Army, NASA Want Laser Micro-Satellites For 50 Times The Bandwidth

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  April 30, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  Contract Awards by US Department of Defense - April 29, 2020

  ARMY FN America LLC, Columbia, South Carolina (W56HZV-20-D-0024); and Colt's Manufacturing Co. LLC, West Hartford, Connecticut (W56HZV-20-D-0025), will compete for each order of the $383,311,941 firm-fixed-price contract to provide M16A4 rifles for Foreign Military Sales (Afghanistan, Grenada, Iraq, Lebanon and Nepal). Bids were solicited via the internet with three received. Work locations and funding will be determined with each order, with an estimated completion date of April 28, 2025. U.S. Army Contracting Command, Detroit Arsenal, Michigan, is the contracting activity. Travis Association for the Blind, Austin, Texas, was awarded a $12,483,935 modification (P00004) to contract W56HZV-18-C-0067 to support repairing, cleaning, warehousing and distribution of organizational clothing and individual equipment. Bids were solicited via the internet with one received. Work will be performed in Austin, Texas, with an estimated completion date of April 30, 2021. Fiscal 2020 operations and maintenance, Army funds in the amount of $12,483,935 were obligated at the time of the award. U.S. Army Contracting Command, Detroit Arsenal, Michigan, is the contracting activity. Cepheid, Sunnyvale, California, was awarded a $9,933,000 firm-fixed-price contract (W911QY-20-P-0154) for up to 333,000 COVID-19 assays. Bids were solicited via the internet with one received. Work will be performed in Sunnyvale, California, with an estimated completion date of March 31, 2021. Fiscal 2020 operations and maintenance, Army funds in the amount of $9,933,000 were obligated at the time of the award. U.S. Army Contracting Command, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, is the contracting activity. (Awarded April 27, 2020) Manson Construction Co., Seattle, Washington, was awarded a $7,675,998 modification (P00002) to contract W912P8-20-C-0010 to exercise option hours for the dredge Glenn Edwards. Work will be performed in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, with an estimated completion date of Sept. 30, 2020. Fiscal 2020 civil operations and maintenance funds in the amount of $7,675,998 were obligated at the time of the award. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, New Orleans, Louisiana, is the contracting activity. DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY American Water Military Services LLC, Camden, New Jersey, has been awarded a maximum $70,000,000 modification (P00001) to a 50-year contract (SP0600-19-C-8327) with no option periods for additional wastewater utility system construction, repair and replacement work at Target Hill Wastewater Treatment Plant, U.S. Army Garrison West Point, New York. This is a fixed-price contract. Locations of performance are New Jersey and New York, with a Sept. 30, 2023, performance completion date. Using military service is Army. Type of appropriation is fiscal 2016 through 2020 Army military construction funds. The contracting activity is the Defense Logistics Agency Energy, Fort Belvoir, Virginia. Raytheon Co., Andover, Massachusetts, has been awarded a maximum $13,688,190 firm-fixed-price, one-time purchase contract for radomes. This was a sole-source acquisition using justification 10 U.S. Code 2304 (c)(1), as stated in Federal Acquisition Regulation 6.302-1. This is a two-year base contract with no option periods. Location of performance is Massachusetts, with a March 31, 2022, performance completion date. Using military service is Army. Type of appropriation is fiscal 2020 defense working capital funds. The contracting activity is Defense Logistics Agency Aviation, Redstone Arsenal, Alabama (SPRRA2-20-C-0023). UPDATE: Werres Corp., Frederick, Maryland (SPE8EC-20-D-0058) has been added as an awardee to the multiple-award contract for commercial material handling equipment, issued against solicitation SPE8EC-17-R-0002 and awarded June 9, 2017. AIR FORCE Raytheon Missile Systems, Tucson, Arizona, has been awarded a not-to-exceed $32,780,869 fixed-price-incentive-fee, undefinitized contract action for StormBreaker Lot 6 Contract Line Identification Number 6001 - All Up Round (AUR); Simmonds Precision Product and multicut. This contract provides for Simmonds Precision Product and multicut material and labor for parts used in a StormBreaker AUR. Work will be performed in Tucson, Arizona, and is expected to be completed by Nov. 21, 2022. This award is the result of a sole-source acquisition. Fiscal 2020 missile procurement funds in the amount of $6,612,745 are being obligated at the time of award. Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, is the contracting activity (FA8672-20-C-0005). (Awarded April 28, 2020) NAVY Physical Optics Corp.,* Torrance, California, is awarded a $17,783,583 cost-plus-fixed-fee order (N68335-20-F-0001) against previously issued basic ordering agreement N68335-19-G-0041. This order provides non-recurring engineering for the production, test, integration and delivery of the T-45 Head-Up Display (HUD) and its associated internal software. Work will be performed in Torrance, California, and also provides airworthiness substantiation and supports the joint software support activity lab and government flight test demonstration for the HUD. This is a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase III for research and development performed under the SBIR Topic Numbers N091-003, N152-096 and 04-A-A1.01. Work is expected to be complete by April 2022. Fiscal 2020 research, development, test and evaluation (Navy) funds in the amount of $1,166,435; fiscal 2019 fiscal aircraft procurement (Navy) funds in the amount of $16,387,148; and fiscal 2019 research, development, test and evaluation (Navy) funds in the amount of $230,000 will be obligated at time of award, $230,000 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. Vectrus J&J Facilities Support LLC, Colorado Springs, Colorado, is awarded a $17,090,690 indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for base operating support (BOS) services at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Patuxent River, Maryland; Webster Field, St. Inigoes, Maryland; Solomons Annex, Solomons, Maryland; and Point Lookout, St. Mary's County, Maryland. The maximum dollar value including the base period and seven option periods is $190,007,916. All work will be performed in Calvert County (8%) and St. Mary's County (92%), Maryland. The BOS services to be performed include: general information, management and administration, airfield facilities, facilities support including facility management; facility investment; integrated solid waste management; other (swimming pools); special events; and utility management, wastewater, water and environmental services. Work is expected to be complete by June 2028. No funds will be obligated at time of award. Fiscal 2020 operations and maintenance (Navy) contract funds in the amount of $17,090,690 for recurring work will be obligated on an individual task order issued during the base period. This contract was competitively procured via the Navy Electronic Commerce Online website, and seven proposals were received. The Naval Facilities Engineering Command, Atlantic, Norfolk, Virginia, is the contracting activity (N62470-20-D-0009). CFM International, West Chester, Ohio, is awarded a $13,582,486 modification (P00172) to a previously awarded firm-fixed-price contract (N00019-18-C-1071). This modification exercises an option to procure one CFM56-7B27AE commercial-off-the-shelf engine for the government of the United Kingdom. Work will be performed in Villaroche, France (50%); and Durham, North Carolina (50%), and is expected to be complete by April 2021. Foreign Military Sales funds in the amount of $13,582,486 will be obligated at time of award, none of which will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Maryland, is the contracting activity. DEFENSE COMMISSARY AGENCY Jones Lang LaSalle Americas Inc., Chicago, Illinois, is being awarded a $9,940,010 hybrid-fixed-price, time and materials schedule task order for whole facilities maintenance at various commissaries located in the U.S. and its territories. The task order is for a one-year base period beginning July 1, 2020. The task order includes four one-year option periods. If all options are exercised, the task order will be completed June 30, 2025. Quoters were solicited on the General Services Administration eBuy website, available to 03FAC contract holders, five quotes were received. The Defense Commissary Agency, Enterprise Acquisition Division, Construction Design Branch, Joint Base San Antonio, Lackland, Texas, is the contracting activity (HDEC03-20-F-0028). Jones Lang LaSalle Americas Inc., Chicago, Illinois, is awarded a $9,632,375 hybrid-fixed- price, time and materials schedule task order for whole facilities maintenance at various commissaries located in the U.S. and its territories. The task order is for a one-year base period beginning July 1, 2020. The task order includes four one-year option periods. If all four option periods are exercised, the task order will be completed June 30, 2025. Quoters were solicited on the General Services Administration eBuy website, available to 03FAC contract holders, five quotes were received. The Defense Commissary Agency, Enterprise Acquisition Division, Construction Design Branch, Joint Base San Antonio, Lackland, Texas, is the contracting activity (HDEC03-20-F-0027). Nelson Refrigeration Inc., La Vista, Nebraska, is awarded an $8,840,133 hybrid-fixed-price, time and materials schedule task order for whole facilities maintenance at various commissaries located in the U.S. and its territories. The task order is for a one-year base period beginning July 1, 2020. The task order includes four one-year option periods. If all four option periods are exercised, the task order will be completed June 30, 2025. Quoters were solicited on the General Services Administration eBuy website, available to 03FAC contract holders, five quotes were received. The Defense Commissary Agency, Enterprise Acquisition Division, Construction Design Branch, Joint Base San Antonio, Lackland, Texas, is the contracting activity (HDEC03-20-F-0033). J&J Worldwide Services, Austin Texas, is awarded a $7,822,654 hybrid-fixed price, time and materials schedule task order for whole facilities maintenance at various commissaries located in the U.S. and its territories. The task order is for a one-year base period beginning July 1, 2020. The task order includes four one-year option periods. If all four option periods are exercised, the task order will be completed June 30, 2025. Quoters were solicited on the General Services Administration eBuy website, available to 03FAC contract holders, five quotes were received. The Defense Commissary Agency, Enterprise Acquisition Division, Construction Design Branch, Joint Base San Antonio, Lackland, Texas, is the contracting activity (HDEC03-20-F-0030). *Small business https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Contracts/Contract/Article/2170148/source/GovDelivery/

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  August 18, 2020 | International, Land, C4ISR

  Kratos Targets Ground System ‘Revolution’

  We think that p-LEO is a big deal. And there's got to be a revolution that has to hit the ground segment, says Phil Carrai, president of Kratos's space, training and cyber division. By THERESA HITCHENSon August 17, 2020 at 1:20 PM WASHINGTON: As DoD and commercial industry scramble to develop small satellite constellations in Low Earth Orbit for everything from high-speed communications to near-real time Earth observation, Kratos is quietly working to solidify a central role providing the new ground systems required to make them work. While there is enormous military and commercial interest in the proliferation of small LEO satellites, known as p-LEO, not nearly as much attention has been paid to the radically different ground-based infrastructure to support those constellations. But the necessary changes in ground architecture will be monumental, and extremely lucrative for those companies at the crest of that wave. “We think that p-LEO is a big deal. And there's got to be a revolution that has to hit the ground segment,” says Phil Carrai, president of Kratos' space, training and cyber division. “We think this is kind of our play for the next many years. ... We've been making some substantial investments in that, in the sense of taking what was analog and stovepiped and moving it into a digital, dynamic, cloud infrastructure.” Kratos, headquartered in San Diego, is a mid-tier company with $750- to $800 million in annual revenue, and is perhaps best known in the defense arena right now for its low-cost attritable drones. Its XQ-58A Valkyrie is one of the top contenders for the Air Force's high-profile Skyborg program to build autonomous drones that can mate with piloted aircraft for a variety of missions; it also is providing an airframe, based on its Mako UTAP-22, as a subcontractor to Dynetics in DARPA's Gremlins program to develop drone swarms. But space-related work is the firm's bread and butter. Kratos' space, training and cyber Division is the company's biggest, Carrai said, with a large, but often behind-the-scenes, footprint in both the military and commercial satellite communications markets. Indeed, while Valkyrie's role in the Air Force's Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS), which is developing new technologies to support command and control of future all-domain operations, has been well documented, Kratos space-related comms systems and ground equipment are actually playing a bigger part as subsystems within many other company's offerings, company officials explained in a teleconference with Breaking D. “Our space portfolio really is all about communications and the ground segment, if you will, so that's been our heritage,” Carrai said. “Probably 90 percent of US satellite missions use our technology in one form or fashion. So, we are rather unique in the sense that we can claim the US Air Force and SMC [Space and Missile Systems Center] as one of our largest customers, and, probably in our top 10 or top five, Intelsat and SES are also very large customers.” The advent of 5G mobile telecommunications networks, and its promise of hyper-connectivity through the Internet of Things including from space, has mesmerized DoD and the Intelligence Community, as well as industry. The chief benefit of tying together satcom and wireless and terrestrial networks, for both national security and commercial communications, is expanded reach to hard-to-access areas. For example, satellite signals have trouble penetrating areas like ‘urban canyons'; laying fiber and erecting cell-towers in rural and harsh terrain such as mountainous regions is very costly if not impossible, but satellite communications is relatively simple. The challenge is integrating currently incompatible (in more ways than one) and heavily stovepiped networks in a seamless fashion that allows near-instantaneous roaming among them. That is why the ground system issue is so important. “We think that there's a substantial change that needs to take place from the ground perspective,” Carrai said. Not only will there need to be “way more sites” to connect to fast-moving LEO satellites due to the simple laws of physics, but satellite ground stations will need to be configured more like terrestrial communications nodes with machine-to-machine operations ensuring the best link to any one satellite at a given place or time. Chris Badgett, Kratos VP for Technology, explained that this kind of “dynamic resource allocation or that dynamic situational awareness” is particularly important to military users in order to provide jam-proof communications. In essence, this would allow a military radio to ‘jump' from one frequency being jammed to another that is open. Today, if ‘changing the channel' is possible, it is up to a solider or sailor or Marine to figure that out and manually flip switches. The ultimate goal is to automate that frequency and network ‘hopping' capability so that users don't even notice that it's being done. The mess that is the world of DoD satcom terminals is a long-standing sore-thumb for operators, particularly in the Army. As Breaking D readers know, DoD currently maintains 17,000 terminals with “approximately 135 different designs,” as the Government Accountability office found. Those terminals operate across diverse platforms—such as ships, backpacks, vehicles and aircraft — all with differing system requirements, so that for the most part each terminal system (i.e. each type of radio) is tied to only one satellite network and one type of platform. And while fixing the current problem is already a Herculean task, it could be a show-stopper to Dod's vision of future all-domain operations, linking sensors and shooters provided by all the services together via a Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) network. “The major obstacle that we have from a ground system standpoint is the current ground architectures have all been designed and developed in a very stove-piped and mission-specific sense. And so each ground system was designed for the mission that it was supporting,” said Frank Backes, senior VP for Kratos Space Federal Solutions. “Where we're going now with a joint, or combined, capability is the integration of those ground systems. And therein lies the complexity. “How do you take a legacy-based architecture that was very stovepipe designed and integrate it together into a common system that gives you enterprise-wide control of the infrastructure, and also gives you the awareness of all the systems? It's very easy to become overwhelmed in the information that a combined system provides,” Backe added. As Breaking D readers know, sorting out those answers is what Gen. Jay Raymond, head of the Space Force, set out to do with his Vision for Enterprise Satellite Communications (SATCOM). That is aimed at creating a seamless network of military and commercial communications satellites in all orbits, accessible to troops, vehicles, ships and aircraft via ground terminals and mobile receivers that would automatically “hop” from one satellite network to another. Carrai said Kratos believes that ultimately the “current analog stovepipe infrastructure that exists today” must simply be replaced. What is needed for integrated satcom is “a roaming modem or a roaming terminal,” and the ability to integrate satellite-provided imagery into the network, a “kind of a virtual antenna.” “If you don't have that capability, you're not going to be resilient, it's going to cost a lot of money, and you're going to create a huge exposure because everybody's going to know what antennas are used for what purpose,” he added. All that said, Carrai opined that partly because of push from the Space Force, the stovepipe problem with milsatcom networks is beginning to change. “It's still a struggle,” he said, because “there's a lot of drive from the spacecraft manufacturers to link the ground system with it. You know, that's what makes it a multibillion dollar system.” In addition, he said, the scramble by commercial satcom operators to get on the 5G bandwagon is forcing them to figure out how to open up proprietary networks. “Commercial operators all see that 5G and data is their future, not broadcast, he said. “The commercial operators are going to lead if not the defense side because they have to interoperate with the telecom operators if they're going to survive.” https://breakingdefense.com/2020/08/kratos-targets-ground-system-revolution

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  October 7, 2024 | International, Aerospace

  US FAA authorizes SpaceX Falcon 9 vehicle for Monday flight