ARL Broad Agency Announcement

ARL BAA

Supports continuous Army science research for universities, companies, and nonprofits across broad disciplines.

The DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory Broad Agency Announcement for Foundational Research (BAA W911NF-23-S-0001, Amendment 4, effective January 8, 2025) is the principal mechanism through which ARL awards assistance agreements and contracts to non-federal performers. It accepts submissions year-round with no fixed deadline, and its Grants.gov reference number is 344592. The BAA funds both basic (6.1) and applied (6.2) research across all of ARL's scientific mission areas, which span 11 foundational competencies including electromagnetic spectrum sciences, photonics and quantum sciences, network and cyber sciences, biological sciences, energy sciences, human-machine teaming, materials sciences, and weapons sciences.

Five distinct award types flow through this single BAA number: Single Investigator (SI) Awards; Short-Term Innovative Research (STIR) Awards; Early Career Program (ECP) Awards, also known as the Young Investigator Program; Research Instrumentation (RI) Awards; and Conference and Symposia Grants. Award instruments include grants, cooperative agreements, and contracts, with the choice of instrument determined by the degree of government involvement in each project. Eligible applicants include institutions of higher education, nonprofit organizations, state and local governments, foreign organizations and foreign public entities, and for-profit organizations of all sizes.

The submission process follows three steps: first, a Preliminary Inquiry directed to the relevant Technical Point of Contact (TPOC) for the applicable research area; second, a White Paper reviewed by the TPOC; and third, a Full Proposal submitted only upon explicit invitation. Proposals are evaluated solely on the basis of advancing the scientific state of the art — applied device or component-specific work is explicitly out of scope. The submission portal is a Salesforce-based system hosted at cftste.experience.crmforce.mil/arlext/. ARO's Research Triangle Park office in Durham, NC serves as the contracting authority (using the W911NF contract prefix) on behalf of ARL.