Advanced Cyber Operations Prototypes

The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) is seeking to develop cyber operations prototypes for transition into operational Department of Defense (DoD) platforms to facilitate superiority in the Cyber Domain. The strategic vision for cyber superiority is to ensure the success of cyberspace-dependent missions in air, space, and cyberspace. The purpose of this Advanced Research Announcement (ARA) is to research, design, develop, implement, and refine the next- generation cyber platform and framework prototypes that also can be integrated and transitioned to existing platforms and frameworks where cyber capabilities can be hosted and executed to expand and enhance full spectrum cyber operations, cyber assurance and resiliency capabilities within the appropriate Department of Defense (DoD) Cyber Weapon Systems as well as US Government (USG), Intelligent Community (IC) and coalition cyber platforms so that they can enhance their cyber warfighting mission systems. Prototype integration areas of interest include methods of improving coordination and advancing the capability to conduct cyberspace operations in a multitude of environments including cloud architectures, code analysis and evaluation, cyber modeling & simulation, decision support for cyber missions, design frameworks, evaluation & measurement techniques, formal methods, mobile and embedded device security, methods/means for non-traditional cybersecurity, methods for data security in untrusted environments, protocol development and analysis, cyber situational awareness and risk estimation, secure development tools and techniques, standards for information exchange, trusted hardware and software, virtualization, and zero trust computing.