AI/ML Verification of Microelectronic Integrity for High-Assurance Systems

STTR topic DTR27TZ02-NV002 (U.S. Department of Defense – DTRA), Phase I and II. Open to U.S. small businesses; STTR projects partner with a U.S. research institution. Opens: December 2, 2026. Closes: January 6, 2027. The Department of War relies heavily on advanced microelectronics sourced from a globally distributed commercial supply chain. Securing this supply chain against malicious insertion is a critical national security imperative, repeatedly highlighted by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) as a high-risk area. [2] For defense systems operating in contested environments, compromised hardware represents a catastrophic vulnerability. Advanced adversaries are capable of introducing microscopic logic alterations (e.g., dopant-level Trojans, malicious dormant circuitry) during fabrication or transit. [3] A primary use case of concern involves hardware-level Trojans engineered to bypass software encryption, forcing ultra-secure communications gear or deployable sensor packages to execute unauthorized radio frequency (RF) transmissions, thereby exposing sensitive mission telemetry to hostile forces. Furthermore, there is a critical emerging requirement to address sophisticated vulnerabilities residing between the hardware and firmware boundaries. The DoW seeks capabilities to identify malicious logic that facilitates unauthorized data inspection within the data layer, allowing an adversary to silently monitor, filter, or alter encrypted traffic streams at the silicon level. Additionally, the solution must investigate vectors where the data layer is manipulated to trigger unintended electromagnetic emanations from legitimate components, or the covert activation of dormant RF elements, for out-of-band exfiltration. [4] The DoW seeks proposals for an automated, AI-driven inspection capability to mitigate these threats. The desired solution should ingest a Level 3 Technical Data Package (TDP) or Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) Digital Twin to establish…