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Office of Naval Research Looks to Small Businesses for Wartime Technologies

For Immediate Release: Mar 08, 2002

The Office of Naval Research (ONR) is inviting small businesses to develop technologies that offer en-hanced capabilities to Naval forces fighting terrorists. The Navy and Marine Corps are looking for technologies that will help them anticipate, prepare for, recognize, survive, and retaliate against a terror attack. Any approach that offers such an enhanced capability will be considered; the technologies busi-nesses offer should be available within five years.


The pre-solicitation will open on 1 May 2002. It will be made under the Small Business Innovation Re-search Program (SBIR), which seeks to take full advantage of the innovations America's small compa-nies have shown themselves capable of offering. SBIR awards are available to U.S. companies em-ploying less than 500 people.


In general, the Department of the Navy is looking for capabilities in any of these four categories:

  1. Detection, Indications, And Warnings: Among other priorities the Naval services are interested in technologies that offer enhanced situational awareness, physical security, or force protection capabilities that enhance the security Naval facilities and forward-deployed forces while reducing the number of personnel that would otherwise be required to achieve an equivalent level of security.

  2. Survivability and Denial: These include technologies that offer enhanced protection of ships, port fa-cilities, and other high-value afloat assets against terrorist or other asymmetric attack. A technology pro-posed along these lines should enhance the security of Naval forces afloat and the port and harbor facili-ties that support them.

  3. Consequence Management and Recovery: Such technologies may include but are not limited to: ad-vanced emergency medical technologies, decontamination technologies for shipboard use, continuity of operations following attack by weapons of mass destruction, etc.

  4. Attribution and Retaliation: Such technologies might offer precision targeting (particularly of moving and other short-dwell-time targets), ways of avoiding friendly fire casualties and injury to noncombat-ants, enhancements to Naval strike capabilities (particularly against weapons-of-mass-destruction pro-duction and storage facilities, and against hard and deeply buried targets), enhanced sea-based fire sup-port for Operational Maneuver from the Sea, etc.

Initial proposals must be submitted in the form of a white paper not to exceed two pages in length be-tween 1May and 7 June 2002. Submissions are accepted electronically at SBIRN1@onr.navy.mil.

About the Office of Naval Research

The Department of the Navy’s Office of Naval Research provides the science and technology necessary to maintain the Navy and Marine Corps’ technological advantage. Through its affiliates, ONR is a leader in science and technology with engagement in 50 states, 55 countries, 634 institutions of higher learning and nonprofit institutions, and more than 960 industry partners. ONR, through its commands, including headquarters, ONR Global and the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., employs more than 3,800 people, comprising uniformed, civilian and contract personnel.