IARPA Broad Agency Announcement - Effective Quantitative Antenna Limits for Performance (EQuAL-P) Program

Amendment No. 3

The purpose of this amendment is to provide additional answers to questions received in response to this
BAA. The Q&A is below:

Amendment No. 3
Questions & Answers

Question #1: If a bidder submits a proposal beyond the "Proposal Due Date for Initial Round of
Selections" of 04 February 2022 but before the "Closing Date" of 04 March 2022, will it still be reviewed
or is this gap in dates meant to allow time for the cost volume requests & submissions? If it still would be
reviewed, would it be reviewed with the same evaluation criteria for proposals received before 04
February 2022?

Answer #1: Per Section 4.C.2 of the BAA, "Volume 1 shall be submitted by the date and time specified
in the BAA, General Information section, in order to be considered in the initial round. It is in the
Government's sole discretion whether to evaluate proposals received after that date. Selection remains
contingent on the technical and funding availability evaluation factors."

Question #2: Will we receive any feedback on proposals selected for negotiation? For example, do you
anticipate that the Government may request tasks or costs be added, removed, or modified?

Answer #2: Per Section 2 "Award Information" of the BAA, "The Government reserves the right to select
for negotiation all, some, one, or none of the proposals received in response to this solicitation and to
make awards without negotiations with Offerors. The Government also reserves the right to accept
proposals in their entirety or to select only portions of proposals for negotiations for award. Evaluation
and award of proposals will follow FAR 35 processes as described herein."

Question #3: Can details of subcontractor budgets appear in the budget table in Volume I, Section 3? In
our case, subcontractor budgets are the same order of magnitude as the prime so it seems that they
should be broken out rather than listed under the "subcontractor" line.

Answer #3: Per Section 4.B.1.c.F of the BAA (pg. 20), the Government has provided a SAMPLE format.

Question #4: Must all listed subsections appear under the heading and order listed in the BAA Section
4.B.1? e.g. must Section 3 be organized as below?
3-A Statement of Work
3-B Detailed description of the objectives, scientific relevance, technical approach and expected
significance of the work
3-C State-of-the-art
3-D Data sources
...etc.

Answer #4: Per Section 4.B.1C of the BAA, "This section of the proposal shall provide the detailed, in-
depth discussion of the proposed research as well as the supporting information about the Offeror's
capabilities and resources. Specific attention shall be given to addressing both the risks and payoffs of
the proposed research and why the proposed research will achieve the goals, objectives, metrics, and
milestones in this BAA. The Government reserves the right to reject a proposal if the information
requested below is not adequately addressed."

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Amendment No. 2

The purpose of this amendment is to provide answers to questions received in response to this BAA. The
Q&A is below:

Amendment No. 2 - Questions & Answers

Question #1: Are tunable antenna approaches within scope of this BAA? That is, if we were to propose a
solution which reconfigures an ESA in non-real-time to achieve a large tunable bandwidth without
violating the Chu limits for instantaneous bandwidth for any individual tuning state, would this be of
interest?

Answer #1: As described, this solution would not meet the objectives of the program.

Question #2: Would a proposal that included magnetic loading to achieve 10 dB improvement over the
Gustafsson limit for electrically thin ESAs without invoking non-LTI constructs be of interest?

Answer #2: While the BAA (1.A) states that "it is anticipated that passive, time-invariant solutions will
not be successful in accomplishing the aims of the program," any solution that accomplishes the goals of
the program is acceptable as long as the proposed strategies have a firm theoretical basis that are
described with sufficient detail that reviewers will be able to assess the viability of the approaches (BAA
1.C). It should also be noted that in 1.A, the BAA expresses the preference for techniques that are
applicable to a variety of aspect ratios and the presence or absence of a ground plane and recognizes
that the bandwidth-efficiency limit for (non-spherical) geometries must be calculated appropriately.

Question #3: The BAA is written in such a way as to assume that active and/or time varying solutions
are the only possible method for realizing gains within ESAs. If we believe that this is not the case and
that we can obtain the desired gains without resorting to non-LTI methods, would such proposals be
accepted?

Answer #3: While the BAA (1.A) states that "it is anticipated that passive, time-invariant solutions will
not be successful in accomplishing the aims of the program," any solution that accomplishes the goals of
the program is acceptable as long as the proposed strategies have a firm theoretical basis that are
described with sufficient detail that reviewers will be able to assess the viability of the approaches (BAA
1.C).

Question #4: The solicitation requests a demonstration of an operational prototype with superior
performance characteristics compared with a traditional ESA - to be determined by the government. Will
the government provide a recommended list of traditional ESAs that a performer could use to for purpose
of comparison prior to the government team Test & Evaluation period during Phase I, for example? Does
the government plan to make these traditional ESAs available to all of the performers as GFE, or are the
performers expected to provide comparison antennas at their own expense?

Answer #4: According to 1.E.1 of the BAA, "To facilitate evaluation of the utility of the Offeror's
technique, a comparable ESA with state-of-the art performance should be proposed." Additionally,
according to Table 1, "Validation via measurement of the performance of the proposed, comparable ESA
approaching its fundamental geometrical limit" is a Phase I Metric Target. While it is incumbent on the
Offeror to propose a comparable ESA, the question accurately points out that the government will make
the final determination as to what is achievable by an otherwise equivalent ESA (BAA 1.A.1). The
government currently does not have plans to make any particular ESAs available to Performers.

Question #5: Are the BAA definitions of ESA size and the maximum ESA size requirements for free space
only?

Answer #5: Yes, please assume the environment is free space when calculating the electrical size of the
ESA to enable straightforward comparison to typical fielded systems. If the proposed system is especially
suited to a different environment, we will take this into consideration as part of the value added by the
proposed system.

Question #6: Is it acceptable to submit a budgetary cost estimate summary roll-up in Volume 1 section
3.f? A budgetary cost estimate would be within -10% to +25% of the value detailed in Volume 2 - Cost
Proposal.

Answer #6: Proposal submissions must be in compliance with the requirements in the BAA. Per 4.B.1.c.F
of the BAA (page 20): "Describe the cost, schedule, and milestones for the proposed research, including
cost estimates by cost element for base period, the option period(s) and the total program summary, and
company cost share, if any, as well as, costs by technical area(s) and tasks (see tables below for sample
format). The milestones shall not include proprietary information (Offeror can use their own format for
milestones).

(Note: The full Volume 2 - Cost Proposal is not required unless requested by the CO; therefore, it is
critical that Offerors address this element in their technical proposal so the Government can evaluate
funding availability. See BAA Sections 4.B.2, 5.A., and 5.B)."

Question #7: In the FAQ, an answer is provided that is somewhat ambiguous, when it states: "An Offeror
may choose to address TC-3 operational prototype for receive but not address TC-2 or TC-4." Please
confirm the following was the intended FAQ meaning: "In addition to the required TC-1, an offeror may
choose to address only the TC-3 operational prototype for receive, although choice of all others is
admitted."

Answer #7: Please refer to the previously answered question and section 4.B.1 of the BAA.


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Amendment No. 1

The purpose of this amendment is to provide answers to questions received in response to this BAA. The
Q&A is included as an attachment. In addition, the amendment sets the due date for questions to
January 14, 2022 at 4:00PM PT. A subsequent amendment will provide answers to those questions
received by the due date for questions. Questions received after the due date for questions will be
answered only at the government's discretion.

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The Naval Information Warfare Center, Pacific (NIWC Pacific), on behalf of the Intelligence Advanced
Research Projects Activity (IARPA), is soliciting proposals under this Broad Agency Announcement (BAA)
for the Effective Quantitative Antenna Limits for Performance (EQuAL-P) Program. The solicitation
process will follow Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Part 35, Research and Development Contracting,
as supplemented with additional information included in this notice. Awards based on responses to this
BAA will be considered the result of full and open competition in accordance with 10 U.S.C. § 2302 and
will be placed as procurement contracts only. The BAA (N66001-22-S-0031) is attached to this
solicitation notice and may be accessed through the NAVWAR e-Commerce Central website.