Farooq Mitha, director of the office of small business programs at the Department of Defense, said he expects the current administration’s next budget proposal to reinstate the Rapid Innovation Fund to make it easier for small enterprises with novel ideas to do business with DOD, Defense News reported Tuesday.
Since 2019, Congress has not funded the Rapid Innovation Fund, which provided seed money to small businesses with innovative tech platforms and secured over $2 billion in funding over nine years.
Mitha said his office will be planning for the initiative, which he said helped small businesses get through the “valley of death” to facilitate the transition of defense tech prototypes into the production of actual platforms for warfighters.
“If we don’t have those programs on stable footing in terms of authorization and funding, we’re not sending the right signal to industry to participate and we’re not giving industry the right avenues to which through which they can participate,” Mitha added.
He mentioned plans to deploy an updated web portal that would directly link small businesses to potential clients.
“So we’re looking to roll that out as well later this year,” he noted.
