(CLOSED) University Consortium for Applied Hypersonics (UCAH) (TEES/JHTO-RPP-2022-002)

The Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (OUSD), Research and Engineering (R&E) Joint Hypersonics Transition Office (JHTO), in partnership with Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) and the UCAH, is soliciting White Papers (WPs) and Prototype Project Proposals (PPPs), supporting projects that will accelerate hypersonics technology development, develop the nation’s future hypersonics workforce, and facilitate the transition of ready technologies into operational capabilities. The Project Technology Areas descriptions are listed in Section 2 of this document. The JHTO reserves the right to fund none, some, or all the submissions made in response to this RWP/ RPP. Furthermore, JHTO may choose to fund a portion of a submission or a combination of submissions. No funding for direct reimbursement of WP or PPP development costs will be provided. Any references within this document to the UCAH website, specific to this RWP/RPP Project Call, will utilize the following website: https://hypersonics.tamu.edu/project-call/.

JHTO in partnership with the UCAH are interested in receiving Challenge Project WPs and PPPs for the following areas (See the RFP for details) :

• Technical Area 1: MULTI-FUNCTIONAL HIGH TEMPERATURE MATERIALS AND STRUCTURES
  • The Joint Hypersonics Transition Office (JHTO) is soliciting innovative proposals in the area of multi-functional thermal protection systems (TPS). Multi-functional, in this case, refers to features or capabilities beyond the main function (thermal management, oxidation/ablation resistance and structural integrity) that a TPS traditionally provides to a hypersonic vehicle. Examples could include, but are not limited to, power generation, sensing/transmission, drag reduction, propulsion enhancement, or enhanced lethality. Successful multifunctional systems will be demonstrably more efficient/effective than separate instantiations of the functions. Multifunctional approaches for this solicitation should be broadly applicable across different hypersonic platforms including boost-glide and air-breathing cruise vehicles.
• Technology Area 2: EFFECTS OF FLOW INTERACTIONS ON END GAME CONTROL EFFECTIVENESS
  • The Joint Hypersonics Transition Office (JHTO) is soliciting innovative proposals that enable revolutionary advances in multi-fidelity Modeling and Simulation (M&S) tools that can quantitatively assess control surface performance during extreme maneuvers at hypersonic speeds and altitudes lower that 80,000 feet. Advances in M&S tools will enable the development of force and hinge-moment requirements for faster response control-surface deflections, which increase maneuverability. This effort will provide updated M&S tools validated by ground testing and will support the leap-ahead capability of robust operation in adverse environments.
• Technology Area 3: ADAPTIVE DECISIONING AND RESPONSE
  • The Joint Hypersonics Transition Office (JHTO) is soliciting innovative proposals for executive decision-making algorithms to increase overall effectiveness of hypersonic vehicles designed for strike and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions that face an increasingly hostile operational environment due to kinetic threats. To ensure resilient engagement of time-critical and high-priority targets, a hypersonic vehicle must react quickly to changes in the operational environment. To that end, approaches are sought that enable adaptive, in-flight decision making to determine and initiate suitable courses of action.
• Technology Area 4: BUILDING TRUST IN AUTONOMOUS MISSION PLANNING
  • The Joint Hypersonics Transition Office (JHTO) is soliciting innovative proposals that build trust in the area of autonomy and its application to left-of-launch (prior to launch) hypersonic mission planning. The generation of high confidence trajectories and associated mission plans for hypersonic flight systems is computationally intense due to its extreme operating environment and velocities. Compressed engagement timelines and increasing operational capabilities of these systems will make human-in-the-loop mission planning less and less tractable. To ensure the robust and timely generation of high-impact hypersonic mission plans, approaches are sought to increase the confidence in automated mission planning approaches to enable the design of future autonomous mission planning systems built with trust as a quantifiable requirement.
• Technology Area 5: FUSION ALGORITHMS FOR POSITION, NAVIGATION, AND TIMING
  • The Joint Hypersonics Transition Office (JHTO) is seeking innovative proposals to advance algorithms and methods used to fuse hypersonic-relevant navigation sensor data to assure sufficiently accurate and robust position, navigation, and timing (PNT) solutions remain available as the contested environment challenges continue to grow. Approaches are sought to develop new or improved methods to reliably determine and assess the validity of conventional and alternate PNT (alt-PNT) sensor outputs and their use in a fused PNT solution in a hypersonic-relevant environment. This effort will advance algorithms and methods for determining how to trust, exploit, and fuse sensor data, and supports robust, high-performance PNT solutions critical to both offensive and defensive hypersonic vehicle applications.
• Technology Area 6: NEXT GENERATION TECHNOLOGIES
  • The Joint Hypersonics Transition Office (JHTO) is soliciting innovative proposals across a broad range of technology disciplines to advance technologies that will extend hypersonic and high-speed weapon system capabilities. The effort can be applicable to one or more weapon system types such as high-speed projectiles, boost-glide weapons, air-breathing tactical missiles and high-speed platforms. Areas of interest include, but are not limited to, efficient aerodynamic designs, robust guidance navigation and control systems, innovative hot and cold structural design, increased scramjet operational margins, novel sensors, increased lethality and mission planning.

Applicant Eligibility:

Applicant shall be a University Consortium Member prior to submitting a WP Notice of Intent (NOI), as described in Section 3.3.1 of this document. All Awardees shall maintain their Consortium Membership, in good standing, for the duration of the PSA. Each University Consortium Member is limited to leading three WPs. Each WP is limited to a maximum of four Principal Investigators (PIs). This does not preclude teaming between PIs from different University Consortium Members, if no university exceeds the submission limit on which it is the lead.

Except as addressed in the next paragraph, individuals supporting an awarded PSA shall be United States (U.S.) citizens prior to award. Awarded PSAs are expected to include controlled unclassified information (CUI), International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) and/or Distribution Statement C information, and therefore, the National Security Decision Directive 189 does not apply. Consortium Members choosing to collaborate with Affiliate Consortium Members are responsible for all ITAR and export data licensing requirements. All publications will require review and approval prior to release. Universities responding to this RWP/RPP shall be able to appropriately maintain and handle sensitive data.

Affiliate Consortium Members include industry, laboratories, University-Affiliated Research Centers (UARCs), and Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs), and Universities (on a case-by-case basis) from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Affiliate Consortium Members are not eligible to respond to this RWP/RPP as the lead institution, but may team with an eligible University Consortium Member and be funded accordingly. University Consortium Members and Affiliate Consortium Members are responsible for determining the extent to which their participation in WP/PPP submissions is appropriate and consistent with their entities’ authorities and applicable laws, regulations, and policies.

Teams are encouraged in all areas to include:

• Consortium Members
• Other universities
• Industry
• Laboratories
• ARCs/FFRDCs
• Minority Serving Institutions
• Nontraditional Defense Contractors (NTDC)
• Nonprofit Research Institutions (NRI)

Period of Performance: Three-year with an anticipated start date of January 1, 2024