Fusion of Cooperative Information Sharing for Uncrewed Air Systems (FOCISAUS)

Distributed air operations increasingly depend on timely awareness of objects, hazards, and activities beyond the field of view of any individual platform. Cooperative perception offers a path to extend sensing coverage and reduce blind spots by allowing multiple platforms and supporting nodes to share sensor-derived information. Yet this benefit is limited by the large size of modern sensor data, the variability of wireless links, the need for rapid decision making, and the difficulty of combining observations from different platforms, geometries, and sensing modalities. This topic seeks prototype-ready solutions that build on prior feasibility work in distributed information sharing, compression, adaptive transmission, and sensor data fusion. The government is interested in capabilities that can select and transmit the most relevant information, manage latency and bandwidth constraints, and fuse data from multiple sources into improved perception outputs for autonomy or operator use. Offerors should address the data fusion aspect as a core requirement of the overall solution, whether through point cloud fusion, image or radar correlation, feature or object fusion, track association, or other mission-appropriate methods. Solutions should also describe how fused outputs are exposed to mission applications, edge processing nodes, or user interfaces. Approaches that can operate under degraded or intermittent communications and can scale across multiple sensing platforms are of particular interest. Prototype capabilities may include, but are not limited to: Distributed organization, naming, publication, discovery, or retrieval of sensor information; Adaptive data selection, fidelity control, compression, and transmission policies; Real-time or near-real-time fusion and correlation of data from multiple platforms or sensor types; Delivery of fused perception products to autonomy software, edge analytics, or mobile mission applications; and Measurable improvements in latency, bandwidth efficiency, blind-spot reduction, and detection or tracking performance.

Program: STTR, Phase II Agency: Department of War, Air Force Topic number: DAF27TZ01-DV003 Solicitation: 27.TZ Released October 7, 2026; proposals accepted from October 28, 2026 Closes November 25, 2026. Check the official solicitation for the exact due time. Award type: contract, not a grant. Official solicitation: https://www.dodsbirsttr.mil/topics-app/ Listed on SBIR.gov: https://www.sbir.gov/topics/13054. SBIR.gov copies agency solicitations and can lag behind them; the official solicitation is the final word.

Small businesses only: a for-profit US business with 500 or fewer employees, including affiliates.

More than 50% owned and controlled by US citizens or permanent residents (some agencies also accept majority ownership by venture capital, hedge fund or private equity firms; the solicitation says).

SBIR: the principal investigator is primarily employed by the business. STTR: the business partners with a US nonprofit research institution or university, which does at least 30% of the work.

Registered in SAM.gov before submitting.

Check the official solicitation for its own conditions, proposal limits and security review.