The Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Transportation both run SBIR programs, and both are small. Each publishes a limited number of topics per cycle rather than the hundreds DoD releases, and each buys through contracts rather than grants, which means you are being paid for a deliverable, not funded to explore. The upside is proportion: fewer topics attract fewer proposals, and a company whose technology genuinely matches a topic competes against a manageable field.
DHS: screening, borders, and the first responder
DHS is not one buyer. It is a department of components — Customs and Border Protection, the Transportation Security Administration, the Coast Guard, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, FEMA — and its Science and Technology Directorate writes SBIR topics on their behalf. Reading a DHS topic means asking which component actually has the problem, because that component is your eventual customer and its operating environment sets your requirements.
Topics cluster around screening and detection, border and maritime surveillance, cybersecurity for critical infrastructure, and first-responder equipment: protective gear, communications that work inside a burning building, situational awareness. Counter-drone and airspace security recur often, and our overview of counter-drone detection and mitigation covers the stack those topics keep describing. Field conditions are non-negotiable here. Equipment gets dropped, soaked, worn through a twelve-hour shift, and operated by someone wearing gloves.
DOT: surface transportation, safety, infrastructure
DOT runs its SBIR centrally but draws topics from its modal administrations — highways, rail, transit, NHTSA, the Maritime Administration, and the FAA, which also funds work of its own. Recurring themes are highway and rail safety, bridge and pavement condition monitoring, work-zone protection, transit accessibility, and freight efficiency.
DOT topics tend to be concrete: an inspection method that shortens lane closures, a sensor that survives a decade outdoors on a structure, a system a state DOT could buy and maintain. That last point matters more than founders expect, because the end buyer is often a state or local agency with a modest budget and a small maintenance crew. If your technology rides on a vehicle, the requirements framing in our piece on automotive electronics development is the right starting point.
Is a small program worth your time?
A small program fits well when your technology maps to a stated topic almost exactly, and badly when you are stretching. With a handful of topics per cycle you cannot shop around your product — either a topic fits or you wait for the next release. Because both agencies award contracts, read the deliverables, milestones and data-rights language closely, and take award ceilings and Phase II structure from the current solicitation rather than assuming DoD or NIH figures apply. If you have not settled on an agency at all, start with our comparison of which federal agency to apply to, and if you expect to keep selling to these buyers after the award, see how selling to the government works beyond SBIR.
Projects House helps hardware teams turn a matching topic into a technically credible Phase I plan and a prototype that survives the field. Tell us the topic you are chasing through the contact form.