Welcoming Army Research Lab to town
Army Research Laboratory has recently opened a Midwest office at the University of Chicago, termed ARL Central, which is led by Dr. Mark Tschopp. ARL’s Chicago office is one of four “Open Campus” research sites — including locations in Los Angeles, Texas, and Boston — and will be focusing on propulsion science and materials, IOT for the battlefield, advanced materials and manufacturing, machine learning and data analytics, power and energy, to name a few.
Last week I talked to Dr. Tschopp, Mr. David Christ, the Assistant Director of ARL’s Office of Small Business Programs, and Mr. Joshua Houck, part of ARL’s Technology Transfer and Outreach Office, about what to expect from their new office and how to best engage.
“Technology is moving so fast,” says Tschopp. “The Army realizes that the best ideas, the best technologies, and the best people can come from anywhere. So ARL has proactively decided that we need to build a connected network across this country.”
“There is an ongoing, top-down new acquisitions process,” Christ told me, noting the Army has developed a number of new contracting mechanisms to drive faster technology acquisitions, and engage smaller firms.
Tschopp added that the Army has identified several urgent, short-term technology challenges they need solved, including greater precision for long-range targeting, ground and aerial vehicles with unmanned capabilities, IOT infrastructure, and improved body armor with sensors. (More detail provided in this memo.)
I pressed Tschopp and the ARL team on longer-term priorities. “We want to be assured that we’re not being surprised by technologies,” Houck said, adding that “one of the top priorities that we’re challenged by over and over again is AI.”
Army Research Laboratory will build solutions up to a certain “technology readiness level”, after which after which sister organizations within the Army will work with commercial partners, be it a startup or a major defense contractor, to build it into a product and put it into the acquisitions cycle.
Their commercialization partners are increasingly coming from smaller- and earlier-stage firms. Christ told me that that ARL contracted out more than $1.3 billion the last fiscal year, and that 53 percent of those dollars went to small businesses.
So how do you compete? Here is where the old playbook was junked, and a new one — largely written by the Army’s “Section 809 Panel” (a reference to the line item in the 2016 Defense Authorization Act commissioning it) —is now being tested.
Last week the Army selected 12 finalists for its first “xTechSearch”, providing a nationwide competition for startups to present technology solutions to meet the Army’s specific, short-term challenges. There are more than $2 million in prizes given away to semi-finalists and winners of the xTechSearch competition, which can help them to further develop their innovative technologies and partner with the Army.
The Army has also relaxed rules around foreign ownership with commercial partners. If a product enters the commercial market, the Army will no longer close its doors if the company has foreign owners.
Ever tethered to the federal government’s unique, acronym-heavy vernacular (I say this with a bit of nostalgia, having served from 2002 to 2007 in the Army’s 101st Airborne Division), ARL has pushed small businesses toward “GWACs”, or Governmentwide Acquisition Contracts, which last around five to ten years, and allow ARL to award more specific tasks to commercialize research and sell products back to the Army.
The Army has also made increased use of a law passed in the Reagan Administration to issue “Broad Agency Announcements”, wherein the Army solicits proposals for cooperative agreements without a specific technology need in mind, and has provided individualized support for university-based researchers. ARL has gone out of its way to engage foreign research partners, supporting research into tactical information processing with German researchers, solid state laser research with Israel, and fuel cell research with Singapore.
The Army’s top concern throughout is speed. The Army has fanned out across the country in search of solutions because they need solutions now. And they are far more willing to engage startups and small businesses than in the past.
It was somewhat of a theme at last week’s Association of the U.S. Army (AUSA) conference last week in Washington. “One of the things we try to do is find a way to facilitate and understand what’s possible by giving you a voice,” said Dr. Bruce D. Jette, the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology. “What we really want to do at this corner is listen to you.”
All of this is relatively new. And all of this has just landed in Chicago. “What works best,” Houck said, “is when we get some folks from industry or academia in front of our professionals on a one-on-one basis.” Those professionals are here in Chicago now.
Dr. Tschopp and I became acquainted months ago at a conference at Northwestern, before he moved into the area. The conference brought together folks from Chicago’s universities and technology community to generate ideas on streamlining the Air Force’s acquisitions process.
So in other words, the Army isn’t alone in looking for startups to commercialize technologies and push new solutions into their acquisitions process.
Thomas Day is the co-founder of Invent2026.
