Brian Shipley, director of the Navy’s Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer (SBIR/STTR) office, said he plans to pursue other transaction authorities for all of the Navy program’s open topics as part of an effort to attract more companies and move promising technologies through the acquisition process faster.
The SBIR and STTR programs use phased research-and-development awards to support small businesses as they move technologies from feasibility work into prototype development and potential transition.
The Navy’s SBIR/STTR program has funded more than $11 billion in technologies over its history. The program releases a new set of open topics every 30 days, giving companies 60 days to submit proposals addressing Navy problem statements.
For Shipley, however, moving faster after those investments are made remains a central challenge.
“I think we need faster acquisition pathways,” Shipley said during the MODSIM World 2026 conference on Aug.19. “Contracting many times holds it up, and we have to figure out how to do things differently.”
For the Navy SBIR program, Shipley said he sees other transaction authorities as one way to address that problem while making the program more attractive to companies that may be reluctant to navigate traditional government contracting requirements.
“I’m looking at other transactions as a way to be more attractive to companies who don’t want to deal with FAR-based requirements, and hoping it’s going to give us more flexibility,” Shipley said.
“Not many people at DOW’s SBIR program have worked with other transactions,” he said. “But I’m going out on a limb and doing them for all of our open topics.”
Under the Trump administration, the Department of Defense (DOD) was rebranded as the Department of War (DOW).
“If I can cut any weeks off the contracting timeline, that’s a win for us, and it’s certainly a win for you,” Shipley said.
Shipley also pointed to funding gaps between SBIR phases as another obstacle to moving technologies forward. He offered an example in which a company finishes an initial phase, is asked to build a prototype, and then faces an eight-month wait for the next contract.
Reducing those gaps – including by overlapping funding cycles – could help companies continue development rather than waiting months for the next round of government funding, he said.
Shipley framed the effort as part of a broader DOD push to “take risk and fail fast,” arguing that “faster acquisition pathways and less contracting bureaucracy” are necessary to move technologies from development to demonstration and fielding.