DARPA-SN-26-101.pdf

Notice of Intent to Review Marketplace Solutions

SHOPPING NOTICE: DARPA-SN-26-101

MARKETPLACE: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Expedited Research

Innovation System (ERIS) REQUIRING ACTIVITY: DARPA Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) NOTICE DATES: August 10, 2026 – July 31, 2027

TOPIC AREA: 2

1. PURPOSE

Between the notice dates listed above, DARPA IPTO will be actively “shopping” the ERIS Marketplace for innovative, post-competitive, awardable solutions that address modeling, simulation, and software-defined technical approaches to support decentralized, distributed, and horizontally integrated command and control for heterogeneous combat agents for sensing grids, unmanned aircraft systems, satellite constellations, collaborative aircraft, and ground or surface capabilities.

2. BACKGROUND & SCOPE

2.1 Background

Today’s paradigms for command and control often assume combat systems will maintain robust connectivity and centralized control with decentralized execution due to the proliferation of connectivity in the last 30 years. The reality of modern combat in the contested environment will test these assumptions; approaches that develop robust, resilient autonomy for decentralized and distributed integrated command and control for combat systems are paramount if these assumptions prove to be inaccurate.

2.2 Scope

DARPA IPTO is seeking proposals to advance the state of the art for closed-loop, open-loop, optimization-based, controls-based, systems-theoretic, information-theoretic, compressive, tokenization/encoding/quantization at the edge, and other technical approaches for autonomy frameworks to manage decentralized control at the edge. The scope of this shopping notice includes both short-term efforts as well as participation in ambitious technology development for a space autonomy program that seeks to deploy existing space-based hardware during its lifecycle. The focus of this autonomy program will include development of technologies to enable trustworthy agent-to-agent collaboration in a compute, bandwidth limited environment and for technologies that enable orchestration and autonomy at scale.

3. DESIRED CAPABILITIES AND EXPERTISE

While all submissions will be evaluated against the standard criteria published in the ERIS Master Program Solicitation (PS), IPTO will be specifically looking for solutions that demonstrate strength in the following areas. These are not new evaluation criteria but rather highlight the specific attributes of interest for this opportunity.

• Defining the Problem & Current State of the Art: The focus of the current state of the art has historically addressed the decision-making under uncertainty challenge as a “sense-decide-act” paradigm; this shopping notice seeks solutions that treat the first step in this action chain as “sense/act” and the second step as “incorporate feedback”. This shopping notice also seeks approaches that address scalability in the 1,000s of nodes using low overhead, lightweight algorithmic implementations that can be adapted to disparate, varying multi-vendor hardware implementations.

• Advancing the State of the Art (Technical Innovation): Approaches to collaborative control and estimation should enable autonomous, distributed, decentralized operations for heterogeneous agents with disparate technical implementations. These approaches should be able to demonstrate their conceptual novelty compared to traditional approaches as well as their limitations and capabilities. Challenges in information exchange, data incest, time dynamism, and barriers to system collaboration are of particular interest.

• Team Capability (Expertise and Vision): Experience in distributed tracking, measurement and track fusion at the edge, and delivering autonomy to low compute, constrained bandwidth environments for defense or scalable sensing systems is desired. Exposure to development pipelines that produce code or product in an unclassified environment and deploy to classified combat systems is a plus.

• Impact (Defense and Commercial Use Case): Approaches that are extensible between warfighting domains are desired.

4. HOW TO RESPOND

This notice is a call for solutions to be flagged for review.

For Existing Awardable Solutions:

Existing ERIS Solution providers who believe their current ERIS solution(s) meet the above characteristics may flag their existing solution video for inclusion in this market research activity by emailing ERIS@darpa.mil with the following:

• Subject Line: Shopping Notice Response: DARPA-SN-26-101 - [Your Company Name]

• Body: The Title and Video URL of your existing awardable solution.

For New Submissions:

Prospective ERIS Solution Providers interested in having their solutions included in this market research activity must submit a video solution through the standard ERIS submission process in either the August, September, October, November, or December 2026; January, February, March, April, May, June, or July 2027 collection period. If the submitted solution is determined awardable in the respective assessment period (September, October, November, or December 2026; or January, February, March, April, May, June, July, or August 2027), through the standard ERIS assessment process, then the Solutions Provider may flag their awardable solution video for inclusion in this market research activity.

mailto:ERIS@darpa.mil

If you have a new solution, please submit it to the Topic Area, listed below, via the ERIS portal.

Developing advanced technologies for improved resilience, efficiency, and effectiveness of strategic systems. This topic area supports technologies for critical infrastructure and military command-and-control systems (networks and applications across strategic, command, operational, and tactical edges).

To ensure it is associated with this notice, please use the following format for your video title:

• Video Title Format: DARPA-SN-26-101: [Your Solution Title] (Example: DARPA-SN-26-101: Distributed Decentralized Control & Estimation)

After submitting, please also send a notification email to ERIS@darpa.mil with:

• Subject Line: Shopping Notice Response: DARPA-SN-26-101 - [Your Company Name]

• Body: The Title of your new submission and its Date of Submission.

Solutions submitted during this window that are deemed “awardable” through the standard ERIS assessment process will be included for consideration by IPTO.

5. RESOURCES

• ERIS Master Solicitation: SAM.gov link

• DARPAConnect offers free resources to potential performers to help them navigate DARPA, including “Understanding DARPA Award Vehicles and Solicitations” and “Tips for DARPA Proposal Success”. Join DARPAConnect at DARPAConnect.us to leverage on-demand learning and networking resources.

• To Submit a New Solution: DARPAConnect ERIS Portal https://www.google.com/url?q=mailto%3AERIS%40darpa.mil https://sam.gov/opp/bc7dc7e2845241d3bc9ef60e6d37cc7c/view https://darpaconnect.us/ https://www.google.com/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.darpaconnect.us%2Feris