Who We Are

The Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction (CWMD) Consortium was formed in response to the government’s expressed interest to establish an Other Transaction Agreement (OTA) with an eligible entity or group of entities, to include industry, academic, and not-for-profit partners, for advanced development efforts to support agencies that have a need to prototype new technologies related to Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction.

The Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Defense (JPEO-CBRND) is always looking for innovative and effective solutions to counter weapons of mass destruction.  The usage of an OTA allows government to partner with the CWMD to leverage cutting-edge R&D and develop prototypes.  This gives agencies an agile and flexible way to develop CWMD prototypes using new and innovative technology.

The OTA Consortium is an enterprise partnership between the US Government (JPEO-CBRND) and the CWMD Consortium connected through a “contract-like” OTA.  This OTA operates outside the Federal Acquisition Regulations.

The CWMD provides the flexibility for better public and private collaboration by providing access to innovative concepts, ideas, and technologies from traditional and non-traditional technology providers.  Through the OTA with the CWMD Consortium, the JPEO-CBRND is looking to work with new industry partners to provide soldiers with safe and effective weapons of mass destruction countermeasures.

The CWMD Consortium is currently recruiting a broad and diverse group of interested parties that includes representatives from large businesses, small businesses, traditional and non-traditional government contractors, academic research institutions, and not-for-profit organizations with collective expertise in the technology areas specifically related to the JPEO-CBRND mission.

What We Do

The consortium focuses on the developing technologies such as radiation sensor, sonar, cargo X-ray, and chemical detection to stop attacks before they occur, technologies to gain situational awareness and understand the actions of adversaries, including technologies for detection, analytics, vulnerability assessments, and operational readiness, and technologies to protect individuals and groups, including ocular, respiratory, percutaneous, and materiel protection.

This technical area focuses on providing capabilities to reduce, eliminate, counter, survive, and mitigate the effects of WMD threats. This can include capabilities for non-intrusive diagnostics, transport, removal, destruction or neutralization of a threat, material solutions to consequence managers, and the integration of CWMD support between Federal, State, and Local First Responders. Example requirements include:

  • Development, production, testing, integration, sustainment, operation and fielding of capabilities (people, equipment, and training) required to conduct WMD destruction operations (assess, access, demilitarize, decontaminate, dispose, and recover) worldwide.
  • Development/enhancement, demonstration, and transition of a system or system of systems that can be used to detect, identify, avoid, shield, contain, neutralize and dispose and related functions of WMD threats.
  • Development/enhancement, demonstration, and transition of capabilities and technologies to extend the period of mission effectiveness of personnel and systems subjected to the effect of WMD threats.
  • Development/enhancement, demonstration, and transition of technologies, processes and methodologies to work more closely with civil authorities, partner nations and all components of the Armed Forces to equip them with capabilities to protect against WMD threats.
  • Development/enhancement, demonstration, and transition of homeland security intelligence capabilities and structures to enhance prevention, protection, response, and recovery efforts with respect to a CBRNE attack.
  • Development/enhancement of render safe technologies.
  • Development/enhancement, demonstration, and transition of forensic technologies.

This technical area focuses on the development of technologies to assist in the location, identification, characterization, assessment, and prediction of WMD threats. This can include capabilities for situational awareness and information systems, advanced sensors and platforms, unmanned systems and robotics, sensitive site exploitation (SSE) and forensics, intelligence, and surveillance and reconnaissance. Special operations forces are anticipated to be the primary end user; however, conventional forces, surveillance, reconnaissance, and intelligence specialists, and inter and intra-organizational entities will also participate. Example requirements include:

  • Development/enhancement, demonstration, and transition of a hand-held, rapid WMD material detection and identification capability for special operating forces in support of sensitive site exploitation missions and for identification during offensive and direct action missions.
  • Development/enhancement, demonstration, and transition of a safe, robust, sample collection capability for use by special operating forces, technical support working groups and crisis response forces operating in support of SSE missions.
  • Technology to integrate knowledge across disciplines and improve rapid processing of intelligence and dissemination of information.
  • Development/enhancement, demonstration, and transition of a safe, suitable and effective self-contained breathing apparatus that supports special operating forces specific requirements for the execution of CWMD missions.
  • Development/enhancement, testing, verification and validation and transition of software tools or related capabilities.
  • Development/enhancement, demonstration, and integration of an integrated early warning capability, accredited hazard prediction model, state-of-the-art consequence management, and related course of action analysis tools.
  • Development/enhancement, demonstration, and transition of capabilities to support homeland security-focused intelligence analysis of terrorist actors, their claims, and their plans to conduct attacks involving CBRNE against the United States, and of global infectious diseases, public health, food, agricultural, and veterinary issues.
  • Development/enhancement, demonstration, and transition of capabilities to support and enhance the effective sharing and use of appropriate information generated by the intelligence community, law enforcement agencies, other governmental authorities, and foreign governments.

This technical area focuses on the development, demonstration, and transition of technologies or processes that facilitate the implementation of WMD-related international arms control, initiatives, understandings, treaties and other agreements. Example requirements include:

  • Technologies to support strategic arms control treaties.
  • Technologies to support future nuclear warhead counting regimes.
  • Technologies to support future non-strategic (tactical) nuclear arms control agreements.
  • Technologies to support the Chemical Weapons Convention and other CW related agreements.
  • Technologies to support the Biological Weapons Convention and other BW-related agreements.
  • Oriented Protective Posture (MOPP) level while reducing life cycle costs and logistical burdens.

This technical area focuses on the rapid development, demonstration, implementation and transition of prototypes, products and test infrastructure to deliver capability to the Joint Warfighter in support of combating CBRN threats. Example requirements include:

  • Development/enhancement, demonstration, and transition of technologies that rapidly reduce contamination hazards and enable reduction of Mission Oriented Protective Posture (MOPP) level while reducing life cycle costs and logistical burdens.
  • Development/enhancement, demonstration, and transition of individual protection which provide percutaneous protection (suits, boots, gloves) as well as inhalation and ocular protection (respirators) on the ground and in the air, to include rotary and fixed wing variants.
  • Provision of mobile, transportable, shipboard, and fixed site collective protection systems (e.g., filters, shelters, field hospitals, and kits).
  • Development/enhancement, demonstration, and transition of a capability for protecting the interior of critical airlift assets from cross-contamination by chemical and biological contaminated personnel and equipment under transport.
  • Development/enhancement, demonstration, and transition of a sensor platform that can detect, identify, characterize, and track CBRN warfare agents and other threat materials.
  • Development/enhancement, demonstration, and transition of a system or system of systems that can be used to contain, neutralize, and dispose of small scale CBRN threats.

This technical area focuses on the identification, adaptation, development, experimentation, demonstration, implementation and transition of innovative concepts or technologies. This area also focuses on developing advanced technology demonstrations (ATDs) to support the Joint United States Forces Korea Portal and Integrated Threat Recognition Assessment of Environmental Detection. Example requirements include:

  • Development/enhancement, demonstration, and transition of technologies, capabilities or methods to support the conduction of Joint CBRN Advanced Capability Sets (JCACS) and Enhanced Capability Demonstrations (ECD).
  • Development/enhancement, demonstration, and transition of an integrated set of detection, identification, situational awareness, and decision support capabilities to support the decision making process in real-time or faster.
  • Development/enhancement, demonstration, and transition of a capability that allows the utilization of global defense laboratories to compress the time between the discovery, detection, or encounter of a WMD threat to a decision for combating and addressing such threat.
  • Development/enhancement, demonstration, and transition of a technology or integrated set of capabilities to support acquisition, financial, logistical, informational, operational and related resource integration for and among CWMD entities.
  • Research and development advances for state-of-the-art technical capabilities and methods used to find, monitor, characterize, assess, plan against, deter, delay, disrupt, neutralize or destroy a threat at any point in its life cycle, under shield by adversaries, or during transport.
  • Mission-oriented models designed to simulate, test and/or evaluate analytic methods or technical capabilities intended to counter a suspected/determined threat, or to mitigate the risks/impacts that it poses to critical assets, operations, survivability, or other interests.