Small Business Innovation Research to Support Aging Aircraft. Priority Technical Areas and Process Improvements

Abstract

The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program was created in 1982 by the Small Business Innovation Development Act. The program is designed to stimulate technology innovation by small businesses, provide technical and scientific solutions to challenging problems, and encourage the marketing of the resulting new technologies in the private sector. Federal agencies with more than $100 million in extramural research and development (R&D) are required to allocate 2.5 percent of their research budgets to small businesses. Such finds from all federal agencies amounted to approximately $1.1 billion in fiscal year 1998. The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) has the largest single SBIR program ($540 million), approximately 40 percent of which comes through Air Force channels. Determining how to allocate these finds to the myriad Air Force agencies requesting finding is a difficult challenge. Historically, the Air Force SBIR program has been defined largely by the R&D directorates of the Air Force Research Laboratory. Many of the resulting programs were focused on solving important problems identified by customers within the Air Force, but these customers were not consistently brought into the SBIR allocation process even though they contributed resources to the Air Force SBIR pool. More customer participation would ensure not only that important problems are being addressed, but also that effective processes are put in place to transition new technologies. The need for more active customer participation and effective technology transition was recognized at the DOD level to be an important SBIR program issue across all the services and defense agencies. Formal direction to remedy this situation DOD-wide was issued in 1999 by the DOD undersecretary of defense for acquisition and technology.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2001
Accession Number
ADA412980

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Ground and Sea Platforms

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force Facilities
  • Aircraft Equipment
  • Aircraft Industry
  • Aircrafts
  • Airframes
  • Commercial Aircraft
  • Corrosion Inhibition
  • Engineers
  • Fighter Aircraft
  • Materials
  • Materials Engineering
  • Materials Science
  • Mechanical Properties
  • Mechanics
  • Physics Laboratories
  • Systems Engineering
  • Test And Evaluation

Readers

  • Defense Acquisition Program Management
  • Economics
  • Small Business Innovation Research Program (SBIR) EDI Research and Innovation.