Integrated Digital Platform

Delivering software based mission capabilities for national security is excessively time-consuming and costly, posing an unacceptable risk to freedom and independence amid escalating software-driven conflicts and competition. In the face of software-intensified conflict and peer competition, especially in a contested space domain, software must become an enabler instead of a limiter to operational capability. Software delivery for national security has unique challenges: diverse infrastructures, limited or no access to the internet, integration at scale, cyber security compliance, and system operators trained in mission effects, not IT.  This is even more true when considering the Assured Access to Space mission where traditional operational tempos must have the capability to increase by an order of magnitude to ensure operations and respond to ever-evolving threats in a highly dynamic space-as-a-warfighting domain environment. To attack this problem, Defense Unicorns builds open source technologies to accelerate delivery of software and AI capabilities to greatly reduce the time and resources needed for software delivery and improve operational effectiveness. Specifically, Defense Unicorns leverages Unicorn Delivery Service (UDS) as an integrated system that accelerates delivery of software and AI capability to any environment by abstracting away the complexity of government-secure technology stacks. With UDS, mission hero teams can spend less time on configuration management and systems of systems integration and more time on their unique mission outcomes. UDS also makes mission capabilities fully portable, so mission-oriented customers can get capabilities where they’re needed (cloud, on-prem, or at the edge) quickly, securely, and cost effectively. UDS is fully deployable to air gapped or disconnected systems as well.  With Assured Access to Space gearing up for transformational space launch shifts, a software revamp is crucial. Key to this endeavor is the Defense Unicorns technology, aiming for rapid deployment of mission capabilities in challenging scenarios. This effort will enable resilient, flexible, responsive, and affordable launch, recovery, and test & evaluation operations while allowing scalability for accelerating launch capacity and cadence. Based on the needs of the objectives, we propose the following outlined in this proposal over a 1 Year Base Period and 2 Options Years to follow. More details on pricing and breakdowns can be found in the cost volume.  The UDS tech stack is intentionally composed of open source technologies, so that mission heroes retain data independence and avoid vendor lock. With UDS, Defense Unicorns accelerates authorization, significantly simplifying the process of obtaining an Authority to Operate by meeting 70% of NIST 800-53 technical controls across IL-4, IL-5, and IL-6, and satisfying 100% by the end of 2024 (some exceptions may apply).