Record number of proposals submitted to U.S. Air Force’s technology development solicitation

The U.S. Air Force’s inno­va­tion hub, AFWERX, is rec­om­mend­ing more than 250 pro­pos­als which have been sub­mit­ted as part of a solic­i­ta­tion relat­ed to Agili­ty Prime — which aims to fund the cre­ation of new tech­nolo­gies for use in mil­i­tary mis­sions.

The pro­pos­als are part of AFW­ERX’s X20D Small Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Trans­fer, or STTR, Open Top­ic solic­i­ta­tion, and the num­ber is a record in the programme’s near­ly three-decade his­to­ry.

“After suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ing weeks of eval­u­a­tions, selectees are under­go­ing final due dili­gence activ­i­ties pri­or to pro­ceed­ing to con­tract award,” said Maj. Jared Evans, AFVen­tures’ STTR Open Top­ic pro­gramme man­ag­er.

“While this is only the fourth STTR Open Top­ic, the X20D cohort is on track to be the largest sin­gle cohort in the STTR program’s his­to­ry – rep­re­sent­ing a col­lec­tive Phase 1 effort worth over $38 mil­lion.”

eVTOL air­craft devel­op­ers Joby Avi­a­tion and Beta Tech­nolo­gies are edg­ing clos­er to flight test­ing with the US Air Force, after both pro­gressed to Phase III of the Ini­tial Capa­bil­i­ties Open­ing as part of Agili­ty Prime’s ‘Air Race to Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion’.

And LIFT Air­craft gave a flight demon­stra­tion of its HEXA eVTOL to senior mem­bers of the US Air Force in Camp Mabry in Austin, Texas, in August.

The STTR Open Top­ic aims to help small busi­ness­es com­mer­cialise emerg­ing research in part­ner­ship with a qual­i­fy­ing non-prof­it organ­i­sa­tion, aca­d­e­m­ic insti­tu­tion, or fed­er­al­ly fund­ed research and devel­op­ment cen­tres (FFRD­Cs).

Dif­fer­ent from the tra­di­tion­al STTR pro­gramme, the Open Top­ic pro­vides an oppor­tu­ni­ty for small busi­ness­es to high­light any tech­nol­o­gy or solu­tion to the Air Force.

The objec­tive of this Open Top­ic Focus Area was to explore poten­tial com­mer­cial tech­nolo­gies being devel­oped in the emerg­ing eVTOL mar­ket to field fly­ing organ­ic resup­ply bus, or ORBs, for dis­as­ter response, human­i­tar­i­an aid and logis­tics mis­sions.

“This unprece­dent­ed inter­est demon­strates the val­ue of the STTR pro­gram and the ener­gy cre­at­ed when acad­e­mia, indus­try, investors and gov­ern­ment unite to accel­er­ate com­mer­cial­iza­tion of trans­for­ma­tive tech­nolo­gies,” said Col. Nathan P. Diller, AFWERX direc­tor.

“While we are pleased to use this as a tool to bol­ster the work­force of the future and pro­pel research and devel­op­ment in the elec­tric ver­ti­cal take­off and land­ing, or eVTOL, mar­ket, we are even more excit­ed to see what oth­er ‘Prime pro­grams’ might spring from these part­ner­ships.”