a combination of the two. Letters documenting committed matching funds should be included with the application's letters of support, and additional proof may be requested later during Just in Time review.

Key Dates and Timeline

The opportunity was posted on May 28, 2026, and the earliest applications can be submitted is August 5, 2026.

Applications are accepted on the standard NIH cycle three times per year, and every submission must be a Renewal, Resubmission, or Revision application type, except in the specific case of a Phase IIB tied to an underlying Phase II contract rather than a grant, which is submitted as New.

The upcoming due dates and their associated review timelines are as follows.

September 5, 2026 due date leads to scientific merit review in November 2026, advisory council review in January 2027, and an earliest possible start date of April 2027.

January 5, 2027 due date leads to scientific merit review in March 2027, advisory council review in May 2027, and an earliest possible start date of July 2027.

April 5, 2027 due date leads to scientific merit review in July 2027, advisory council review in August 2027, and an earliest possible start date of December 2027.

This same September, January, April cycle repeats through the expiration date of April 6, 2029. All applications are due by 5:00 PM local time at the applicant organization, and no late applications are accepted under this opportunity. If a due date falls on a weekend or federal holiday, it automatically moves to the next business day.

How to Apply

Applications are submitted electronically through one of three paths: the NIH ASSIST system, an institutional system to system solution, or Grants.gov Workspace, with application status then tracked in eRA Commons. Paper applications are not accepted.

Before submitting, a company must have several registrations active and current, and these can take six weeks or more to complete, so early preparation matters. The company needs an active registration in the System for Award Management (SAM.gov), which also issues a Unique Entity Identifier and a CAGE code. It needs an SBA Company Registry registration, which requires the UEI first. It needs an eRA Commons organizational account with at least one Signing Official and one Program Director or Principal Investigator listed, and every Program Director or Principal Investigator needs both a personal eRA Commons account and a linked ORCID iD. Finally, the company needs an active Grants.gov registration, which itself requires an active SAM.gov registration to complete.

The primary employment of the Program Director or Principal Investigator must be with the small business at the time of award and throughout the project, with limited exceptions for multi-PI teams.

Required application components include a Regulatory Plan of no more than two pages describing the regulatory pathway and milestone timeline, a Commercialization Plan addressing market opportunity, target customers, competitive landscape, and the source and evidence of 100 percent matching funds, and, where applicable, a VCOC Certification for companies majority owned by venture capital operating companies, hedge funds, or private equity firms. A Data Management and Sharing Plan is not required for this specific opportunity.

What NIH Reviewers Are Looking For

Reviewers score applications on the standard NIH criteria of Significance, Investigators, Innovation, Approach, and Environment, with extra weight placed on commercial trajectory given the Phase IIB context. For this award specifically, reviewers pay close attention to the progress made during the original Phase II project, whether market research supports the technology as an effective solution, and whether the applicant has provided compelling, documented evidence of its 100 percent match. Applications are also evaluated against Strategic Breakthrough criteria, including the technology's potential to advance national security capabilities, whether it offers new alternatives to existing approaches, whether a federal agency customer has expressed intent to adopt the technology, and whether the technology area is currently undercapitalized by private investors.

Funding decisions also weigh scientific merit alongside fund availability, demonstrated availability of the required match, and results of an HHS security risk assessment. Companies with certain ties to foreign countries of concern, or that appear on specified federal restricted entity lists, cannot receive an award under this opportunity, and all applicants under consideration for funding must submit an SBA Disclosure of Foreign Affiliations form during Just in Time review.

Common Reasons Applications Are Rejected Before Review

Applications are screened for completeness and responsiveness before they ever reach a review panel. The most common disqualifiers under this opportunity are applying without a completed NIH Phase II award as the foundation, applying for a clinical trial through an institute that does not accept clinical trials under this NOFO, such as NCATS or ORIP, missing or incomplete SAM.gov, UEI, or eRA Commons registrations at the time of submission, and failing to document credible progress toward the required 100 percent match.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does my company need a Phase I award to apply for Phase IIB? No. This opportunity is only for companies that already completed a Phase II award. There is no standalone Phase I component to this NOFO.

Can we apply if our matching funds are not fully secured yet? You should have strong, documented progress toward the full 100 percent match, ideally with signed or near final commitment letters, since this is one of the most heavily weighted review factors. If your match is not yet in place, the Commercialization Readiness Pilot Program under PAR-27-098 may be a better near-term fit.

How long do we have to apply after our Phase II award ends? You should submit within the first six standard NIH due dates following the end of your Phase II budget period to maintain eligibility for this mechanism.

What is the maximum award amount? Total funding support cannot exceed $30,000,000, though most participating institutes and centers set lower internal guidelines, commonly in the $3,000,000 to $4,500,000 range, with a few components following standard SBA guidelines instead.

Can foreign owned companies apply? No. Non-domestic entities and non-domestic components of United States organizations are not eligible. Companies with certain ownership ties, research affiliations, or listed relationships connected to countries of concern, including the People's Republic of China, are barred from receiving an award.

Is a clinical trial required? No. Clinical trials are optional under this opportunity, but applicants proposing a clinical trial should confirm their target institute or center accepts clinical trials, since NCATS and ORIP do not.

Can we submit more than one Phase IIB application? Yes, provided each application is scientifically distinct from any other pending or funded application, including any Commercialization Readiness Pilot application tied to the same underlying Phase II project.

What is the difference between Phase IIB and the Commercialization Readiness Pilot (CRP)? Phase IIB requires a full 100 percent third party match and functions as a second, larger Phase II award. CRP, under PAR-27-098, is designed for companies that need additional technical assistance or later stage research and development but do not yet have matching funds secured or need significant outsourced work. The two can run concurrently on the same underlying Phase II project if they are scientifically distinct.

Do we need a Data Management and Sharing Plan? No. This NOFO explicitly states a Data Management and Sharing Plan is not applicable.

What registrations do we need before we can submit? An active SAM.gov registration with an assigned UEI, an SBA Company Registry registration, an eRA Commons account for the organization and for each Program Director or Principal Investigator, an ORCID iD linked to each PD or PI's eRA Commons profile, and an active Grants.gov registration. Start this process early, since it can take six weeks or more from start to finish.

DIBC Critical Minerals RPP-CM-26-02: What Startups Need to Know

Below is a brief summary. Please check the full solicitation before applying (link in resources section).

Quick Answer

The Defense Industrial Base Consortium (DIBC) has opened a Request for Project Proposals titled Domestic Processing Capabilities of Critical Minerals, numbered RPP-CM-26-02. It funds domestic production and processing of four in-scope critical minerals: indium, magnesium, manganese (including high purity and electrolytic), and titanium (including sponge and sponge substitutes). The opportunity is run by the Department of War's Industrial Base Policy office through an Other Transaction (OT) agreement, which means awards are not governed by the Federal Acquisition Regulation and can use flexible, non-dilutive and equity-style funding tools. The process has two phases. Phase 1 is a single Quad Chart, due September 17, 2026, at 12:00 PM Eastern. To submit, your company must be a member of the DIBC, be registered on SAM.gov, and file through ATI's Acquisition Management Portal at dibc-amp.ati.org. There is no published dollar ceiling, and evaluation language contemplates projects worth more than 100 million dollars and more than 500 million dollars, so awards can range from focused pilot efforts to very large capacity-building projects.

What This Opportunity Is

RPP-CM-26-02 is a solicitation issued under the Defense Industrial Base Consortium, an Other Transaction vehicle administered by Advanced Technology International (ATI) on behalf of Washington Headquarters Services, Acquisition Directorate (WHS/AD). The sponsoring organization is Industrial Base Policy (IBP), which sits within the Office of the Under Secretary of War for Acquisition and Sustainment. IBP works through its Warfighting Investments, Resourcing, and Execution office and draws on two authorities: Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment (IBAS) and Defense Production Act (DPA) Title III.

The purpose is to build resilient, secure domestic supply chains for critical minerals that matter to national security and defense. It responds directly to Executive Order 14241, signed March 20, 2025, titled Immediate Measures to Increase American Mineral Production, which directed the government to expand domestic mining, processing, refining, and smelting to the maximum extent possible and to use Defense Production Act authorities to get there.

Because this is an OT and not a traditional contract, the award instrument is a Project Agreement between ATI and the government, flowed down to your company as a project sub-agreement. Neither instrument is subject to the FAR or its supplements. That gives the government room to negotiate commercial terms, milestone-based fixed pricing, and the equity-style structures described later on this page.

The Four In-Scope Minerals

Your proposed project must address at least one of these commodities:

Indium.

Magnesium.

Manganese, including high purity and electrolytic forms.

Titanium, including sponge and sponge substitutes.

The government is clear that this list does not represent every mineral it considers critical. It also actively encourages co-production. If your process produces at least one in-scope mineral, you may recover additional in-scope minerals or other critical mineral products as co-products or by-products, and that breadth is viewed favorably.

The Six Capability Areas (AOIs)

Beyond naming a mineral, your project must fit at least one of six Areas of Interest. You can span more than one.

AOI 1, Raw mineral sourcing and beneficiation. This covers identifying, extracting, concentrating, and beneficiating ores to source an in-scope mineral. It includes bankable or definitive feasibility studies needed to secure investment, infrastructure and capital investments to operationalize mining or beneficiation, development of by-product or co-product streams from existing operations, productivity enhancements such as flowsheet optimization or autonomous systems, and efforts that move extraction projects toward operation or expand current capacity.

AOI 2, Separation and processing. Processes that transform raw or beneficiated material into intermediate chemical forms such as oxides, chlorides, and salts.

AOI 3, Metal production, metallization, refining, and upscaling. Producing metals from semi-processed material by smelting and other methods, and refining or upscaling metals to purified forms suitable for critical applications.

AOI 4, Alloying and finish processing. Creating alloys from two or more metals, coating or plating materials to impart specific properties, and transforming or combining purified materials into products ready to enter critical component supply chains.

AOI 5, Recycling, recovery, and alternative sourcing. Recovering in-scope minerals from mine tailings, industrial waste, scrap, swarf, end-of-life material, and other underutilized sources. Recovery can happen at any point in the value chain.

AOI 6, Supporting supply chains. Producing chemical reagents, key inputs, tooling, production equipment, and other materials that support the critical processes in these mineral value chains. This also includes qualifying materials for Department of War systems and applications.

The government specifically encourages holistic solutions that touch multiple stages, for example extraction plus beneficiation plus processing to oxide, or recycling plus metal making plus refining plus alloying to defense specifications.

What the Government Is Actually Looking For

This is not a research-for-its-own-sake program. The Department of War wants demonstrable progress toward standing up and securing real supply chains. A competitive proposal makes a clear case on several fronts.

It states the effort's impact and its relevance to defense industry supply chains, and it quantifies expected production volumes rather than speaking in generalities.

It addresses the current state of the market, the demand picture, and a sustainable commercialization pathway for the mineral and capability area you are targeting. The government is funding capacity that can survive commercially, not a demonstration that collapses when funding ends.

It specifies both a Technology Readiness Level and a Manufacturing Readiness Level, giving the starting point, the finishing point, and a clear description of the advancement your project will deliver on each scale.

Solutions that cross multiple AOIs, produce multiple minerals, or knit together several nodes of a supply chain are encouraged, provided they still name at least one in-scope mineral and at least one AOI.

Eligibility: You Must Be a DIBC Member First

This is the single most important thing for a startup to understand, because the solicitation assumes it throughout by referring only to "Consortium Members." You cannot submit unless your company is a member of the Defense Industrial Base Consortium.

DIBC membership is open to United States based companies, United States based affiliates of foreign companies, and organizations based in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. It is open to companies, innovators, research institutions, and academic institutions working on defense industrial base supply chain challenges. Membership is currently free for the first year, and dues thereafter are modest, with the consortium reserving the right to charge up to 250 dollars annually. Membership does not imply any government endorsement, and it does not guarantee funding or an award.

Two practical points matter for timing. First, you must be registered in the System for Award Management at SAM.gov to receive an award, and you must keep that registration active for the life of the sub-agreement. Non United States entities also need a NATO Commercial and Government Entity code. Second, apply for membership early. Waiting until a solicitation is already open can create processing delays that leave you unable to submit before the deadline. With a September 17 close, a startup that is not yet a member should begin the membership and SAM.gov steps immediately and in parallel.

Funding Structures and Cost Considerations

There is no fixed award ceiling published in this RPP. The evaluation criteria explicitly contemplate projects valued over 100 million dollars and over 500 million dollars, with progressively stricter justification requirements at each tier, which signals that awards can be substantial. Smaller, focused efforts are equally in scope.

As a default, agreements are executed as fixed-price with a milestone schedule that doubles as the payment schedule. Each milestone should map to specific priced tasks or deliverables. Other award types can be proposed and negotiated, so the fixed-price default is a starting point rather than a hard rule.

The government also signals a wide menu of financial tools beyond a straight milestone-payment agreement, particularly for technologies and materials critical to national security. These include direct equity stakes, Simple Agreements for Future Equity, convertible notes, percent-of-revenue or royalty and revenue-share agreements (including convertible revenue share, royalty with warrants, and equity-linked royalty structures), and offtake agreements at a guaranteed price point that may carry an equity-linked component. Under DPA Title III specifically, the government can use purchase commitments and guarantees to create guaranteed demand, loans where private financing is not commercially available, and loan guarantees where credit is otherwise unavailable on reasonable terms. For a capital-intensive minerals project, these demand-side and financing tools can matter as much as the direct award.

For a prototype project awarded under 10 U.S.C. 4022, there is a participation and cost-share requirement. The use of that authority is contingent on one of three conditions being met: significant participation by at least one nontraditional defense contractor or nonprofit research institution, complete participation by a small business, or a resource contribution of at least one-third from any consortium member that does not fall into the categories just named. A startup that qualifies as a nontraditional defense contractor or small business is well positioned here, because its participation can satisfy this condition without a mandatory one-third cash match. If you rely on the resource-contribution path instead, you must tie each contribution to the milestone payment schedule and summarize the base and option period split.

One more cost note. The government will not reimburse any costs you incur preparing a submission in either phase, so proposal development is at your own expense.

Timeline and Deadlines

Release date: August 21, 2026.

Phase 1 Quad Chart due: September 17, 2026, at 12:00 PM Eastern. Late submissions may not be reviewed or considered, and the government may close the RPP at any time.

Phase 2 by invitation: only companies selected from Phase 1 are invited to submit the full proposal package. There is no public fixed date for Phase 2, because invitations are issued on a rolling basis after Phase 1 review.

The basket: a Phase 1 Quad Chart that is not immediately selected is held in what the government calls "the basket" for a minimum of 24 months and remains eligible for a Phase 2 invitation during that window. A qualifying Phase 2 package the government chooses not to fund immediately is likewise held for at least 24 months and remains eligible for award. Submissions in the basket may be shared with other government agencies for other opportunities, with access restricted to government users. This means a strong submission has a long shelf life even if it is not funded on the first pass.

Follow-on production: because this can be awarded as a competitively selected prototype OT, a successfully completed prototype may lead to a follow-on production agreement without a new competition, under 10 U.S.C. 4022(f). That follow-on is negotiated separately.

How to Apply, Step by Step

First, confirm eligibility and become a DIBC member if you are not already, and complete or verify your SAM.gov registration. Do these in parallel and start now given the deadline.

Second, prepare the Phase 1 Quad Chart using the mandatory template provided with the solicitation. This is a concise, single-artifact outline of your proposed solution. Do not alter the template syntax or formatting, other than converting to a final PDF. Files must be print-capable, unencrypted, not password protected, and under 5 megabytes.

Third, submit electronically through ATI's Acquisition Management Portal at dibc-amp.ati.org. The RPP itself is posted on the DIBC opportunities website at dibconsortium.org/solicitations, where you will also find AMP registration and Quick Card guidance. You are responsible for timely submission, and neither the government nor ATI assumes responsibility for transmission delays.

Fourth, if selected, complete the Phase 2 package. It consists of a cover page (two page limit), a Project Execution Plan (fifteen page limit, and the document where you lay out tasks, deliverables, payment milestones, data rights assertions, security requirements, and success criteria), an Affirmation of Business Status Certification for your company and for every entity participating to a significant extent, price information with a pricing spreadsheet and a price justification narrative, and an Environmental Assessment Questionnaire. All Phase 2 templates are mandatory.

A note on where you apply. The solicitation and your submission live in ATI's portal, not on SAM.gov. SAM.gov is where your company registration and representations must be active in order to receive an award, and those representations are incorporated by reference into any resulting agreement. Treat SAM.gov as a required credential and dibc-amp.ati.org as the submission destination.

How Proposals Are Evaluated

Phase 1 review looks at two things: relevance to the Area of Interest, and merit and feasibility relative to the Area of Interest. Miss either and your submission stops advancing. The government may decline to advance a proposal that does not address the AOI, is technically unsound or infeasible, proposes an unrealistic schedule, or is simply not of interest. Feedback on Phase 1 may not be provided, and companies are notified only if they advance.

Phase 2 review adds several factors: relevance to the AOI, merit and feasibility, reasonableness of the proposed schedule, reasonableness and adequacy of the proposed cost (with the heightened justification tiers noted above for efforts over 100 million and over 500 million dollars), and the potential impact of your data rights assertions. Overly restrictive data rights that limit the government's ability to use or share the resulting technology are called out as a specific risk.

Security, Environmental, and Compliance Notes

The default security level is unclassified, though the work may involve Controlled Technical Information or Controlled Unclassified Information. Any submission expected to include CUI is subject to the security requirements in NIST Special Publication 800-171 revision 2. Classified material may not be included in submissions.

Consortium members are expected to disclose foreign investment or control, address resource sharing, and provide supply chain data for relevant suppliers and subcontractors, including vendor name, CAGE or Unique Entity Identifier codes where applicable, and part or product numbers and descriptions.

The Environmental Assessment Questionnaire requires you to address existing environmental notices at your proposed activity location, your plans for environmental compliance and pollution prevention appropriate to the scale of the work, and a path to obtaining and maintaining the permits needed to scale the prototype, including responsible waste management and use of maximum achievable or best available control technology.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is RPP-CM-26-02?

It is the Defense Industrial Base Consortium's Request for Project Proposals for Domestic Processing Capabilities of Critical Minerals, released August 21, 2026, with Phase 1 submissions due September 17, 2026, at 12:00 PM Eastern. It funds domestic sourcing, processing, refining, alloying, recycling, and supporting supply chains for indium, magnesium, manganese, and titanium.

Which minerals are eligible?

Four commodities are in scope: indium, magnesium, manganese (including high purity and electrolytic forms), and titanium (including sponge and sponge substitutes). You must address at least one, and you may produce others as co-products or by-products.

Do I have to be a DIBC member to apply?

Yes. Only Consortium Members can submit. Membership is free for the first year and open to United States based companies, United States based affiliates of foreign companies, and entities in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Apply for membership and complete SAM.gov registration early, because starting after the solicitation opens can leave too little time to submit.

Where do I actually submit my proposal?

Through ATI's Acquisition Management Portal at dibc-amp.ati.org. The RPP and registration guidance are posted at dibconsortium.org/solicitations. SAM.gov is where your company must be registered to receive an award, but it is not where you upload your proposal.

How much funding is available?

The RPP does not publish a fixed ceiling. Evaluation language contemplates projects worth more than 100 million dollars and more than 500 million dollars, so award sizes vary widely from focused pilots to major capacity projects. Agreements default to fixed-price with milestone payments, and other structures can be negotiated.

What funding structures can the government use?

Beyond a milestone-based fixed-price agreement, the government may use direct equity stakes, SAFEs, convertible notes, royalty and revenue-share agreements, offtake agreements at a guaranteed price, and, under DPA Title III, purchase commitments, loans, and loan guarantees. These are especially relevant for capital-intensive minerals projects.

Is there a cost-share or matching requirement?

For prototype projects under 10 U.S.C. 4022, use of that authority is contingent on one of three conditions: significant participation by a nontraditional defense contractor or nonprofit research institution, complete participation by a small business, or at least a one-third resource contribution from other members. Startups that are nontraditional or small businesses can often satisfy this through participation rather than a cash match.

What do I submit in Phase 1 versus Phase 2?

Phase 1 is a single Quad Chart on the mandatory template. Phase 2, by invitation only, is a full package: a two-page cover page, a fifteen-page Project Execution Plan, an Affirmation of Business Status Certification, price information and justification, and an Environmental Assessment Questionnaire, all on mandatory templates.

What happens if I am not selected right away?

Qualifying Phase 1 and Phase 2 submissions are placed in "the basket" for at least 24 months and remain eligible for an invitation or award during that window. They may also be shared with other government agencies for other opportunities, so a strong submission keeps working for you well past the initial review.

Can this lead to a production contract?

Yes. A successfully completed prototype under this OT can lead to a follow-on production agreement without a new competition, under 10 U.S.C. 4022(f). That follow-on is negotiated separately.

Does the government pay for my proposal costs?

No. The government will not reimburse costs associated with preparing your submission in either phase.

Need Help Positioning Your Company?

Winning non-dilutive and equity-style federal funding for critical minerals work is as much about how you frame technology readiness, production volume, and commercialization as it is about the science. BW&CO helps deep-tech, materials, and defense-adjacent founders map their capability to the right authority, structure a competitive Quad Chart, and build the Phase 2 package that survives cost and data-rights review. If you are weighing a submission to RPP-CM-26-02, reach out before the September 17 deadline.

ARPA-H STREAM Program: Funding, Deadline, and How to Apply

Below is a brief summary. Please check the full solicitation before applying (link in resources section).

Quick Answer

The STREAM program (Systems for Tracking and Resilience in Efficient Agricultural-input Management) is an ARPA-H research initiative that funds breakthrough technology to control weeds while reducing herbicide exposure for farmers, farm workers, consumers, and the environment. Launched by the Department of Health and Human Services through ARPA-H on August 17, 2026, STREAM seeks solutions across four technical areas: next-generation herbicides and formulations, precision and nonchemical weed control, low-cost chemical monitoring, and methods to remove or degrade herbicides in soil and water. Applications are made as Solution Summaries through the Scalable Solutions Office Innovative Solutions Opening (ISO), notice ID ARPA-H-SOL-24-105, which is posted and maintained on SAM.gov. Solution Summaries that select STREAM are due no later than September 14, 2026 at 11:59 pm ET. STREAM is funded through Other Transactions rather than SBIR or STTR grants, so awards are negotiated per project and there is no fixed application dollar cap published in the announcement.

Program Overview

STREAM is ARPA-H's push to modernize American agriculture at the intersection of crop chemistry and human health. Herbicides keep food affordable, support regenerative farming, and help farmers stay productive, but some herbicides and their formulation ingredients can affect people, animals, fish, and pollinators. Farmers, farm workers, and consumers are exposed through food, water, soil, and air, while weeds grow more resistant and off-target runoff harms nearby habitats and rural communities. Alternatives have been sought for years without resolving the core tradeoff between efficacy, health, safety, ecological impact, soil dynamics, and cost.

STREAM aims to close that gap. The program funds safer alternative crop protection formulations, better monitoring of where herbicides travel, and practical ways to break down or remove agricultural chemicals before they reach consumers. If it succeeds, STREAM will lower the cumulative chemical burden on consumers and agricultural workers, protect the soil and water the food supply depends on, and give farmers economically viable alternatives to the products they rely on today.

The program is one piece of a broader interagency commitment. HHS, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have pledged to invest more than one billion dollars in farm modernization and long-term food security, and STREAM advances that effort along with the federal push toward regenerative agriculture. That one billion dollar figure is the joint interagency envelope, not a single STREAM award pool, so applicants should not read it as a per-project budget.

What ARPA-H Is Looking For

STREAM is organized around four coordinated technical areas. A submission must address one or more of these areas to be considered, and ARPA-H encourages interdisciplinary teams drawn from agricultural and weed sciences, artificial intelligence and machine learning, advanced chemistry, drone development, sensing, and related fields.

Technical Area 1: Next-generation herbicides and formulations. Use artificial intelligence and machine learning to discover novel chemical compounds, biologically derived herbicides, and advanced biological treatments that selectively target weeds, including resistant species, while minimizing impacts on the surrounding ecosystem. The goal is efficacy against hard-to-kill weeds without the collateral health and environmental cost of current products.

Technical Area 2: Precision and nonchemical weed control. Advance cost-effective physical weed-control approaches such as laser ablation and miniature autonomous weeders, machine vision-guided targeted herbicide application, real-time drift modeling, and U.S.-manufactured drone-based precision application systems. The aim is to cut chemical inputs while keeping farms productive. Domestic manufacturing of the drone platforms is called out specifically.

Technical Area 3: Improved monitoring of herbicides and associated chemicals. Develop accurate, low-cost, continuous sensing technologies for compounds that are currently difficult and expensive to measure. Better sensing enables community-level monitoring and faster response when a problem appears, rather than waiting on slow or costly lab analysis.

Technical Area 4: Remove or degrade herbicides and associated chemicals. Create methods to rapidly break down agricultural chemicals in soil and water, intercept runoff before it reaches waterways, and reduce residues absorbed by crops. This is the cleanup and containment side of the program, ensuring chemicals are removed from the environment after they do their work.

ARPA-H funds revolutionary rather than incremental ideas, and its programs typically target early-stage technologies with a clear path to maturity. Teams that combine a bold technical concept with a credible plan to reach real-world deployment tend to fit the agency's model best.

Funding and Award Structure

There is an important structural point that startups should understand before applying. STREAM is not an SBIR or STTR opportunity. It runs through a Mission Office Innovative Solutions Opening, and ARPA-H primarily uses Other Transactions and cooperative agreements rather than traditional grants. Other Transactions are flexible business arrangements that let the government adopt commercial-style terms and negotiate scope, milestones, intellectual property, reporting, and payments on a per-award basis.

Because awards are negotiated, the STREAM announcement does not publish a fixed dollar ceiling for applications. For context, ARPA-H operates on an annual budget of roughly 1.5 billion dollars and has historically supported large, milestone-driven awards that can range from single millions to tens of millions of dollars per project, depending on scope. Your budget is built in the Cost Proposal that accompanies a full proposal, and it must reconcile with the milestones and level of effort you commit to.

A few cost-related details from the current ISO documents are worth noting when you plan your budget. Proposers must provide supporting documentation for planned materials and equipment purchases once the unit cost reaches ten thousand dollars, an increase from the prior five thousand dollar threshold. Profit or fee is treated as not applicable unless you specifically include it in the Cost Proposal Workbook. The ISO also defines burdened labor rate and fully burdened labor rate for clarity, and it notes that fully burdened labor rates are not used in the Cost Proposal Workbooks.

Eligibility

ARPA-H opportunities are open to a broad range of performers, including companies, small businesses, startups, universities, and nonprofit research organizations, and the agency encourages collaborative teams. STREAM specifically invites experts across agricultural science, artificial intelligence, chemistry, drones, and sensing to team up on its objectives.

Two eligibility constraints matter for planning. ARPA-H prioritizes awards to domestic recipients, and it cannot award funding to entities organized under the laws of a covered foreign country, which include Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China. Applicants should also be prepared to address organizational conflicts of interest, research security, human and animal subjects considerations where relevant, and biosecurity, since the ISO documents include disclosure requirements in each of these areas.

Timeline

The program was launched on August 17, 2026. Solution Summaries that select STREAM are due no later than September 14, 2026 at 11:59 pm ET. After you submit a Solution Summary, you should wait to hear back from ARPA-H with feedback before proceeding to a full proposal. Only summaries that receive encouragement move forward, which protects you from investing in a full proposal that is not aligned.

It helps to understand how STREAM sits inside the broader solicitation. STREAM submissions flow through the Scalable Solutions Office ISO, notice ID ARPA-H-SOL-24-105, which is a rolling solicitation that remains active on SAM.gov with a much later administrative closing date in 2029. STREAM itself carries the firm September 14, 2026 cutoff, so treat that as your working deadline regardless of the ISO's longer horizon.

How to Apply

STREAM applications are made through the Scalable Solutions Office ISO on SAM.gov, and the steps are as follows.

First, access the Scalable Solutions solicitation, notice ID ARPA-H-SOL-24-105, on SAM.gov. This solicitation and its attachments provide the full details on eligibility, submission requirements, evaluation criteria, contacts, and the link to apply.

Second, download all documents in the Attachment section, including the ISO document, the Solution Summary template (Appendix A), and the bundle of attachments. Follow the instructions in the ISO document and its associated files when preparing your Solution Summary.

Third, submit your Solution Summary using the link provided in the solicitation documents, at the ARPA-H Solutions site. When prompted, select STREAM from the Solution Summary dropdown list. A sign-in is required to submit, and your summary must be in by September 14, 2026 at 11:59 pm ET.

Fourth, await feedback. Do not begin a full proposal until you hear back from ARPA-H on your Solution Summary.

If you have questions about the opportunity, submit them through the Ask A Question form on the ARPA-H Solutions site, select STREAM from the dropdown, and note that a sign-in is required.

How BW&CO Consulting Supports STREAM Applicants

BW&CO Consulting helps deep-tech, biotech, MedTech, agtech, and dual-use founders pursue non-dilutive federal funding across ARPA-H, NIH, NSF, DoD, NASA, DOE, and other agencies. Because STREAM runs on an Other Transactions ISO rather than a conventional SBIR or STTR grant, it rewards a sharp technical narrative, a credible commercialization and manufacturing story, and a milestone plan that a program manager can act on quickly. If you are weighing a STREAM Solution Summary, we can assess fit against the four technical areas, shape the concept for the ARPA-H model, and prepare a competitive submission ahead of the September 14, 2026 deadline. Reach out to start a fit conversation.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the ARPA-H STREAM program? STREAM, short for Systems for Tracking and Resilience in Efficient Agricultural-input Management, is an ARPA-H program that funds breakthrough technology to control weeds while reducing herbicide exposure for farmers, farm workers, consumers, and the environment. It was launched by HHS through ARPA-H on August 17, 2026.

Who runs STREAM and what agency funds it? STREAM is run by the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), which sits within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The program manager is James Coburn, CAPT.

When is the STREAM application deadline? Solution Summaries that select STREAM are due no later than September 14, 2026 at 11:59 pm ET.

How do I apply to STREAM? You apply by submitting a Solution Summary through the Scalable Solutions Office ISO, notice ID ARPA-H-SOL-24-105, which is posted on SAM.gov. Download the solicitation attachments, prepare your Solution Summary using the provided template, submit it at the ARPA-H Solutions site, and select STREAM from the dropdown.

What are the four STREAM technical areas? The four technical areas are next-generation herbicides and formulations, precision and nonchemical weed control, improved low-cost monitoring of herbicides and associated chemicals, and methods to remove or degrade those chemicals in soil and water. A submission must address at least one of these areas.

How much funding does STREAM provide? STREAM does not publish a fixed award ceiling in its announcement because awards are negotiated per project through Other Transactions. For context, ARPA-H typically supports milestone-driven awards ranging from single millions to tens of millions of dollars, and STREAM advances a broader interagency commitment of more than one billion dollars in farm modernization shared across HHS, USDA, and EPA.

Is STREAM an SBIR or STTR opportunity? No. STREAM is offered through a Mission Office Innovative Solutions Opening and uses Other Transactions and cooperative agreements, not SBIR or STTR grants. This means the application pathway, budgeting, and terms differ from a standard SBIR solicitation.

What funding mechanism does ARPA-H use? ARPA-H primarily uses Other Transactions and cooperative agreements. Other Transactions are flexible, commercial-style agreements that allow scope, milestones, intellectual property, reporting, and payment terms to be negotiated on a per-award basis.

Who is eligible to apply for STREAM? Eligibility is broad and includes companies, startups, small businesses, universities, and nonprofit research organizations, and teaming is encouraged. ARPA-H prioritizes domestic recipients and cannot award funding to entities organized under the laws of a covered foreign country, including Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China.

Can startups and small businesses apply? Yes. Startups and small businesses can apply and are well suited to STREAM's emphasis on bold, early-stage technology, provided they can present a credible technical concept and a plan to reach real-world deployment.

What is a Solution Summary? A Solution Summary is a short initial submission that describes your proposed solution against the program objectives. ARPA-H reviews it and provides feedback before inviting a full proposal, which saves applicants from investing in a full proposal that is not aligned.

What happens after I submit a Solution Summary? After you submit, you wait for feedback from ARPA-H. You should not begin a full proposal until you have heard back, and only encouraged summaries advance to the full proposal stage.

Where do I submit my STREAM application? Solution Summaries are submitted at the ARPA-H Solutions site using the link in the solicitation documents, with STREAM selected from the dropdown. The underlying solicitation, ARPA-H-SOL-24-105, is accessed and downloaded from SAM.gov, and questions go through the Ask A Question form on the same ARPA-H Solutions site.

NIH SBIR Bioethics Research Funding for Startups: 2026 Guide

Below is a brief summary. Please check the full solicitation before applying (link in resources section).

Quick Answer

The NIH Highlighted Topic "Strengthening Biomedical Research, Promoting Trust, and Improving Health through Bioethics Research" invites small businesses to develop actionable bioethics tools and approaches across artificial intelligence, research engagement, informed consent, and return of research results. This is not a standalone funding opportunity. It is a Highlighted Topic, which means you apply through the NIH, CDC and FDA Parent SBIR announcement (PA-27-100) or, if you are partnering with a university or other nonprofit, the Parent STTR announcement (PA-27-102). The topic is active from August 14, 2026 through January 12, 2028. Standard NIH SBIR due dates are September 5, 2026 (adjusted to September 8, 2026), January 5, 2027, and April 5, 2027. Phase I funding runs up to the current SBA guideline of about $323,090, with several participating Institutes offering waivers of $400,000 or $700,000. Phase II funding runs up to about $2,153,927 under the SBA guideline, with several Institutes offering waivers of $2.5 million or $3 million.

What Is the NIH Bioethics Research Highlighted Topic?

The Highlighted Topic is an area of science that NIH has flagged as a priority for its participating Institutes, Centers, and Offices. It signals to investigators that if they build a competitive application in this space, multiple NIH components are interested in funding it. A Highlighted Topic is not a Notice of Funding Opportunity. There is no separate application package, no dedicated funding number, and no set-aside budget attached to the topic itself. Instead, NIH directs you to submit through a broad parent announcement and to make your project relevant to at least one participating Institute or Center that awards grants.

For a small business, the practical path is the Parent SBIR announcement PA-27-100. If your project depends on a formal collaboration with a nonprofit research institution such as a university, the correct vehicle is the Parent STTR announcement PA-27-102. In both programs the award goes to the small business, and both are strong fits for bioethics work because much of the field's expertise sits inside academic centers.

The topic was posted on August 14, 2026 and expires January 12, 2028. Because that window spans more than a year, you can target any of the standard SBIR due dates that fall inside it, applying through whichever parent SBIR announcement is current at your chosen deadline.

How Do You Apply for This Bioethics Topic?

You apply by submitting an SBIR application to PA-27-100 (or an STTR application to PA-27-102) and making your project responsive to the bioethics areas of interest for at least one participating Institute or Center. You do not apply to the Highlighted Topic directly.

A few practical points shape a competitive submission. First, NIH's Center for Scientific Review assigns every application to the most appropriate Institute, so you are not required to name an awarding component in advance. You may request an assignment on the PHS Assignment Request Form, and you are strongly encouraged to contact program staff at the Institute you believe is the best fit before you apply. Second, several of the offices listed in the topic, including the Office of Science Policy, the Office of AIDS Research, the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research, and the Office of Data Science Strategy, do not award grants. Your application must map to an Institute or Center that does. Third, because SBIR is a commercialization program, your bioethics work needs a product or service with commercial potential, not a purely academic study. More on that below.

What Kind of Research Is NIH Looking For?

The purpose of this topic is to advance bioethics research projects that are actionable, that build trust, and that improve how bioethical principles are integrated into biomedical and behavioral research. NIH wants work that strengthens science so that research generates evidence-based products communities will adopt more readily. The specific areas of interest fall into five buckets.

Artificial intelligence. NIH is interested in access to and use of AI models and algorithms, maximizing the generalizability of AI, strategies for AI transparency and data privacy, and the integration of digital health research. This is one of the most naturally commercializable areas for a startup, covering audit and transparency tooling, bias and generalizability testing, and privacy-preserving infrastructure.

Research engagement. NIH is interested in approaches for effective community engagement, co-developing research priorities with communities, building and sustaining research trustworthiness, and improving recruitment and access to clinical trials. Platforms and methods that make engagement measurable and repeatable are a fit here.

Informed consent. NIH is interested in strategies and structures for facilitating transparency and autonomy, community approaches to consenting for population-level public health research, and novel forms of consent, including consent for research use of electronic health records, wearables, linked data, and public health data. Consent management systems and dynamic consent tooling map directly to this area.

Return of research results. NIH is interested in approaches for returning aggregate and individual research results, strategies for communicating findings in ways that support health decision-making, and considerations for populations with unique needs or decision-making circumstances. Communication tools and result-delivery systems fit here.

Other cross-cutting issues. NIH also flags data access and sharing, biosafety and biosecurity, and emerging and novel technologies.

Individual Institutes layer their own priorities on top of these buckets. The National Human Genome Research Institute is focused on ethical, legal, and social implications of genetics and genomics. The National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering is focused on ethics across the technology development continuum, including AI and machine learning, point-of-care technologies, and re-identifiability risks from imaging data. The National Institute on Aging is focused on autonomy, consent tailored to older adults, and the ethical use of AI in aging populations. The National Institute on Drug Abuse is focused on return of results, stigma reduction, and vulnerable-population protections. The BRAIN Initiative, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, and the National Eye Institute each bring neurotechnology, neuroimaging, and vision-specific angles. Aligning your project to a specific Institute's stated priorities, rather than to the topic in general, is what separates a fundable application from a vague one.

Which NIH Institutes and Centers Participate?

The Institutes and Centers that award grants under this topic include the National Cancer Institute, the National Eye Institute, the National Human Genome Research Institute, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the National Institute on Aging, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, and the National Institute of Nursing Research. The BRAIN Initiative also participates, funding through its associated Institutes.

Several offices are interested in the topic but do not award grants, including the Office of Science Policy, the Office of AIDS Research, the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research, and the Office of Data Science Strategy. Applications relevant to these offices must still be assigned to and funded by one of the participating grant-making Institutes or Centers.

How Much Funding Can a Startup Receive?

Funding depends on which Institute your application is assigned to, because budgets vary across NIH components. The default ceiling is the current SBA guideline, which NIH lists at about $323,090 in total costs for Phase I and about $2,153,927 for Phase II. Those figures include direct costs, indirect costs, and fee, and the SBA adjusts them annually, so confirm the current number on the NIH SEED website before you build your budget.

Many Institutes have secured waivers to exceed the SBA guideline. Among the components participating in this bioethics topic, the following Phase I ceilings apply. The National Cancer Institute, the National Institute on Aging, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke offer Phase I budgets up to $700,000. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, and the National Institute of Nursing Research offer Phase I budgets up to $400,000. The National Eye Institute and the National Human Genome Research Institute set Phase I at $400,000. The National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences follow the standard SBA guideline for Phase I.

On the Phase II side, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the National Institute on Aging, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke offer Phase II budgets up to $3 million. The National Cancer Institute, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, and the National Institute of Nursing Research offer Phase II budgets up to $2.5 million. The National Eye Institute, the National Human Genome Research Institute, the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences follow the standard SBA guideline for Phase II.

In every case, NIH expects a budget that is reasonable and appropriate for the work, not a number anchored to the ceiling. Requests at or near a hard cap should be well justified. If you intend to request more than the SBA guideline, contact the participating Institute early in your planning process.

What Is the Timeline and What Are the Deadlines?

The Parent SBIR announcement opened for submissions on August 5, 2026. Its standard due dates are September 5, 2026, January 5, 2027, and April 5, 2027, each at 5:00 PM local time of the applicant organization. When a due date falls on a weekend or federal holiday, NIH automatically rolls it to the next business day. September 5, 2026 is a Saturday and September 7 is Labor Day, so the effective first deadline is Tuesday, September 8, 2026. The Parent SBIR announcement PA-27-100 itself expires April 6, 2027, and NIH typically reissues its parent announcements, so applicants targeting later cycles should apply through whichever parent SBIR is current at that time.

The review path is predictable. An application submitted for the September 2026 cycle receives scientific merit review in November 2026, advisory council review in January 2027, and an earliest possible start date of April 2027. A January 2027 submission maps to March 2027 review, May 2027 council, and a July 2027 earliest start. Build backward from your target start date, and remember that no late applications are accepted for this announcement.

Project periods are constrained by statute. Phase I awards normally may not exceed 6 months, and Phase II awards normally may not exceed 2 years. NIH also offers two accelerated paths that only apply to NIH components: Fast-Track, which submits and reviews Phase I and Phase II together to reduce the funding gap, and Direct to Phase II, for companies that have already demonstrated feasibility but never received a Phase I for that project.

Who Is Eligible to Apply?

Only United States small business concerns are eligible. To qualify, your company must be organized for profit with a place of business in the United States, must operate primarily in the United States or make a significant contribution to the US economy, and must have no more than 500 employees including affiliates. Ownership must satisfy one of the allowed structures: more than 50 percent directly owned and controlled by US citizens or permanent residents, or majority owned by multiple venture capital operating companies, hedge funds, or private equity firms under the specific limits in the announcement, where no single such firm owns more than 50 percent unless it independently qualifies as a small business.

The Program Director or Principal Investigator must be primarily employed by the small business at the time of award and during the project. For projects with multiple PDs or PIs, at least one must meet this primary employment requirement.

The work-share rules also matter. In SBIR Phase I, the small business normally performs at least two-thirds, or 67 percent, of the research or analytical effort. In SBIR Phase II, the small business normally performs at least one-half, or 50 percent. Consultant and contractual arrangements to third parties are generally capped at the remaining share. If your bioethics project leans heavily on academic collaborators, the STTR announcement PA-27-102 may be the better structural fit, since it allows a nonprofit partner to perform a larger share.

What Registrations Do You Need Before Applying?

You must complete and maintain several registrations before you can submit, and they can take six weeks or more in total, so start immediately. You need an active System for Award Management registration, which issues your Unique Entity Identifier and a CAGE Code. You need to register in the SBA Company Registry, which requires your UEI first. You need an eRA Commons account for your organization, with at least one Signing Official and one Program Director or Principal Investigator, and obtaining an account can take up to two weeks. You need a Grants.gov registration, which depends on an active SAM registration. Every PD or PI must also have an eRA Commons ID and must link a valid ORCID iD to their eRA Commons profile. Failure to complete registrations on time is not an accepted reason for a late submission.

What Are the Key Compliance and Foreign Risk Rules?

Two areas deserve early attention. The first is foreign involvement. Non-US entities and non-US components of US organizations are not eligible to apply. NIH will not issue awards that involve foreign subawards or subcontracts under this announcement, and any application that includes them will be deemed noncompliant and will not be funded. Unfunded international collaborations, funding for foreign consultants, and procurement of unique equipment or supplies from foreign vendors may still be allowed.

The second is foreign risk disclosure and security review. Applicants under consideration for award must submit the SBA Required Disclosures of Foreign Affiliations or Relationships to Foreign Countries form during the just-in-time process, covering all owners and covered individuals. HHS cannot make an award if the company has an owner or covered individual party to a malign foreign talent recruitment program, a parent company or subsidiary located in the People's Republic of China or another country of concern, or other disqualifying ties described in the announcement. NIH, CDC, and FDA will not provide an opportunity to cure an identified security risk before award, though a denial on security grounds does not bar the company from applying in a later cycle.

A few additional terms are worth knowing. This announcement is clinical trial optional, but some Institutes do not accept clinical trials, so confirm your target component accepts your study design. SBIR recipients may retain data rights for up to 20 years after the award date. Cost sharing is not required.

How Should a Startup Frame a Bioethics Project for SBIR?

This is the point most applicants miss. SBIR is a commercialization program, not a research grant program in the traditional academic sense. Reviewers score significance, investigators, innovation, approach, and environment, and for Phase II and Fast-Track they weigh a Commercialization Plan heavily. A bioethics project that reads like a scholarly study will struggle. A bioethics project framed as a product or service with a clear market, clear customers, and a clear path to revenue will compete.

The most commercializable angles in this topic are the ones that produce software, tooling, or repeatable methods. Examples include AI transparency, audit, and generalizability testing tools; privacy-preserving data infrastructure and de-identification systems; dynamic and electronic consent management platforms, including consent for wearables, EHR data, and linked datasets; community engagement platforms that make trust-building measurable; and return-of-results communication systems tailored to specific populations. If you can name the customer who would pay for your solution and explain how it solves a demonstrated need, you have the spine of a competitive application. If you cannot, the project may be better suited to a non-SBIR mechanism.

How BW&CO Helps

BW&CO helps deep-tech, health, and AI founders match their technology to the right NIH Institute, choose between the SBIR and STTR routes, structure a fundable budget within the correct ceiling, and build the commercialization narrative that NIH reviewers reward. If you are evaluating whether your product fits this bioethics topic, or which of the participating Institutes is the strongest home for your work, we can help you make that call before you invest in a full application.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the NIH Bioethics Research topic a funding opportunity you can apply to directly?

No. It is a Highlighted Topic, not a Notice of Funding Opportunity. There is no separate application package or funding number. You apply through the NIH Parent SBIR announcement PA-27-100, or the Parent STTR announcement PA-27-102 if you are partnering with a nonprofit research institution, and you make your project responsive to at least one participating Institute or Center.

What is the deadline to apply?

The standard NIH SBIR due dates are September 5, 2026, January 5, 2027, and April 5, 2027, at 5:00 PM local time of the applicant organization. Because September 5, 2026 is a Saturday and September 7 is Labor Day, the effective first deadline is September 8, 2026. The Highlighted Topic remains active through January 12, 2028.

How much SBIR funding can my startup receive?

Phase I runs up to the current SBA guideline of about $323,090, with several participating Institutes offering waivers of $400,000 or $700,000. Phase II runs up to about $2,153,927 under the SBA guideline, with several Institutes offering waivers of $2.5 million or $3 million. The exact ceiling depends on which Institute your application is assigned to.

Who is eligible to apply?

United States small business concerns that are for-profit, have no more than 500 employees including affiliates, meet the ownership rules, and whose Program Director or Principal Investigator is primarily employed by the company at the time of award.

Can universities apply for this topic?

No. The award goes to the small business. A university can participate as a partner through the STTR announcement PA-27-102, or as a subaward or consultant within the SBIR work-share limits, which allow up to about one-third of the effort to third parties in Phase I and up to about one-half in Phase II.

Does my bioethics project need a commercial product?

Yes. SBIR is a commercialization program, so your project needs a product or service with commercial potential and a credible path to market. The strongest fits produce software, tooling, or repeatable methods, such as AI transparency tools, consent management platforms, or return-of-results communication systems.

Which NIH Institutes fund this topic?

Participating grant-making components include NCI, NEI, NHGRI, NHLBI, NIA, NIAAA, NIAID, NIBIB, NIDA, NIDCD, NIDCR, NIEHS, NIMH, NINDS, and NINR, along with the BRAIN Initiative. Several offices are interested but do not award grants, so applications must be assigned to a grant-making Institute or Center.

Do I need to pick an Institute before I apply?

No. NIH's Center for Scientific Review assigns your application to the most appropriate component. You may request an assignment on the PHS Assignment Request Form, and you are strongly encouraged to contact program staff at your target Institute before submitting.

How long does registration take?

Plan for six weeks or more. You need active registrations in SAM, the SBA Company Registry, eRA Commons, and Grants.gov, and each PD or PI needs an eRA Commons ID linked to an ORCID iD. Late registration is not an accepted reason for a late submission.

Can foreign companies or foreign subawards be involved?

No. Only US small business concerns are eligible, and applications that include foreign subawards or subcontracts are deemed noncompliant and will not be funded. Unfunded international collaborations, foreign consultants, and procurement of unique equipment or supplies from foreign vendors may still be permitted.

NIH Connectedness Interventions SBIR Funding: A Guide for Startups

Below is a brief summary. Please check the full solicitation before applying (link in resources section).

Quick Answer

The NIH Highlighted Topic on Interventions to Promote Health by Fostering Connectedness invites small businesses to develop and test interventions that improve health by strengthening people's connections to others, communities, culture, activities, and nature. It is part of the federal Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Chronic Disease Initiative and its Whole-Person-Health approach. This topic is not a standalone funding announcement. Startups pursue funding through the NIH, CDC, and FDA Parent SBIR announcement PA-27-100 (R43/R44, Clinical Trial Optional). The topic is active from August 11, 2026 through August 11, 2028. Standard SBIR due dates fall on September 5, January 5, and April 5 of each cycle, and Phase I awards can range from roughly 400,000 dollars to 700,000 dollars depending on the funding Institute.

What Is the NIH Connectedness Interventions Highlighted Topic?

A Highlighted Topic is a signal from NIH about an area of science that its Institutes, Centers, and Offices want to fund. It tells applicants where the agency's scientific interest and money are pointed. It is not a Notice of Funding Opportunity, so there is no separate application form tied to the topic itself.

This particular topic, Interventions to Promote Health by Fostering Connectedness, encourages rigorous research that evaluates connectedness interventions to improve health or reduce risk factors for chronic disease. The scientific premise is that social isolation, loneliness, and poor mental health have risen alongside a widespread chronic disease crisis, and that stronger connections to people, culture, and activities can improve both mental and physical health. Epidemiological evidence links greater social connectedness to improved behavioral, cognitive, cardiovascular, and immune health, and to lower all-cause mortality.

The topic sits inside the Make America Healthy Again initiative and aligns with the NIH MAHA Chronic Disease Initiative, which promotes a Whole-Person-Health approach to chronic disease prevention. It also connects to current federal attention on social prescribing, the 2026 Surgeon General's Warning on the Harms of Screen Use, and the 2026 MAHA ELEVATE initiative for older Medicare recipients.

Which Funding Announcement Do I Actually Apply Through?

You apply through the NIH, CDC, and FDA Parent SBIR announcement, PA-27-100, titled the NIH, CDC and FDA Small Business Innovation Research Grant (Parent SBIR R43/R44 Clinical Trial Optional). This is the application vehicle for the connectedness topic.

When you submit, you do not need to name a specific Institute, but you are encouraged to identify the Institute or Center whose mission best matches your work and to contact its program staff before applying. NIH's Center for Scientific Review assigns each application to the most appropriate participating component.

A few companion announcements matter depending on your project:

• PA-27-100 is the SBIR route (R43 Phase I, R44 Phase II), where the small business does most of the work.

• PA-27-102 is the STTR route (R41 Phase I, R42 Phase II), used when your project depends on a formal collaboration with a nonprofit research institution such as a university. Connectedness research often involves academic or clinical partners, so the STTR route is worth evaluating.

• PA-27-101 is the standalone SBIR Phase II announcement, including Phase IIB Strategic Breakthrough applications.

• PAR-27-098 is the SB1 Commercialization Readiness Program.

If PA-27-100 expires before you are ready to apply, use whichever Parent SBIR announcement is active at that time. The connectedness topic remains valid through August 11, 2028, while PA-27-100 itself carries an expiration date of April 6, 2027 and is expected to be reissued.

Is My Startup Eligible?

To apply, your company must be a United States small business concern that meets all of the following at the time of a Phase I or Phase II award:

• Organized for profit with a place of business in the United States.

• No more than 500 employees, including affiliates.

• More than 50 percent directly owned and controlled by United States citizens or permanent residents, or by other qualifying United States small businesses, or majority owned by multiple venture capital operating companies, hedge funds, or private equity firms (with the condition that no single such firm owns more than 50 percent unless it independently qualifies as a United States owned small business).

For SBIR awards, the Program Director or Principal Investigator must be primarily employed by the small business at the time of award and during the project. In projects with multiple PIs, at least one must meet this employment requirement. If you take the STTR route instead, the PI may be primarily employed by either the small business or the nonprofit research partner.

Non United States entities are not eligible, and NIH will not issue awards that involve foreign subawards or subcontracts under this announcement. Unfunded international collaborations, funding for foreign consultants, or procurement of unique supplies from foreign vendors may still be allowed.

What Registrations Do I Need, and How Long Do They Take?

Plan for registration to take six weeks or more, and start early, because a late registration is never accepted as an excuse for a missed deadline. You need active registrations in:

• System for Award Management (SAM), which includes a Commercial and Government Entity (CAGE) Code and a Unique Entity Identifier (UEI).

• SBA Company Registry.

• eRA Commons, with at least one Signing Official and at least one PI account.

• Grants.gov.

Each PI must have an eRA Commons ID and a linked ORCID iD. The same UEI must be used across all systems and on the application.

What Kind of Projects Is NIH Looking For?

Connectedness can take many forms, including connections with people, communities, history, traditions, hobbies, sports, the arts, or nature. Interventions may be tested as adjuncts to healthcare or as stand-alone interventions in non-medical settings.

NIH strongly encourages projects that:

• Specify a clear conceptual model that identifies the hypothesized pathways between connectedness and health outcomes.

• Use validated measures of connectedness and health outcomes wherever possible, such as those in the PhenX Toolkit.

• Address the multi-level factors that make connections possible and sustainable, for example providing transportation so urban youth can reach existing green spaces.

• Involve collaboration with organizations that can actually implement or deliver the intervention if it proves effective.

• Include a rigorous, sufficiently powered study design that accounts for the expected correlation of outcomes within clusters such as families, schools, clinics, or neighborhoods.

For a startup, the practical takeaway is that a competitive application pairs a strong commercial concept with a real conceptual model, validated measurement, a credible delivery partner, and a study design that will hold up under peer review.

Which NIH Institutes and Centers Are Funding This Topic?

Several Institutes and Centers participate, each with its own angle. Matching your intervention to the right one improves your odds. Your application must be relevant to at least one of the awarding Institutes or Centers below. Two offices, the Office of Disease Prevention (ODP) and the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR), signal interest but do not award grants themselves.

• National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH): mind and body approaches that promote mental, emotional, and behavioral health, using feasibility, hybrid effectiveness-implementation, mechanistic, pragmatic, or community-based designs, including health information technology and partnerships with schools, health systems, and justice systems.

• National Cancer Institute (NCI): connectedness and cancer control outcomes, including risk behaviors, screening, treatment decision-making, symptom management, and patient and caregiver health, plus the effect of the online and social media environment on connectedness.

• National Eye Institute (NEI): the intersection of visual impairment, social isolation, and wellness, including accessibility technologies and care-delivery models for people experiencing vision loss.

• National Institute on Aging (NIA): how connectedness affects the physical, cognitive, social, and emotional health of people in midlife and older adulthood, including isolation among older adults aging in place, kinless individuals, and dementia caregivers, and the role of the built environment.

• National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA): the role of connectedness in preventing and treating alcohol misuse and alcohol use disorder across the lifespan, including screening, brief interventions, and recovery outcomes.

• National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA): social connectedness and loneliness as levers to prevent or treat substance use disorders and support recovery, with strong emphasis on stakeholder engagement.

• National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH): connectedness and risk for mental illness, social prescribing including digital approaches, and connectedness among people living with HIV.

• National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD): community-engaged connectedness interventions that improve health and reduce risk among populations experiencing health disparities.

• National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR): interventions that promote mental well-being through social, cultural, or environmental connectedness, including school-based settings and the use of artificial intelligence in healthcare settings.

How Much Funding Can My Startup Receive?

Budget ceilings vary by Institute. Phase I supports a feasibility study and normally runs up to six months. Phase II continues research and development toward commercialization and normally runs up to two years. Total funding support includes direct costs, indirect costs, and fee.

For the Institutes participating in this topic, the Phase I and Phase II guidelines are:

• National Cancer Institute: Phase I up to 700,000 dollars, Phase II up to 2,500,000 dollars.

• National Institute on Aging: Phase I up to 700,000 dollars, Phase II up to 3,000,000 dollars.

• National Institute of Mental Health: Phase I up to 700,000 dollars, Phase II up to 3,000,000 dollars.

• National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health: Phase I up to 700,000 dollars, Phase II follows the SBA guideline.

• National Institute on Drug Abuse: Phase I up to 400,000 dollars, Phase II up to 3,000,000 dollars.

• National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism: Phase I up to 400,000 dollars, Phase II up to 2,500,000 dollars.

• National Institute of Nursing Research: Phase I up to 400,000 dollars, Phase II up to 2,500,000 dollars.

• National Eye Institute: Phase I up to 400,000 dollars, Phase II follows the SBA guideline.

• National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities: both phases follow the SBA guideline.

Where an Institute follows the SBA guideline, the ceiling is the standard SBA hard cap, which the Small Business Administration adjusts annually, so confirm the current figure before you budget. In all cases, propose a budget that is reasonable for the work. If you need to request more than the SBA guideline, contact the relevant Institute early, since some Institutes can exceed standard amounts for approved topics.

What Is the Timeline and What Are the Deadlines?

PA-27-100 was posted on May 28, 2026, with an earliest submission date of August 5, 2026. The standard application due dates are:

• September 5, 2026, with scientific merit review around November 2026, advisory council review around January 2027, and earliest start around April 2027.

• January 5, 2027, with review around March 2027, council around May 2027, and earliest start around July 2027.

• April 5, 2027, with review around July 2027, council around August 2027, and earliest start around December 2027.

All applications are due by 5:00 PM local time of the applicant organization. When a due date falls on a weekend or federal holiday, the deadline moves to the next business day. No late applications are accepted.

Two expiration dates matter. The Parent SBIR announcement PA-27-100 expires April 6, 2027, and the connectedness Highlighted Topic expires August 11, 2028. If you apply after PA-27-100 expires, use the active Parent SBIR announcement at that time and align your project with the connectedness topic while it remains open.

What Are the SBIR Phases, and Which One Fits My Startup?

• Phase I establishes the technical merit and feasibility of your idea. It is the entry point for most companies.

• Phase II continues research and development to advance toward commercialization, and is submitted as a renewal of your Phase I project.

• Direct to Phase II (NIH only) is available if you have already demonstrated feasibility but never held a Phase I SBIR or STTR for that project.

• Fast-Track (NIH only) lets you submit and review Phase I and Phase II together to reduce the funding gap between them.

After Phase II, NIH expects you to fully commercialize the product using non-SBIR and non-STTR funds, whether federal or private.

How Is the Research Effort Split Between My Company and Partners?

In Phase I, the small business normally performs at least two-thirds (67 percent) of the research or analytical effort, and outside consultants and contracts generally account for no more than 33 percent of the total. In Phase II, the small business normally performs at least half (50 percent), with outside arrangements generally capped at 50 percent. Deviations can be considered case by case with written approval. If a formal university or nonprofit collaboration is central to your project, the STTR route under PA-27-102 may fit better.

Do Clinical Trials Fit This Topic?

PA-27-100 is Clinical Trial Optional, meaning it accepts applications that do or do not propose clinical trials. Many connectedness interventions will involve a clinical trial. The Institutes participating in this topic accept clinical trials, so a well-designed trial is on the table. If you propose one, you must include a two-page Regulatory Plan attachment, and you may not submit that attachment if your project does not include a clinical trial.

What Do Reviewers Evaluate?

Peer reviewers score five criteria and combine them into an overall impact score:

• Significance: does the product or service address an important problem or unmet need, and does it have commercial potential.

• Investigators: are the team and any partners suited to complete and eventually commercialize the work.

• Innovation: does the solution shift current practice and hold a real competitive advantage.

• Approach: are the aims, methods, milestones, and study design sound and appropriate for the stage.

• Environment: does the business and scientific environment support success and commercialization.

For Phase II and Fast-Track applications, reviewers also weigh a Commercialization Plan covering the market opportunity, barriers such as regulatory approval and reimbursement, a funding path, the management team, and how the project differs from or complements existing private-sector activity.

What Restrictions Should I Know About?

• Foreign entities are not eligible, and foreign subawards or subcontracts make an application non-compliant under this announcement.

• Applicants under consideration for award must complete foreign relationship disclosures during the Just-in-Time process, and awards can be denied for defined national security risks with no opportunity to cure before award.

• Applications may not simultaneously duplicate the same research focus across multiple HHS opportunities.

• SBIR recipients may retain rights to data generated under the award for up to 20 years.

How BW&CO Helps

BW&CO helps deep-tech and health-focused founders decide whether the SBIR or STTR route fits, identify the right Institute and program contact, sharpen the conceptual model and study design that reviewers reward, and build a Commercialization Plan that holds up under scrutiny. If you are weighing a connectedness intervention against the September or January cycle, the earlier we start, the more room you have to register, refine, and position the application.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the connectedness Highlighted Topic a grant I can apply to directly? No. It is a statement of NIH scientific interest, not a Notice of Funding Opportunity. You apply through the Parent SBIR announcement PA-27-100 and align your project with the topic.

What is the funding announcement number I should use? PA-27-100 for SBIR, or PA-27-102 for STTR if your project depends on a formal nonprofit or university collaboration.

When are applications due? Standard due dates are September 5, 2026, January 5, 2027, and April 5, 2027, all by 5:00 PM local time of the applicant organization.

How much money can a startup receive? Phase I generally ranges from 400,000 dollars to 700,000 dollars and Phase II from about 2,500,000 dollars to 3,000,000 dollars, depending on the funding Institute. Some Institutes follow the standard SBA hard cap, which adjusts annually.

Who is eligible? United States small business concerns with 500 or fewer employees that meet the ownership rules, with a PI primarily employed by the small business for SBIR awards.

Which Institutes fund this topic? NCCIH, NCI, NEI, NIA, NIAAA, NIDA, NIMH, NIMHD, and NINR award grants for this topic. ODP and OBSSR signal interest but do not award grants.

Can I propose a clinical trial? Yes. PA-27-100 is Clinical Trial Optional, and the participating Institutes accept clinical trials. Clinical trial applications must include a Regulatory Plan attachment.

How long do registrations take? Six weeks or more. Complete SAM, UEI, SBA Company Registry, eRA Commons, and Grants.gov well ahead of your target due date.

What is the difference between SBIR and STTR here? SBIR (PA-27-100) requires the small business to perform most of the work. STTR (PA-27-102) is built around a formal collaboration with a nonprofit research institution and allows the PI to be employed by either the company or the partner.

How long is the topic open? The Highlighted Topic is active from August 11, 2026 through August 11, 2028. Apply through whichever Parent SBIR announcement is active at your time of submission.

NIH SBIR Funding for Time-Sensitive Environmental Health and Disaster Research: What Startups Need to Know

Below is a brief summary. Please check the full solicitation before applying (link in resources section).

Quick Answer

NIH has flagged time-sensitive environmental health research as a current priority through a Highlighted Topic titled "Time-Sensitive Research Opportunities in Environmental Health Sciences" (posted August 10, 2026, active through August 10, 2028). This topic is not itself a funding opportunity, so small businesses cannot apply to it directly. Instead, a U.S. small business applies through the NIH Parent SBIR announcement, PA-27-100, and writes its research aims to match what the topic describes: capturing exposure and health data during the narrow window that follows a disaster or an emerging environmental threat. The next Parent SBIR deadline is September 5, 2026, which falls on a Saturday ahead of Labor Day and therefore moves to Tuesday, September 8, 2026. Phase I awards run up to roughly $323,090 and Phase II awards up to roughly $2,153,927 under current SBA guidelines, with several participating institutes offering higher caps.

What is the "Time-Sensitive Research Opportunities in Environmental Health Sciences" topic?

It is an NIH Highlighted Topic, which is a signal from a group of NIH Institutes, Centers, and Offices that they want to receive applications in a specific area of science. It is not a Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO), and it does not have its own application package, budget, or deadline. NIH is explicit on this point: applicants pursue the topic by applying through an appropriate NIH Parent Funding Announcement or another broad opportunity on Grants.gov.

The topic exists because disasters and emerging environmental threats create a short, often unpredictable window in which exposure and health data can be collected. Once that window closes, the scientific value is lost. NIH wants research that moves fast enough to capture that information and that lays the groundwork for later, longer-term analysis of how those exposures affect health. A strong application makes two things obvious: that the triggering event was genuinely unforeseen, and that the proposed study is both scientifically valuable and feasible inside that limited window.

For a small business, the practical takeaway is simple. If your technology or study can capture exposure, biospecimen, or health data quickly after a natural or human-made disaster, or in response to an emerging environmental public health threat inside the United States, this topic tells you that three parts of NIH are actively looking for that work right now. You reach them through the Parent SBIR.

How does a startup actually apply for this?

You apply through the NIH, CDC, and FDA Parent SBIR announcement, PA-27-100 ("Parent SBIR [R43/R44] Clinical Trial Optional"). This is the vehicle that turns the Highlighted Topic into a fundable application for a for-profit small business.

The workflow looks like this. You confirm your company is an eligible U.S. small business concern, you register in the required federal systems, you build your Phase I feasibility study (or a Direct to Phase II or Fast-Track application) around the time-sensitive environmental health science described in the topic, and you submit through ASSIST, Grants.gov Workspace, or an institutional system-to-system solution. In your application you signal fit with the topic and, where useful, name the most appropriate Institute on the assignment request form. NIH's Center for Scientific Review then assigns your application to the best-fit participating component.

If your project depends on a formal partnership with a university or other nonprofit research institution, the companion STTR announcement, PA-27-102, is the better route. Both SBIR and STTR make the award to the small business. Note also that the Highlighted Topic stays open until August 10, 2028, while PA-27-100 itself expires April 6, 2027, so applicants submitting after that date should apply through whatever reissued Parent SBIR announcement is current at that time.

What kind of research is NIH looking for?

Three parts of NIH are participating in this topic, and each brings a distinct angle. Reading their interests closely is the difference between a fundable application and a near miss.

The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) is the anchor. NIEHS wants studies that clarify the relationship between environmental exposure and health outcomes. That includes the immediate and short-term health effects that follow a disaster, methods for measuring and characterizing human exposure to environmental hazards, work that helps understand how contaminants move and predict where exposure will occur, and approaches to preventing or reducing exposure during a disaster event, including remediation technologies relevant to Superfund-type contamination. NIEHS specifically encourages exploratory and developmental work with clear time-sensitivity, and it will treat studies that use animals as stand-ins for human exposure as lower priority. Its Superfund Research Program is interested where the work applies to hazardous waste sites. Its Workers Training Program is not part of this topic. Scientific contact: Toccara Chamberlain, M.A., toccara.chamberlain@nih.gov.

The National Institute on Aging (NIA) is interested in the same time-sensitive framing but focused on older adults, whose bodies are less able to absorb the stress of a disaster and who often depend on medication, caregivers, and health services that a disaster can disrupt. NIA wants early exposure and health data captured in older populations, including people in assisted living, nursing homes, rural areas, and other at-risk settings, to understand effects on functional status, cognition, cardiometabolic health, mobility, resilience, and progression toward Alzheimer's disease and related dementias. Applications should point toward modifiable risk and protective factors that can inform prevention, preparedness, and recovery. Scientific contacts: Richard Kwok, PhD, richard.kwok@nih.gov, and Emerald Nguyen, PhD, emerald.nguyen@nih.gov.

The Office of Research on Women's Health (ORWH) focuses on how these unexpected events uniquely affect the health of women and girls. ORWH prioritizes rapid data and biospecimen collection that captures women's distinct health risks, including chronic disease management, reproductive and maternal health, and mental health, with attention to differences across life stages and to gaps in disaster preparedness for women with limited resources. One important detail: ORWH does not award grants directly, so any application it co-funds must still be relevant to the mission of at least one of the awarding Institutes or Centers in the topic. Scientific contact: Regine A. Douthard, M.D., M.P.H, orwhinfo@mail.nih.gov.

Across all three, the common thread is speed with scientific purpose. Reviewers and program staff want to see that the event was genuinely unforeseen, that the collection window is real, that the study is feasible inside it, and that the short-term data will feed longer-term understanding of exposure and health.

Who is eligible to apply?

Only a United States small business concern (SBC) can apply. To qualify, your company must be organized for profit with a place of business in the United States, and it must operate primarily in the U.S. or make a significant contribution to the U.S. economy. It must have no more than 500 employees, including affiliates. Ownership must meet one of two tests: either more than 50 percent owned and controlled by U.S. citizens or permanent residents (directly, or through other qualifying U.S.-owned businesses), or more than 50 percent owned by multiple venture capital operating companies, hedge funds, or private equity firms, with no single such firm owning more than 50 percent.

For an SBIR award, the Program Director or Principal Investigator must have their primary employment with the small business at the time of award and throughout the project. Foreign organizations and foreign components of U.S. organizations cannot apply, and NIH will not make awards under this announcement that involve foreign subawards or subcontracts. Companies also need to be aware of the foreign-risk and security screening that applies before award, including required disclosure of foreign affiliations for owners and covered individuals.

How much funding is available?

The dollar amount depends on which Institute your application is assigned to. The current SBA total-cost guidelines, which set the ceiling agencies can award without a waiver, are Phase I up to $323,090 and Phase II up to $2,153,927 as of April 2026. NIEHS, the lead Institute for this topic, uses those SBA guideline amounts for both phases, so an environmental exposure study routed to NIEHS would generally target up to about $323,090 for Phase I and up to about $2,153,927 for Phase II.

If your project skews toward aging and is assigned to NIA, the caps are higher: up to $700,000 for Phase I and up to $3,000,000 for Phase II. For applications ORWH co-funds, the Phase II reference is $2,500,000, though ORWH itself does not make the award. These are guideline amounts, and NIH may exceed them for approved waiver topics. If you plan to request more than the SBA guideline, NIH strongly encourages you to contact the relevant Institute early. No cost sharing is required, and SBIR does not take equity.

There is one work-share rule that startups sometimes overlook and that shapes the budget. In Phase I, the small business normally performs at least two-thirds (about 67 percent) of the research or analytical effort, so consultants and subcontractors together are generally capped near 33 percent. In Phase II, the small business normally performs at least half (50 percent), so outside effort is generally capped near 50 percent. Deviations are possible but must be approved in writing.

What is the timeline and what are the deadlines?

The Parent SBIR (PA-27-100) was posted May 28, 2026, opened for submission on August 5, 2026, and carries three standard due dates before it expires on April 6, 2027:

• September 5, 2026, for the first cycle. Because September 5 is a Saturday and Labor Day falls on Monday, September 7, NIH's weekend and holiday policy moves the effective deadline to Tuesday, September 8, 2026. Confirm the displayed date in ASSIST or Grants.gov before you submit.

• January 5, 2027, for the second cycle.

• April 5, 2027, for the third cycle.

All applications are due by 5:00 PM local time of the applicant organization, and NIH does not accept late applications. After submission, an application moves through scientific merit review, then Advisory Council review, then the earliest possible start date. For the September 2026 cycle, that path runs through review in November 2026, Council in January 2027, and an earliest start around April 2027. The later cycles follow the same rhythm a few months out.

Because registration in SAM.gov, eRA Commons, Grants.gov, and the SBA Company Registry can take six weeks or longer, the practical deadline for a first-time applicant is well before the submission date. Start the registrations now if you have not.

What are the funding phases?

Phase I establishes technical merit and feasibility and normally runs up to six months. Phase II continues the research and development toward commercialization and normally runs up to two years. NIH also offers two accelerated paths that other agencies do not. Direct to Phase II lets a company that has already demonstrated feasibility, without ever holding a Phase I SBIR or STTR for that project, apply straight into Phase II. Fast-Track lets you submit and review Phase I and Phase II together to reduce the funding gap between them. After Phase II, NIH expects the company to commercialize using non-SBIR funds, whether private capital, sales, licensing, or other federal sources.

Is this a good fit for my company?

This topic is a strong fit if your company works on environmental exposure measurement, sensing, remediation, biomonitoring, rapid data or biospecimen collection, or health surveillance tied to disasters and emerging environmental threats, and if you can credibly move fast enough to capture data inside the event window. It fits especially well for teams building tools or study capabilities relevant to older adults or to the distinct health needs of women and girls, given NIA's and ORWH's participation. It is a weaker fit if your work has no time-sensitive collection element, relies mainly on animal surrogates for human exposure, or cannot meet the small business and PI employment rules. If you are unsure which Institute fits or whether SBIR or STTR is the right route, that is exactly the kind of question worth resolving before you write a single specific aim.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I apply directly to the environmental health Highlighted Topic?
No. It is not a funding opportunity and has no application package. You apply through the NIH Parent SBIR announcement, PA-27-100, and align your research aims with the topic so it routes to NIEHS, NIA, or ORWH.

What is the next deadline?
The next Parent SBIR standard due date is September 5, 2026. That date is a Saturday just before Labor Day, so under NIH policy the effective deadline moves to Tuesday, September 8, 2026. The following cycles are January 5, 2027, and April 5, 2027.

How much money can a startup receive?
Under current SBA guidelines, Phase I runs up to about $323,090 and Phase II up to about $2,153,927. NIEHS uses those guideline amounts. NIA offers higher caps of up to $700,000 for Phase I and up to $3,000,000 for Phase II. The exact ceiling depends on the Institute your application is assigned to.

Who is eligible?
A U.S. small business concern with no more than 500 employees, organized for profit, and meeting NIH's ownership tests. For SBIR, the Principal Investigator's primary employment must be with the small business.

Do I need a university partner?
Not for SBIR. If your project depends on a formal collaboration with a university or nonprofit research institution, use the companion STTR announcement, PA-27-102, instead. In both programs the award goes to the small business.

What kind of research does NIH want here?
Time-sensitive studies that capture exposure and health data during the short window after a natural or human-made disaster or an emerging environmental threat in the United States, including short-term health effects, exposure measurement, contaminant movement, remediation, effects on older adults, and effects on women and girls.

Is the SBIR program still funded?
Yes. The SBIR and STTR programs were reauthorized in April 2026 and are currently authorized through September 30, 2031.

How long does it take to get funded?
Plan on several months from submission to award. For the September 2026 cycle, scientific review is expected in November 2026, Council review in January 2027, and the earliest start date around April 2027.

What if I miss the September deadline?
The Parent SBIR has additional standard due dates on January 5, 2027, and April 5, 2027. The Highlighted Topic itself stays active through August 10, 2028, so the priority persists across cycles, though the specific Parent SBIR announcement is reissued periodically.

ERDC Broad Agency Announcement (W912HZ26S0001): The Complete Guide for Startups and Small Businesses

Below is a brief summary. Please check the full solicitation before applying (link in resources section).

Quick Answer

The U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) Broad Agency Announcement, solicitation number W912HZ26S0001, is a continuously open funding pathway that lets startups, small businesses, universities, and nonprofits propose basic and applied research across seven ERDC laboratories. It covers a wide range of technical areas including AI and machine learning, cybersecurity, high performance computing, advanced manufacturing, sensing and instrumentation, autonomous systems, materials and structures, infrastructure, environmental technologies, and geospatial technologies. There is no fixed submission deadline and no set per-award dollar ceiling. You start with a short five-page pre-proposal, and ERDC responds within 60 days on whether to invite a full proposal. Awards can take the form of a procurement contract, a grant, or a cooperative agreement.

What is the ERDC Broad Agency Announcement?

The ERDC Broad Agency Announcement is a standing solicitation issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Engineer Research and Development Center under the authority of FAR 35.016. A Broad Agency Announcement, or BAA, is a mechanism the government uses to solicit proposals for basic and applied research, and for that part of development not tied to a specific system or hardware procurement. In plain terms, ERDC is inviting outside organizations to bring forward research ideas that advance the state of the art or increase scientific and technical knowledge in the areas ERDC cares about.

To be eligible for award, your proposed work needs to fall into one of these categories: basic research, applied research, advanced technology development not tied to a specific system or hardware, or demonstration and validation. Work aimed at building a specific product or piece of hardware for direct government use generally does not fit the BAA and would belong on a different acquisition pathway.

This is a science and research vehicle, not a services or product procurement, and understanding that distinction is the single most important thing to get right before you invest time in a submission.

Who is the ERDC BAA for?

ERDC explicitly encourages small business participation. The solicitation specifically invites small business concerns, women-owned small businesses, small disadvantaged businesses, HUBZone small businesses, firms in the SBA 8(a) program, and service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses to submit research proposals. It also encourages proposals from Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Minority Institutions.

In practice the applicant pool skews roughly half universities and half small businesses. Some research areas lean toward earlier-stage work that naturally draws academic teams, but there is substantial room for commercial small businesses, especially those with genuine research and development depth and a technology that maps cleanly to an ERDC mission area.

Federal facilities and organizations cannot compete. Federally Funded Research and Development Centers and other government entities face direct competition limitations and must clear a high bar to be eligible, with the burden of proving eligibility resting entirely on them.

If your company is doing real R&D in a field ERDC works in, you are very likely in the intended audience.

What research areas does the ERDC BAA cover?

ERDC organizes its research interests across seven laboratories, each with its own set of numbered topic areas. When you submit, you reference the specific topic number, for example CHL-1, CRREL-10, or CERL-15.

Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory (CHL) covers coastal and inland hydraulics, hydrodynamics, sediment transport, dredging, navigation channels, groundwater, hydrology, coastal structures, nature-based coastal resilience, and marine transportation technologies.

Geotechnical and Structures Laboratory (GSL) covers soil and rock mechanics, pavements, vehicle mobility, earthquake engineering, geophysics, protective and survivable structures, concrete and construction materials, projectile penetration, bridge and railroad technology, computational structural mechanics, and advanced maneuver technologies.

Environmental Laboratory (EL) covers environmental sensing, hazardous waste characterization and treatment, water quality and contaminant modeling, emerging contaminants, dredged material management, wetlands and ecological restoration, invasive and endangered species management, systems biology and bioinformatics, ecological modeling, and decision analysis.

Information Technology Laboratory (ITL) covers computational science and engineering, software engineering and informatics, high performance computing, cybersecurity, high performance data analytics, additive manufacturing enabled by HPC, artificial intelligence and machine learning for materials discovery, and edge computing.

Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (CERL) covers additive construction, critical infrastructure protection, innovative construction materials, energy efficiency and energy security, water resilience, autonomous robotic solutions for engineer operations, geopolymers, fiber reinforced polymers, structural health monitoring, and installation infrastructure management.

Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL) covers signature physics, terrestrial and cryospheric science, biogeochemical processes, environmental fate and transport, force projection and sustainment, cold regions infrastructure, geospatial water resources applications, and hydrology and hydraulics.

Geospatial Research Laboratory (GRL) covers photon-counting LIDAR, photogrammetry, intelligent spatiotemporal analytics, assured position, navigation and timing in GPS-denied environments, advanced terrain analytics, and cyber geospatial science.

Across all seven labs there are well over one hundred specific topic areas, so the practical first step is identifying which single topic your technology best fits.

How much funding can you get through the ERDC BAA?

The ERDC BAA does not publish a fixed per-award dollar ceiling. This is a meaningful difference from SBIR and STTR, which cap awards at set phase amounts. Under the BAA, the size of an award is scoped to the proposed effort and is constrained by the funding ERDC has available for that research area at the time.

There are two dollar thresholds worth knowing. First, for proposed awards exceeding $900,000, large businesses and nonprofits (including educational institutions) must submit a formal small business subcontracting plan. Small businesses are exempt from that requirement. Second, when the proposed value exceeds $100,000, an SF-LLL disclosure of lobbying activities is required.

The type of award affects fee. Procurement contracts can include a proposed fee or profit. Grants and cooperative agreements do not allow any fee or profit. Cost realism and the availability of funds are part of how proposals are evaluated, so your budget needs to be detailed, defensible, and proportionate to the work.

What is the ERDC BAA timeline and deadline?

There is no single deadline. This BAA is open on a rolling basis and remains in effect until it is superseded by a newer edition. The current edition is dated April 2026 and supersedes all previous editions. You can submit a pre-proposal at any time.

After you submit a pre-proposal, ERDC will respond within 60 days of receipt. The response either encourages you to submit a full proposal or advises you that the pre-proposal did not receive a favorable review. Pre-proposals that lack sufficient scientific merit, that are not relevant to Army needs, or that fall in areas where funds are not expected to be available may be declined.

If you are proposing support for a conference or symposium rather than research, that proposal should be submitted at least six months before the event.

The rolling nature is an advantage. You are not racing a fixed clock, and you can time your submission around your own readiness and around informal conversations with ERDC about fit.

How do you apply to the ERDC BAA?

The process has two stages: a pre-proposal first, then a full proposal by invitation only.

Before you submit anything, your organization must be registered and active in the System for Award Management at sam.gov. This is a prerequisite, and it can take time, so start it early if you are not already registered.

Stage one is the pre-proposal, which ERDC treats as a white paper. Every initial submission under this BAA is considered a pre-proposal. You submit it electronically through the ERDCWERX portal at erdcwerx.org. ERDC reviews it and, if the concept is promising, invites a full proposal.

Stage two is the full proposal, which you only prepare after receiving an invitation directly from the ERDC Contracting Office. Full proposals are submitted by email to the specific laboratory your topic falls under, using the contact and address provided in your invitation. Proposals should never be sent directly to technical or lab personnel.

What goes in an ERDC BAA pre-proposal?

The pre-proposal has a firm five-page limit, and it may only be submitted under one specific topic area. It must reference the topic number for that research area. The pre-proposal should include a descriptive title, the submitting organization's name and address including email, the principal investigator's name and phone number, the project duration, a statement of objectives or the working hypothesis, one or more paragraphs on the technical approach, one or more paragraphs on the potential military or civil payoffs to the Corps of Engineers, and a one-page curriculum vitae for the principal investigator.

Separately, you include a one-page executive summary that describes the background, scope of work, deliverables, and total proposed price. No cost breakdown is required in this summary, and the summary must not contain any sensitive or proprietary data. Importantly, this one-page executive summary does not count against the five-page limit.

If you intend to seek a grant or cooperative agreement rather than a contract, you also describe how the research supports or stimulates a public purpose.

What goes in an ERDC BAA full proposal?

A full proposal has a technical portion and a cost portion.

The technical portion covers the background and objectives, the technical approach, the proposed level of effort, and the anticipated results and deliverables. It includes a recommended Quality Assurance Surveillance Plan, biographical information and recent publications for key personnel, the names of any other agencies you have submitted the same proposal to, a description of your organization, and past performance information for at least three customers you have performed similar work for in the last three years. You also include a revised one-page executive summary. If you are pursuing a grant or cooperative agreement, you add a data management plan.

The cost portion is a detailed cost estimate broken out by element of cost and by task. It covers direct labor by discipline, fringe benefits, itemized equipment, expendable supplies, travel, subcontracts, other direct costs, and indirect cost rates and bases. Proposals should also address expected use of DoD High Performance Computing Center systems where relevant.

How are ERDC BAA proposals evaluated?

Pre-proposals get an initial technical review against three factors: the overall scientific and technical merit, the potential contribution to the ERDC mission, and available funding.

Full proposals go through scientific peer review against a broader set of criteria. Scientific and technical merit is the most important factor. The remaining factors are of equal importance to one another and, when combined, are significantly more important than cost. Those factors are the contribution to the ERDC and DoD mission, the offeror's capabilities and facilities, the qualifications of the principal investigator and key personnel, the reasonableness and realism of proposed costs along with the availability of funds, past performance, and a subcontracting plan where one is required.

A useful takeaway: this is a merit-driven, science-first evaluation, not a lowest-price competition. A strong technical concept from a credible team carries the most weight.

What types of awards can result from the ERDC BAA?

The BAA lets you propose one of three instruments, though the final instrument can change through negotiation based on the nature of the work.

A procurement contract is used when the principal purpose is to acquire research services for the direct benefit of the government. Contracts can be cost-reimbursable, which suits research where direction may shift as results come in, or fixed-price, which suits well-defined efforts with predictable costs. Contracts can include a fee.

A grant is used when the principal purpose is to transfer value to support or stimulate a public purpose, with no substantial government involvement expected and no fee or profit allowed.

A cooperative agreement is similar to a grant but anticipates substantial involvement between the government and the recipient, and it also allows no fee or profit.

How is the ERDC BAA different from SBIR and STTR?

If you have looked at SBIR or STTR, the ERDC BAA will feel both familiar and different. Both are non-dilutive federal funding, but the BAA is continuously open rather than tied to solicitation cycles, it has no phase-based dollar caps, and it is evaluated as basic and applied research rather than as a commercialization-staged program. It rewards genuine research depth and a clear tie to an ERDC mission area. For many deep-tech companies, the two pathways are complementary, and the right move is to map your technology against both.

How BW&CO helps you pursue the ERDC BAA

BW&CO works with deep-tech, defense, and dual-use founders to identify the right non-dilutive funding pathways and to build competitive submissions. For the ERDC BAA that means pinpointing the single best-fit topic area across the seven laboratories, pressure-testing whether your work reads as fundable research rather than product development, shaping the pre-proposal and executive summary, and preparing you for the full proposal stage if you are invited. If the ERDC BAA looks like a potential fit for your technology, contact BW&CO to talk through it.

FAQ SECTION WITH SCHEMA

Is the ERDC BAA open to small businesses and startups?
Yes. ERDC explicitly encourages small businesses, women-owned small businesses, small disadvantaged businesses, HUBZone firms, 8(a) participants, and service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses to submit research proposals. The applicant pool is roughly half small businesses and half universities.

Is there a deadline for the ERDC BAA?
No. The BAA is continuously open and remains in effect until superseded. The current edition is dated April 2026. You can submit a pre-proposal at any time, and ERDC responds within 60 days.

How much money can you receive through the ERDC BAA?
There is no published per-award dollar ceiling. Award size is scoped to the proposed research effort and depends on available funding. Awards above $900,000 require a subcontracting plan from large businesses and nonprofits, while small businesses are exempt.

What is the ERDC BAA solicitation number?
The solicitation number is W912HZ26S0001.

How do you apply to the ERDC BAA?
You must be registered and active in SAM at sam.gov, then submit a five-page pre-proposal electronically through erdcwerx.org under one specific topic area. If ERDC invites you, you submit a full proposal to the relevant laboratory by email.

How long can an ERDC BAA pre-proposal be?
The pre-proposal is limited to five pages under a single topic area, plus a separate one-page executive summary that does not count against the five-page limit.

What types of awards can the ERDC BAA result in?
A procurement contract, a grant, or a cooperative agreement. Grants and cooperative agreements do not allow fee or profit, while procurement contracts can include a fee.

How are ERDC BAA proposals scored?
Scientific and technical merit is the most important factor, followed by mission contribution, offeror capabilities, personnel qualifications, cost realism and fund availability, and past performance. All non-cost factors combined outweigh cost.

ERDC BOTAA 25-01: The Army's Continuously Open Prototype Funding Path for Deep-Tech Startups

Below is a brief summary. Please check the full solicitation before applying (link in resources section).

Quick Answer

ERDC BOTAA 25-01 is a Broad Other Transaction Authority Announcement issued in October 2024 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC). It uses Other Transaction (OT) authority under 10 U.S.C. 4022 to fund prototype projects in two broad domains: Military Engineering and Engineered Resilient Systems. It is continuously open, meaning there is no fixed deadline. Companies submit a short white paper (three pages or less) against any focus area through ERDCWERX, and the government typically responds with a selection decision within 60 to 90 days. Selected companies may be invited to pitch, demonstrate, or submit a full proposal through a Request for Prototype Proposal. There is no published dollar ceiling, and successful prototypes can lead directly to a noncompetitive follow-on production award. This mechanism is especially attractive to nontraditional defense contractors and small businesses, because it sits outside the Federal Acquisition Regulation and moves faster than a traditional contract.

What Is ERDC BOTAA 25-01?

ERDC BOTAA 25-01 is the current Broad Other Transaction Authority Announcement from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Engineer Research and Development Center. ERDC is the Army's premier engineering and environmental sciences research organization and is an integral component of the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. The BOTAA is the standing vehicle ERDC uses to solicit prototype concept white papers from industry and academia, review them, and fund the ones that address a real government capability gap.

Unlike a traditional grant or contract solicitation with a hard due date, this announcement is open on a rolling basis. A company can submit whenever it has a concept that fits, and the government evaluates each white paper on its own merit against the criteria in the announcement, not against other submissions. All white papers are submitted electronically through ERDCWERX, the innovation hub that administers the announcement, at the ERDC BOTAA page on erdcwerx.org.

What Is a BOTAA and Why Does It Matter for Startups?

A BOTAA is a Broad Other Transaction Authority Announcement. It relies on Other Transaction authority, a flexible acquisition tool Congress gave the Department of Defense under 10 U.S.C. 4022 specifically to fund prototype projects. The key thing for a startup to understand is that Other Transactions are generally not subject to the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) or its supplements. That means the terms are negotiated between the company and the government rather than dictated by the full weight of federal procurement law, which usually translates into a faster and more collaborative path than a standard contract.

Other Transactions were designed to bring in companies that do not normally work with the Department of Defense. The technology can be a proof of concept, a model or process, a novel application of commercial technology for defense purposes, an agile development effort, or a demonstration of operational utility. If your company is building something with a plausible defense application in engineering, computing, sensing, materials, or infrastructure, a BOTAA is often the lowest-friction way to get in front of a government customer.

What Is ERDC Looking For? The Two Focus Areas in Detail

ERDC BOTAA 25-01 solicits prototype concepts across two business areas. Each contains several focus areas, and a company may submit against any of them.

Military Engineering (ME)

The Military Engineering business area is about giving the warfighter technologies and capabilities that enable force protection and maneuver. It contains ten focus areas:

Protective Structures and Systems. Technologies, materials, and processes that reduce manpower, logistics, or equipment hours while improving the survivability of individuals, small units, fighting positions, semi-fixed assets, outposts, and contingency bases. This includes planning tools and tactics that speed up force protection setup, reuse, and retrograde, as well as capabilities for overwatch, perimeter, port, and border security, surveillance, and warning.

Protection and Survivability. Unit-level and system-level technologies that detect, disable, survive, or defeat enemy weapon systems and characterize the threat they pose. This covers infrastructure hardening and retrofit, camouflage, reducing detectability and vulnerability, recoverability, and protection of personnel, critical assets, and facilities against conventional, unconventional, and advanced threats.

Geophysical Sensors and Data Fusion. Sensors, sensor systems, and unmanned systems that detect, assess, and persistently monitor threats and critical infrastructure across urban, subterranean, and complex terrain. The goal is automated fusion that builds an in-depth Common Operating Picture for surface and subsurface movement, maneuver, and force protection planning.

Vulnerability Assessment, Detection, and Analytics. Technology and processes that support strategic, operational, and tactical analysis of anti-terrorism and force protection posture, and of population and infrastructure disruption from combat, humanitarian, and disaster situations. Prototypes support assessment of mission assurance, population vulnerability, and resilience.

Geoscience, Environmental, Geospatial, and Material Modeling and Simulation. Computational methods and materials-by-design capabilities that predict system performance, environmental impact on sensors, structural response to weapons effects, and level of protection. This includes simulating detection of above-ground, below-ground, and maritime avenues of approach.

Enhance and Assess Mobility of Manned and Unmanned Systems. Technologies that accelerate platform development, integrate autonomous systems, and improve mobility across complex terrain. This covers obstacle and gap crossing, vehicle and soil interaction, mobility hazard detection, and modeling and simulation tools that predict ground vehicle and watercraft performance in varied weather and terrain.

Engineering and Engineering Enabling Technologies. A broad category covering combat engineering, mobility and counter-mobility, explosive effects, breaching, materials, manufacturing and process technologies, modeling and simulation, virtual prototyping, operational energy, autonomous systems, prime power, and engineer-related environmental technologies.

Global Access Engineering. Technologies, materials, and planning tools for technical reconnaissance, construction, maintenance, repair, and upgrade of infrastructure critical to force projection and theater access. This includes remote sensing and field methods for assessing soils, ice and snow, pavements, matting, terrain, bathymetry, river currents, port depths, airfields, roads, rail, and bridges.

Infrastructure Maintenance, Repair, and Reconstruction Technologies. Materials and equipment that rapidly assess, repair, and reconstruct pavements, bridges, railways, ports, and airfields. Prototypes include physics-based tools for measuring layer thickness and strength, rail and pier capacity, and bridge structural capacity, plus new repair equipment and field kits.

Engineering Analysis Tools and Decision Aid Prototype Software. Software that integrates advanced engineering algorithms for evaluating, designing, repairing, and operating critical infrastructure in support of force projection and maneuver planning.

Engineered Resilient Systems (ERS)

The Engineered Resilient Systems business area combines advanced engineering with high-performance computing to amplify the design options examined early in the acquisition process. It contains seven focus areas:

Cybersecurity. Techniques, software, hardware, and tools that protect critical infrastructure and advanced manufacturing control systems, including industrial control systems, SCADA systems, programmable logic controllers, and networks, against adaptive cyber adversaries. ERDC is interested in networked, host-based, and behavior-based approaches that deliver holistic defense and cyber situational awareness.

High Performance Computing Enabled Advanced Manufacturing. Tools and systems that support advanced manufacturing, including 3-D printing, and that bring HPC resources to the point of manufacture. Areas of interest include multi-physics and multi-scale approaches, optimization, trade-space analytics, uncertainty quantification, data-driven and machine learning methods, virtual testing, AI-enabled certification, and the ability to design, fabricate, and test large-scale components more than a meter in length for uses such as armor, aerospace and marine substructures, blast and ballistic protection, and rotorcraft components.

High Performance Data Analytics. Techniques and tools that examine data sets too large or complex for traditional processing to uncover hidden patterns, correlations, and multidimensional trends, using HPC, heterogeneous computing, and next-generation algorithms.

System Engineering Techniques. Advanced system engineering methods that address acquisition and readiness challenges through design trade-space development, analysis of many candidate designs, and condition-based maintenance driven by sensor and maintenance data, often using artificial intelligence and machine learning at massive data volume.

HPC Enabled Development of Surrogate Models and Data Analytics. Computationally efficient and accurate surrogate models for full-order systems, with application areas including blast effects, flight envelope simulation, turbulent rotor dynamics, fluid-structure-thermal interaction, and physics-informed machine learning.

Leveraging HPC Capabilities for On-the-Edge Computing. Tools that deliver high-performance computing at the point of need to improve soldier situational awareness, including electro-optical, thermal, radar, and acoustic sensor data processing, terrain characterization and mapping, sensor fusion, anomaly detection, and local maneuver planning.

Computational Material Testing and Validation. Computational processes for testing and validating components produced through advanced manufacturing, connecting standard manufacturing procedures to engineering mechanics simulation and reducing uncertainty in additively manufactured parts.

Who Is Eligible to Apply?

ERDC awards Other Transactions to nontraditional defense contractors, traditional defense contractors, and nonprofit research institutions. To actually receive an award, at least one of the following conditions must be met:

There is at least one nontraditional defense contractor or nonprofit research institution participating to a significant extent in the prototype project, or

All significant participants in the transaction other than the federal government are small businesses or nontraditional defense contractors, or

At least one-third of the total cost of the prototype project is paid out of funds provided by parties other than the federal government.

A nontraditional defense contractor is an entity that has not performed, for at least the one-year period preceding the announcement, any DoD contract or subcontract subject to full coverage under the Cost Accounting Standards. Most commercial technology companies and venture-backed startups qualify as nontraditional, which is exactly why this vehicle fits them so well. A nontraditional partner can sit at the prime level, as a team member, as a subcontractor, or as a lower-tier vendor, as long as it is a key participant supplying a meaningful technology, doing a significant share of the work, or materially improving cost, schedule, or performance.

Prospective awardees must be registered in the System for Award Management (SAM) before award, so companies that are not yet registered should start that process early. Work under any resulting agreement is subject to the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) and the Export Administration Regulations (EAR), and each offeror is responsible for compliance.

How Much Funding Is Available?

This is one of the most important differences between a BOTAA and a program like SBIR. There is no published dollar ceiling for ERDC BOTAA 25-01. Funding is scoped to the prototype concept itself.

At the white paper stage, a company provides a Rough Order of Magnitude (ROM) price, which is an estimate of what the prototype would cost, along with any anticipated cost share. The government evaluates whether that ROM is commensurate with the proposed solution. If the concept advances to a full proposal, pricing is submitted on a firm fixed price basis and structured as a milestone payment schedule, where each milestone has a description, a price, and a target completion date. Payments are tied to completed events rather than reimbursed as incurred costs.

Cost share is directly connected to eligibility. If your project qualifies through significant nontraditional or small business participation, cost share is generally not required. If you instead rely on the third eligibility path, at least one-third of total project cost must come from non-federal sources. Cost share can be cash or in-kind, where in-kind means non-financial resources such as wear and tear on capital equipment, the prorated value of facility space, or the fair market value of materials used on the project.

The government does not reimburse the cost of preparing white papers or proposals, and no costs incurred before the effective date of an agreement are recoverable.

What Is the Timeline and How Does the Process Work?

Because the announcement is continuously open, the timeline is driven by review cycles rather than a due date. The process runs as follows:

First, the company submits a white paper against any focus area through ERDCWERX. The white paper is the technical concept and rough pricing, limited to three pages plus a cover page.

Second, the government reviews the white paper against the evaluation criteria in the announcement. White papers judged advantageous are selected for further consideration.

Third, the company is notified of selection or non-selection, typically within 60 to 90 days of submission.

Fourth, if a white paper is selected and funding is available, the government may request a solution pitch or technical demonstration and may issue a Request for Prototype Proposal (RFPP). If a white paper is selected but funding is not currently available, the government may keep it in an electronic library for consideration and possible funding for up to three years after submission.

Fifth, once an RFPP is issued, the company collaborates with the government to develop the Statement of Work, then submits a full proposal within the time stated in the RFPP.

Sixth, the government evaluates the proposal, negotiates as needed, and makes an award once terms and conditions are agreed upon.

A significant advantage sits at the end of this path. Under 10 U.S.C. 4022(f), a company that successfully completes a prototype Other Transaction can receive a follow-on production award on a noncompetitive basis. In other words, a well-executed prototype can open the door to production work without having to re-compete.

What Does the White Paper Require?

The white paper is short and focused. It runs no more than three pages, not counting the cover page, and includes the following.

A cover page, generated from the submission form, capturing the point of contact, the submitting business and its Commercial and Government Entity (CAGE) code, business status (nontraditional, traditional, or nonprofit research institution), the focus areas addressed, a project title, a prototype description, the DoD purpose, and the ROM price.

Technical requirements, covering the background and benefits of the proposed solution, the technical approach with a clearly defined prototype, and anticipated data rights assertions if applicable.

A Rough Order of Magnitude price, including anticipated cost share if applicable and any supporting documentation.

Formatting requirements are specific. Pages are 8.5 by 11 inches, numbered X of Y. Margins are at least one inch on all sides. The font is 12 point Times New Roman, single spaced. All acronyms are spelled out on first use. The language is English. The file must be a PDF compatible with Adobe Acrobat Reader 11.0 and under 20 MB. Classified information must not be included, and generic capability brochures are not accepted in place of a white paper.

How Are White Papers Evaluated?

White papers are assessed on an integrated basis against four considerations: the degree to which the solution meets a government problem, need, or capability gap within an identified focus area; whether the ROM price is commensurate with the proposed solution; government funding availability; and whether the submission sufficiently demonstrates one of the eligibility conditions, meaning significant nontraditional participation, significant nonprofit research institution participation, an all small business or nontraditional participant pool, or at least one-third non-federal cost share.

If the project advances to a full proposal, evaluation broadens to scientific and technical merit, the qualifications of the program manager and key personnel, the significance of any nontraditional or nonprofit participation, and whether the budget is realistic, reasonable, and fully justified.

Why This Opportunity Deserves Attention

The BOTAA is one of the most accessible defense funding mechanisms available to a company that is not already embedded in the defense industrial base, and it is not widely tracked by commercially focused firms. Recent activity suggests the odds are reasonable for a well-targeted concept. Based on figures reflecting the current fiscal year, an estimated 20 to 25 of roughly 200 submissions advanced to the proposal stage or received funding, which points to an advancement rate above 10 percent. That is broadly comparable to what strong applicants see in competitive SBIR programs, and it is achieved with a much shorter initial submission.

The breadth of the focus areas is the other reason to pay attention. Companies working in cybersecurity, high-performance computing and data analytics, advanced and additive manufacturing, edge computing, modeling and simulation, autonomous systems, sensors, advanced materials, and infrastructure technologies all have a natural home under Military Engineering or Engineered Resilient Systems. If your technology has any of those characteristics and a plausible defense application, the three-page white paper is a low-cost way to test government interest.

How BW&CO Helps

BW&CO Consulting helps deep-tech, biotech, medtech, and defense-adjacent founders win non-dilutive federal funding, including Other Transaction opportunities like ERDC BOTAA 25-01. We help you determine whether your technology fits a Military Engineering or Engineered Resilient Systems focus area, position the concept against a specific government capability gap, structure eligibility and any cost share, and build a white paper that survives evaluation. If you want to know whether this vehicle is a fit for your company, reach out and we will assess it with you.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is ERDC BOTAA 25-01?

ERDC BOTAA 25-01 is a Broad Other Transaction Authority Announcement issued in October 2024 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Engineer Research and Development Center. It uses Other Transaction authority under 10 U.S.C. 4022 to fund prototype projects in Military Engineering and Engineered Resilient Systems, and it is continuously open with no fixed deadline.

Who can apply to the ERDC BOTAA?

Nontraditional defense contractors, traditional defense contractors, and nonprofit research institutions can apply. To receive an award, the project must include significant nontraditional or nonprofit participation, consist of only small business and nontraditional participants, or include at least one-third non-federal cost share.

What is the deadline for the ERDC BOTAA?

There is no deadline. The announcement is continuously open, so white papers can be submitted at any time and are evaluated as they arrive.

How much funding can I receive through the BOTAA?

There is no published dollar ceiling. Funding is scoped to the prototype concept. Companies provide a Rough Order of Magnitude price at the white paper stage, and full proposals are priced on a firm fixed price basis with milestone payments.

Is cost share required?

Cost share is not automatically required. If your project qualifies through significant nontraditional or small business participation, you generally do not need cost share. If you qualify through the third eligibility path, at least one-third of total project cost must come from non-federal sources, and that share can be cash or in-kind.

What are the focus areas of ERDC BOTAA 25-01?

There are two business areas. Military Engineering covers protective structures, protection and survivability, geophysical sensors and data fusion, vulnerability analytics, geoscience and material modeling, mobility of manned and unmanned systems, engineering enabling technologies, global access engineering, infrastructure repair, and decision-aid software. Engineered Resilient Systems covers cybersecurity, HPC-enabled advanced manufacturing, high performance data analytics, system engineering techniques, surrogate model development, edge computing, and computational material testing.

What is a nontraditional defense contractor?

A nontraditional defense contractor is an entity that has not performed a DoD contract or subcontract subject to full Cost Accounting Standards coverage for at least the one-year period preceding the announcement. Most commercial and venture-backed technology companies qualify.

What is an Other Transaction?

An Other Transaction is a flexible award instrument authorized under 10 U.S.C. 4022 for prototype projects. Other Transactions are generally not subject to the Federal Acquisition Regulation, which allows terms to be negotiated and typically enables a faster, more collaborative process than a traditional contract.

How long is the white paper?

The white paper is three pages or fewer, not counting the cover page. It must be a PDF under 20 MB, formatted in 12 point Times New Roman, single spaced, with one-inch margins and numbered pages.

How long does the review take?

Companies are typically notified of selection or non-selection within 60 to 90 days of submitting a white paper.

Can a prototype lead to a production contract?

Yes. Under 10 U.S.C. 4022(f), a company that successfully completes a prototype Other Transaction can receive a follow-on production award on a noncompetitive basis.

How do I submit a white paper?

White papers are submitted electronically through ERDCWERX at the Broad Other Transaction Authority Announcement page on erdcwerx.org. Do not include classified information, and do not submit generic capability brochures in place of a white paper.

How is a BOTAA different from SBIR?

A BOTAA has no fixed deadline, no published funding ceiling, and a much shorter initial submission (a three-page white paper rather than a full proposal). It uses Other Transaction authority outside the Federal Acquisition Regulation and can lead directly to noncompetitive production, whereas SBIR follows fixed phases, set award amounts, and periodic solicitation windows.