BAA14-009.pdf

ONRBAA 14-009

Advanced Analytics and Data Science for Naval Warfare Planning and Execution

Table of Content

The following information presents the basic organization of this document as well as the location of significant information:

I. General Information A. Agency Name B. Research Opportunity Title C. Program Name D. Research Opportunity Number E. Response Date F. Research Opportunity Description G. Point(s) of Contact H. Instrument Type(s) I. Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) Numbers J. Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) Titles

K. Other Information II. Award Information

A. Amount and Period of Performance B. Peer Reviews C. Production and Testing of Prototypes

III. Eligibility Information IV. Application and Submission Information

A. Application and Submission Process B. Content and Format of White Papers/Full Proposals

a. White Papers

b. Full Proposals

i. Instructions for Contracts

ii. Instructions for Grants

C. Significant Dates and Times D. Submission of Late Proposals E. Submission of Grant Proposals through Grants.gov F. Submission of White Papers and Full Proposals for Contracts, Cooperative Agreements and

Other Transaction Agreements V. Evaluation Information

A. Evaluation Criteria B. Commitment to Small Business - (Contract Awards Only) C. Options D. Evaluation Panel

VI. Award Administration Information VII. Other Information

A. Applies to Grant, Cooperative Agreement and Other Transaction Agreement applications only B. Applies to Contracts only

C. Applies to Contracts, Grants and other Assistance Agreements

INTRODUCTION:

This publication constitutes a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) as contemplated in Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 6.102(d)(2) and 35.016 and the Department of Defense Grants and Agreements Regulations (DoDGARS) 22.315(a). A formal Request for Proposals (RFP), other solicitation, or additional information regarding this announcement will not be issued.

The Office of Naval Research (ONR) will not issue paper copies of this announcement. The ONR reserves the right to fund all, some or none of the proposals received under this BAA. ONR provides no funding for direct reimbursement of proposal development costs. Technical and cost proposals (or any other material) submitted in response to this BAA will not be returned. It is the policy of ONR to treat all proposals as sensitive competitive information and to disclose their contents only for the purposes of evaluation.

I GENERAL INFORMATION:

A. Agency Name - Office of Naval Research

B. Research Opportunity Title - Advanced Analytics and Data Science for Naval Warfare Planning and Execution

C. Program Name - Data Focused Naval Tactical Cloud

D. Research Opportunity Number - 14-009

E. Response Date -

White Papers: 7/18/2014 Full Proposals: 10/3/2014

F. Research Opportunity Description -

Objective.

The Office of Naval Research is interested in receiving white papers and full proposals for Advanced Technology Development that will forge major advancements towards a well developed and robust Naval Big Data Ecosystem that enables more sophisticated and powerful analytics for supporting Naval Warfighting applications. To accomplish this objective, ONR seeks to make advancements in four key Thrust Areas: (1) Development of a robust Naval Data Science foundation that addresses data representations and ontologies required to support a wide range of Naval Warfare Mission Areas; (2) Identifying, acquiring, ingesting, and indexing Data Sources pertinent to Naval Warfighting Missions; (3) Development of advanced analytics for Naval Warfare Mission Areas; and (4) Development of data protection and security mechanisms to ensure the integrity of data used throughout the analytic process. The overall objective of this effort is to achieve unprecedented access to data; to extract new and deeper insights by exploiting data in new and innovative ways; and to apply those new insights to improving Naval Warfare activities.

Integration of National and Tactical Information.

A major goal of this effort is to significantly improve the Naval community's real-time ability to bring together information from National systems and sensors with information from Naval combat and weapon systems and sensors. In the past, the ability to merge these types of information to support tactical warfighting has been extremely limited. Emerging technologies (such as Cloud, Computing, Big Data, and more effective Cross Domain technologies) are enabling us to overcome many of the technological and infrastructure limitations that limit the ability to integrate and exploit National and tactical data sources. This BAA seeks to leverage the power of these emerging technologies to develop innovative and ground-breaking analytic capabilities that enhance threat assessment and prediction, combat ID, integrated fires, and Naval mission planning and execution. Enhancements to these capabilities will be focused on two Naval Warfare Areas: Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) and Integrated Air/Missile Defense (IAMD).

Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW).

Anti-Submarine Warfare is a critically important warfare area for the Navy. Over the past decade, U.S.

adversaries have been making significant investments in their submarine capabilities, making detection, identification, and en-gagement of submarine threats a much more challenging proposition. Furthermore, the large increase in commercial shipping traffic has made submarine detection and identification a much more difficult activity. Conventional methods of relying on organic tactical sensors as the primary means for conducting ASW are no longer sufficient. ONR is interested in developing advanced ASW analytic capabilities that make use of a much broader range of data sources and that cross traditional system boundaries. Some examples of the types of data sources and ASW analytical capabilities that are of interest include (but are not limited to):

• Enemy Course of Action data - example analytic might use historical Pattern of Life data such as depth operating profile, speed profile, noisy evolution schedule, navigational strategies, and historical tracks to portray three-dimensional probability distributions of likely threat position for each of the enemy course of action (ECOA) being modeled. Contact report data of various precision and confidence will be tested against the modeled ECOAs and the likelihood of each ECOA will be adjusted. The analytic will be expected to work in a multi-threat context and take advantage of class specific identifiers.

• Organic/non-organic combatant sensor data - example analytic might data mine for contact data and below threshold contact follower snippets to cluster information over time that may not be recognized when analyzed in isolation from one another. The analytic will test for consistency, allowing for unique capabilities of disparate sensor types. The analytical will account for bearing and range uncertainties in its kinematic testing of whether or not a single threat submarine could account for the cluster of data. Analytics may explore how filter thresholds (e.g., auto-alert thresholds) might be adjusted to better inspect only that data that would be consistent with the clustered snippets, thus allowing improved recognition while controlling false alarm rate.

• Organic/non-organic environmental data - example analytic might use in-situ acoustic data (e.g., noise measured through the sensor) or oceanographic data (e.g., sound speed profile from any number of sources including XBT data) to monitor differences between expected conditions and encountered conditions. The search plans and sensor line-ups are predicated on acoustic and environmental parameters. The analytic monitors the difference between planned and encountered conditions and evaluates if it is significant. When a difference is determined to be significant, an alert is generated that a new search plan or line-up plan may be needed. If search plan or line-up plan algorithms are resident in the NTC, a recalculation is spawned and operators are notified of results.

• Blue operational behaviors, characteristics and performance - example analytic might use in-situ platform position, heading, speed, and depth data to monitor platform compliance with the intended search plan. This analytic accommodates different levels of search plan specificity. The analytic monitors the difference between planned and executed search effort and evaluates if it is significant. When a difference is determined to be significant, an alert is generated that a new search plan may be needed. If search plan algorithms are resident in the NTC, a recalculation is spawned and operators are notified of results. Another analytic might monitor ship heading or towed array heading data and calculate the impact of course changes of search effectiveness; an alert may be generated when towed array stability is evaluated as overly compromised.

• National Technical Means (NTM) - example analytic might gather all available NTM data and process it so that it could be brought into a geographic plot of threat probability density. The analytic will be interested in gathering both positive search information and negative search information, which will require information of the NTM sensor footprint and conditions necessary for detection. An analytic may test this NTM data with other sensor data sources.

Proposers are encouraged to show how your proposed efforts would support the achievement of these objectives. Because many of the data sources and analytic methods associated with ASW are classified, ONR encourages Pro-posers to submit classified proposals where necessary to fully convey the proposed effort.

Integrated Air/Missile Defense (IAMD).

Integrated Air/Missile Defense is another Naval Warfare Area that is of critical importance to the Navy. The rapid expansion of anti-ship and ballistic missiles (both in numbers and capabilities) is a major challenge to Navy IAMD capabilities. AEGIS is the Nation's primary ballistic missile defense system, engaging air and ballistic missile threats with a family of Standard Missiles. In the past, AEGIS could be counted on to engage all incoming air and missile threats, but today's expanded missile threats and predicted raid sizes can easily overwhelm the weapon resources of a single ship. Going forward, the Navy must be prepared to use its sensor and weapon resources much more judiciously. It is critical to better characterize missile and air threats in a way that allows for intelligent use of Standard Missile resources (to engage only the most critical threats), as well as to identify air/missile threats that could be mitigated using other methods (e.g., deception, cyber methods, directed energy). ONR is interested in developing advanced IAMD analytic capabilities that make use of a much broader range of data sources and that cross traditional information swim lanes. Some examples of the types of data sources and IAMD analytical capabilities that are of interest include (but are not limited to):

• Improved Identity Classification, Intent and Future Movement Prediction, and Track Association -example analytic might use Identification Friend-or-Foe (IFF)/Automatic Identification System (AIS) data;

flight plans, schedules, air routes; intelligence information; collected second and third tier information sources in addition to primary sources; shipping lanes and fishing areas; organic sensor information to recommend the identification of a track, to predict its intent and future movement, and/or recommend its association with another track.

• Optimizing sensor configuration - example analytic might use historical and current environmental data;

indications, alerts, and warnings; real-time and historical sensor measurements; real-time operational status of a sensor; sensor models to produce optimal sensor settings recommendations.

• Identifying unexpected Red Air and Missile capabilities, behaviors, and operational patterns - example analytic might use intelligence information; missile models; historical measurements; Intelligence threat library (e.g. Anti-Ship Cruise Missile/Ballistic Missile Radar, Electronic Warfare, and Infrared signatures) data sets; live sensor data; Electronic Warfare/Non-cooperative target recognition data to identify new ca-pabilities, behaviors, and operational patterns and possibly recommend new systems settings to address them.

• Improved planning of asset movement and tactical utilization - example analytic might use models and simulations; readiness information; plans; doctrine; predicted Red/White/Blue future movement;

Intelligence data; historical and current weather conditions to recommend how to move assets so that tactical assets can be optimally utilized.

• Weapons usage optimization - example analytic might utilize threat disposition; current inventory levels across the battle group; knowledge of planned and active engagements and results; weapons models to recommend optimal utilization of weapons across the battlegroup/force and strategies for coordinated fires.

• Improved spectrum operations - an example analytic might use plans; historical usage patterns;

offender/victim performance parameters; Order-of-Battle/Electronic Order-of-Battle; Intelligence information; organic measurements; earth and space weather measurements and predictions to recommend an optimum spectrum allocation for the battlegroup/force, to identify interference, to support planning for future operations and changing environmental conditions.

• Improved situational awareness - an example analytic might use indications and warnings; current, predicted, and historical movements of Red/White/Blue assets; Intelligence sources to identify information that should trigger a warfighter notification (e.g. an alert).

• Cyber awareness - an example analytic might use data from organic and non-organic cyber sensors to assess the state of visible cyberspace and to identify patterns indicative of anomalous activity.

Proposers are encouraged to show how your proposed efforts would help support the achievement of these objectives. Because many of the data sources and analytic methods associated with IAMD are classified, ONR encourages Proposers to submit classified proposals where necessary to fully convey the proposed effort.

Cross Warfare Areas.

In addition to the ASW and IAMD Naval Warfare areas, ONR is interested in capabilities of a cross cutting nature. Since most Naval platforms are designed to support multiple Warfare areas, it is often the case that optimizing the battlegroup/force for one Warfare area comes at the expense of other Warfare areas. ONR is also interested in ana-lytics and applications that address battlegroup/force level operations that span multiple Warfare areas. Cross Warfare area proposals, need not be limited to ASW and IAMD. Other Warfare areas that will be accepted include Anti-Surface Warfare (ASuW), EW, Mine Warfare (MW), and

Strike Warfare. However, greater weight will be given to Cross Warfare area proposals that include either ASW or IAMD.

The Naval Tactical Cloud Reference Implementation.

Over the past several years, ONR has developed a Big Data Ecosystem software platform called the Naval Tactical Cloud Reference Implementation (NTCRI) that provides an environment for storing relevant Naval Data sources and for hosting and executing advanced Naval analytics and applications. The intent of this BAA is to leverage the NTC RI as the underlying environment for all work performed under this BAA. This will allow the full resources of this BAA to be focused on Naval Data Science, analytics, and applications, and not on the development and underlying Big Data and Cloud infrastructure. It is important for proposers to understand that this BAA seeks to develop Naval Data Science and analytics, not to develop infrastructure, systems, tools, or middle-ware. Proposers shall ensure that any proposed work under this BAA not come packaged within unique or proprietary platforms or systems.

It is extremely important for proposers to review and understand the Naval Tactical Cloud Reference Implementation and to clearly show how work proposed under this BAA will be able to run within the Naval Tactical Cloud environment. At a high level, the Naval Tactical Cloud Reference Implementation consists of a utility computing component (Cloudera), a Big Data analytic component (Hadoop Distributed Files System, Accumulo, MapReduce, and Storm), and a Data Storage component (Content Zone). ONR will provide information about Naval Tactical Cloud Reference Implementation (available at http://_________). It is important for efforts proposed under this BAA to clearly show how they can be incorporated within this reference implementation.

Thrust Area #1. Naval Data Science Foundation.

The ability of Big Data to bring together and operate on large numbers of diverse data sets has made it more important than ever to develop common frameworks for characterizing data and achieving understanding of the data across diverse communities. In the past, data representations and ontologies have been developed for individual systems and communities. As we move to an integrated Big Data environment, it becomes important to develop data representations and ontologies that cut across these communities. As part of this BAA, ONR seeks to establish a strong Naval Data Science foundation that develops the data representations and ontologies that will support analytic development across the full range of Naval Warfare activities. ONR is interested in developing data representations and ontologies that address the highly integrated and interdependent nature of modern Naval Warfare. Experience developing real data representations and ontologies is critical for this Thrust Area, as this Thrust Area is focused on data representation and ontology development, not on developing data representation and ontology infrastructure and tools.

To maximize the use of commercially developed tools and services, ONR expects all data representation and ontology efforts to be done in accordance with World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) compliant Resource Description Framework (RDF) for data representation and Web Ontology Language (OWL) for ontologies.

To avoid past problems of attempting to develop a universal data representation and ontology, ONR seeks solutions that bring together and connect multiple data representations and ontologies from across many different communities and disciplines. Furthermore, because speed to fielding capability is critically important, the methodologies for developing, implementing, and cross-connecting data representations and ontologies are just as important as the resulting data representations and ontologies. Proposals for this Thrust Area shall speak to the methodologies and solutions that will be employed to enable rapid development, implementation, and alignment of data representations and ontologies, not just the data representations and ontologies that will be delivered. (Note that methodologies refer to patterns and practices, not to specific tools, systems, or software platforms).

In the past, efforts to develop all encompassing data representations and ontologies have met with significant failures. In many cases, this has been because of attempts to develop a monolithic, global solution that takes too long to develop and is not accepted by the various stakeholder communities. To avoid these problems, ONR is interested in developing small, self-contained data representations and ontologies that can be cross-connected and linked, as needed, to form larger, more complex data representations and ontologies. ONR sees this approach as more agile and flexible, better suited to leverage the work of other communities, and more conducive to support continual evolution.

Proposals in this Thrust Area shall speak to the proposer's ideas and experience in developing federated data representations and ontologies.

For this effort, ONR seeks proposals that will leverage data models and ontologies that have already been developed by various communities. It will be important to demonstrate a good understanding of current data representations and ontologies that already exist, and to address how they can be leveraged. Wherever possible, the use of existing data representations and ontologies from industry and/or from other government and DoD is highly desirable. Examples of such existing data representations and ontologies include

• Common Data Model (CDM) - from the Navy's Product Line Architecture (PLA).

• Track Data Model (TDM) - also from the Navy's PLA

• ASW Community-of-Interest Data Model (ACDM)

• Ontology for Geography Markup Language (OGC)

To fully support the diverse needs of Naval Warfare, it is necessary to represent and model information across a wide range of supporting disciplines. ONR is interested in data representation and ontology solutions that address and account for the following areas: Combat ID, Spectrum Management, Cyber, Blue and Red Force Readiness, Blue and Red Force Structure and Capabilities, Plans & Tasks, Meteorological, and Environment.

The S&T Challenges for this Thrust Area are as follows:

• How can we speed up the creation of data representation and ontology designs from taking years to taking weeks or months?

• How do we avoid the proliferation of too many specialized data representations and ontologies such that it becomes too hard to manage them and integrate them?

• How can we automate the capture and ingestion of legacy data representations and ontologies into the RDF/OWL framework?

• How can we automate the cross-connection of different data representations and ontologies from across diverse communities?

• What are the key data representations and ontology constructs for addressing Cross Warfare Area planning and resource allocation activities?

Those selected to work this Thrust Area will be expected to evolve the data representations and ontologies that are being developed to support the needs of other Thrust Areas. Proposals shall therefore not presume specific answers to what is the right data representation and ontology for a specific area, but shall show how the methodologies and solutions that are proposed can be flexible and adaptable to evolving needs.

Thrust Area #2. Naval Data Source Ingestion and Indexing.

In order to enable the development of advanced Naval Warfighting analytics, it is essential to acquire and make available large data storage that covers the full range of data relevant to ASW and IAMD. The purpose of work under this Thrust Area is to (1) build a rich set of data within the Naval Tactical Cloud Big Data environment that will support the development of advanced analytics for ASW and IAMD and (2) develop enhancements and aug-mentations to the current Naval Tactical Cloud that facilitate faster and easier data ingest and indexing.

Proposers for this Thrust Area shall demonstrate that they have skills, resources, experience, plan, strategy to monitor and correct the plan and one of the areas reviewers will focus on is computer science; another will be their capabilities with data. The goal is to focus on data ingest and indexing, not on educating a technical team as to what these data sources are and how they are used. Successful proposals in this area will require clear demon-stration of data domain expertise in the areas that are proposed.

The ability to ingest and index such a large range of data sets requires the development of highly agile and effective tools and processes for capturing the data. The current Naval Tactical Cloud environment comes with a set of tools and processes for facilitating data ingest and subsequent data indexing. However, the current state of these tools and processes requires Data Scientists to have a deep understanding of the Naval Tactical Cloud's underlying Ha-doop/Accumulo environment, and as a result, Data ingest and indexing activities can be highly complex, take significant amounts of time, and require special talent. ONR is interested in software tools and/or methodologies that Proposers can put forward that will help improve the current state of the practice for data ingest and indexing.

Primary interest is leveraging existing tools and methodologies, not developing tools and processes as part of this BAA. However, exceptional ideas for the development of such tools and processes will be considered if (1) they offer a compelling improvement over the current state of the practice and (2) they are considered highly cost effective.

The S&T Challenges for this Thrust Area are as follows:

• How can we improve the speed and accuracy of data ingest?

• How can we simplify the data ingest process to allow people without specialized knowledge of Hadoop/Accumulo to take on the data ingestion role.

• How do we establish and maintain a sufficiently comprehensive and up to date integrated Big Data store to fully support the needs of ASW and IAMD analytic development?

• What are the best ways to index the Naval Data Sources to effectively support ASW and IAMD analytics?

• To what extent can we automate data indexing to improve the speed at which effective indexes can be generated?

• How do we balance the need for extensive and rich indexes with the limitations of storage onboard ships, especially for smaller platforms such as submarines and destroyers?

Those Proposers selected to work this Thrust Area will be expected to adjust their data ingesting and indexing to support the needs of analytic developers working in Thrust Area #3. Proposals shall therefore account for some degree of flexibility as to the range and scope of the data that is put forward as part of your proposal.

Thrust Area #3. Naval Warfighting Analytics.

The central thesis behind Big Data is that great insights can be obtained from large diverse data sets if properly exploited with the right analytics. As ASW and IAMD threats become more capable and more numerous, the development of more powerful analytics is one of the few avenues available to the U.S. Navy to overcome these challenges. The objective of Thrust Area #3 is to develop and evaluate advanced analytics for supporting Naval Warf-ighting activities, particularly for ASW and IAMD. ONR is seeking highly innovative concepts for analytics that will make significant improvements to these Naval Warfighting areas.

All analytics developed under this effort will be expected to run in the Naval Tactical Cloud analytic environment. The Naval Tactical Cloud provides a batch analytic platform (MapReduce) and a streaming analytic platform (STORM). It is important that proposed analytic efforts be compatible with one of these elements of the Naval Tactical Cloud. Proposed analytic efforts that are incompatible with the Naval Tactical Cloud analytic environment will not be considered.

Proposals for this Thrust Area shall include the following information for each proposed analytic effort: (1) A description of what the analytic is intended to accomplish; (2) What Warfare Area the analytic is intended to support (if applicable to more than one Warfare Area, please indicate); (3) Whether the analytic is a batch or streaming analytic; (4) The rationale for why the analytic will result in significant improvements to the stated Warfare Areas; (5) The data sources required for the analytic; and (6) An assessment of the computational complexity of the analytic.

ONR places no constraints on the type of analytic proposed or the data required to support the analytic (so long as it is reasonable that the data in question can be obtained in real world situations). However, greater weight will be given to analytics that (1) make more extensive use of cross-community data sources and (2) offer the most compelling case for significantly improving ASW and IAMD Warfighting performance.

Some specific examples of analytic areas of interest include:

• Improving Combat ID of submarines, ships, aircraft, and missiles, by analytics that combine data from National sensors, tactical sensors, and Combat Systems.

• Creating more accurate atmospheric and oceanographic forecasts by combing traditional METOC sensors and predictions with data collected by tactical sensors and combat systems.

• Improving the prediction of enemy operations and plans using analytics that exploit historical patterns of life combined with real-time sensor data of enemy movements and actions.

The S&T Challenges for this Thrust Area are as follows:

• How to effectively integrate data across traditionally separate communities (e.g., Intelligence, C2, and Combat Systems)?

• Developing advanced analytics that significantly improve detection and identification of ASW and IAMD threats.

• Developing advanced analytics that significantly reduce the time required to detect, identify, and engage ASW and IAMD threats.

• Developing advanced analytics that significantly increase the effective range and performance of ASW and IAMD platforms and sensors.

• Developing advanced analytics that predict enemy behavior including confidence factor.

• Control False Identification.

Those Proposers selected to work this Thrust Area will be expected to feed their analytics with data from the Big Data store developed in Thrust Area #2.

Proposals shall therefore account for some degree of flexibility as to the range and scope of the data that will be used to support your proposed analytic efforts.

Thrust Area #4. Data Cloud Security and Integrity.

The migration to the NTC environment provides an opportunity to give the warfighter the flexibility to fight through an adversary's attempts to use cyber to degrade or deny the decision making capabilities of naval commanders. Greater cyber maneuverability can be achieved through increased diversity, agility, non-persistent systems, controlled access/centralization, etc. For example, machine virtualization offers a means of decoupling software from a specific hardware implementation. It is now possible to use a commodity hardware model with different hard-ware/software instantiations deployed across the fleet, or even on a ship, at any given time. For an adversary to have a decisive advantage, they need to be able to compromise an operationally significant number of these instantiations. Similarly, rapidly swapping out hardware components, changing hypervisors or switching to new (or reverting to old) virtualized instantiations of an application potentially negate the significant amount of time / resources expended by an adversary to attack a single hardware or software component. Finally, virtual machines are non-persistent and, when re-started, can be returned to their original trusted state to resolve technical problems as well as minimize time that malware has a foothold in the system. These are examples illustrate how virtualization enables greater cyber maneuverability through diversity and agility

The S&T Challenges for this Thrust Area are as follows:

• Adapt/improve technologies and techniques to protect the NTC by identifying, isolating, and/or removing adversary cyber actors from this infrastructure.

• Develop analogous capabilities or new approaches for the Naval Big Data Ecosystem to assure the integrity and accuracy of the underlying data (which consists of many different types / formats) used to make decisions. These approaches shall provide the capability to understand the provenance of a piece of data (i.e. who created it, what was the process used to create it, who has touched or modified it over its life cycle), to validate or estimate the trust-worthiness of that data and if possible determine the likelihood that a piece of data has been tampered with. If it has been determined that a piece of data has been tampered with, the framework shall assist in finding other data elements that may have been tampered with and ultimately provide the ability to restore the tampered data to a known good state.

• Integrate these capabilities into advanced cyber analytics / applications that leverage the NTC analytic environment while being simple enough for a sailor to operate.

Thrust Area Dependencies.

Work in the first three Thrust Areas will be addressed separately but are not to be viewed in isolation. It is essential that the solutions in each Thrust Area function in a supportive manner. It is essential that data representations and ontologies developed under Thrust Area 1 support the needs of the other Thrust Areas and it is essential that the Data Sources developed under Thrust Area 2 support the advanced analytics developed under Thrust Area 3. ONR will assume responsibility and management to achieve inter-thrust area coordination of awardee activity if necessary.

To facilitate the alignment and integration of capabilities across Thrust Areas, ONR intends to define a set of preferred interface standards for the interoperation of Thrust Areas. The current view of these interface standards are contained in the "Naval Data Ecosystem Framework," which can be obtained at (http://_________). Proposers should review this framework and show how any proposed efforts will be compatible with the Framework. While ONR will not automatically exclude highly innovative proposals that do not conform to this framework, greater weight will be given to proposals that do conform. For proposals of capabilities that do not align with the Frame-work, the proposer should indicate their rationale for why their proposal cannot conform.

Integration and Experimentation.

ONR intends all capabilities developed under this BAA to be integrated into the Naval Tactical Cloud Reference Implementation and undergo extensive experimentation to assess performance and operational effectiveness. To ensure successful integration, ONR will make available to all awardees or offerors a Naval Tactical Cloud Reference Implementation developer package (provided as a set of Virtual Machines).

Performers will be expected to use the NTC RI developer environment to support Data Science and analytic development and integration activities. Performers will also be expected to bring capabilities developed under this BAA into ONR's Limited Technical Experimentation (LTE) activities. LTEs are multi-performer events where the Data Science and analytic capabilities of multiple performers will be integrated and then evaluated in an operationally relevant environment. Performers will be expected to provide support for integrating their capabilities into the experiment and with the capabilities of other Performers. Performers will also be expected to provide additional technical support to facilitate the set up and execution of the LTEs, including planning for the experiment, set up and initialization of the experiment (including in-strumentation of the Performer's software deliverable if needed), execution of the experiment, and data collection during the experiment. ONR will provide a separate analysis team to independently assess the experimental articles and results. However, Performers will be expected to support the analysis team by responding to inquiries and pre-paring white papers on patterns and practices. All Proposers shall include resources and personnel as part of your Proposal to account for these LTE related activities.

Technology Transition.

ONR desires that S&T products that result from this BAA be capable of, and ready for, integration into yearly technology experiments involving Navy and/or Marine Corps systems. Where possible, products shall use common standards, open architectures, and be extensible for technology advances. ONR expects all work performed under this BAA, including the development of data representations, ontologies, analytics, and data security mechanisms to be made available to the Government with full Government Purpose Data Rights. Innovative Science and Technology (S&T) that supports these goals will be seriously considered and if selected, ONR will provide assistance in technology transition.

Work funded under a BAA may include basic research, applied research and some advanced technology development (ATD). With regard to any restrictions on the conduct or outcome of work funded under this BAA, ONR will follow the guidance on and definition of "contracted fundamental research" as provided in the Under Secretary of Defense (Acquisition, Technology and Logistics) Memorandum of 24 May 2010. As defined therein the definition of "contracted fundamental research", in a DoD contractual context, includes [research performed under] grants and contracts that are (a) funded by Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation Budget Activity 1 (Basic Research), whether performed by universities or industry or (b) funded by Budget Activity 2 (Applied Research) and performed on campus at a university. The research shall not be considered fundamental in those rare and exceptional circumstances where the applied research effort presents a high likelihood of disclosing performance characteristics of military systems or manufacturing technologies that are unique and critical to defense, and where agreement on restrictions have been recorded in the contract or grant.

Pursuant to DoD policy, research performed under grants and contracts that are a) funded by Budget Category 6.2 (Applied Research) and NOT performed on-campus at a university or b) funded by Budget

Category 6.3 (Advanced Research) does not meet the definition of "contracted fundamental research." In conformance with the USD(AT&L) guidance and National Security Decision Direction 189, ONR will place no restriction on the conduct or reporting of unclassified "contracted fundamental research," except as otherwise required by statute, regulation or Executive Order. For certain research projects, it may be possible that although the research being performed by the prime contractor is restricted research, a subcontractor may be conducting "contracted fundamental research." In those cases, it is the prime contractor's responsibility in the proposal to identify and describe the subcontracted unclassified research and include a statement confirming that the work has been scoped, negotiated, and determined to be fundamental research according to the prime contractor and research performer.

Normally, fundamental research is awarded under grants with universities and under contracts with industry.

ATD is normally awarded under contracts and may require restrictions during the conduct of the research and DoD pre-publication review of research results due to subject matter sensitivity.

FAR Part 35 restricts the use of the Broad Agency Announcements (BAAs), such as this, to the acquisition of basic and applied research and that portion of advanced technology development not related to the development of a specific system or hardware procurement. Contracts and grants and other assistance agreements made under BAAs are for scientific study and experimentation directed towards advancing the state of the art and increasing knowledge or understanding.

As regards to the present BAA, the Research and Development efforts to be funded will consist of applied research and advanced technology development. The funds available to support awards are Budget Activity 2 and 3.

THIS ANNOUNCEMENT IS NOT FOR THE ACQUISITION OF TECHNICAL, ENGINEERING AND

OTHER TYPES OF SUPPORT SERVICES.

G. Point(s) of Contact -

Questions of a technical nature should be submitted to:

Program Manager Name: Dr. Carey Schwartz Address: 875 North Randolph Street, Arlington, VA, 22203 Code: 311 Phone: 703.696.7824 Email: carey.schwartz@navy.mil

Questions of a Business nature, and suggestions for improvement, should be submitted to:

Name: Lynnette Desorcie Address: 875 North Randolph Street, Arlington, VA, 22203 Code: BD252 Phone: 703.696.4324 Email: lynnette.desorcie@navy.mil

Any questions regarding this solicitation must be provided to the Technical Point of Contact and Business

Point of Contact listed in this solicitation. All questions shall be submitted in writing by electronic mail.

Comments or questions submitted shall be concise and to the point, eliminating any unnecessary verbiage.

In addition, the relevant part and paragraph of the Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) shall be referenced.

Questions submitted within 2 weeks prior to a deadline may not be answered, and the due date for submission of the white paper and/or full proposal will not be extended.

Amendments will be posted to one or more of the following webpages:

• Federal Business Opportunities (FEDBIZOPPS) Webpage - https://www.fbo.gov/

• Grants.gov Webpage - http://www.grants.gov/

• ONR Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) Webpage - http://www.onr.navy.mil/en/Contracts-

Grants/Funding-Opportunities/Broad-Agency-Announcements.aspx

Questions of a security nature shall be submitted to:

Diana Pacheco Industrial Security Specialist Office of Naval Research Security Department, Code 43 One Liberty Center 875 N. Randolph Street Arlington, VA 22203-1995 Email Address: diana.pacheco@navy.mil

Note: All UNCLASSIFIED communications shall be submitted via e-mail to the Technical Point of Contract (POC) with a copy to the designated Business POC.

CLASSIFIED questions shall be handled through the ONR Security POC. Specifically, any entity wanting to ask a CLASSIFIED question shall send an email to the ONR Security POC with copy to both the Technical POC and the Business POC stating that the entity would like to ask a CLASSIFIED question. DO NOT EMAIL ANY CLASSIFIED QUESTIONS. The Security POC will contact the entity and arrange for the CLASSIFED question to be asked through a secure method of communication.

H. Instrument Type(s) - Contracts and Grants

Awards may take the form of Contracts and Grants as appropriate. ONR reserves the right to award a different instrument type if deemed to be in the best interest of the Government.

Any contract awards resulting from this BAA will incorporate the most current FAR, DFARs, NMCARS and ONR clauses.

Examples of model contracts can be found on the ONR website at the following link:

http://www.onr.navy.mil/Contracts-Grants/submit-proposal/contracts-proposal/contract-model-awards.aspx.

ONR Contract specific representations and certifications can be accessed on the following page of the ONR https://www.fbo.gov/ http://www.grants.gov/ http://www.onr.navy.mil/en/Contracts-Grants/Funding-Opportunities/Broad-Agency-Announcements.aspx http://www.onr.navy.mil/en/Contracts-Grants/Funding-Opportunities/Broad-Agency-Announcements.aspx http://www.onr.navy.mil/Contracts-Grants/submit-proposal/contracts-proposal/contract-model-awards.aspx website: http://www.onr.navy.mil/Contracts-Grants/Funding-Opportunities/Requests-for-Information.aspx.

Examples of model grants can be found on the ONR website at the following link:

http://www.onr.navy.mil/en/Contracts-Grants/submit-proposal/grants-proposal/model-grant.aspx.

I. Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) Numbers -

12.300

J. Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) Titles -

Basic & Applied Scientific Research

K. Other Information -

II. AWARD INFORMATION

A. Amount and Period of Performance- Estimated Total Amount of Funding Available ($K):

FY2015 FY2016 FY2017 FY2018 FY2019 Total

$3750 $4750 $8500 $4750 $6750 $28500

Anticipated Number of Awards: One or more awards per Topic, as described in the Research Opportunity Description. An Offeror may propose on more than one Topic.

Anticipated Range of Individual Award Amounts: As required to complete each Topic. There may be more than one performer per Topic.

Anticipated Period of Performance: Up to five (5) years

B. Production and Testing of Prototypes-

In the case of funded proposals for the production and testing of prototypes, ONR may during the contract period add a contract line item or contract option for the provision of advanced component development or for the delivery of additional prototype units. However, such a contract addition shall be subject to the limitations contained in Section 819 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010.

III. ELIGIBILITY INFORMATION

All responsible sources from academia and industry may submit proposals under this BAA. Inclusive of Small Business Concerns, Historically Underutilized Business Zone (HUBZone) Concerns, Service- Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) Concerns, Small Disadvantaged Business (SDB) Concerns, Women-Owned Small Business (WOSB) Concerns, Veteran-Owned Small Business (VOSB) Concerns, and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Minority Institutions (MIs) are all highly encouraged to submit proposals as prime contractors and as well as join others (e.g., subcontractors) http://www.onr.navy.mil/Contracts-Grants/Funding-Opportunities/Requests-for-Information.aspx http://www.onr.navy.mil/en/Contracts-Grants/submit-proposal/grants-proposal/model-grant.aspx in submitting proposals. However, no portion of this BAA will be set-aside for Small Businesses, HUBZones, SDVOSBs, SDBs, WOSBs, VOSBs or HBCU and MI participation, due to the desire to seek research ideas from all entities.

Federally Funded Research & Development Centers (FFRDCs), including Department of Energy National Laboratories, are not eligible to receive awards under this BAA. However, teaming arrangements between FFRDCs and eligible principal bidders are allowed so long as they are permitted under the sponsoring agreement between the Government and the specific FFRDC.

Navy laboratories and warfare centers as well as other Department of Defense and civilian agency laboratories are also not eligible to receive awards under this BAA and should not directly submit either white papers or full proposals in response to this BAA. If any such organization is interested in one or more of the programs described herein, the organization should contact an appropriate ONR POC to discuss its area of interest. The various scientific divisions of ONR are identified at http://www.onr.navy.mil/. As with FFRDCs, these types of federal organizations may team with other responsible sources from academia and industry that are submitting proposals under this BAA.

University Affiliated Research Centers (UARC) are eligible to submit proposals under this BAA unless precluded from doing so by their Department of Defense UARC contracts.

Teams are also encouraged and may submit proposals in any and all areas. However, Offerors must be willing to cooperate and exchange software, data and other information in an integrated program with other contractors, as well as with system integrators, selected by ONR.

Some topics cover export controlled technologies. Research in these areas is limited to "U.S. persons" as defined in the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) - 22 CFR § 1201.1 et seq.

There is no requirement for cost sharing.

IV. APPLICATION AND SUBMISSION INFORMATION

A. Application and Submission Process - Industry Day, White Paper, Oral Presentation, Full Proposals

INDUSTRY DAY: An Industry Day will be conducted at the unclassified level for potential Offerors on Tuesday, 24 June 2014 in Arlington VA. The purpose of the meeting will be to provide potential Offerors with a better understanding of the scope of the Data Focused Naval Tactical Cloud program and objectives of this BAA. The briefing will be held at 9:00 AM Eastern Standard Time (EST) with check-in be-ginning at 8:00 AM (EST). All attendees are required to pre-register at https://www.onlineregistrationcenter.com/register.asp?m=4269&c=16 by 3:00 pm on Monday 16 Jun 2014.

Pre-registration is mandatory; WALK-IN REGISTRATION WILL NOT BE PERMITTED. If requested attendance exceeds capacity, it may be necessary to limit attendance, and organizations will be so notified.

ONR will reply via email on or Wednesday, 18 Jun 2014 to confirm attendance of registrants. Those not able to attend this briefing should consult the web page http://www.onr.navy.mil/XXXX after Tuesday, 01 July 2014 to see briefing slides and answers to questions submitted during the conference.

WHITE PAPERS: The due date for White Papers is no later than 3:00 PM (EST) on Friday, 18 July 2014.

White Papers shall be submitted as an Adobe PDF or Word 2007 file via an e-mail to Dr. Carey Schwartz at carey.schwartz@navy.mil . The subject line of the email must state "BAA 14-009". The body of the email must include the primary point of contact's name, any additional points of contacts (names), title(s), organization, department(s) or company division(s), telephone and fax numbers, and email address(es). Each white paper shall state that it is submitted in response to BAA Number 14- 009 and cite the particular Thrust of the Research Opportunity Description that the White Paper is primarily addressing, 1,2,3, or 4. A White Paper may address only a single Thrust Area, and an Offeror may submit multiple White Papers.

WHITE PAPER EVALUATION/NOTIFICATION: Navy evaluations of the white papers will be issued via email notification on or about Friday, 15 Aug 2014. An expanded oral presentation will be subsequently requested from those Offerors whose proposed technologies have been identified as being of "particular value" to the Navy. However, any such request does not assure a subsequent award. Any Offeror whose white paper technology was not identified as being of "particular value" to the Navy is ineligible to make an oral presentation or to submit a full proposal under this BAA.

ORAL PRESENTATION: ONR will request that Project Managers (PMs)/Principal Investigators (PIs) provide an expanded oral presentation from those Offerors whose proposed technologies have been identified as being of "particular value" to ONR. The purpose of the oral presentation is to provide greater detail than can be contained in the White Paper and to permit the evaluation panel to ask questions to better understand particular aspects of the proposed effort. However, any such request does not assure a subsequent award.