DARPA seeks ideas for novel antenna designs, materials and more under BRIDGES initiative

As a means to improve performance or substantially reduce the size, weight, power, and cost of current antennas, DARPA announced last week that it is soliciting novel designs, materials, manufacturing or processing concepts under its Bringing Classified Innovation to Defense and Government Systems (BRIDGES) initiative.

“If your company is working on cutting-edge antenna designs for commercial applications and you’ve never considered or known how to apply your expertise to help solve Defense Department challenges, we want to hear from you,” Greg Kuperman, program manager in DARPA’s Strategic Technology Office, said. “In the defense space, we’re at least 10 years behind state of the art in antennas. There’s a gold mine of untapped technical capability and potentially revolutionary concepts in small and large commercial companies across our country that could provide solutions to national security needs.”

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, deployed BRIDGES to tap innovation from small companies that do not traditionally work with the U.S. government and its classified research and development efforts. BRIDGES will offer companies with demonstrable capabilities the means to acquire facility clearance from the Department of Defense (DoD) and interact directly with its customers at a classified level.

In this particular case, DARPA seeks ideas related to active and passive sensing across radio frequency, acoustic, and electro-optic/infrared spectral bands applied to air, space, sea, and land. As the first BRIDGES topic, this will be a learning experience for all involved, but DARPA ultimately hopes it will connect tech companies with classified areas of interest through a relatively simple proposal process.

A four-page or shorter proposal of concepts will be reviewed by DARPA staff. If it strikes their interest or seems potentially useful for DoD, sponsorships could be dealt to applicants through the BRIDGES consortium to get things moving on facility clearance and classified discussions. The initial evaluation of proposals will begin Wednesday, May 31, 2023, although proposals may still be submitted on a rolling basis until April 12, 2024.

From here, DARPA intends to intermittently solicit responses for several technical topics under BRIDGES.