J.R. MullisFor the Department of the Air Force’s TACFI and STRATFI programs, and for its Strategic Breakthrough notices, the package is submitted by a government point of contact, not by the company. The TACFI notice says the ingest form “must be completed by a Government Point of Contact,” meaning an end user, customer, or technical point of contact, and the templates are distributed only through government channels. The package also carries government-side commitments: a collaboration agreement, a contracting responsibility acceptance, and funding letters. A founder’s job is to make that submission easy and credible. If no one in government is willing to submit, the program has already given you its answer.
Founders read these notices the way they read a solicitation: eligibility, page limits, evaluation criteria, due date. Then they start writing. Somewhere in the second week they discover that they cannot submit the thing they are writing, and that the person who can has not agreed to.
That sequence costs companies months. It is avoidable, because the rule is stated plainly in the notice, and it is not a technicality. It is the design of the program.
What exactly do the rules say?
The language is consistent across the programs:
- TACFI. The PY26.2 notice states that the ingest form must be completed by a government point of contact, meaning the end user, customer, or technical point of contact.
- STRATFI and TACFI. The AFWERX program page states that submission is to be completed by a government point of contact only. The SpaceWERX FAQ says the government point of contact is responsible for submitting the package.
- Templates. The submission templates are distributed through a government-only channel. SpaceWERX says they are accessed through your government partners.
- Strategic Breakthrough. The Air Force’s September notice was limited to submissions from government champions.
So the company is a contributor to the package, not its owner.
Why is it designed this way?
Because these programs are not buying research. They are adding money to research that a government organization has already decided it wants to carry forward. The submission is that organization saying so. A company cannot say it on the government’s behalf, any more than a company can write its own requirement.
From the contracting side, this makes complete sense. The expensive failure in transition programs is money invested in a technology that no office goes on to use. Requiring the government to submit, and to put its own commitments in the package, screens that failure out at the front door.
Which government documents go in the package, and what does each one commit?
This is where companies most often misread what they are asking for. Each document is a different kind of commitment, usually from a different person.
The collaboration agreement
Shows senior leader buy-in from the government organization and its willingness to see the effort awarded within 90 days.
What it commits: the organization’s intent and priority. A leader is putting their name behind the effort.
What it does not do: obligate money. Intent is not a contract.
The contracting responsibility acceptance
A contracting office agreeing to take on the award action.
What it commits: contracting capacity. Someone with a warrant has agreed their office will execute this.
What it does not do: guarantee the award, or waive any of the normal requirements the contracting officer must satisfy. I held a warrant. Agreeing to execute an action means agreeing to do it correctly, which includes confirming that everything in the package holds up.
The funding letters
Government or private letters committing the matching money.
What they commit: the match, from a named source, in a named amount.
What they do not do: make the money available on your schedule. Government match money sits in a specific appropriation with its own rules and timing.
“If this package were ready, would you be willing to submit it, and who else in your organization would need to agree?” Ask it before anyone writes a page. A clear yes tells you what to build. Hesitation tells you what to work on first.
What can a company do, and what can it not?
You can supply the technical substance: Phase II results, the transition need as the user describes it, the plan, the budget, and the evidence. Most of the content in a strong package comes from the company.
You can make your champion’s job easier. Assemble what they need, in the form they need it, early. Know the templates exist and ask for them through the right channel.
You can arrange your private match, if your structure includes one, and have it documented before anyone asks.
You cannot submit the package, sign for the government, or ask anyone to commit something outside their authority. A technical point of contact cannot sign for a senior leader. A program manager cannot sign for a contracting office. If you are asking one person for all three commitments, you have misunderstood the package.
You cannot treat the submitter as a formality to arrange at the end. The submitter is usually the hardest thing to get, and everything else depends on it.
What if nobody will submit?
Then you have learned the most important fact about this opportunity, and you have learned it cheaply. Programs like these exist to carry forward work that a government organization already wants. If no one in that organization will put their name on the submission, the demand is not yet real enough.
That is not the end. It is the work. Go back to the end user, the program office, and the resource sponsor, and find out what would make the effort worth their commitment. Sometimes it is results you have not shown yet. Sometimes it is a priority that has not reached their budget. Sometimes the answer is that the office that needs this is a different one.
None of that is about who you know. It is about understanding who has to say yes, in what form, and earning each of those yeses in the right order. That is what these programs are built to test.
Sources: PY26.2 TACFI Notice of Opportunity, Section 1.4; AFWERX STRATFI/TACFI program page; SpaceWERX PY26 STRATFI/TACFI FAQ; DAF PY26.3.2 Strategic Breakthrough Notice of Opportunity (September 2026). Confirm current notice terms before relying on them.