N0001426SBC03 26.1 GlobalX NOFO Amd 2.pdf

Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) Call N0001426SBC03

For Office of Naval Research (ONR) Global Opportunity:

GlobalX Challenge 26.1:

AI-Native Air Interface for Tactical Communication Networks

CHANGE OVERVIEW: The update to this announcement is found in the text as follows:

-Section I- Extend dates for the white paper submission, pitch days and notifications.

-Section IV- Kick-Off Webinar recording link added.

-Section V- Remove the requirement to attach a spreadsheet to the white paper submission.

This BAA Call describes new funding to be awarded under authority of N0001425SB001, Long

Range Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) for Navy and Marine Corps Science and Technology.

This BAA may be found at the following link: https://www.onr.navy.mil/work-with-us/funding-opportunities/fy25-long-range-broad-agency-announcement-baa-navy-and-marine.

The Assistance Listing Number for this announcement is 12.300.

I. SIGNIFICANT DATES AND TIMES

Event Date (GMT) Time (GMT)

BAA Call Release Date 9 June 2026 09:30 am

Kick-off Webinar 24 June 2026 08:00 am

White Paper Submission Date 24 July 2026 05:00 pm

Notification of White Paper Valuation* 3 Aug 2026 05:00 pm Proposal Pitch Day* 14 Aug 2026 09:30 am

Notification of Selection* 21 Aug 2026 05:00 pm

Full Proposal Submission Date* 31 Aug 2026 05:00 pm

Grant Award* 30 Sep 2026 05:00 pm

Note: * represents an approximate date.

II. INTRODUCTION

The submission of white papers, proposals, their evaluation and the placement of research grants will be carried out as described in this BAA Call and the Long-Range BAA. ONR Global expects to issue only research grants from this BAA Call.

ONR Global may award one grant or multiple grants addressing the challenge problem statement described below. The number of grants and amounts of funding for each grant will https://www.onr.navy.mil/work-with-us/funding-opportunities/fy25-long-range-broad-agency-announcement-baa-navy-and-marine https://www.onr.navy.mil/work-with-us/funding-opportunities/fy25-long-range-broad-agency-announcement-baa-navy-and-marine depend on proposals submitted. The grants, which include a twelve-month base period of performance at a value up to $250,000, and an optional twelve-month period of performance at a value up to $250,000, will not exceed $500,000 total. Accomplishment of established success metrics may attract interest from other U.S. federal organizations for potential follow-on applied research efforts under a separate acquisition mechanism.

The purpose of this announcement is to focus the attention of the international scientific community on 1) the challenge areas of interest; and 2) the schedule of key events and deadlines, including the Challenge Kick-off Webinar, and the submission of white papers and full proposals.

Recordings of the Kick-off Webinar, supplementary information such as Challenge Guidelines, templates, and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) will be available on https://www.nre.navy.mil/organization/onr-global.

III. CHALLENGE DESCRIPTIONS

Background:

The purpose of the GlobalX Innovation Challenge is to accelerate the traditional knowledge generation cycle, rapidly testing applied research theories to enable the discovery of revolutionary dual-use capabilities for the benefit of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, the commercial marketplace, and the public. Led by the Office of Naval Research Global and targeted at researchers in the Indian subcontinent, this challenge addresses a joint Naval need and seeks to deliver outcomes of value to both the U.S. and India. The expected results are promising, potentially game-changing applied concepts whose maturity may be further advanced through separate follow-on technology development efforts.

Objective:

ONR Global is interested in promising applied concepts to realize revolutionary capability advancements with dual-use military and commercial value related to the multidisciplinary problem statement described below. Specifically excluded from consideration are concepts that overlap with existing science and technology programs, provide evolutionary enhancements to existing technologies, or modernize current commercial systems or products.

ONR Global recognizes that international scientists and engineers conduct innovative and novel research. This Challenge provides an opportunity for these international performers to collaborate, generate revolutionary ideas, and show success metrics that these ideas will succeed.

ONR Global invites outstanding international performers to form multi-national, multidisciplinary teams to address these listed capability challenges.

Non-federal entities from academia and industry may participate. ONR Global requires that the proposing team be led by an eligible non-U.S.-based research entity, whether from academia, industry and/or the broader scientific community. U.S.-based non-federal entities may also participate as part of a multi-national team but are not required. Eligibility requirements are detailed in the BAA, specifically under Section C (Eligibility Information) on page 5 and Section https://www.nre.navy.mil/organization/onr-global https://www.onr.navy.mil/work-with-us/funding-opportunities/fy25-long-range-broad-agency-announcement-baa-navy-and-marine

D (Program Description/Objective), the ONR Global overview on pages 8-9. As stated above, this Challenge is an opportunity specifically directed toward international performers; therefore, ONR Global expects the majority of team members will be entities outside of the U.S. Each team shall designate a lead Principal Investigator (PI) whose organization outside of the U.S. will submit the white paper or proposal and be responsible for distributing funding to co-PIs and other sub-recipients. For a given project team, one award is made to the lead PI’s institution. Only the lead PI’s institution will be the prime awardee, and that institution is responsible for all aspects of the grant, including strict adherence to the terms and conditions of the grant and applicable statutes, regulations, and policies regarding the use of grant funds.

Revolutionary technology development typically results from multidisciplinary teams working in an environment that fosters and leverages serendipitous discovery. ONR Global acknowledges that performers may already have colleagues with whom they wish to collaborate. Nevertheless, ONR

Global encourages performers to participate in multi-disciplinary teams to consider a wide range of approaches to address the Challenge Problem Statement. Organizations and individuals that are not subject to U.S. sanctions or are not otherwise excluded from doing business with the U.S.

Government may participate. Please note the grant applicant is responsible for complying with any applicable sanctions, export controls, and similar limitations.

Challenge Problem Statement:

Develop an artificial intelligence (AI) system capable of dynamically optimizing networking protocols and signal modulation schemes for tactical communications in contested, interference-laden environments across air, surface and/or subsurface domains.

We are seeking proposals that 1) rigorously define realistic, high-fidelity communications scenarios using real-world or synthetically generated datasets derived from systems commonly deployed on maritime, ground, and airborne platforms, while capturing key operational constraints such as mobility, limited connectivity, and adversarial interference; and 2) develop and demonstrate novel AI-Native Air Interface algorithms that can autonomously adapt to these dynamic, multi-domain environments to optimize network performance, resilience, and spectrum efficiency.

Example Scene Perception Scenarios

• Adaptive Networking: Real-time network topology reconfiguration, self-optimizing protocols, and routing optimization based on mission parameters, node availability, and threat conditions

• Flexible Physical Layer: Autonomously modify waveforms, frequency, and power allocation to maximize performance under time-varying operational constraints

• Integrated Sensing and Communications: Simultaneously perform sensing and communications using shared waveforms, including real-time detection and tracking of mobile nodes, obstacles, and environmental parameters

Operational Resilience Objectives

• Minimize electromagnetic signature through waveform optimization and power management across spatial, temporal, and frequency domains

• Detect, characterize, and autonomously counter RF interference at both physical and networking layers

• Implement real-time detection and mitigation against spoofing and protocol exploitation attacks

• Employ semantic communications for intelligent compression, error correction, and information extraction

• Use integrated sensing and communications to track dynamic network layer and changing environmental conditions to optimize physical and network layer configurations

Technical Challenge:

The AI system must operate with minimal computational overhead, maintain robust operation across heterogeneous air, surface, and subsurface networks, and provide measurable improvements in survivability, throughput, and spectrum efficiency across multi-domain threat environments.

Success Metrics:

• Network availability under time-varying interference conditions and topology changes

• Maintain network reachability percentages, minimize end-to-end delay, and preserve data rate capacity under adversarial interference conditions in multi-hop network topologies

• Multi-target tracking accuracy, channel state information (CSI) estimation error, and spatial mapping fidelity (i.e., correct reconstruction of physical environmental geometry)

• Probability of detection by adversarial surveillance systems, e.g., eavesdropping, direction-finding, and/or source localization

Selected proposals will develop a dynamic scenario (simulation or physical testbed) to demonstrate the benefits or utility of the novel algorithms / techniques developed for this challenge. Proposers should use whatever models, simulations or testbeds that are readily available to them and craft a demonstration scenario with sufficient fidelity to be representative of a tactical environment (e.g., mobility, low data rates, intermittent connectivity, etc.). A baseline with an out-of-the-box or traditional implementation should be established and then an excursion with what was done under the challenge to show improvement over the baseline using success metrics established for the project.

IV. KICK-OFF WEBINAR

ONR Global will hold a Challenge Kick-off Webinar in accordance with the date listed in Section I above. This webinar is open to any interested performers and may be viewed by navigating to the weblink provided. There is no fee for participating in the webinar, but pre-registration is required using the weblink provided. Subsequent to the live webinar broadcast, a recording of the webinar will be available for viewing on https://www.nre.navy.mil/organization/onr-global, as well as on grants.gov. Participation in the webinar is not required to submit a white paper or proposal. The link to the live Webinar can be found here. A recording of the Webinar can be found here.

V. WHITE PAPER SUBMISSION

White papers are highly encouraged for all applicants seeking funding from this GlobalX https://events.dod.teams.microsoft.us/event/745ea16c-2810-42c9-8230-1af2e4733701@e3333e00-c877-4b87-b6ad-45e942de1750 https://flankspeed-my.sharepoint-mil.us.mcas-gov.us/personal/joel_i_goodman_civ_us_navy_mil/_layouts/15/stream.aspx?id=%2Fpersonal%2Fjoel%5Fi%5Fgoodman%5Fciv%5Fus%5Fnavy%5Fmil%2FDocuments%2FRecordings%2F2026%20GlobalX%20Webinar%20%2CAI%20for%20Tactical%20Communications%2D20260624%5F074444UTC%2DMeeting%20Recording%2Emp4&ga=1&referrer=StreamWebApp%2EWeb&referrerScenario=AddressBarCopied%2Eview%2E568c3bd3%2D71fa%2D484f%2Db973%2D703661a727ab

Innovation Challenge. The Challenge evaluation panel will assess how well each white paper submitted achieves the revolutionary capability described in the Challenge Problem Statement above. ONR Global will invite those teams submitting white papers with the most promising concepts to submit a full proposal or to participate in a Proposal Pitch Day (see Section VI below).

All notifications and feedback will be issued via e-mail notification to the team PI from the

Technical Point(s) of Contact or their designee(s). However, such invitation does not guarantee a subsequent award. Full proposals may be submitted by any applicant in response to this BAA Call, regardless of whether a white paper was submitted or evaluated by ONR Global.

White papers shall follow the format provided in this BAA Call (see BAA Call attachments 1-2);

this format will meet mandatory ONRG Cover Page requirements. White papers shall be in 12-point Times New Roman font and shall not exceed five single-sided pages. Figures, charts, and tables may use a smaller font size if the texts are legible. White papers must include an additional one-page quad chart, which is not part of the white paper page limitation. The five-page white paper should be submitted in Adobe PDF format (preferred) or in Microsoft Word. The quad chart may be submitted in Adobe PDF (preferred) or in Microsoft PowerPoint format.

The PI for each team shall be the primary point of contact throughout the application process; the

PI is responsible for submitting white papers describing his or her proposed concept and approach to usn.ncr.onrghq.list.grantsproposals@us.navy.mil by the submission deadline listed in Section I above. White papers received after the deadline may not be considered. The subject line of the email shall read: “N0001426SBC03 GlobalX Challenge 26.1 White Paper Submission”. Do not send ZIP files or provide links to “Dropbox” type applications as they will not be reviewed.

Password-protected files are discouraged.

The GlobalX Challenge evaluation panel will review submitted white papers and will invite teams with the most promising and revolutionary concepts on or before the date listed in Section I above.

to participate in the Proposal Pitch Day or to submit a grant proposal. All teams submitting a full proposal must follow steps listed in Section VII below.

VI. PROPOSAL PITCH DAY

As described above in Section V, ONR Global may invite those teams submitting white papers with the most promising concepts to participate in a Proposal Pitch Day that will be held in accordance with the date listed in Section I above. The intent of the Proposal Pitch Day is to give performers the opportunity to present their ideas to a team of technical experts and to interactively answer any questions that may arise. Details of the event will be provided to those who are invited to participate. ONR Global reiterates that full proposals may be submitted by any applicant in response to this BAA Call, whether or not individuals participate in the Proposal Pitch Day or submit a white paper for evaluation by ONR Global.

VII. FULL PROPOSAL SUBMISSION AND AWARD INFORMATION

Full grant proposals must be submitted to the Department of the Navy at www.grants.gov under

BAA number N0001425SB001, Call N0001426SBC03 in accordance with the submission deadline listed in Section I above. ONR Global is not obligated to consider full proposals received after this date. See Appendix 1 of BAA N0001425SB001 for instructions on submitting grant proposals via http://www.grants.gov/ grants.gov. Please note SAM (System for Award Management) registration (including Financial

Assistance Reps and Certs) is required to submit proposals on grants.gov and may require significant time to complete for new SAM registrants.

ONR Global will notify teams selected for award and intends to award grants in accordance with the dates listed in Section I above. Regular performance reporting and a final research progress report are required in accordance with the terms and conditions of the grant. Financial and patent reports will also be required.

Although ONR Global expects the above plan to be implemented, ONR Global reserves the exclusive right to make changes or cancel this GlobalX Challenge, as necessary. This Notice does

NOT imply any promise of award.

VIII. POINTS OF CONTACT

The specific points of contact for this announcement are listed below:

Technical Points of Contact:

• Primary:

o Dr. Joel Goodman, ONR Global Science Director, joel.i.goodman.civ@us.navy.mil

• Supplemental:

o Dr. Sunoy Banerjee, ONR Program Officer, sunoy.n.banerjee.civ@us.navy.mil o Dr. Tripti Johri, ONR Global Science Director, tripti.johri.ln@us.navy.mil

Business Point of Contact:

• ONR Global Procurement Team, usn.ncr.onrghq.list.grantsproposals@us.navy.mil

IX. SUBMISSION OF QUESTIONS

Any questions regarding this announcement must be provided to the Business Point of Contact listed above. Please submit all questions in writing by electronic mail.

Answers to questions submitted in response to this Notice will be addressed in a Frequently Asked

Questions (FAQ) document posted on https://www.nre.navy.mil/organization/onr-global and grants.gov.

Questions regarding White Papers or Full Proposals should be submitted no later than five working days before the dates recommended for receipt of White Papers and/or Full Proposals.

Questions received after this date may not be answered.

mailto:joel.i.goodman.civ@us.navy.mil mailto:sunoy.n.banerjee.civ@us.navy.mil mailto:tripti.johri.ln@us.navy.mil mailto:usn.ncr.onrghq.list.grantsproposals@us.navy.mil