SERDP released two solicitations on November 5, 2026, offering a substantial FY 2028 funding opportunity to researchers across federal agencies, academia and industry.
The SERDP Core solicitation invites pre-proposals responding to targeted Statements of Need (SONs) in 9 selected topics, designed to address priority challenges across Department of War (DoW) installations related to environmental restoration, natural resource management, and weapons systems and platforms. Key topics include:
- Development of Integrated Conceptual Site Models and Coupled Modeling Frameworks for Stormwater and Transport of Chemicals of Concern: This SON focuses on developing modular modeling frameworks paired with standardized Conceptual Site Model approaches to simulate stormwater dynamics, infrastructure performance, and chemical of concern (COC) transport across media. Successful research will deliver a risk-informed predictive capability that allows installations to focus limited resources on the most consequential vulnerabilities.
- Integrated Flow Diversion, Retention, and Synergistic Treatment Trains for Stormwater Management: This SON seeks projects on comprehensive stormwater management strategies that seamlessly integrate flow diversion, retention, and advanced synergistic treatment trains. Successful execution of this work will provide actionable, scalable, and cost-effective tools to manage complex stormwater challenges.
- Development of Residuals Management Options of PFAS-Impacted Wastewater Streams: This SON is looking for projects that will evaluate different management options that also include various operational and technical requirements to provide improved decision-making options for sludge and biosolids from wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) at military installations.
- Development of Alternative Water Production and Resilience Technologies: This SON focuses on development of advanced alternative water production, treatment, and reuse technologies that contribute to long-term water resilience for DoW installations.
- Data Fusion for Monitoring Conditions of Natural Infrastructure and Decision Support on Military Installations: This SON focuses on advancing rigorous, generalizable data-fusion methods that address challenges of integrating monitoring data across technologies, scales, and uncertainties to provide improved information for range and resource management of DoW lands and waters.
- Evaluating Performance of Resource Management Practices on Military Installations: This SON seeks proposals to develop and test practical methods for evaluating whether natural-resource management practices work, why they work or don't, and at what cost — enabling DoW to compare approaches and adopt cost-effective, repeatable practices across installations to support mission activities.
- Advanced Performance Coatings: This SON seeks to develop advanced performance coatings that meet MIL-PRF-32239A and MIL-PRF-85285 Type IV requirements, delivering high weathering durability and cleanability for DoW aircraft.
- Identification of Plants and Favorable Growing Conditions to Produce Optimal Nitrocellulose: This SON seeks to identify optimal trees, plants, and growing conditions for producing cellulose (MIL-C-206, MIL-DTL-20330, MIL-C-216) that maximizes nitrogen content in Type A and B nitrocellulose (MIL-DTL-244), increasing supply chain resiliency for nitrocellulose production and providing flexibility to tailor fiber attributes to munition applications.
- Technologies for Critical Mineral Refining Unit Operations: This SON focuses on the development of more effective and efficient technologies used in the chemical refining of critical minerals. Successful development could reduce the costs of critical mineral refining and aid in the acceptance and proliferation of domestic refining of critical minerals.
The SERDP Exploratory Development solicitation provides a limited amount of funding (not to exceed $250,000) for projects up to approximately one year in duration to investigate innovative approaches that entail high technical risk and/or require supporting data to provide risk reduction or proof of concept. For FY 2028, there is one SEED SON:
- Quantifying and Improving Environmental Benefits of Cold Spray and Other Solid-State Manufacturing for Corrosion Repair: This SON focuses on benchmarking the environmental footprint of cold spray and solid-state manufacturing against traditional plating for corrosion repair, including energy, hazardous chemicals, critical elements, and waste. Successful completion of this research effort will result in life cycle benefits to help transition cold spray and solid-state manufacturing into DoW applications.
The pre-proposal deadline for the SERDP Core solicitation is January 7, 2027 at 2:00 PM ET, and the pre-proposal deadline for the SERDP SEED solicitation is March 11, 2027, at 2:00 PM ET. For pre-proposal instructions and more information about each SON, visit www.serdp-estcp.mil/workwithus.
The program office will host a webinar about these solicitations on Friday, November 20 at 1:00 PM ET. During the webinar, participants will have the opportunity to ask questions about the funding process, the current SONs, and the proposal submission process. Register here.
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About SERDP & ESTCP
The Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP) and the Environmental Security Technology Certification Program (ESTCP) develop and demonstrate innovative, scalable technologies that enhance military readiness, improve warfighter capabilities, and strengthen defense infrastructure. SERDP invests in basic and applied research to secure military installations, and ESTCP puts innovations to the test, fielding real-world solutions that enhance military operations. The programs report to the Deputy Assistant Secretary of War for Energy Resilience & Optimization headquartered at the Pentagon. For more information, visit https://serdp-estcp.mil.
