Bid document

DARPA-SN-27-15

Future Program Announcement
Special Notice DARPA-SN-27-15
Laguna
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
Biological Technologies Office (BTO)
Technical POC: Dr. William Mounfield, BTO Program Manager E-mail: [email protected]

BACKGROUND: The purpose of this Special Notice (SN) is to provide public notification of additional research areas of interest to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Biological Technologies Office (BTO), specifically for the forthcoming Laguna program. When released, the solicitation will be made available at https://www.sam.gov and will take precedence over any information contained in this Special Notice. Additionally, this SN may be amended with a draft solicitation when available. PROGRAM GOALS: The Department of War (DoW) depends on specialty chemical products to sustain the performance, maintainability, and readiness of defense systems. Many of the finechemical intermediates and formulated specialty chemical products required for these applications depend on vulnerable foreign supply chains.
The goal of the Laguna program is to develop and demonstrate integrated manufacturing approaches that directly convert abundant domestic feedstocks into application-ready specialty chemical formulations, while minimizing intermediate separations, processing steps, or downstream reformulation. Target areas include advanced protective and functional coatings for aircraft, ground vehicles, maritime systems, and infrastructure; composite resins and adhesives for lightweight structural assemblies, repair, and bonding applications; high-performance polymeric materials and molded structural components; and non-fluorinated replacements for fluorinated polymers used in chemically resistant, thermally stable, low-friction, barrier, dielectric, and wateror oil-repellent applications. Resulting products must meet or exceed the critical performance requirements of incumbent military materials while providing economically viable domestic alternatives to import-dependent supply chains. Domestic feedstocks include biological and petrochemical bulk products, such as, sugars, ethylene, BTX (benzene, toluene, and xylenes), and other suitable inputs produced entirely in the U.S. Laguna seeks to bypass conventional, multistep fine-chemical supply chains by integrating synthesis, processing, formulation, and validation into manufacturing approaches that deliver application-ready products with reduced waste and