The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has chosen seven companies for the small business track of the Artificial Intelligence Cyber Challenge. The competing small businesses were evaluated by the Air Force Research Laboratory, the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering and the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, DARPA said Monday.

DARPA will be represented by Kathleen Fisher, director of the Information Innovation Office, at the Potomac Officers Club's 5th Annual Artificial Intelligence Summit on March 21. Register now!

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency awarded contracts to Leidos and Raytheon BBN, an RTX company, for services related to the Quantum Augmented Network program. The cost-plus-fixed-fee contracts, valued at $8.5 million for Leidos and $7.5 million for BBN, is for the development of a hybrid quantum-based communication network specifically for critical infrastructure security, the Department of Defense said Friday.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has awarded a grant worth $18.6 million to Princeton University and technology company EnCharge AI, which have partnered on a multi-year project under DARPA's Optimum Processing Technology Inside Memory Arrays program. The $78 million OPTIMA program seeks to develop compute-in-memory accelerators for the handling of artificial intelligence workloads relevant to defense, EnCharge AI said Wednesday.

Federal leaders and industry experts will tackle the transformative power of artificial intelligence at the Potomac Officers Club's 5th Annual Artificial Intelligence Summit. Register now!

Executive Mosaic is proud to confer upon Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Director Dr. Stefanie Tompkins the Wash100 Award for 2024, her third win in total. This year, Tompkins is being recognized for leading her agency in collaborating with various stakeholders to advance quantum computing technologies and develop trustworthy artificial intelligence in the service of U.S. national security.

Click here to vote for Tompkins as one of your favorite GovCon leaders for 2024! The Popular Vote Competition of the Wash100 Award runs through April 30, 2024.

Northrop Grumman has received a $28.9 million contract to help the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency develop tactical autonomy capabilities for multi-ship, beyond visual range defensive and offensive air combat missions. A notice posted on SAM.gov states that Northrop will build an AI air combat capability that could work with existing sensors, electronic warfare and weapons within dynamic and operationally representative environments.

Join the Potomac Officers Club’s 5th Annual Artificial Intelligence Summit on March 21. Register here.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has selected five companies to develop autonomous capabilities to enable military and commercial drones to carry out predefined operations without operator connection. DARPA said Thursday the Rapid Experimental Missionized Autonomy program is an 18-month, single-phase program that aims to develop drone autonomy adapter and mission-specific autonomy software.

Laser communications technology developer Mynaric has secured a contract to develop an intersatellite optical communications terminal for enabling satellite constellations to communicate in space. The company said Tuesday it will serve as a development partner for the second phase of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Space-Based Adaptive Communications Node program.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has selected Aurora Flight Sciences, a Boeing subsidiary, to commence the development of a full-scale aircraft that uses active flow control for flight control. Aurora will build and demonstrate the X-65 aircraft under the third phase of the Control of Revolutionary Aircraft with Novel Effectors program, DARPA said Wednesday.

Aurora Flight Sciences, Bell Textron, Northrop Grumman and Piasecki Aircraft Corp. have begun designing prototypes of an experimental military aircraft capable of vertical take-off and landing under a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency initiative. DARPA expects one of the contractors to finish designing, prototyping, building and demonstrating the VTOL aircraft by spring of 2027 as part of the Speed and Runway Independent Technologies program.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has selected Microsoft and PsiQuantum to design prototype technologies that could demonstrate how underexplored quantum computing approaches can achieve utility-scale operation. The companies will move forward to the next phase of DARPA's Underexplored Systems for Utility-Scale Quantum Computing program to develop and defend a system design for a fault-tolerant quantum computer prototype, the agency said Thursday.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has selected 14 companies for a seven-month capability study that seeks to develop technology concepts to advance an integrated, multiservice commercial lunar infrastructure. Under the 10-Year Lunar Architecture Capability Study, the companies will collaborate to design systems-level platforms spanning multiple lunar services, including lunar power; communications, navigation and timing; mining and commercial in-situ resource utilization; construction and robotics; and transit, mobility and logistics, DARPA said Tuesday.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has awarded RTX's Raytheon BBN Technologies the Resilient Supply-and-Demand Networks contract. The RSDN contract calls for the development of a modeling and simulation tool that will work to predict how supply demand networks might be impacted by shocks and formulate mitigations to address those effects, RTX said Monday.