-- Responses Are No Longer Being Accepted --
As part of the evolution of Blue UAS announced on May 16, 2025, the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) will establish Recognized Assessors, a group of third-party organizations, to evaluate drone platforms and related components for compliance with the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
These assessments will help inform DIU’s certification decisions for inclusion on the Blue UAS Cleared list, increasing access to compliant sUAS across the Department of Defense.
This effort leverages DIU’s multi-stakeholder partnership authority, which enables collaboration across industry, nonprofits, academic institutions, and federally affiliated organizations to support national security needs. DIU is seeking submissions from entities to serve as an initial cohort of Recognized Assessors for the partnership. DIU expects to add additional Recognized Assessors after the initial cohort at a time yet to be determined.
About the Recognized Assessor Role
Blue UAS Recognized Assessors will be responsible for:
Conducting NDAA compliance assessments on all relevant components under existing law and policy.
Verification of all ownership/interest stakes as required under existing law and policy to determine eligibility.
Reviewing supply chain provenance, country-of-origin documentation, component-level sourcing, and relevant software/firmware/hardware artifacts to verify compliance with existing law and policy.
Producing standardized assessment reports and submitting them to the Government via DIU for certification consideration.
Operating with independence, integrity, and technical rigor.
In most cases, Recognized Assessors will contract directly with companies seeking Blue UAS Cleared List inclusion. DIU will review and consider the resulting reports, and make the determination whether a platform meets the requirements for certification and listing.
Selection
DIU will select the initial cohort of Recognized Assessor candidates by considering a range of factors that include, but are not limited to:
Technical qualifications
Team composition
Expected costs
Organizational independence
Demonstrated experience
Ability to scale
Must adhere to Government standards, reporting format, and audit oversight
DIU will work with selected organizations to ensure consistent reporting and be subject to periodic performance and quality reviews. Strong Submissions will likely highlight:
Multidisciplinary team (hardware engineers, cybersecurity subject matter experts (SMEs), and regulatory SMEs)
Regulatory knowledge to include latest NDAA rules, executive orders, and Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR)/Defense FARs related to drones
Supply chain forensics technical expertise to identify compliance issues based on drone hardware and software supply chains
Business intelligence expertise to identify ownership structures and stakes through country of origin and nationality of key company members
Reverse engineering expertise to disassemble platforms to visually inspect
Cybersecurity compliance and penetration testing expertise
Vulnerability scanning/identification, reverse engineering, static/dynamic code analysis, exploit development, vulnerability profiling/scoring
Risk Management Framework and associated DoD instructions/manuals, DISA STIGs
Independence and objectivity
Experience providing clear reports that detail findings and recommendations for Government audiences
Organizations seeking to be considered as Recognized Assessors should submit either a presentation deck (max 15 slides) or a white paper (max 5 pages) detailing capabilities and qualifications.
-- Responses Are No Longer Being Accepted --
Please contact blueuasra@diu.mil with questions.