Cornerstone Initiative CS-19-0206 - Optical Beam Steering

U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command - Chemical Biological Center (CCDC CBC), Rock Island, IL, on behalf of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Policy via its Manufacturing Resiliency and Assurance Office, and Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment Program (10 U.S.C. - 2508), in conjunction with Army Contracting Command - Rock Island (ACC-RI), manages the Cornerstone Other Transaction Agreement (OTA), in accordance with 10 U.S.C. - 2371b. Cornerstone was architected to create a broad-based, flexible and enduring public-private consortium focused on strategic strengthening of the U.S. Manufacturing and Defense Industrial Base and provides a strong complement to the mandates in Presidential Executive Order 13806. ACC-RI, on behalf of CCDC CBC and the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Research and Engineering (DASD(R&E)), intends to issue a competitive Cornerstone Initiative Request (CIR) for Innovative Optically Controlled Phased Array Beam Steering Module Prototypes for Microwave Antennas, on or after 8 July 2019, with an estimated closing date of 10 days after issuance. The CIR for Optical Beam Steering will be restricted to Cornerstone consortium members. The CIR will solicit enhanced whitepapers for one or more firm-fixed-price prototype OTAs with incremental payments made upon completion of specific milestones. The government reserves the right to award OTA(s) in the best interest of the government, to include re-competing the requirement if needed. The Base Period of Performance will be two years with options up to an additional four years. Upon successful prototype completion, a follow-on production contract may be awarded. In support of the Department of Defense (DoD), Microelectronics Innovation for National Security and Economic Competitiveness (MINSEC) program, there is a critical need to provide a multi-level response to current known threats that begins to: secure U.S. national microelectronics interests, reverse the erosion of domestic innovation and supply, and establish a strong leadership foundation for the next-generation of microelectronics technology. Improving these areas will provide the DoD with access to advanced microelectronics that are vital to the national security and economic competitiveness for the U.S. Government (USG) in order to enable DoD and broader USG access to commercial state-of-the-art (SOTA) microelectronics technology. Radio frequency (RF) photonics as a technology is already finding applications within DoD systems by enabling capabilities such as advanced aircraft and platform self-protection, electronic intelligence and radar warning systems. Advanced RF photonic capabilities will find additional applications within DoD systems as the technology evolves over the next four to ten years. Specifically, new survivable wideband front ends that dramatically extend our ability to detect signals in cluttered and contested environments, hybrid integrated photonic circuits enable wideband functionality, and advanced optical processors will enable a new class of RF systems. All of these solutions are poised to enable SWAP-C efficient, higher performance, wider bandwidth systems on smaller platforms with higher performance. RF photonics technology will give the US a large tactical advantage in the battle space within the next six to 10 years. This investment focuses on the development of materials and manufacturing processes for photonic technologies used in RF systems. Microwave photonics is an interdisciplinary area that studies the interaction between RF and optical signals, for applications such as, photonic phased array antennas, photonic true-time delay beam forming, radio-over-fiber technology, and microwave photonic signal processing. Reduced size-weight-cost, low and constant attenuation over a wide modulation bandwidth, high information transfer capacity, improved sensitivity and efficiency, low power consumption, immunity to electromagnetic interference are amongst the most important benefits of microwave photonic systems. This effort aims to support projects in several areas: Integrated Optics (including photonic communication) research, True Time Delay (TTD) research, Photonic Antenna Design, RF-over-fiber links, and ARM (Availability, reliability and maintainability) analysis of fiber assets in storage. The objective of this effort is to create prototype transmit and receive modules for a microwave phased array antenna that can optically control the amplitude and phase of multiple RF signals and make them available to the U.S. industrial base. The CIR for Optical Beam Steering will be communicated to the Cornerstone consortium and companies with pending applications via email. Interested organizations are required to have begun the membership process for their proposal to be reviewed. Entities must be members of the Cornerstone consortium, with a signed Cornerstone Consortium Management Agreement, to be awarded this OTA task. Contractors may obtain Cornerstone registration information by visiting the Cornerstone website: http://ibasp-public.ria.army.mil/cornerstone/ Interested parties should stay alert for any changes that may be published to this FBO posting. Please email all questions and responses to the following mailbox: contact@example.gov This Special Notice is for planning purposes only and does not constitute a CIR or an obligation on behalf of the U.S. Government. Issuance of this Special Notice is not a guarantee of a future CIR or an award and is not a commitment of any kind by the Government.