Miles Jamison
BAE Systems’ FAST Labs research and development organization has received a $6 million contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency as part of the Pipelined Reasoning of Verifiers Enabling Robust Systems, or PROVERS, program.
DARPA Contract Scope
The company said Wednesday it will develop a Department of Defense-relevant system that showcases the integration of formal methods tools into the software development and certification process. This demonstration is meant to prove that these tools can enhance software assurance of correctness.
BAE Systems’ software engineers will offer feedback to developers to ensure formal methods tools can be utilized for DOD systems and are accessible to traditional software developers.
The defense contractor will work on the project at its facilities in Merrimack, New Hampshire; Burlington, Massachusetts and Arlington, Virginia.
Pipelined Reasoning of Verifiers Enabling Robust Systems Program
DARPA launched the PROVERS program in 2023 to boost modernization efforts by enabling non-experts such as traditional software developers and systems engineers to have access to formal methods.
Existing formal methods tools utilize mathematical proofs to verify that software works correctly. This software verification process, however, is time-consuming and hard to utilize effectively. They also have to be rewritten at every code or specification change.
Daniel Mitchell, technical manager at BAE Systems’ FAST Labs research and development organization, said, “Engineering practices for software-reliant systems continuously evolve and so too must the assurance techniques that confirm systems’ correctness and security. With PROVERS, proof engineering will create higher levels of assurance – helping critical Department of Defense software systems remain free of certain defects and vulnerabilities.”
