NAICS CODE: 541715 FEDERAL AGENCY NAME: Department of the Air Force, Air Force Materiel Command, AFRL - Rome Research Site, AFRL/Information Directorate, 26 Electronic Parkway, Rome, NY, 13441-4514 BAA ANNOUNCEMENT TYPE: Initial announcement BROAD AGENCY ANNOUNCEMENT (BAA) TITLE: Coordinating Austere Nodes through Virtualization and Analysis of Streams (CANVAS) BAA NUMBER: FA8750-24-S-7003 PART I – OVERVIEW INFORMATION This announcement is for an Open, 2 Step BAA which is open and effective until 21 MAY 2029. Only white papers will be accepted as initial submissions; formal proposals will be accepted by invitation only. While white papers will be considered if received prior to 1600 hours Eastern Standard Time (EST) on 21 MAY 2029, the following submission dates are suggested to best align with projected funding: FY25 by 15 Jun 2024 (Please note: For FY25, AFRL is seeking whitepapers for TA1 ONLY; further, see Figure 2 on page 7; for FY25, AFRL will only consider components in WHITE; TA2 and TA1 SHADED components will not be considered for FY25. FY26 by 15 Jun 2025 FY27 by 15 Jun 2026 FY28 by 15 Jun 2027 FY29 by 15 Jun 2028 Offerors should monitor the Contract Opportunities on the SAM website at https://SAM.gov in the event this announcement is amended. CONCISE SUMMARY OF TECHNOLOGY REQUIREMENT: This BAA is seeking innovative research to develop a capability to continuously orchestrate command and control (C2) processes in an Agile Combat Employment (ACE) operational environment through distributed workflow execution. We are particularly interested in approaches to orchestrate the execution of distributed workflows that adhere to maintaining flexibility, while adapting to a dynamic operational environment. The Air Force plans to complicate the adversary's targeting problem through the distribution of forces to increase survivability and maintain functionality. Successful distributed C2 operations will rely on distributed control and decentralized execution, with an assumption that specific conditional authorities will be delegated to lower tier nodes. As the Air Force transitions from monolithic C2 nodes to many distributed nodes, it will require a capability to execute distributed C2 workflows across multiple locations while maintaining awareness of changing states to functions, resources, and mission objectives. The Coordinating Austere Nodes through Virtualization and Analysis of Streams (CANVAS) program proposes to meet these demand signals by designing and developing a system prototype that assumes contested and degraded environments will be normal for executing distributed operations. The CANVAS program proposes to develop a system for distributed task execution that includes a virtual C2 layer (TA1) to realize the concept of maintaining centralized command in distributed operations and a decentralized C2 framework (TA2) to support the execution of workflows across many physically dispersed C2 nodes. Virtualizing …