The U.S. Navy is accelerating the development of new capabilities and bridging the so-called “valley of death” for small business innovations through Catapult, an interim technology maturity initiative. Shadi Azoum, program manager for small business innovation research and small business technology transfer programs at the Naval Information Warfare Systems Command, or NAVWAR, told the Federal News Network that Catapult has reduced the time spent to transition a vendor solution.
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Fast-Tracking Development to Deployment
According to Azoum, about 60 percent of NAVWAR’s entire portfolio were SBIR and STTR capabilities.
“I think because NAVWAR is very cyber focused and very fast paced, it makes more sense for us to capitalize on prior investments, than to go through the regular topic process,” he explained.
He emphasized the importance of public databases such as SBIR.gov, which enables the command to search for relevant technologies among previous contract awardees.
“We could search by keywords and locate some of the past awardees based on the needs that we’re looking for,” Azoum said.
Azoum also encouraged small businesses to use SBIR.gov to see the list of capabilities the Navy is looking for. He added that the next Catapult broad agency announcement will be posted on April 23.
More Small Business Partners
Recent efforts by the Navy to reach out to small businesses have been fruitful. Azoum said about 41 percent of small businesses that responded to Navy solicitations in 2024 are doing business with the service for the first time. Furthermore, 29 percent belong to socioeconomic categories such as woman-owned or service disabled veteran-owned.
“Of $500 million of SBIR or STTR funded efforts, we have transitioned about more than $1 billion in that and that is more than $1 billion in phase three or non-SBIR/STTR funded efforts,” he revealed.
NAVWAR plans to reach out to even more small businesses in 2025.
Azoum advised firms that want to secure SBIR or STTR contracts to pay attention to submission requirements listed in announcements. Although margins and font sizes seem trivial, not following the requirements prevents a proposal from being evaluated.
He told small businesses to engage with topic authors to ensure that they understand program requirements.
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