Bell changes design for the US Army’s future attack recon aircraft

On the same subject

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  August 14, 2020 | International, C4ISR

  Cubic Wins Contract from US Special Operations Command to Deliver Satellite and Baseband Communications

  August 12, 2020 - Cubic Corporation (NYSE:CUB) today announced its Cubic Mission Solutions (CMS) business division was awarded a follow-on, single-award, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (ID/IQ) contract with a ceiling of $172 million from United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) to deliver GATR inflatable satellite communications (SATCOM) terminals and baseband communications equipment in support of special operations forces (SOF) communications requirements. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200812005229/en/ “Cubic is an established and trusted partner for USSOCOM, providing special operations forces with leading-edge capabilities that support our customer's expeditionary and tactical needs,” said Mike Twyman, president of Cubic Missions Solutions. “We are proud to continue our partnership with USSOCOM; this strategic opportunity allows us to continue providing reliable solutions for SOF missions in remote and forward deployed situations.” The contract consists of five one-year ordering periods for the procurement of Cubic's 1.2-meter and 2.4-meter GATR inflatable satellite communications terminals. Cubic's technology not only enables the movement of data, but it also allows for pre-processing of data and rapid sharing of processed information, which is essential to the Hyper Enabled Operator and allows for more informed and timely decision making. About Cubic Corporation Cubic is a technology-driven, market-leading provider of integrated solutions that increase situational understanding for transportation, defense C4ISR and training customers worldwide to decrease urban congestion and improve the militaries' effectiveness and operational readiness. Our teams innovate to make a positive difference in people's lives. We simplify their daily journeys. We promote mission success and safety for those who serve their nation. For more information about Cubic, please visit www.cubic.com or on Twitter @CubicCorp. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200812005229/en/ (Photo: Business Wire)

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  August 21, 2020 | International, C4ISR, Security

  Here’s what US Cyber Command wants next for its training platform

  Mark Pomerleau WASHINGTON — As the U.S. Defense Department matures its cyber force and training, it wants greater visibility over the readiness of its teams and a more realistic training environment that replicates the entirety of the internet, including social media. These two areas were the focus of the latest industry day for the Persistent Cyber Training Environment, or PCTE, which is U.S. Cyber Command's online client that allows worldwide cyber mission force teams to connect and conduct individual and team training as well as mission rehearsal. The Army is running the program on behalf of Cyber Command and the joint cyber force. The Aug. 19 industry day specifically focused on what the PCTE program office is calling Cyber Innovation Challenge 4. Officials have said that Cyber Innovation Challenge 4 differs from its predecessors, partly because how the program office has matured and better integrated with the operational force at Cyber Command and the service cyber components. The challenges are ways to deliver incremental capability to the training platform. They also serve as competitions to award contracts and layer new technologies onto the platform, oftentimes involving smaller, nontraditional defense companies. There were 78 companies registered to the industry day — 25 percent of which were new to PCTE competitions and cyber innovation challenges. “What do I need from you? The two major areas we're focused on today are cyber mission force assessment, which is improving our ability to assess our training of the force, and two, traffic generation. Increasing the realism of operating [in] the internet,” Lt. Gen. Stephen Fogarty, commander of Army Cyber Command, told the industry audience during the remote event. These two focus areas emerged from multiple discussions with Cyber Command and the service cyber components, officials said. Part of what is driving the greater need to assess the force and understand its readiness is new reporting requirements from Congress. “The assessment functionally must be able to incorporate defined training standards which will enable USCYBERCOM to accurately measure and maintain team and mission readiness, which has become even more critical with the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act directing quarterly reviews of the cyber mission force's readiness,” said Col. Tanya Trout, the outgoing director of the Joint Cyber Training Enterprise, which is the nonmaterial component to PCTE at Cyber Command. “Being able to demonstrate how we're impacting readiness is the gamechanger.” A staffer for the House Armed Services Committee said the quarterly assessment is set to be delivered along with the quarterly briefing on cyber operations, as mandated in a previous NDAA. However, due to the ongoing pandemic, the committee has been unable to schedule the briefing. The staffer added that despite not having the report in hand, the committee is encouraged to see the Pentagon has made progress in creating metrics to evaluate the cyber mission force. Commanders also want a better way to see how their forces perform during training so they can review scenarios and modify it as needed. Specific requests to industry include planning tools, a scoring engine, an assessment repository and data collection, analytics dashboards and aggregation, and external reporting. “These capabilities will give commanders better tools to assess their force. Commanders will be able to look at data and assess individual ... and unit readiness. These capabilities will also give training managers planning tools to meet commander's goals,” Fogarty said. Regarding traffic generation, Fogarty said there's a need for forces to be able to operate across the continuum of the information environment, not just within a certain set of networks. These include friendly space, gray space — which refers to the neutral area of the broader internet — and adversarial networks (known as red space). “The environment that PCTE replicates has to actually replicate the real-world environment,” he said. “We need a way to define, shape and record realistic traffic emulation capabilities that mirror real-world activities and terrain across the cyber domain. But also, very importantly, in the information environment, that includes social media because it would be very simple for us if all we had to do was worry about just the network. What we have to worry about is the entire information environment.” The program office is now looking for host/user-based traffic activities, cyber traffic terrain, network traffic layers, information operations and social media layers, and traffic command-and-control dashboards. https://www.c4isrnet.com/cyber/2020/08/20/heres-what-us-cyber-command-wants-next-for-its-training-platform/

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  October 29, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security, Other Defence

  Contract Awards by US Department of Defense – October 28, 2020

  AIR FORCE Megan-PCI JV LLC, Dayton, Ohio (FA8601-21-D-0002); CPM-AWA LLC, Dayton, Ohio (FA8601-21-D-0003); Peak Runge Co. JV, Port Clinton, Ohio (FA8601-21-D-0004); John Cecil Construction Co., Columbus, Ohio (FA8601-21-D-0005); NISOU LGC JV LLC, Detroit, Michigan (FA8601-21-D-0006); CAM Management and Services, Dayton, Ohio (FA8601-21-D-0007); Pontiac Drywall Systems Inc., Pontiac, Michigan (FA8601-21-D-0008); OAC Action Construction, Miami, Florida (FA8601-21-D0009); Butt Construction Co., Dayton, Ohio (FA8601-21-D-0010); Dawn Inc., Warren, Ohio (FA8601-21-D-0011); A&H Ambica JV LLC, Livonia, Michigan (FA8601-21-D-0012); and Pinnacle Construction & Development, Independence, Ohio (FA8601-21-D-0013), have been awarded a $247,000,000 multiple award, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for construction projects. Work will be performed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, and is expected to be completed Aug. 31, 2025. These awards are the result of a competitive acquisition and 21 offers were received. Fiscal 2021 operations and maintenance funds in the amount of $2,500 are being obligated to each contractor at the time of award. The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, is the contracting activity. Lockheed Martin Corp., Syracuse, New York, has been awarded a $25,000,000 ceiling indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for the Atmospheric Early Warning System AN/FPS-117 Radar program. This contract provides for contractor logistics support and radar hardware/spares procurement. Work will be performed in Syracuse, New York, as well as various sites in Alaska, Hawaii, Canada, Puerto Rico and Utah. The work is expected to be complete by March 2026. This award is the result of a sole-source acquisition. Fiscal 2020 operations and maintenance funds in the amount of $3,946,336 are being obligated at the time of award. Hill Air Force Base, Utah, is the contracting activity (FA8217-20-D-0006). NAVY Q.E.D. Systems Inc., Virginia Beach, Virginia, is awarded a $76,360,281 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract for specification development and availability execution support, formerly known as third party planning services for guided missile cruiser (CG), guided missile destroyer (DDG), landing helicopter assault, landing helicopter dock landing platform dock, and dock landing ship class vessels. This contract includes options which, if exercised, would bring the cumulative value of this contract to $229,411,097. Work will be performed in Norfolk, Virginia (51%); San Diego, California (43%); and Everett, Washington (6%), and is expected to be completed by October 2023. Fiscal 2021 operations and maintenance (Navy) funding in the amount of $2,825,931 is being obligated at time of award and funding in the amount of $2,825,931 will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was not competitively procured; a history of one bids and a lack of sources sought responses form the basis of the justification and approval for this effort. This single source contract to Q.E.D. will allow the government additional time to conduct extensive market research in preparation for a follow-on competitive effort. The Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington, D.C., is the contracting activity (N00024-21-C-4200). DRS Systems Co. Inc., Melbourne, Florida, is awarded a $10,503,852 cost-plus-fixed-fee modification to previously awarded contract N00024-13-C-4229 for an engineering change to the Energy Magazine Prototype design for the DDG51-class destroyer program. This award is for an engineering change proposal to the Energy Storage Module that will provide capability to supply power to a directed energy load and includes design, build and testing for a total of two prototype units. Work will be performed in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and is expected to be completed by June 2022. No funding will be obligated at time of award. The Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington, D.C., is the contracting activity. Lockheed Martin Corp., Missiles and Fire Control, Orlando, Florida, is awarded a $9,835,348 cost-plus-fixed-fee order (N00019-21-F-0062) against previously issued basic ordering agreement N00019-19-G-0029. This order provides non-recurring engineering for the production of target designator sets and electro-optical in support of AH-1Z Light Attack helicopters for Foreign Military Sales (FMS) customers. Work will be performed in Orlando, Florida (97%); and Ocala, Florida (3%), and is expected to be completed in November 2022. FMS funds in the amount of $9,835,348 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. ARMY General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc., Poway, California, was awarded a $70,706,229 modification (P00019) to contract W31P4Q-15-D-0003 for engineering and technical services required to accomplish research, development, integration, test, sustainment and operation across the family of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. unmanned aircraft systems. Work locations and funding will be determined with each order, with an estimated completion date of Jan. 27, 2022. U.S. Army Contracting Command, Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, is the contracting activity. *Small business https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Contracts/Contract/Article/2397509/source/GovDelivery/