April 14, 2020 | International, Land
By: Jen Judson
WASHINGTON — The Army's acquisition chief, Bruce Jette, has directed the Army's Expeditionary Technology Search program to hold a competition for solutions to rapidly build ventilators to support the COVID-19 virus emergency response, according to an April 9 service statement.
Addressing the United States' ventilator shortage needed to treat severe cases of COVID-19, the xTechSearch team will tap industry for innovative approaches to building an inexpensive, emergency ventilator “that requires minimal components and is designed for simplified mass production,” the statement reads.
The competition will be open to “any American business, regardless of size,” the statement notes.
The team will begin accepting virtual pitches from competitors starting April 13. “Novel solutions” will win a prize of $5,000 to present pitches of the concepts virtually to a panel of judges, according to the statement. The Army will then award $100,000 cash prizes to winning solutions to develop concept prototypes, it adds. Some technologies could receive follow-on contracts for further production and deployment.
"The technology solution must provide a rapid-response breathing apparatus capable of short-term, rugged field operation in a small footprint that will support field hospitals," Zeke Topolosky, the Army xTechSearch program manager, said in the statement.
The statement did not detail how rapidly technologies should move from concept to prototype to production.
xTechSearch is a competition sponsored by the Army's acquisition branch “targeting small businesses to uncover novel dual-use science and technology solutions,” according to the program's website. “The competition aims to tackle the Army's most critical modernization challenges supporting the top Army focus areas.”
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The technologies the U.S. needs to bolster its homeland defense against Russian submarines and missiles are currently available ' meaning the Defense Department could move out quickly on buying and fielding them if they support these programs in the upcoming 2023 budget.
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July 8, 2019 | International, Aerospace, C4ISR
By: Cal Pringle General Dynamics Information Technology will provide the Air Force's 480th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Wing with network technology through a contract worth up to $217 million, according to a June 26 news release from the company GDIT already works for the Air Force to provide network support for the service's Distributed Common Ground System), a contract the company has held for 20 years, the report said. That program is the Air Force's primary ISR planning, collection, processing and exploitation, analysis and dissemination weapon system. GDIT developed and implemented the initial design for the global network that supports the system, the report said. As a result of the contract, the program's operations center will receive network administration, network engineering, information assurance, computer network defense, systems administration, computer network defense, systems administration, project management and C4ISR engineering, according to the report. The company will also work to help modernize the network, the release said. https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/it-networks/2019/07/05/general-dynamics-wins-217m-contract-for-the-air-forces-network/