CACI Awarded $1.3 Billion Task Order to Provide Communications and Information Technology Expertise to U.S. European Command and U.S. Africa Command

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  October 16, 2020 | International, Land

  Soldiers to evaluate new light tank prototypes

  Jen Judson WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army is preparing a soldier vehicle assessment of two different light tank prototypes for infantry brigade combat teams that will start in January 2021 at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The assessment will run through June 2021, according to the service. BAE Systems and General Dynamics Land Systems were chosen in December 2018 to each build 12 prototypes of the Army's future mobile protected firepower, or MPF, vehicle identified in the service's ground combat vehicle strategy published in 2015. The service had found the capability one the service lacks. GDLS is building a vehicle that takes the United Kingdom's AJAX chassis and combines it with an M1 Abrams tank turret. BAE Systems' design is an updated M8 Buford armored gun system with new capabilities and components. “I just had my deep dive today on the SVA [soldier vehicle assessment] with the 82nd [Airborne],” Maj. Gen. Brian Cummings, the Army's program executive officer for ground combat systems, told Defense News in a recent interview. Work is ongoing to prepare ranges and roads for the arrival of the prototypes, he said. The MPF is going to be critical for the infantry because it provides infantry brigade combat teams with an organic capability to take care of impediments to forward progression such as gunfire from a machine gun nest or another enemy vehicle. The Army is expected to choose a winner in 2022. The first units will get MPF in fiscal 2025. The Army plans to initially build 26 vehicles, with an option to build 28 more and retrofit eight prototypes. GDLS told Defense News in an interview ahead of the Association of the U.S. Army's annual conference that it has delivered three vehicles to the Army. One is at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, going through characterization and mobility testing and preparing for firing. Another is at Yuma Proving Grounds, Arizona, undergoing desert testing and preparing for soldier training. Five more prototypes are in “some form of checkout, getting ready for their final inspection report to deliver to the government,” a GDLS spokesperson said, and the company is on track to deliver all of the vehicles this year. BAE is looking forward to the assessment because the two prototypes are so different from one another, said Jim Miller, the company's senior business development director for combat vehicles. The BAE's offering is smaller — fitting in between the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle and a Stryker in terms of size — while GDLS' vehicle is bigger, as it's based on the M1 Abrams chassis. The BAE's MPF prototype can be transported via a C-130 aircraft. Three can fit on a C-17 aircraft. And even though it is small, it has the survivability of BAE's Armored Multipurpose Vehicle, Miller said. The Army is requiring the vehicle be C-17 transportable. Soldier assessments for other recent competitions have weighed heavily into decisions, Miller added. “I think the soldier vehicle assessment is going to be really important,” he said. “Did we get this right? Now which one is closer to the mark?” https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/ausa/2020/10/15/soldiers-to-evaluate-new-light-tank-prototypes/

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  June 11, 2018 | International, C4ISR

  Cyberwarriors need a training platform, and fast

  By: Mark Pomerleau U.S. Cyber Command's cyber teams are now built and transitioning to readiness, and now the force needs a dedicated platform to conduct training. Given the importance of properly preparing cyberwarriors, the Army (acting as Cyber Command's executive agent for all the service's cyber teams) has been using a rapid acquisition approach called other transaction authorities to field a training platform. The Persistent Cyber Training Environment, or PCTE, is not a single entity, but rather a complex system of systems that will require many moving parts for individual and collective training, as well as mission rehearsal. According to Jim Keffer, director of cyber at Lockheed Martin, it will be more than just a cyber range. It'll require event management; scheduling for training exercises; scenario design features; control of the exercises; assessments; red forces; library of capabilities that can be linked to designing adversary network mock-ups (which will require good intelligence); and classrooms to put all this together. The reason such a high-end training environment is being fast-tracked is because cyberwarriors don't currently have anything akin to what traditional war fighters use to prepare for combat. Capstone cyber exercises that only occur once or twice a year are not enough for the force, and in many cases the first-time cyberwarriors will engage with an adversary in the real world and not in simulations. “It's like a fighter pilot going up and the first time he's flown actual combat is against a real adversary,” Keffer told Fifth Domain. “That's not a good way to fight wars. That's not a good way to train your troops. That's not a good way to decrease the risk to your forces.” Incremental approach The overall PCTE is made up of a number of cyber investment challenges, or CICs, that the Army is releasing incrementally and will eventually string together. This will “bring together some of the best technology that's out there” to address immediate needs in various categories as the longer-term vision of what PCTE might look like coalesces, Deon Viergutz, vice president of Cyber Solutions at Lockheed Martin, told Fifth Domain in an interview. The Army will release five CIC's to get multiple industry approaches as it heads up the full PCTE indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract, Viergutz said, adding, “I believe that is still under work, the long term for PCTE and the acquisition.” While CIC one has been awarded, CIC two should be awarded in the next few weeks. According to contracting documents, CIC two is focused on enabling user access to the PCTE and training aids through a portal. CIC three, which is forthcoming in mid- to late-June, is focused on red team planning, as well as master exercise control. CIC four, estimated for release in July, will focus on training assessment. There is no information released yet regarding CIC five. One important question remains unclear, however: In the end, who will be the integrator of systems — the government or a contractor? “The seams between all these capabilities tend to be the weak points. Having an integrator to kind of tie all that together — the ranges and all these different capabilities — would be important to make sure that the cyberwarriors get the best capability that they deserve ... as quickly as possible,” Keffer said. “If the government wants to be the integrator, we'll do all we can to help them out. If they want industry to be the integrator, industry has a lot of experience doing that, especially Lockheed Martin; we're big in the training business.” https://www.fifthdomain.com/dod/2018/06/04/cyberwarriors-need-a-training-platform-and-fast/

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  July 8, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval

  House Appropriators Add 12 F-35s, Boost Weapons Spending, But…

  "To us, it means that there is going to be much more tension and debate over future modernization programs as flat investment will not enable DoD to recapitalize in a timely and militarily relevant pace," says defense analyst Byron Callan. By COLIN CLARKon July 07, 2020 at 7:38 PM WASHINGTON: House appropriators made their first cut at the annual defense spending bill today, approving spending $3.5 billion below the Trump Administration's request — although lawmakers added a substantial $4.1 billion for several weapons systems, including 12 additional F-35s. Overall, the House Appropriations Committee trimmed $3.5 billion from the Trump Administration's 2021 budget request while still fully paying for a 3% pay raise and force structure increases to all but the Marines, who will lose 2,100 people. The appropriators approval of an increase in F-35 buys makes it unlikely the House Armed Services Committee's skepticism of the Joint Strike Fighter program will prevail. The HASC added no more planes above the administration request for 79 aircraft of all three models and docked at least a score of supporting line items by a total of $561 million. By contrast the SASC added $1.36 billion to buy more Air Force F-35As, Marine F-35Bs, and Navy F-35Cs, plus spare parts. In other bump ups, the HAC funds 11 V-22 aircraft, adding $1.1 billion to buy two more than the request. It also adds three P-8A Poseidon aircraft for the Navy Reserve, three more than the request for an additional $510 million. And echoing the House authorizing committee's support, the HAC added 16 MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles to the Pentagon request, for a cost of $344 million. But making sense of the HAC-D bill is difficult because it's not yet clear what and where they've cut, as veteran defense stock analyst Byron Callan notes. It all gets complicated by the CARES Act and adjustments to contracts that have been made. Overall, Callan says, it looks as if fiscal 2020 — last year — may have been the peak of whatever Trump defense boost there has been. But it's all uncertain. “Absent the pandemic budget impacts, however, the markups so far suggest that FY20 was a peak for DoD investment. This does not mean investment is at the peak and headed fast downhill in FY21 and beyond,” Callan writes. “To us, it means that there is going to be much more tension and debate over future modernization programs as flat investment will not enable DoD to recapitalize in a timely and militarily relevant pace.” https://breakingdefense.com/2020/07/house-appropriators-add-12-f-35s-boost-weapons-spending-but/