A -- Recognize IED and Report (RIEDAR)

This notice serves as Amendment No. 02 to BAA06-17. BAA06-17 remains open for one year from the date of initial posting on FedBizOpps (24 Jan 2006). DARPA is publishing a revised Proposer's Information Pamphlet (PIP). Proposers are required to use the revised PIP for all future submissions made against BAA06-17. October 2, 2006 at 4:00pm Eastern Time is hereby established as the deadline for a second round submission of proposals. Proposers are required to submit proposals by this time to be considered in the second round of evaluations; however, proposals received after this deadline may be received and evaluated for up to one year from the date of initial posting on FedBizOpps and Grants.gov. Proposals should be submitted in the manner delineated in the BAA and PIP, as revised by this amendment. Proposers who submitted proposals that were not selected during the first round of evaluation may submit new or amended proposals. Submission of a proposal abstract is not necessary or encouraged for these Proposers. It is suggested that these proposers request an informal debrief from the DARPA Program Manager, if not already completed, prior to submitting a new or amended proposal for the second round of evaluations. At this time, DARPA does not intend to make any awards based upon proposals submitted during the first round of evaluations; however, DARPA reserves the right to do so at a later date if considered in its best interest and in conformance with the original BAA and PIP. Accordingly, the original BAA notice is hereby revised as reflected below: PROGRAM OBJECTIVES AND DESCRIPTION The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is soliciting research proposals in the area of recognizing improvised explosive devices and reporting. Proposed research should investigate innovative approaches that enable revolutionary advances in science, devices or systems. Specifically excluded is research which primarily results in evolutionary improvement to the existing state of practice. DARPA places a high value on technically feasible approaches that can reach the stated end objectives of the RIEDAR program in no more than 40 months. The ultimate vision for the Recognize IED and Report (RIEDAR) program is to demonstrate a compact, robust, practical system for the remote detection of IEDs using their chemical vapor signatures and to demonstrate the ability of this system to operate from a moving vehicle with a high probability of detection of the IED and a low false positive rate. The purpose of the revised BAA is to focus the program on specific component development (e.g. lasers, spectrometers, optical elements, etc) required to successfully achieve the end objectives of the program. This change in emphasis is to ensure that all of the components required for meeting the program goals are developed up front and not later in the program. Offerors are encouraged to use existing experimental data and/or theoretical calculations/modeling/simulation to determine the appropriate component specific metrics. If multiple technologies are proposed, then specific component requirements and component development plans for each of the proposed technologies should be described in detail. The end objectives of the RIEDAR program are listed below: (1) Standoff detection distance of 400 meters. (2) Detection time of 1 second or less. (3) Area search rate capability of 2700 square meters per second (to search a road 100 meters wide and a meter in the travel direction from a vehicle moving at 60 mph). (4) A false positive rate, P (false positive) of less than or equal to 1E-6. (5) Overall size of the system should be less than 1 meter cubed, not including the power source, but including control electronics and any required device packaging. Offerors should provide the following information: - Details of component development that will be necessary to meet these program objectives for each detection technique proposed. - Details of the timelines and metrics for each component for each detection technique proposed. This information needs to be presented in clearly defined phases with interim component development metrics that provide a technically feasible path to meet the overall program objectives. - A detailed description of the necessary component technologies that need to be developed, how they will enable the program to meet the objectives and whether the components are commercially available and/or why the proposed components need to be developed. - A list of all the major commercially available components that will be integrated with the developed components. Please provide detailed integration plan, metrics and timelines. - Go/No-Go component development metrics and milestones at self-defined time intervals to allow periodic program review of component development metrics and performance for Go/No-Go decision points. DARPA seeks innovative proposals to address the following: The offerors can provide a proposal for all of the technical areas or individual technical areas. I. Technical Area One: Direct Optical Standoff Explosive Vapor Detection Technique(s) Development. This area of the program will focus on the development of optical technologies to increase standoff distance without compromising signal-to-noise ratio. The primary means of detection in the RIEDAR program is limited to direct optical approaches such as, but not limited to Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) and Raman-Based Spectroscopies. Technologies that integrate two or more of these sensing and detection techniques into an orthogonal based detection system are also of interest. Techniques that require the pre-dispersal of sensors or materials in the targeted area are not encouraged. Techniques that detect electronics or electronics on standby, detect metal or metallic objects, or are used as a non-chemical based cueing technique are not of interest in this program as a primary means of detection. These techniques may be complementary to the detection of explosives but should not be the primary means of detection. Methods that - jam electronics or provide wide area neutralization are not part of this program. Offerors should provide a detailed component development plan for each technique proposed, detailed descriptions regarding the choice of a particular detection scheme, the technical concepts and details of the detection scheme(s), and the overall system technology (power requirements, cooling, systems engineering, etc) roadmap to meet the program objectives. II. Technical Area Two: Increasing Signal-to-Noise Ratio. This area of the program will focus on the development of novel component development to increase the signal-to-noise ratio of detected chemical signatures by the optical methods proposed. The signal-to-noise ratio is significantly reduced not only by increasing standoff distance but also by limiting the time available for scanning the target area. Hence, novel signal-enhancement component development is required to compensate for the orders of magnitude reduction in signal-to-noise ratio relative to that required for laboratory experiments. Offerors should provide detailed component development plans to enable signal-to-noise ratio enhancement schemes, and proof of concept data if applicable. III. Technical Area Three: Operationally-Relevant Parameters. This area of the program will be centered on the development of operationally-relevant components and technologies that can be incorporated with the chosen optical detection scheme(s) proposed. Offerors should provide technical details of how the proposed component development needs can be operated with eye-safe lasers (the wavelength(s) of operation, the power needed in Watts per square meter), and schemes that allow scanning a 100 meter wide road while moving at 60 mph. Additional information on these technology areas is provided in the Areas of Interest section of the BAA 06-17 revised Proposer Information Pamphlet (PIP) referenced below. PROGRAM SCOPE The Recognize IED and Report (RIEDAR) program will consist of a Phased component development effort to meet the overall program objectives as stated above. Each proposer should provide a timeline and component development metrics for each Phase that map to the component development tasks necessary to meet the overall program objectives. Each offeror is encouraged to develop a compressed but technically feasible timeline based on component development to meet the program objectives. Offerors should provide a budget for each Phase of their program with later Phases being included as options in their proposal. Multiple awards are anticipated. Collaborative efforts/teaming are encouraged. A web site'http://teaming.sysplan.com/BAA-06-17 -has been established to facilitate formation of teaming arrangements between interested parties. Specific content, communications, networking, and team formation are the sole responsibility of the participants. Neither DARPA nor the Department of Defense (DoD) endorses the destination web site or the information and organizations contained therein, nor does DARPA or the DoD exercise any responsibility at the destination. This web site is provided consistent with the stated purpose of this BAA. Cost sharing is not required and is not an evaluation criterion but is encouraged where there is a reasonable probability of a potential commercial application related to the proposed research and development effort. The technical POC for this effort is Dr. Devanand K. Shenoy, fax: (703) 248-1864, electronic mail: Devanand.Shenoy@darpa.mil. GENERAL INFORMATION Offerors must obtain a pamphlet entitled - BAA 06-17, Recognize IED and Report (RIEDAR), revised Proposer Information Pamphlet which provides further information on direct optical standoff explosive vapor detection technique(s) development, increasing signal-to-noise ratio of optical signals at detection site and detector, and development of eye-safe optical sources to be used in conjunction with optical detection techniques, the submission, evaluation, and funding processes, proposal abstract formats, proposal formats, and other general information. This revised pamphlet may be obtained from the FedBizOpps website: http://www.fedbizopps.gov/, Grants.gov website: http://www.grants.gov/, World Wide Web (WWW) at URL http://www.darpa.mil/ or by fax, electronic mail, or mail request to the administrative contact address given below. Proposals not meeting the format described in the pamphlet may not be reviewed. In order to minimize unnecessary effort in proposal preparation and review, offerors were strongly encouraged to submit proposal abstracts in advance of full proposals. An original and six (6) copies of the proposal abstract and two (2) electronic copies (i.e., two (2) separate disks) of the abstract [in PDF (preferred), or MS-Word readable, each on a single 3.5 inch High Density MS-DOS formatted 1.44 Megabyte (MB) diskette, a single 100 MB Iomega Zip (registered) disk, or a CD-ROM] should have been submitted. Each disk must have been clearly labeled with BAA 06-17, offeror organization, proposal title (short title recommended), and Copy __ of 2. First round proposal abstracts (original and designated number of hard and electronic copies) must have been submitted to DARPA/MTO, 3701 North Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22203-1714 (Attn.: BAA 06-17) on or before 4:00 p.m., local time, Friday, February 17, 2006. Proposal abstracts received after this time and date may not have been reviewed. Upon review, DARPA provided written feedback on the likelihood of a full proposal being selected and the time and date for submission of a full proposal, which may have differed from the originally published date. Offerors not submitting proposal abstracts must have submitted an original and six (6) copies of the full proposal and two (2) electronic copies (i.e., two (2) separate disks) of the full proposal [in PDF (preferred), or MS-Word readable, each on a single 3.5 inch High Density MS-DOS formatted 1.44 Megabyte (MB) diskette, a single 100 MB Iomega Zip (registered) disk, or a CD-ROM]. Each disk must have been clearly labeled with BAA 06-17, offeror organization, proposal title (short title recommended), and Copy __ of 2. The full proposal (original and designated number of hard and electronic copies) must have been submitted to DARPA/MTO, 3701 North Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22203-1714 (Attn.: BAA 06-17) on or before 4:00 p.m., local time, Tuesday, April 11, 2006 in order to have been considered during the initial round of selections. University (prime) grant submissions may be made via the Grants.gov web site, http://www.grants.gov/, by using the "Apply" funtion. Proposal abstracts from new offerers and full proposals from those who do not wish to submit a proposal abstract or have already submitted abstracts and full proposals under the initial round of selections (original and designated number of hard and electronic copies) must be submitted to DARPA/MTO, 3701 North Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22203-1714 (Attn.: BAA 06-17) on or before 4:00 p.m., local time, Monday, October 2, 2006 in order to be considered for the second round of selections; however, proposals received after these deadlines may be received and evaluated up to one year from date of posting on FedBizOpps and FedGrants. Full proposals submitted after the due date(s) specified in the BAA or due date otherwise specified by DARPA after review of proposal abstracts may be selected contingent upon the availability of funds. This notice, in conjunction with the BAA 06-17 revised Proposer Information Pamphlet, constitutes the total BAA. No additional information is available, nor will a formal RFP or other solicitation regarding this announcement be issued. Requests for the same will be disregarded. The Government reserves the right to select for award all, some, or none of the proposals received and to make awards without discussion. The Government reserves the right to choose the type of instrument of award. All responsible sources capable of satisfying the Government's needs may submit a proposal which shall be considered by DARPA. Input on technical aspects of the proposals may be solicited by DARPA from non-Government consultants /experts who are bound by appropriate non-disclosure requirements. Non-Government technical consultants/experts will not have access to proposals that are labeled by their offerors as - Government Only. Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Minority Institutions (MIs), and Small and Small Disadvantaged Businesses are encouraged to submit proposals and join others in submitting proposals; however, no portion of this BAA will be set aside for these organizations participation due to the impracticality of reserving discrete or severable areas of research in the Recognize IED and Report program. Offerors should note that the effort will be subject to International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) restrictions as well as other export control laws and it is expected that portions of those efforts that continue into later Phase Options will be classified. Offerors are also expected to explain how ITAR and classified contracts will be handled. The Government anticipates that proposals submitted under a BAA will be unclassified. In the event that a proposer chooses to submit a classified proposal, the following information is applicable. Security Classification guidance on DD Form 254 will not be provided at this time since DARPA is soliciting ideas only. After reviewing the incoming proposals, if a determination is made that the award instrument may result in access to classified information, a DD Form 254 will be issued and attached as part of the award. Offerors choosing to submit a classified proposal must first receive permission from the Original Classification Authority to use their information in applying to this revised BAA. An applicable classification guide should be submitted to ensure that the proposal is protected appropriately. For instructions on submitting classified abstracts or full proposals contact: Robert Copeland, Director, Security & Intelligence Directorate (703) 526-6631. In all correspondence, reference BAA 06-17. All administrative correspondence and questions on this solicitation, including requests for information on how to submit a proposal abstract or full proposal to this revised BAA, should be directed to one of the administrative addresses below; e-mail or fax is preferred. DARPA intends to use electronic mail and fax for correspondence regarding BAA 06-17. Proposals and proposal abstracts may not be submitted by fax or e-mail; any so sent will be disregarded. DARPA encourages use of the WWW for retrieving the revised Proposer Information Pamphlet and any other related information that may subsequently be provided. EVALUATION CRITERIA Evaluation of proposal abstracts and full proposals will be accomplished through a technical review of each proposal using the following criteria, which are listed in descending order of relative importance: (l) overall scientific and technical merit, (2) potential contribution and relevance to DARPA mission, (3) plans and capability to accomplish technology transition, (4) offeror's capabilities and related experience, and (5) cost reasonableness and realism. Awards will be made to offerors whose proposals are determined to be the most advantageous to the Government, all factors considered, including the potential contributions of the proposed work to the overall research program and the availability of funding for the effort. Awards may be made to any offeror whose proposal is determined selectable regardless of its overall rating. The administrative addresses for this BAA are: Fax: (703) 696-2206 (Addressed to: DARPA/MTO, BAA 06-17), Electronic Mail: BAA06-17@darpa.mil Mail: DARPA/MTO, ATTN: BAA 06-17 3701 North Fairfax Drive Arlington, VA 22203-1714 This announcement and the revised Proposer Information Pamphlet may be retrieved via the WWW at URL http://www.darpa.mil/ in the solicitations area.