Like the dolphin in the legend of our Greek namesake, at Taras we are dedicated to helping our clients navigate challenging waters in defense contracting.



The Legend of Taras


Our namesake is Taras, one of the sons of Poseidon, the God of the Sea in Roman mythology. The legend is that when Taras became stranded at sea because of a storm, Poseidon sent a dolphin to rescue his son. The southern Italian coastal city of Taranto is named after Taras, and his return to Poseidon on the back of a dolphin is immortalized on many coins from the area such as this one. On this didrachm from around 2,300 years ago, Taras is shown holding his father's trident and a shield with the image of a griffin, a fierce mythical beast. Beneath the dolphin is a murex shell from which precious purple dye was laboriously made. 



Our logo depicts our admiration of the intelligence and community mindedness of our cetacean friends and carries the colors of our Commonwealth's seal, in the spirit of its motto: Virtue, Liberty, and Independence. Our appreciation for the skill of the warrior, the persistence of industry, and the familial care in the legend inspire us.

Our Services

Our many professional services are tailored to the needs of small defense businesses to improve their processes to enable success and growth. We provide highly professional support in:

  • Proposal management and solution development
  • Technology assessment
  • Technical writing
  • Trade Studies
  • Training


We’re committed to the utmost confidentiality and security in everything we do. Our staff are cleared at a minimum at the DoD Top Secret level, which not only allows us to work on classified proposals, but attention to security and risk management pervade our business, including developing iron-clad nondisclosure agreements and thoroughly addressing potential conflicts of interest.

Proposal Support

We’re experts at developing proposals, following the Shipley process, which relies on successive stages of data-driven proposal refinement under a color team structure. But the very first step after an opportunity is uncovered is to pull the technical writing team together to develop an approach that takes into account the customer’s needs and pain points, and the company’s capabilities, under an overarching solution architecture. One of our specialties is writing to DoD Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) grants.

Technology Assessment

Through decades of exploration and development of a wide variety of technologies across multiple defense domains, our staff are highly capable of investigating technologies for use by the small businesses we serve. We provide expert guidance for early-stage technology exploration and seamlessly work the appropriate new techniques or tools into the business development process.

Technical Writing

Our staff have vast experience with writing on technical topics, whether the document is a white paper, an article, advertising, a technical report, a project plan, or a large proposal. We’re especially skilled at being the “volume boss” on technical sections of proposals, beginning with early development of an approach and incorporating the feasibility of the approach and past performance. We ensure strict compliance with proposal requirements and incorporate company strengths, a customer understanding, and limitations of the competition.

Trade Studies

The purpose of trade studies is to support decision-making throughout the lifecycle of a system. We conduct trade studies among operational capabilities, functional and performance requirements, design alternatives and their related manufacturing, testing, and support processes. We of course include the program schedule and life-cycle costs to systematically examine alternatives. Once alternatives have been identified, a Taras trade study team applies a set of decision criteria to analyze the alternatives. We ‘trade’ these criteria to determine the optimal and recommended alternative. Quite often a trade study provides invaluable input to crafting a proposal.

Training

Taras has deep resources in education and training, stemming from extensive experience in academia, including continuing adult education. Taras staff have a broad knowledge base and the ability to ramp up quickly on new, custom training offerings. We’re driven by a passion for effective knowledge transfer to students at any professional level, and live by the mantra, “Not a sage on a stage, but a guide by the side.”