A -- Proposer's Day Announcement - Persistent Ocean Surveillance (POS)

PROPOSERS DAY CONFERENCE: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will host a Proposers Day Conference in support of the Persistent Ocean Surveillance (POS) Program Broad Agency Announcement BAA04-33 on 31 August 2004 at Schafer Corporation, 3811 N. Fairfax Drive Suite 400, Arlington, VA beginning at 9:00am with an anticipated ending time of 5:00pm. The POS program will enable naval forces to conduct maritime operations in the presence of diesel submarine threats and surface craft capable of launching anti-access weapons. To effect rapid kill of anti-access defenses requires the deployment of networked sensors (agents) that are persistent and pervasive throughout the littoral. This effort will demonstrate the feasibility of a floating field of smart, long-term, station-keeping sensors capable of observing the ocean environment at a known location over an extended period of time. The program will exploit local environmental effects (wind, waves, solar energy, temperature differentials, etc.), and geo-location technologies to establish long-term, station keeping ocean environment sensors. The anticipated products are: 1) Station-keeping and energy harvesting technologies using local environmental effects capable of maintaining less than a 250m watch radius for 90% of the time and a 2,500 meter watch radius for 100% of the time over a four week period in currents as high as 2 knots; and 2) Prototype (tactical sized) ocean sensing buoy with continuous RF communications. DARPA is seeking concepts that will provide either an entirely new military capability or will enhance existing capability by orders of magnitude (based on demonstrable relevant metrics), rather than extensions to existing systems or minor improvements to present capability. The purpose of the conference is to provide program information, address questions from potential proposers, and provide a forum for potential proposers to present their capabilities for teaming opportunities. A portion of the conference agenda will be reserved for presentations by prospective proposers who wish to present company overviews and discuss their POS-relevant technology expertise. Presentations may contain up to five (5) slides and will be limited to five (5) minutes followed by five (5) minutes of question/answer if needed. All material will be subject to review by DARPA for sensitive but unclassified information. It is the presenter?s responsibility to ensure that all material that is presented is approved by the organization that funded the research. Proposers interested in making presentations should contact Mr. Mark Kaczmarek ([email protected]) by 24 August 2004 for scheduling. An electronic copy of the presentation slides must be provided to Mr. Kaczmarek by 24 August 2004 for prior review by DARPA. Registration for the Proposers Day Conference is on-line at https://www.schafertmd.com/POS. If on-line registration is not possible, please contact Mr. Kaczmarek by e-mail no later than 24 August 2004 to register. Foreign nationals will be required to complete and return the DARPA Foreign National Visitor Request (DARPA Form 60) no later than 24 August 2004 if they wish to attend the conference. Attendance at the Proposers Day Conference is not required to propose to any BAA that may be associated with this technology area. Updates to program information will be posted as necessary to http://www.darpa.mil/ato/solicit/POS/index.htm.