The Naval Information Warfare Systems Command (NAVWAR) on Wednesday announced a virtual industry day is being held on Feb. 14 for the Information Warfare Research Project (IWRP) Consortium.
The Navy released a notice for the event on SAM.gov on Jan. 19.
The consortium seeks to help give participants a forum to pitch new information warfare capabilities to NAVWAR officials. It was established as a consortium-based approach and uses Other Transaction Authority (OTA) to streamline acquisitions, rapidly develop prototypes and provide advanced technologies to the Navy.
The industry day will include a brief from the Director of Prototyping – Information Warfare, Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific (NIWC Pacific), Senior Scientific Technology Manager (SSTM) for Rapid Prototyping, Technical Briefs and one-on-one break-out teleconferences.
In 2020, the Navy’s top acquisition official approved a $400 million and two-year performance period extension for the NAVWAR IWRP (Defense Daily, Aug. 18, 2020).
The notice said technical briefs presented during the industry day will cover various information warfare research technology focus areas that the Navy expects will be the basis for upcoming Requests for Prototype Projects (RPPs) to IWRP Consortium members.
The Navy said this announcement aims to provide members of the consortium and industry overall advanced notification of the government’s intent. The notice said this is not a request for prototype projects (RPPs) at this time, but the Navy anticipates eight RPPs for white papers or full proposals to be solicited at a later time.
RPP topics include 5G-enabled command and control/situational awareness tool; 5G-connected vehicles/autonomous platforms; 5G-networked Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) Sensors; cloud, data and analytics at the edge to deploy a cloud at the edge implementation or a DATAOPS Ecosystems; data engineering pipelines and DataOps to test a DATAOPS ecosystem prototype; Digital HF Mesh Embarkable System; cyber security service provider cloud services; and Marine Corps Expeditionary Advanced Ground Link.
As of January, the IWRP has 738 members, 76 percent of whom are categorized as nontraditional. 534 are small businesses, 183 are large businesses, nine are academia and 12 are non-profit organizations.