America Makes, the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute, proudly announces a new, seven year Cooperative Agreement (CA) with the Department of Air Force, Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). The CA is a Cost-Reimbursement/Cost Share agreement with a total funding value worth up to a combined $322 million of government cost and America Makes cost share. The Institute is sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) Manufacturing Technology (ManTech) program, which focuses on cross-cutting defense manufacturing needs. The mission of America Makes directly supports the OSD ManTech program. In particular, the Institute looks to directly support the manufacturing technology needs for the OSD Research & Engineering modernization priorities, including hypersonics, cyber, and AI/machine learning.
The CA with AFRL was finalized on Tuesday, November 26th and announced today on the opening day of the Defense Manufacturing Conference (DMC) 2019, the nation’s premier defense manufacturing and industrial base conference, in Phoenix, Ariz.
“For America Makes, this new CA with AFRL marks a monumental milestone,” said America Makes Executive Director John Wilczynski. “We have worked tirelessly together with the America Makes membership community during the last seven years and two previous Cooperative Agreements with AFRL to execute our mission of advancing the adoption of additive manufacturing. We have moved well beyond our initial pilot start-up phase and a project phase driven by consortium developed roadmaps to become the recognized voice of our industry.