Today blockchain startup SIMBA Chain said it won a $1.5 million Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II contract awarded by the U.S. Office of Navy Research. The project will use blockchain to ensure that critical replacement parts for weapons don’t run short.
SIMBA says the first phase of the project was awarded in June 2020 for a U.S. Marines prototype to monitor inventory and the movement of physical assets at a particular depot. The latest project will extend that work and involves working with the Naval Enterprise Sustainment Technology Team (NESTT) at the Fleet Readiness Center Southeast (FRCSE) in Jacksonville, Florida.
“We are very honored to work with NESTT and the FRCSE on one of the most pressing issues facing the nation today, managing and securing military supply chains and ensuring readiness to thwart cyber and physical threats,” said SIMBA Chain CEO Joel Neidig.
“Our goal with this pilot program is to use blockchain to dramatically improve vital supply chain interactions between FRCSE and the Defense Logistics Agency to mitigate against disruption, issues, and threats to engineering and maintenance operations. Our hope is it becomes a model across the Navy and other branches of the U.S. military.”
The contract started last week and is called the Authenticity Ledger for Auditable Military Enclaved Data Access, or the ALAMEDA project. It ran another ALAMEDA project last year for the Department of Defense to secure sensitive research and development (R&D) data.
SIMBA Chain has had remarkable success in winning military contracts. Its biggest one is a $9.5 million contract awarded in February 2020 by the Naval Air Warfare Center. That one is a Phase III contract to deploy a secure blockchain-based messaging and transaction platform. Additionally, SIMBA Chain has contracts with the Air Force.
The company was founded in 2017 following a grant awarded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to the computing department of the University of Notre Dame and Indiana Technology and Manufacturing Companies (ITAMCO). Notre Dame is also a subcontractor on the ALAMEDA project.
SIMBA Chain offers a smart contract as a service platform that enables enterprises and developers to deploy decentralized applications (Dapps) quickly. It also supports multiple flavors of blockchains.
