AFWERX, an innovation arm of the Department of the Air Force and powered by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), serves as a facilitator, connecting the Air Force, Space Force with cutting-edge American ingenuity from small businesses and start-ups. AFWERX operates several programs like Ventures, Spark, Prime and Spacewerx to expand the defense industrial base for advanced technologies and accelerate the transition of technology. It partners with organizations like Keystone Space Collaborative and Astrobotic to create innovation hubs and drive collaboration with industry, academia, and government.
All verified mentions of this organization in source documents.
The $44,500,000 Air Force contracts include a one-year AFWERX deal to demonstrate launch technology and an agreement with the Space and Missile Systems Center’s Space Enterprise Consortium to conduct three demonstrations of an RS1 vehicle variant and deployable ground infrastructure in 2022.
A traditional SBIR topic typically gives two or three Phase 1 awards, whereas the AFWERX Open Topic can award as many as 300 Phase 1 contracts.
A company that provides $750,000 from a private investor or another government program would receive $1,500,000 from the AFWERX SBIR two-to-one matching program.
In the AFWERX Open Topics SBIR, the Air Force offers two-to-one fund matching from the SBIR budget up to $1,500,000 for companies that have never received a Phase 2 award.
The Air Force Small Business Innovation Research program released a pre-solicitation notice on 2019-12-10 through the AFWERX technology accelerator.
Viasat Inc. (NASDAQ: VSAT) was selected by AFWERX to showcase its Hybrid Adaptive Network concept at AFWERX Vegas held 2019-07-23-24, 2019.
AFWERX is a U.S. Air Force program launched in 2017 that serves as a dual-purpose technology accelerator.