DoD Announces 2005 SBIR Solicitation

By the Defense Alliance of Minnesota Staff

The Department of Defense (DoD) 2005.1 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Solicitation was released on November 1 st. This listing includes hundreds of SBIR topics out there that represent urgent needs for our nation’s defense effort. By law, 2.5% of DoD’s budget will go only to “small” firms (less than 500 employees) for these R&D efforts – though medium and large defense firms routinely partner with small companies and entrepreneurs nationwide to bring innovations to the market. Examples of topics that will have R&D money applied include: “All Weather Featured Based Combat Identification (Navy),” “Carbon Monoxide Detector Kit (Air Force),” and “Renewable Electric Energy Source for Special Operations Force (SOF) Maritime Combatant Craft (Special Operations Command).”

You can learn more about the DoD SBIR program at www.dodsbir.net, including some intriguing postings of success stories from small companies who have won SBIRs. A great local resource for help on SBIRs (for DoD and other federal agencies) is Minnesota Project Innovation (MPI at www.mpi.org).

DoD will begin accepting proposals December 15, 2004 with a closing date of January 14, 2005 . You have until December 14, 2004 to talk directly with the topic authors to ask technical questions about the topics. The topic authors contact information is listed with each topic. Five DoD components are participating in the SBIR solicitation.

Their topic listings can be found at the following links:

Navy  

Air Force  

National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA)  

Chemical & Biological Defense Program (CBD)

Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA)

United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM)