Request for Information (RFI) for DAF Generate Battle COAs Sprint Week

Reference ID: RFI-RIK-24-05 Notice Type: Special Notice Synopsis: Request for Information (RFI) for DAF Generate Battle COAs Sprint Week FEDERAL AGENCY NAME: Department of Air Force, Air Force Material Command, AFRL - Rome Research Site, AFRL/Information Directorate, 26 Electronic Parkway, Rome, NY 13441-4514 1.0 GENERAL INFORMATION 1.1 THIS NOTICE IS A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI) ONLY. This RFI is issued solely for information and planning purposes and does not constitute as a Request for Proposal (RFP) or a promise to issue an RFP in the future. This request for information does not commit the Government to contract for any supply or service whatsoever. Further, the Air Force is not at this time seeking proposals and will not accept unsolicited proposals. Responders are advised that the U.S. Government will not pay for any information or administrative costs incurred in response to this RFI. All costs associated with responding to this RFI will be solely at the interested party's expense. Not responding to this RFI does not preclude participation in any future RFP, if any is issued. If a solicitation is released, it will be synopsized on the SAM.gov website. It is the responsibility of the potential offerors to monitor this site for additional information pertaining to this requirement. Respondents should indicate which portions of their response are proprietary and should mark accordingly. NOTE: This RFI is not associated with any previous or ongoing RFPs or Fair Opportunity Proposal Requests issued by the DAF. 1.2 FEEDBACK. Submission is voluntary. Respondents are advised that AFRL/RI is under no obligation to provide feedback with respect to any information submitted under this RFI. 1.3 REGULATORY GUIDANCE. This publication constitutes a Request for Information (RFI) as defined in Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 15.021(e), - RFIs may be used when the Government does not presently intend to award a contract, but wants to obtain price, delivery, other market information, or capabilities for planning purposes. Responses to these notices are not offers and cannot be accepted by the Government to form a binding contract. REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI) 2.1 BACKGROUND The Deputy Secretary of Defense defines decision advantage as the ability to make better and faster decisions than an opponent. Current Department of the Air Force (DAF) command and control (C2) systems and processes are optimized for low intensity conflict and do not address decision advantage over the pacing threat. Deriving effective C2 capability development toward decision advantage requires a clear understanding of what C2 decisions are. The DAF Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) Cross Functional Team (CFT) defines C2 as the Command, Plan, and Battle Management decision domains. Each of these decision domains are decomposed in the Transformational Models (TM) using model-based systems engineering which bring these C2 decisions to light in a detailed manner. The TMs describe decisions being made within a human-machine team (HMT), including specific choices within these domains and the battlespace information needed to inform said choices. Therefore, a TM provides foundational requirements for C2 decision domains that are universal (agnostic to time epoch, process, geography, organization, doctrine, among others). Additional information on the TMs can be found at: SAM.gov The Transformational Model - Battle Management (TM-BM) is comprised of 13 distinct and orthogonal subfunctions (Figure 1) deduced from the following operational environment (OE) assumptions/axioms: No entities exist in identical states simultaneously. Force distributions in the OE are not uniform. The OE evolves over time. Information is incomplete and inaccurate. Missions are complex and resources are constrained. Based on these assumptions, the TM-BM subfunctions explain the comprehensive set of battlespace information elements and decisions an HMT must make to battle manage the battlespace. Consequently, TM-BM reveals measures of performance and give structure to a design of experiments (DOE) that best characterize a battle management HMT. Figure 1: Transformational Model - Battle Management Subfunctions. The resulting analysis delivers vendor-agnostic, data-informed requirements to military capability developers and acquisition professionals through rigorous defensible analysis. 2.2 SPRINT WEEK The Air Force Research Laboratory, Information Directorate (AFRL/RI) is seeking information to host a TM-BM Generate Battle COA(s) (GBC) software development sprint week from 9-13 September, 2024 at the Howard Hughes Operations (H2O) Center in Las Vegas, NV. Participants will be limited based on resourcing availability and selected participants will be notified by 23 August 2024. During the sprint week, invited participants will have the opportunity to interact with DAF battle managers, operators, and stakeholders to better understand the problem and refine their solutions. The first three days of the week are allotted for quick iteration and refinement of solutions to the described problem set. The final two days of the week are scheduled to run experiments using these refined solutions, during which operators will use the various solutions to complete the described problem sets. The goal is to compare decision performance against a baseline and provide measurable changes in decision performance of the human-machine team. Experiment results and the list of participants will be shared with both participants and internal (government) stakeholders. Invited participants will retain their intellectual property (IP), including any changes made over the course of the week. 2.3 TECHNICAL CHALLENGE This sprint week will focus on Generating BattleCOAs (GBC), one of the subfunctions in the TM-BM. Generating BattleCOAs takes a matched effect-effector set (i.e., the principal effect, deliverable(s), & effector(s)), determines what other effects support the principal effect, & builds a web of events representing the actions necessary for the principal effector(s) to achieve the principal effect, & for all participants to arrive in some post-execution disposition. This web of events may include multiple path options for participating effector(s). This function also characterizes those paths in terms of mission utility, costs, & upside / downside risk. GBC today is almost entirely done through human decision making. Current human-machine teams involve numerous personnel completing the GBC decision function while using software that merely presents information versus automating faster and better informed BattleCOAs. To win against a peer adversary, the joint force must achieve decision advantage by equipping human-machine teams with automation to sort through complex and high-volume battle management decisions with faster tempo and improved decision quality. The hypothesis is that varying the machine element (application(s) for functional processing and human user interfaces) will result in observable mean and variances in the performance of the Generate BattleCOAs function from a baseline. The Generate BattleCOA(s) Sprint Week aims to answer the following core questions: How fast can the HMT decide? How accurate or error free are the HMT's decisions? How confident is the human operator in the HMT's solution? Can we measure the utility, cost and risk with a GBC instance? Applicants will be selected based on their stated ability to meet the basic requirements stipulated in the attached link: RFI Files. Software developers must be able to use given battlespace information to produce a web of all possible courses of action to meet a stated task.. Software will be evaluated based on speed, correctness, completeness, and user experience. Experiment details will be distributed along with this RFI. This will outline the operational environment details with scenario planning materials. Vendor(s) will have a narrow window of time (3-4 days) to refine software that supports the tier 2 decision domain of the Transformational Model of Battle Management, Generate BattleCourse(s) of Action (TM-BM.2.GBC). REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI) ABSTRACTS 3.1 CONTENT AND FORMAT NO CLASSIFIED INFORMATION SHOULD BE INCLUDED IN THE RFI RESPONSE. Section A: A cover page (not to exceed a single page) identifying the company or organization, CAGE Number, street address, and the names, emails, company web page URL, and telephone numbers of the point of contact. In the case of partnerships, please provide the appropriate information for the lead POC. Include the names, emails, and phone numbers of up to four personnel who would be available, if invited by the Government, to attend a Generate BattleCOAs Sprint Event from 09-13 Sep 2024 at the Howard Hughes Operations (H2O) Center in Las Vegas NV. A formal sprint announcement will NOT be posted to SAM.gov, invitations will be sent directly to those organizations that are invited to attend. State whether your company is a Small Business such as 8(a), Small Disadvantaged Business, Women-own Business, HUBZone Small Business, Veteran-owned Business, or Service-Disabled Veteran Owned Business. Only US owned entities are eligible to respond to this RFI. Also provide a short summary statement of the company's or party's experience/capabilities and a short summary of the organization's experience in the areas described above. This section is not included in the page count. Section B: Technical Summary. The Government is assessing the current state-of-the-art and potential near-term solutions. The RFI should describe the potential product solution and address coverage of the requirements stated in this RFI (technical challenge) by the potential solution. The abstract shall be limited to 10 pages. All abstracts shall be double spaced with a font no smaller than 11 pt font. All responses to this announcement must be addressed to POCs, as discussed in Section 6.0 of this announcement. Responses should be submitted in Microsoft Office Word or PDF format. 3.2 ADDITIONAL INFORMATION. The submitted documentation and content thereof becomes the property of the U.S. Government and will not be returned. It does not commit the Government to reply to information received. 3.3 PROPRIETARY INFORMATION. This notice is part of Government market research. Information received as a result of this request will be considered as sensitive and will be protected as such. Any company or industry proprietary information contained in responses should be clearly marked by paragraph, so that publicly releasable and proprietary information are clearly distinguished. Any proprietary information received in response to this request will be properly protected from unauthorized disclosure. The Government will not use proprietary information submitted from any one source to establish the capability and requirements for any future acquisition, so as to inadvertently restrict competition. 4.0 SPECIAL CONSIDERATIONS. Government representatives may or may not choose to meet with vendors responding to this RFI. Such discussions would only be intended to get further clarification of potential capability to meet the requirements. The Government will review abstracts and provide email notification no later than 23 Aug 2024 of those selected for participation in a 9-13 Sep 2024 sprint event at the H2O Center in Las Vegas NV to be held at the unclassified level. If selected and invited by the Government, no more than 4 individuals from each company may participate in the sprint week. Invitees should RSVP no later than 30 Aug 2024 with employee name, email, phone number, and clearance information to POC identified in Section 6. 5.0 SCHEDULE. 9 Aug 2024: Industry abstracts due to Government by 1500 Eastern. 23 Aug 2024: Government invites select vendors to Generate Battles COAs Sprint Week. 30 Aug 2024: Industry RSVPs due. 9-13 Sep 2024: Sprint Week, H2O Center, Las Vegas NV. AGENCY CONTACTS: Primary Technical POC: Maj Denis Prasad HAF ABMS CFT contact@example.gov Alternate POC: Carla Hess AFRL/RIBA contact@example.gov Amendment No. 1 to RFI-RIK-24-05 The purpose of this amendment is to modify: Section 2.3: revises the following statement: - Applicants will be selected based on their stated ability to meet the basic requirements stipulated in the attachments to this notice. Three attachments have been added to this notice. No other changes are made. Amendment No. 2 to RFI-RIK-24-05 The purpose of this amendment is to modify: Section 4.0: adds the following statement: The Government will conduct a virtual - Ask me Anything meeting for Industry on the 6 Aug 2024 from 1400-1500. Individuals can request access to the meeting via the POCs identified in Section 6. One attachment has been added to this notice. No other changes are made.