Two-day event encourages proposals designed to move military technology and capabilities far beyond the state of the art

DARPA's Tactical Technology Office (TTO) invests in innovative platforms, weapons, integrated systems and critical systems components that often incorporate emerging advanced technologies, all designed to preserve and extend decisive advantages for the U.S. military. Constantly evolving technologies, shifting warfighter mission requirements and limited budgets, however, mean TTO must always seek new ways to leverage innovation while fulfilling its duties.

To help address these challenges, TTO is planning by mid-April 2014 to release a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) calling for executive summaries, white papers and proposals for advanced research, development and demonstration of innovative systems. TTO seeks contributors that show significant promise to provide the U.S. military with revolutionary new mission capabilities, significant increases in mission effectiveness or dramatically reduced system costs and inefficiencies.

To support the BAA and familiarize potential participants with TTO's technical objectives, DARPA has scheduled a TTO Office-Wide Proposers' Day on Wednesday, May 7, 2014, and Thursday, May 8, 2014. For details, visit: http://www.sa-meetings.com/2014OfficewideProposersDay. Advance registration was required and has closed.

"This Proposers' Day offers the chance for innovative risk-takers and DARPA to get together and learn from each other where the next huge leaps forward in technology could come from," said TTO Director Brad Tousley. "The access, community building and collaboration this event will provide are essential to help agency programs become even more successful."

The Proposers' Day will educate potential contributors about TTO's strategy and portfolio and the best way of interfacing through the BAA. TTO program managers will also share their insights about their specific interest areas. Attendees can also schedule 1-on-1 meetings with DARPA program managers on either day to discuss shared interests and learn more about working with the agency. After the event, attendees will have access to registrant contact information to facilitate dialogue among interested parties.

TTO seeks contributors who can apply the office's cross-cutting themes (agile systems development, collaborative autonomy and reducing costs) to the following focus areas:

*Ground Systems: Soldier/Squad Technologies, Combat Vehicles and Tactical Operations in Urban Environments

*Maritime and Undersea Systems: Surface and Subsurface Technologies

*Air Systems: Novel Air Vehicles and Hypersonic Platforms

*Space Systems: Spacecraft Technologies, Space Situational Awareness and Systems for Access

TTO is particularly interested in engaging contributors with experience in systems engineering, manned-unmanned teaming and autonomous systems. Such proposals should address rapid experimentation, iteration and demonstration of prototypes in real-world situations.

The DARPA Special Notice document announcing the Proposers' Day and describing the specific capabilities sought is available at http://go.usa.gov/kgk3. For more information, please email darpa-baa-14-25@darpa.mil.