Air Force looks to HBCUs to lead its first university applied research center

The Air Force is looking to tap a historically black college or university to lead the department’s first university applied research center. And its focus will be on tactical autonomy.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said the military department will commit to five years of funding at $12 million per year “to start in a competitive process” for a research center focused on tactical autonomy—an area not well explored in defense research institutes. 

Additionally, the offices for the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering and undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment will each contribute $2 million per year. 

“If any of you have heard me talk at any time, I think in the past year or even before that, I'm very focused on the threat of Chinese military modernization and what that means in terms of our viability, of our forces, you know, for the future,” Kendall told reporters during a media briefing announcing the effort on June 27. 

“And part of the future of the military is going to be autonomy. There's no doubt in my mind of that. We're seeing increasing evidence for that. Almost in every conflict that occurs...we're seeing it in Ukraine now. It's here to stay and we need to be at the front edge of that.”

Once stood up, the partnership will be the first university applied research center (UARC) sponsored by the Department of the Air Force and the first to be led by a historically black college or university. DOD currently has 14 university research centers and are key for cultivating technical talent, said Heidi Shyu, the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering. 

“This nation must have a strong national STEM workforce since the future of our national security is dependent on our ability to grow our STEM talent,” Shyu told reporters. “We will only accomplish this through the cultivation of a highly diverse workforce. Diversity of backgrounds with a diversity of ideas has always been the strength of this country.” 

The tactical autonomy-focused center will focus on key areas including human-machine teaming, trust and collaboration between platforms.

The announcement comes after the White House released its equity plans and the Defense Department, among other federal agencies, named partnering with HBCUs as crucial to meeting innovation and talent needs. 

The 2020 National Defense Authorization Act required DOD to evaluate best ways to build capacity at HBCUs to compete for research and development grants and other contracts in partnership with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Victoria Coleman, the Air Force’s chief scientist, told reporters the school selected to be the UARC would lead and cooperate with a consortium of other HBCUs to leverage their expertise. 

“One of the things that is unusual is that we're not only expecting the institutions to produce research results, we understand the historical inequities, and we want to help them build capacity as well as deliver results to us,” Coleman said. 

Part of the goal with the partnership is to advance more than one of the consortium institutions to “high research activity,” as defined by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. Currently, only 11 of the more than 100 HBCUs meet that standard and would be in the running for the solicitation. 

The Air Force plans to have an industry day focused on the solicitation in early August with a broad agency announcement scheduled to be released by August 15. A final decision on the UARC’s approval is expected by December, officials said.