3D Printing of Multilayered Materials for Smart Helmets | 3D Printing Progress

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  October 18, 2018 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  Contract Awards by US Department of Defense - October 16, 2018

  DEFENSE INFORMATION SYSTEMS AGENCY ViON Corp., Herndon, Virginia, was awarded a competitive, single award, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity, firm-fixed-price contract for SPARC processor capacity services with a total lifecycle contract amount of $329,586,627. The minimum guarantee for this effort, which is being met by the first delivery order under HC1084-19-D-0001, is $630,000, funded by fiscal 2019 research, development, test and evaluation funds. Performance will be at current Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) data centers or future DISA centers in the continental U.S. (CONUS); DISA outside CONUS data centers; and other DISA or DISA-approved locations worldwide in which DISA may acquire an operational responsibility. Proposals were solicited via the Federal Business Opportunities website (FEDBIZOPPS), and two proposals were received. The period of performance is for a base period of five years beginning Oct. 17, 2018, and five one-year option periods through Oct. 16, 2028. The Defense Information Technology Contracting Organization, Scott AFB, Illinois, is the contracting activity (HC1084-19-D-0001). NAVY The Boeing Co., Seattle, Washington, is awarded $136,999,356 for modification P00002 to a previously awarded firm-fixed-price, time and material, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract (N00019-18-D-0113). This modification provides CFM56-7B27A/3 and CFM56-7B27AE engine depot maintenance and repair, field assessment, maintenance repair and overhaul engine repair, and technical assistance for removal and replacement of engines for the P-8A Poseidon aircraft in support of the Navy and the government of Australia. Work will be performed in Atlanta, Georgia (94 percent); and Seattle, Washington (6 percent), and is expected to be completed in October 2019. No funds will be obligated at time of award. Funds will be obligated on individual task orders as they are issued. The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Maryland, is the contracting activity. General Dynamics National Steel and Shipbuilding Co., San Diego, California, is awarded a $136,753,425 undefinitized contract action on a not-to-exceed basis for the procurement of long lead time material, pre-production and engineering support for the Expeditionary Sea Base 6. This action allows the procurement of ship sets of the purchase specifications supporting integrated propulsion, main diesel generator engines, propeller and shafting, integrated bridge electronics, centrifugal pumps, fuel and lube oil purifiers and steering gear components. Work will be performed in San Diego, California (21 percent); Beloit, Wisconsin (19 percent); Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (17 percent); various cities in Alabama and Iowa (9 percent); Chula Vista, California (5 percent); Chesapeake, Virginia (5 percent); Iron Mountain, Michigan (4 percent); Busan, Korea (3 percent); and various other locations totaling 17 percent, and is expected to be completed by May 2019. Fiscal 2018 shipbuilding and conversion (Navy) funding in the amount of $65,876,713 will be obligated at time of award and will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was not competitively procured in accordance with U.S. Code 2304(c) (1) – only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements. The Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington District of Columbia, is the contracting activity. StandardAero Inc., San Antonio, Texas, is being awarded $121,890,824 for modification P00002 to a previously awarded firm-fixed-price, time and material, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract (N00019-18-D-0110). This modification provides CFM56-7B27A/3 and CFM56-7B27AE engine depot maintenance and repair, field assessment, maintenance repair and overhaul engine repair, and technical assistance for removal and replacement of engines for the P-8A Poseidon aircraft in support of the Navy and the government of Australia. Work will be performed in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada (93 percent); and San Antonia, Texas (7 percent), and is expected to be completed in October 2019. No funds will be obligated at time of award. Funds will be obligated on individual task orders as they are issued. The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Maryland, is the contracting activity. The Boeing Co., Seattle, Washington, is awarded $33,025,575 for modification P00003 to a previously awarded firm-fixed-price, time and material, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity multiple award contract (N00019-18-D-0112). This modification provides P-8A Poseidon aircraft depot scheduled and unscheduled maintenance, depot in-service repair planner and estimator requirements, technical directive incorporation, airframe modifications, ground support and removal and replacement of engines in support of the Navy and the government of Australia. Work will be performed in Atlanta, Georgia (94 percent); and Seattle, Washington (6 percent), and is expected to be completed in October 2019. No funds will be obligated at time of award. Funds will be obligated on individual task orders as they are issued. The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Maryland, is the contracting activity. AAR Aircraft Services Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana, is awarded $32,784,405 for modification P00003 to a previously awarded firm-fixed-price, time and material, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity multiple award contract (N00019-18-D-0111). This modification provides P-8A Poseidon aircraft depot scheduled and unscheduled maintenance, depot in-service repair planner and estimator requirements, technical directive incorporation, airframe modifications, ground support and removal and replacement of engines in support of the Navy and the government of Australia. Work will be performed in Indianapolis, Indiana, and is expected to be completed in October 2019. No funds will be obligated at time of award. Funds will be obligated on individual task orders as they are issued. The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Maryland, is the contracting activity. Vectrus Systems Corp., Colorado Springs, Colorado, is awarded $28,694,621 for firm-fixed-price task order N6945019F0500 under a previously awarded global contingency service multiple award contract (N62742-16-D-3552) for base operations support services at Naval Station, Guantanamo Bay. The work to be performed provides for base operations support services to include family housing, facility management, facility investment, custodial, pest control, integrated solid waste management, other (swimming pools), grounds maintenance and landscaping, utilities management, electrical, wastewater, water, and base support vehicles and equipment. The task order also contains two unexercised six-month option periods, which if exercised would increase the cumulative task order value to $59,727,709. Work will be performed in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and is expected to be completed by November 2019. No funds will be obligated at time of award. Fiscal 2019 operations and maintenance (Navy, Army and Defense Agencies); fiscal 2019 Navy working capital funds; and fiscal 2019 Defense Health Program contract funds in the amount of $21,483,790 for recurring work will be obligated on this award and will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. Three proposals were received for this task order. The Naval Facilities Engineering Command, Southeast, Jacksonville, Florida, is the contracting activity. EDO LLC, Amityville, New York, is awarded $7,751,952 for modification P00009 to a previously awarded cost-plus-fixed-fee, firm-fixed-price, cost reimbursable contract (N00019-17-C-0029). This modification provides for the procurement of four carriage system simulators, nine BRU-55B/A engineering change proposal kits, 30 joint miniature munition interface / universal armament interface capable umbilical cables, and non-recurring engineering for the universal armament interface to include parts, testing, labor and travel in support of the Precision Strike Weapons program office. Work will be performed in Amityville, New York, and is expected to be completed in June 2021. Fiscal 2018 aircraft procurement (Navy) funds in the amount of $7,751,952 will be obligated at time of award, none of which will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division, Lakehurst, New Jersey, is the contracting activity. DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY Aseptico Inc.,* Woodinville, Washington, has been awarded a maximum $28,500,000 fixed-price with economic-price-adjustment, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for hospital equipment and accessories for the Defense Logistics Agency electronic catalog. This is a five-year contract with no option periods. This was a competitive acquisition with 53 responses received; 16 contracts have been awarded to date. Using customers are Department of Defense and other federal organizations. Location of performance is Washington, with an Oct. 15, 2023, performance completion date. Type of appropriation is fiscal 2018 through 2023 defense working capital funds. The contracting activity is the Defense Logistics Agency Troop Support, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (SPE2DH-19-D-0004). *Small Business https://dod.defense.gov/News/Contracts/Contract-View/Article/1663723/source/GovDelivery/

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  August 19, 2020 | International, Aerospace, C4ISR

  Trio of prototyping contracts brings new approach for collecting military weather data

  Nathan Strout WASHINGTON — The U.S. Space Force hopes its prototype low-Earth orbit weather satellites will entice commercial businesses and allied nations to partner up on the project, reducing the cost of delivering critical weather data to the war fighter. The U.S. Air Force has been trying to replace the aging Defense Meteorological Satellite Program for years, ever since Congress opted to can it in 2015. Two capabilities in particular have proven a challenge for replacement: cloud characterization and theater weather imagery. But now the Space Force thinks it has the answer. By leveraging the increasingly popular low-Earth orbit architecture demonstrated by SpaceX's Starlink constellation and other experiments, the military believes it can lower the cost of individual satellites, increase the resiliency of the systems and attract new partnerships. In a recent interview with SpaceNews, Space and Missile Systems Center Portfolio Architect Col. Russell Teehan explained the thinking behind the new approach. The Air Force previously struggled to attract partners due to the sheer cost of the systems, he said. After all, when a single satellite costs more than $700 million, it's difficult to find someone to share the load. That price point forced the Air Force to build exquisite systems, comprised of just a handful of satellites operating in higher orbits. As the Pentagon has come to understand with its other exquisite systems, in wartime this leaves the military's space-based capabilities dependent on just a few satellites that are difficult to defend. A proliferation low-Earth orbit, or P-LEO, constellation may solve both of those problems. Smaller LEO satellites can deliver the same capabilities at a fraction of the cost per satellite, while the sheer number of targets in the constellation means that the loss of a single satellite isn't crippling. “The goal is in doing that, that ideally the commercial and allied sector would increase their desire to partner on those activities,” Treehan said. “[T]he activities in the past were generally $700 million-plus individual systems, which forced us into architectures that were [made up of less than five satellites] that were significantly vulnerable if we were in a time of conflict.” The Space Force is targeting satellites in the $30-50 million range, Treehan added. The Space Force has issued a trio of prototype contracts this summer for new space-based sensors that can collect cloud characterization and theater weather imagery from low Earth orbit. Raytheon Technologies, General Atomics and Astra are leading separate prototyping efforts after receiving contracts from the Space Enterprise Consortium. The Space Force is asking for $131 million to continue these efforts in fiscal 2021. The decision to settle on LEO for this critical weather data follows years of disarray as the Pentagon has worked to find a replacement for the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, or DMSP. For decades, the military has relied almost entirely on that program for weather data. The first satellite was launched in the 1960s, with the constellation being replenished with updated generations of weather satellites over the years. Today, there are just four DMSP satellites in operation. But no satellite is built to last forever, and there are no new DMSP satellites coming. As those satellites reach the end of their service life, they leave the two vital gaps of cloud characterization and theater weather imagery. Foreseeing this problem, Congress in 2015 directed the Air Force to launch a new weather satellite program to replace DMSP. The Air Force began working on a new constellation to launch in 2024, but there was a problem: a four-year gap between the projected end of DMSP's service life in 2020 and the launch of the new satellites. To fill that gap, the Air Force collaborated with NASA on ORS-8, a satellite to be launched just before DMSP expired. While a contract was awarded to Sierra Nevada Corp. to build that gap-filling satellite, it was protested, rescinded and ultimately canceled by the Air Force after the service determined DMSP's end-of-life date would extend beyond 2024. In 2019, the Air Force proposed a new solution: a free-flying space vehicle that would operate in low Earth orbit. The Pentagon asked for $101 million to begin the effort in fiscal 2020, with plans to launch it in 2024. But that plan didn't last the year. In September, the Air Force told Congress it wanted to scrap the free-flying space vehicle in favor of a new approach. Based on a space-based environmental monitoring capability assessment and strategy review completed in April 2019, the Air Force found it best to switch to an LEO architecture for scalability and increased resilience. Though skeptical, Congress ultimately swapped the funding for the free-flyer space vehicle to the new program. “Across the board in our weather strategies ... we're looking at multilayers of an architecture, how to most cost-effectively move forward in capability. They can be incrementally delivered over time. So that becomes a mix of large satellites that do missions and smaller satellites that we can launch in order to grow capability over time,” Col. Dennis Bythewood, program executive officer for space development at the Air Force's Space and Missile Systems Center, said in September 2019. “We're finding much more capable sensors being delivered in small packages that we think we can grow mission sets over time. Those are the types of things that we are looking at within our strategy.” https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/space/2020/08/17/trio-of-prototyping-contracts-brings-new-approach-for-collecting-military-weather-data/

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  May 6, 2020 | International, Aerospace

  Expand missile defenses during the pandemic, don’t cut them

  By: Rebeccah L. Heinrichs Rogue states are taking advantage of the American preoccupation with the COVID-19 pandemic. North Korea may test another long-range missile according to the head of U.S. Northern Command, Gen. Terrence O'Shaughnessy. He warned Congress in March that the North Korean regime is still a serious threat and is improving its missile program. And last week, Iran's Revolutionary Guard successfully launched a satellite into space. This was the first for the terrorist paramilitary group, though not the first for the regime. The pandemic is likely to prompt Congress to reassess, cut and redirect spending, but safeguarding the American people from missile attack is an essential service the government cannot afford to scale back. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Rob Soofer said at a recent Hudson Institute event: “[T]oday we are in an advantageous position vis-a-vis North Korea. Forty-four ground-based interceptors. Gen. O'Shaughnessy has complete confidence that the system will work and we can address the threat. Then the question is: Can we wait until 2028?” The Trump administration intends to deploy in 2028 the Next Generation Interceptor, or NGI, meant to handle far more complicated missile threats than what the Ground-based Midcourse Defense, or GMD, system was initially designed to do. Still, as Dr. Soofer explained, threats develop at an unpredictable pace, and so the Pentagon is pushing for initiatives to bolster defense in the meantime. Those initiatives will require serious bipartisan cooperation while concurrently developing the NGI and pursuing other advanced capabilities meant to dramatically increase the ability of the missile defense architecture. It's a tall order, but critical, nonetheless. First, and to be clear, the Pentagon has not yet embraced this step due to its determination to focus on NGI. But Congress should invest in more than just sustaining the current GMD system; it should improve it by adding 20 GBIs to the already fielded 44. The silos will be prepared for the additional numbers since, in 2017, President Donald Trump called for adding more deployed GBIs considering the heightened North Korea missile threat. The Pentagon began work on preparing for their delivery but never emplaced GBIs into those silos because Pentagon officials canceled the Redesigned Kill Vehicle. The Pentagon had anticipated the Redesigned Kill Vehicle for the nation's new GBIs. After evaluating the resources and time it would take to restart the production line of the Capability Enhancement II interceptors or to rapidly develop an improved kill vehicle that leverages new technology, the Pentagon should choose the most cost-effective solution. Recall, the Capability Enhancement II was the kill vehicle that performed well in the last complex flight test, which was the first salvo engagement of a threat-representative intercontinental ballistic missile target by GBIs. Regardless of the option the Pentagon would choose, the result would be a near-term enhanced capability by either increased capacity at a minimum, or an increased capacity with improved kill vehicles on 20 of the 64 at best. Either would be a much better scenario than keeping the backbone of homeland defenses stagnant while we anticipate the NGI in 2028. But that is not all the country should do. It should also move forward with steps the Pentagon has embraced. Those steps include improving the discrimination radar capability in the next few years so GMD can better detect and characterize the evolving threat, and deploying other existing systems to bolster GMD. Utilizing current systems with impressive testing records against missiles shorter than ICBM range as part of a layered homeland defense is called the “underlay.” As a key component of the underlay, Congress has directed the Pentagon to test the Aegis SM-3 IIA interceptor against an ICBM target. Unfortunately, because of the pandemic, the Missile Defense Agency's planned flight tests will be delayed, including for the SM-3 IIA. The threats facing the country will not wait for the end of the pandemic, and the Pentagon should reconsider that delay. As soon as the country can test the system, and if it is a success, it would be wise to prepare to deploy Aegis SM-3 IIA as the threat requires. If there is an ICBM attack against the U.S. homeland, a GBI would have the first shot at the incoming missile while it's in its midcourse phase of flight; and if an enemy missile gets through, and the Aegis SM-3 IIA is positioned correctly, it could have another shot at the missile as it begins its descent. There has been some concern about whether Russia or China have legitimate claims that bolstering homeland defense in this way is destabilizing. But no evidence supports these claims, and, as Dr. Jim Miller, an Obama-era undersecretary of defense for policy, said at a recent Hudson event: “We cannot and must not give Russia or China a veto over the United States' ability to defend ourselves from North Korea and Iran. That is an absolute no-go for any administration.” Another system that is a natural candidate for the underlay is the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense air defense system. Embracing that concept as well, Dr. Miller said: “It makes sense for certain contexts. And if you're looking at a shorter-range missile and a relatively small footprint of coverage, THAAD has a real chance to contribute in that. To me, that's certainly the case for Guam and Hawaii.” But what about cost? That's the $10 billion question — a question that happens to be valued at more than the current president's budget requires for the Missile Defense Agency. The budget request that Congress is currently considering for the MDA is roughly $9.2 billion, noticeably less than previous years, even as the role of missile defense is supposed to be expanding in the country's National Security Strategy. There is no margin for cutting the budget. Congress should rally around this mission and budget, and it should increase funding to sufficiently make these necessary improvements in the near term without paying for them by sacrificing investments like NGI for the not-so-distant future. It can do that without tipping the scale much more than $10 billion this year. That is eminently reasonable given the pressure every government department will feel after the sudden spending splurge due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Rebeccah L. Heinrichs is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute where she specializes in nuclear deterrence and missile defense. https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2020/05/05/expand-missile-defenses-during-the-pandemic-dont-cut-them/