Electro-Optical Commercial Layer Contract Awards Announced
On May 25, the NRO announced the results of its largest-ever commercial imagery contract effort, awarding Electro-Optical Commercial Layer (EOCL) contracts to BlackSky, Maxar, and Planet. Valued at billions of dollars over the next decade, these contracts mark a historic expansion of the NRO’s acquisition of commercial imagery to meet increasing customer demands with greater capacity than ever before.
The EOCL has broad levels of shareability and user-friendly license conditions to ensure NRO’s diverse community has greater access to commercial imagery. The NRO, in coordination with NGA, developed a common family of licenses that will facilitate a standardized, automated approach to imagery dissemination and sharing. EOCL is also a resounding example of NRO’s commitment made good to ‘buy what we can and only build what we must,” i.e. maximum acquisition and utilization of commercial imagery.
EOCL will support the mission needs of NRO’s half-million intelligence, defense, and federal civil agency users over the next decade. It will also help ensure long-term, continued support for the U.S. commercial remote sensing industry. EOCL is effective as of May 22, 2022 with a five-year base and multiple one-year options with additional growth through 2032.
Click here to read the full press release.
NRO Awards First Commercial Radar BAAs
On Jan. 20, the NRO announced the first contract awards for the Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) Framework for Strategic Commercial Enhancements. In just over three months, the NRO issued the request for proposal, received and evaluated the responses, and awarded five contracts for the BAA’s first focus area, commercial radar capabilities. The companies receiving the contracts are Airbus, U.S.; Capella Space; ICEYE, U.S.; PredaSAR, and Umbra. The NRO’s commercial radar capabilities focus area was open to both U.S. domestic companies and foreign-owned U.S. companies.
The BAA is a flexible approach to an acquisition process that will allow the NRO to evaluate, leverage, and integrate new and emerging phenomenologies as they become available.
The NRO intends to release the next BAA focus area later this year.
Click here to read the full press release.
Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) for Strategic Enhancements
On Oct. 7 at the GEOINT Symposium, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) announced a new acquisition-the Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) Framework for Strategic Commercial Enhancements-which will focus on new and emerging phenomenologies, such as commercial radar, hyperspectral imagery, radio frequency remote sensing, etc., as well as emerging and evolving electrooptical capabilities. Today, Oct. 12, the NRO released the BAA Framework and the first Focus Area. The first Focus Area, commercial radar capabilities, is open to U.S. domestic industry, as well as to foreignowned U.S. companies. The BAA Framework and first Focus Area can be found at NRO's Acquisition Center of Excellence, Acquisition Research Center (ARC)
Click here to read the official BAA press release
Click here to read DNRO Dr. Scolese's Keynote Presentation at the 2021 GEOINT Symposium
Contracting Opportunities
Learn about contracting opportunities with the NRO by visiting the Acquisition Research Center website.
The Acquisition Research Center (ARC) is a website operated by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) Acquisition Center of Excellence (ACE) that is used by the Intelligence Community (IC) to support e-commerce with Industry. It provides a unique ability for procurement officials to participate in the communication exchanges that are controlled to protect the source selection sensitive information and proprietary equities of the participants, and features specialized services and capabilities critical to the successful acquisition of goods and services for the IC and other Government activities. The ARC is available in both a classified and unclassified format to support a wide range of source selection activities.
Director's Innovation Initiative
The Director’s Innovation Initiative (DII) invests across the U.S. in cutting edge technologies and high payoff concepts relevant to the NRO’s mission of overhead ISR for National Security.
The DII
- Allows for continuous access to revolutionary concepts and ideas
- Provides access to non-traditional developers of NRO technology and broadens the developer base
- Establishes risk tolerant environment for conducting potentially high payoff projects
Each year the program solicits proposals by releasing a Broad Agency Announcement and Government Sources Sought Announcement to solicit proposals that
- Improve existing NRO capabilities
- Adapt existing techniques and technologies to its mission
- Develop entirely new technologies, processes, or tools to meet NRO needs
NRO looks for proposals from U. S. domestic education institutions, government agencies, non-profit and not-for-profit organizations, and private industry. The period of performance for successful DII proposals is generally nine months and carry a maximum award value of $500,000.
Past areas of interest included Remote Sensing, Apertures, Communications, Systems Design, Sense-Making, and Other Disruptive Concepts and Technologies. Please see the below link for the DII and other ways of doing business with the NRO.
Acquisition Center of Excellence, Acquisition Research Center (ARC)
Architecture After Next (AAN)
The Architecture After Next (AAN) Program is an Open Broad Agency Announcement (BAA), built using the FY21-25 AS&T BAA Framework - Architecture After Next, consisting of multiple broad areas of interest providing traditional and non-traditional developers an opportunity to participate in building the NRO of the 21st century by presenting innovative ideas. Innovative ideas can be submitted through 30 September 2025. The period performance is not to exceed 12 months. Visit the Acquisition Research Center for more information.
Request an NRO Speaker
Do you want to invite an NRO speaker to your event? Submit the NRO Speaker Invitation Request Form online and submit engagement inquiries to publicaffairs@nro.mil.
