SIMBA Chain Receives $1.5M Naval Contract

Joel Neidig is the CEO of SIMBA Chain. (IIB Photo)

The U.S. Office of Navy Research has awarded a $1.5 million Small Business Innovation Research Phase II contract to Plymouth-based SIMBA Chain Inc. The contract calls for the company to design and build a blockchain solution to enable demand sensing for the Defense Logistics Agency, the combat support and supply chain agency of the U.S. Department of Defense.

The ALAMEDA Project, which stands for Authenticity Ledger for Auditable Military Enclaved Data Access, began earlier this month. The company says demand sensing is necessary to ensure the U.S. military has replacement parts available for weaponry.

The award follows an SBIR Phase I project awarded in last year during which SIMBA Chain worked with the U.S. Marine Corps to “define a use case for a blockchain-based prototype to monitor the inventory and movement of physical assets at its Albany, Georgia Depot.”

SIMBA Chain says it will further build out the prototype developed in Phase I, working with the Naval Enterprise Sustainment Technology Team on a use case centered on the Boeing Hornet supply chain.

SIMBA Chain Chief Executive Officer Joel Neidig will serve as principal investigator on the project.

“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 Neidig. “Blockchain is well suited to solve complex supply chain pain points as it enables a decentralized mechanism for the recording of non-repudiable transactions, making data both immutable and auditable, and lastly, tamper-proof once written.”

Neidig says the pilot program aims to use blockchain to improve supply chain interactions between FRCSE and the Defense Logistics Agency to “mitigate against disruption, issues, and threats to engineering and maintenance operations.”

The University of Notre Dame will join SIMBA Chain in the ALAMEDA Project as a subcontractor. The work is expected to be conducted at the Fleet Readiness Center Southeast at the Naval Air Station in Jacksonville, Florida.

SIMBA Chain will be featured on Inside INdiana Business later this week.