Hagel leaves new strategy to seek innovative ideas

DoD To Silicon Valley, VCs: How ‘Bout Some Help! « Breaking Defense - Defense industry news, analysis and commentary

confronted with an historic shift in science and technology spending from the military to commercial companies and the rapid global proliferation of precision weapons and other technologies, the Pentagon has issued a Request for Information asking anyone with a really good idea to click on a dedicated website and let them know about it.


While Lockheed, Boeing and friends will certainly be listened to should they have ideas to share, this effort is really aimed at individuals and companies who traditionally don’t do business with the Pentagon. “I think that’s a very clear message,” said Stephen Welby,
the deputy assistant defense secretary leading the effort, when I pressed him if the RFI’s target was companies like Google, Cisco and other tech generators.

Long Range Research and Development Plan - Federal Business Opportunities: Opportunities

Submissions to this RFI should be focused on technology-enabled capabilities that could be matured and would be available to enter formal development in the next 5-10 years, so as to provide an opportunity to offer significant military advantage in the 2025 to 2030 time frame. This focus restricts consideration to

1. relatively mature technologies that may be applied in novel or unique ways to field a  fundamentally different type of system capability,
2. emerging technologies that can be rapidly matured to offer new military
   capability or
3. technologies under development for, or being applied  in, non-defense applications which can be repurposed to offer a new military capability. 

 Unclassified responses to this RFI should be submitted through the dedicated website with the following URL: http://www.defenseinnovationmarketplace.mil/LRRDP.html. All RFI responses will be accepted starting at 1400 EST, December 3, 2014, through 14 January 2015. The Government reserves the right to extend acceptance of RFI responses beyond this initial 45-day. The RFI will close-out no later than April 15, 2015. All technical questions regarding this announcement should also be submitted using the above URL.

To submit a classified response to this RFI, the proposer should contact Lt Col Luke Cropsey at luke.c.cropsey.mil@mail.mil for further instructions to ensure the information is safeguarded at the appropriate level.