Rapid Attack Detection, Isolation and Characterization Systems (RADICS) | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

The Rapid Attack Detection, Isolation and Characterization Systems (RADICS) opportunity is a DARPA research solicitation focused on creating new, high-impact technologies to help the United States detect, contain, understand, and recover from serious cyber-attacks on critical infrastructure. The central use case is a widespread, persistent cyber campaign targeting the power grid and the systems that depend on it. DARPA is looking for approaches that can spot attacks early, rapidly isolate affected networks or components to prevent cascading failures, and characterize the threat in enough detail to support effective response and restoration. The emphasis is on capabilities that still function under real-world conditions, including large-scale disruption where defenders may have incomplete information, limited time, and a fast-evolving adversary.

The technical priorities are spelled out in the title itself: detection, isolation, and characterization. Early attack detection implies identifying malicious activity as soon as possible, ideally before an attacker achieves major operational impact. Network isolation refers to methods for segmenting, disconnecting, or otherwise limiting communication pathways so that compromise does not spread laterally across operational technology and supporting enterprise networks. Threat characterization is about making sense of what is happening during the incident: determining the nature and scope of the compromise, what assets or functions are affected, how the attacker is moving, what their objectives may be, and what actions are safe to take to restore service without making the situation worse. The overall goal is not just to notice an intrusion, but to enable resilient operations and faster recovery during an ongoing, large-scale attack.

DARPA frames this as a science and technology research and development effort and explicitly asks for innovative, potentially game-changing ideas rather than incremental upgrades to existing tools. In other words, proposals should aim for “revolutionary advances” in devices, systems, or underlying science, and the announcement specifically excludes work that mainly produces evolutionary improvements to the current state of practice. That makes this opportunity a poor fit for projects that simply extend conventional intrusion detection, add routine automation to standard incident response workflows, or provide modest refinements to established security products. The intent is to push beyond what is commonly deployed today, especially in critical infrastructure environments where reliability, safety, and operational continuity are paramount.

From an administrative standpoint, the solicitation is identified as DARPA BAA 16-14 under the Department of Defense, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), I2O. The opportunity category is discretionary and the anticipated funding instruments include cooperative agreements and grants, reflecting DARPA’s typical approach of funding research performers while maintaining active program engagement. The activity category is science and technology and other research and development, and the CFDA number listed is 12.910. Eligibility is described as unrestricted, meaning it is open to any type of entity, subject to any additional eligibility language that may appear in the full announcement.

The posting and timeline details indicate the opportunity was created and posted on December 11, 2015, with an original and current closing date of February 11, 2016. The public listing shows an award ceiling of 0 and does not specify the expected number of awards in the summary fields, which usually means applicants must consult the full BAA for budget guidance, scope, and award structure. Overall, RADICS is best understood as a DARPA effort to fund ambitious research that can help the nation keep critical power infrastructure operating, or return it to operation quickly, when facing sophisticated and persistent cyber adversaries.

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