Proprietary applications compete for a solicitation. Public networks demonstrate a capability. We chose demonstration.
⚠ Draft Document — Public for Comment
The SBIR application referenced in this post is a working draft prepared in advance of the CTA-LOG solicitation. It has not been submitted. It is published publicly to invite substantive feedback from builders, manufacturers, and defense industry professionals. It will be refined before formal submission.
The Department of War's SBIR/STTR program has been restructured around six Critical Technology Areas. CTA-LOG — Contested Logistics Technologies — is where Aedes operates. There is no open solicitation yet. The direction is clear, and it is heading somewhere specific.
Most organizations wait for the solicitation. They scramble when it drops, assemble a proposal in six weeks, and compete against applicants who have been thinking about the problem for years.
Aedes is not doing that.
We drafted the SBIR Phase I application. We published it — publicly, at aedesmfg.com/sbir — before any solicitation existed. We invited the builders who are forming this network to read it, comment on it, and improve it. Because the builders who join Aedes now are not applicants waiting in a queue. They are the Phase I deliverable.
A SBIR Phase I application asks: can you demonstrate feasibility? For most companies, feasibility is a prototype and a projection.
For Aedes, feasibility is a live network of certified American builders distributed across multiple states, already producing reference systems, already vetting applicants, already demonstrating the distributed architecture the DoW has formally identified as a national security priority.
When the CTA-LOG solicitation drops, Aedes will not begin building the network. It will submit the network as evidence.
The builders registering at aedesmfg.com today are Section 8 of the application. The network is not a plan. It is forming.
Read the draft. If you build drones — or if you know someone who does — you are already in the proposal.