A text mining is carried out to analyze 5955 SBIR/STTR projects funded by the U.S. Navy since 2011, and the project layout is analyzed from the perspective of the overall funding trend, the small business awardees, the major research fields and the emerging hotspots. It is found that the U.S. Navy invests 200~400 million dollars annually in the SBIR/STTR program with a wide range of funding. The small business awardees are mainly located in coastal states clustered with marine scientific research institutes. The funding fields mainly focus on improving the stability and the concealment of the systems and the components, enhancing the perception and cognitive ability of complex environments, increasing the security and reliability of the energy supply, and training the personnel for the combat capability. Recent research hotspots funded by the U.S. Navy are the additive manufacturing and the machine learning.

US Navy  /  SBIR/STTR program  /  small business  /  project layout