Capability marketplace

DARPA ACK Capability Marketplace Lab

A synthetic, non-operational demonstration of how requests, offers, compatibility, availability, quality, opportunity cost, and authority can be compared without treating a mathematical match as permission to act.

Research basis KW-RPT-002 KW-RPT-008 KW-RPT-009

Consumer request

A mission owner describes a bounded outcome, deadline, data contract, and constraints rather than naming one preassigned platform.

Supplier offers

Capability providers advertise what they can contribute, when it is available, and which dependencies, risks, and authorities apply.

Virtual Liaison

A mediation layer compares feasible combinations and exposes tradeoffs while protecting unnecessary internal detail. A responsible authority still decides.

Synthetic request

Configure the need

Mission outcome Required data contract Maximum illustrative latency band 5 relative units Require matching authority class Require exact or backward-compatible data Exclude unavailable offers

The score is a fictional teaching value. It is not a weapon-target assignment, operational recommendation, or performance estimate.

Marketplace response

Feasible offers and exclusions

Ready to evaluate.

Choose constraints and evaluate the marketplace.

A ranked option is not an authorized action

ACK’s public contribution was capability discovery and comparison. KillWebs.com keeps technical feasibility, resource reservation, trust, policy, legal review, command authority, and execution as separate states. The lab can exclude an offer; it cannot create permission.

Answer-ready summary

Direct answers

What problem did ACK address?

ACK addressed cross-domain capability discovery and resource composition: finding feasible alternatives when organizations own different sensors, support services, and effectors.

Read the supporting page

Did ACK itself authorize force?

The public research basis describes ACK as a decision aid that compared and recommended command-and-control plays; technical compatibility is not the same as authorization.

Read the supporting page