UW–Madison is now a member of the Joint Directed Energy Consortium (JDEC), managed by the National Security Technology Accelerator (NSTXL). NSTXL provides a wide range of opportunities outside normal grants and contracts processes.

JDEC is a Department of War consortium supporting the Office of the Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering’s Scaled Directed Energy (SCADE) office. NSTXL holds the JDEC Other Transaction (OT) agreement, which carries a ceiling of up to $500 million and supports project awards for research, prototyping, experimentation, and prizes in directed energy, principally high-energy lasers (HEL) and high-power microwaves (HPM). Universities are part of the membership the consortium is designed to engage.

JDEC membership brings:

• Direct access to opportunities: Solicitations, requests for white papers, and prototype project calls are issued to consortium members through the NSTXL portal — often before or instead of public release.
• Faster, more flexible awards: OT agreements move more quickly and with fewer FAR-based requirements than traditional contracts, which makes them a practical path for university research to reach prototype and transition.
• Teaming with industry: Many JDEC projects are pursued by teams. Membership puts our faculty in front of primes and nontraditional defense companies looking for university partners with specialized expertise and facilities.
• Visibility with DoW sponsors: Members get access to government-hosted webinars, industry days, and program updates that shape where directed energy investment is headed.
• Active near-term demand: JDEC is already preparing opportunities such as directed energy prototypes for counter-uncrewed aircraft systems (DE-cUAS). This is also relevant to Wisconsin and regional efforts on Autonomous Heartland / Area 52.

Directed energy draws on far more than lasers and microwave sources. Relevant UW–Madison expertise includes optics and photonics, plasma and pulsed-power physics, power electronics and energy storage, thermal management, materials and coatings, atmospheric propagation and sensing, beam control, RF engineering, autonomy and AI for targeting and tracking, and system modeling and test. If your work touches any of these, JDEC may be a good fit.

If you would like to be added to the NSTXL portal to receive JDEC opportunities, reach out to WINS at nationalsecurity@wisc.edu and include your department and a sentence or two on your relevant research area(s). WINS is happy to help with white paper development, teaming, and navigating the OT process.