The Defense Department on Thursday announced its first round of awards in fiscal year 2024 under its program to quickly transition technologies—most of which are being developed by small businesses and non-traditional defense contractors—into production.
The four awards include $14.4 million for the Navy’s Electronic Intelligence Modernization Upgrade (EIMU), $13.6 million for the Air Force’s ARCHER Airborne Threat Detection and Tracking, the Marine Corps’ Accelerated Procurement of Maritime Expeditionary Standoff Response Advanced Capability Modules (AMPAC), and $10.1 million for the Micro Identity Friend or Foe (IFF), also for the Marines.
The Navy in 2019 awarded Florida-based R Cubed Engineering a $7 million Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract for the Micro IFF effort. Video Ray, LLC of Pottstown, Pa., is the contractor for AMPAC, Hart Technologies in Manassas, Va., for EIMU, and Rome, N.Y.-based North Point Defense for ARCHER. Video Ray develops and manufactures remotely operated unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs).
The awards under the Accelerate the Procurement and Fielding of Innovative Technologies (APFIT) pilot project are being made while the DoD operates under a continuing resolution. The Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (R&E) said additional APFIT awards will be made once Congress has approved an appropriations budget for FY ’24.
Congress appropriated $100 million for APFIT in FY ’22 and $150 million in FY ’23.
“APFIT now has a proven track record of accelerating capabilities by many years, and our warfighters will greatly benefit from accelerated fielding of the capabilities we’re announcing today,” Heidi Shyu, under secretary of defense for R&E, said in a statement.
Testifying before the House Armed Services Committee on Thursday, Shyu said APFIT has resulted in accelerating the production of critical capabilities across the services by two to four years including in the areas of mine-detecting sensors for UUVs, anti-jam antennas, vertical take-off-and-landing unmanned aircraft systems, unmanned surface vessels, and a paint removal system “that improves Naval maintenance time by 94 percent.”
She also highlighted that candidate programs under APFIT, and her office’s Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve, have benefitted from early technology funding through the SBIR program, and separate funding efforts by the military services and the Defense Innovation Unit.
“This interconnected process illustrates how small businesses and non-traditional companies receive direct support from the department in every stage of development,” Shyu told the committee, which hosted a hearing on defense innovation.
When it comes to funding APFIT, she said, “The higher the better.” Using earlier funding, 21 companies have been awarded contracts under APFIT and there are more to come once the FY ’24 appropriation is ready, she said.
“As you all know, a small company delivers a product, we like it, it has proven capability and then we want to [budget plan] for it,” she told the panel. “And that’s a two-year process, so the small company will die in the valley of death waiting the two years.”