Canada acquiring air defence and anti-drone capabilities for Canadian Armed Forces members deployed with NATO in Latvia

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  October 16, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security, Other Defence

  Contract Awards by US Department of Defense – October 15, 2020

  AIR FORCE Raytheon Missiles and Defense, Tucson, Arizona, has been awarded a $239,113,565 definitization modification (PZ0001) to contract FA8672-20-C-0005 for StormBreaker (SDBII, GBU-53/B) production Lot 6. Work will be performed in Tucson, Arizona, and is expected to be completed Nov. 28, 2023. The current action relates to classified Foreign Military Sales (FMS), and 6.3% of contract value supports FMS. Fiscal 2020 production funding in the amount of $265,281,689 is being obligated at the time of award. Total cumulative face value of the contract is $271,894,434. The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, is the contracting activity. JOINT ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE CENTER Redhorse Corp., San Diego, California (FA701420A0020); Cyber Point International LLC, Baltimore, Maryland (FA701420A0021); Elder Research Inc., Charlottesville, Virginia (FA701420A0019); Barbaricum LLC, Washington, D.C. (FA701420A0018); and Enterprise Resource Performance Inc., Fairfax, Virginia (FA701420A0022), were awarded five-year competitive blanket purchase agreements (BPAs), each with a $100,000,000 ceiling, to provide services to the Department of Defense Joint Artificial Intelligence Center Missions Directorate. The services include software development, machine learning, cognitive and systems engineering, operations research, and user experience design. Work on the contract will occur in Arlington, Virginia. The ordering period is from Sept. 25, 2020, through Sept. 24, 2025. The contracting activity is the Air Force District Washington, Joint Base Andrews, Maryland. ARMY Construction Outfitters International Inc., Boerne, Texas (W9128F-21-D-0001); Fluor Federal Services LLC, Reston, Virginia (W9128F-21-D-0002); Weston Solutions Inc., West Chester, Pennsylvania (W9128F-21-D-0003); Greenway Enterprises Inc., Helena, Montana (W9128F-21-D-0004); and Amentum Services Inc., Germantown, Maryland (W9128F-21-D-0005), will compete for each order of the $95,000,000 firm-fixed-price contract for facility renovations and repair requirements for Defense Intelligence Agency defense attache offices in U.S. diplomatic facilities worldwide. Bids were solicited via the internet with nine received. Work locations and funding will be determined with each order, with an estimated completion date of Oct. 14, 2027. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Omaha, Nebraska, is the contracting activity. Craig Technical Consulting Inc.,* Merritt Island, Florida, was awarded a $49,845,380 hybrid (cost-plus-fixed-fee, firm-fixed-price) contract to procure scientific and engineering support services for the Army Aberdeen Test Center. Bids were solicited via the internet with two received. Work locations and funding will be determined with each order, with an estimated completion date of Oct. 14, 2025. The U.S. Army Contracting Command, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, is the contracting activity (W91CRB-21-D-0002). Aegis Defense Services LLC, McLean, Virginia, was awarded a $15,974,994 firm-fixed-price contract to provide U.S. Forces Afghanistan with private security service protection. Bids were solicited via the internet with seven received. Work will be performed in Mazar-e Sharif, Afghanistan, with an estimated completion date of Oct. 29, 2023. Fiscal 2021 Afghanistan Security Forces Fund (Army) funds in the amount of $15,974,994 were obligated at the time of the award. The U.S. Army Contracting Command, Afghanistan, is the contracting activity (W91B4N-21-C-2000). DRS Network & Imaging Systems, Melbourne, Florida, was awarded a $10,425,596 firm-fixed-price contract for Direct Support Electrical System Test sets. Bids were solicited via the internet with one received. Work will be performed in Melbourne, Florida, with an estimated completion date of Jan. 31, 2022. Fiscal 2010 Foreign Military Sales (Kuwait) funds in the amount of $10,425,596 were obligated at the time of the award. The U.S. Army Contracting Command, Detroit Arsenal, Michigan, is the contracting activity (W56HZV-21-C-0055). NAVY AAR Aircraft Services Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana, is awarded a $67,262,091 modification (P00009) to previously awarded, firm-fixed-price, time and materials, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract N00019-18-D-0111. This modification exercises options to procure P-8A Poseidon aircraft depot scheduled and unscheduled maintenance, fulfillment of depot in-service repair/planner and estimator requirements, technical directive incorporation, airframe modifications, aircraft on ground support and removal and replacement of engines in support of the Navy, the government of Australia, and Foreign Military Sales customers. Work will be performed in Indianapolis, Indiana, and is expected to be completed in October 2021. No funds will be obligated at the time of award; funds will be obligated on individual orders as they are issued. The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Maryland, is the contracting activity. BAE Systems Technology Solutions and Services Inc., Rockville, Maryland, is awarded a $65,704,035 cost-plus-fixed-fee, cost-reimbursable, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract. This contract provides for air traffic control platform integration technical and engineering services, including systems production, development, test, evaluation and improvement; operational software development and maintenance; field change programs; test beds; overhaul and restoration; and fleet and supply support in support of the Air Traffic Control and Landing Systems Division systems and subsystems. Work will be performed St. Inigoes, Maryland (60%); and Lexington Park, Maryland (40%), and is expected to be completed in December 2025. No funds will be obligated at the time of award; funds will be obligated on individual orders as they are issued. This contract was competitively procured via an electronic request for proposal and two offers were received. The Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division, Patuxent River, Maryland, is the contracting activity (N00421-21-D-0002). The Boeing Co., Seattle, Washington, is awarded a $61,554,305 modification (P00005) to previously awarded, firm-fixed-price, time and materials, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract N00019-18-D-0113. This modification exercises options to procure P-8A Poseidon CFM56-7B27A/3 and CFM56-7B27AE engine depot-level maintenance and repair in support of the Navy, the government of Australia, and Foreign Military Sales customers. Work will be performed in Atlanta, Georgia (97%); and Seattle, Washington (3%), and is expected to be completed in October 2021. No funds will be obligated at the time of award; funds will be obligated on individual orders as they are issued. The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Maryland, is the contracting activity. StandardAero Inc., San Antonio, Texas, is awarded a $46,003,699 modification (P00009) to previously awarded, firm-fixed-price, time and materials, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract N00019-18-D-0110. This modification exercises options to procure P-8A Poseidon CFM56-7B27A/3 and CFM56-7B27AE engine depot-level maintenance and repair in support of the Navy, the government of Australia, and Foreign Military Sales customers. Work will be performed in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada (86%); Cincinnati, Ohio (11%); and San Antonio, Texas (3%), and is expected to be completed in October 2021. No funds will be obligated at the time of award; funds will be obligated on individual orders as they are issued. The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Maryland, is the contracting activity. CH2M Hill Constructors Inc., Englewood, Colorado, is awarded an $8,388,171 firm-fixed-price modification to task order N69450-20-F-0078 under previously-awarded multiple-award construction contract N62470-19-D-8024 for Hurricane Sally recovery at Naval Air Station Pensacola. The work to be performed provides for immediate restoration/sustainment and clean-up recovery actions due to damage caused by Hurricane Sally. Specific elements of work include roofing/seal building envelope; rip-out/tear-out; mold remediation; vegetation/tree clearing/chipping; waste/debris collection, removal and disposal; traffic management; and security fencing. This award brings the total cumulative value to $22,635,705. Work will be performed in Pensacola, Florida, and is expected to be completed by November 2020. Fiscal 2021 operations and maintenance (Navy); and fiscal 2021 operations and maintenance (Air Force) funding in the amount of $8,388,171 will be obligated at time of award and will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Facilities Engineering Command, Southeast, Jacksonville, Florida, is the contracting activity. *Small business http://ttps://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Contracts/Contract/Article/2383996/source/GovDelivery/

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  June 17, 2019 | International, Aerospace

  BAE Systems Joins Boeing’s MQ-25 Industry Team

  NASHUA, N.H.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--BAE Systems has been awarded contracts by The Boeing Company to supply the Vehicle Management Control System and Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) System for the MQ-25. “BAE Systems leads the industry in high-integrity fly-by-wire and mission-critical IFF technologies,” said Corin Beck, director of Military Aircraft Systems at BAE Systems. “Our relationship with Boeing started more than four decades ago and has resulted in aircraft that have some of the most advanced avionics and reduced size transponders in the world.” The Vehicle Management Control System will control all flight surfaces and perform overall vehicle management duties for the MQ-25 unmanned aerial vehicle. The IFF product ensures operation in contested environments by reliably identifying both coalition and enemy vehicles. The MQ-25 is the U.S. Navy's first operational carrier-based unmanned aircraft and is designed to provide a much-needed refueling capability. The contract supports Boeing's engineering and manufacturing development program to provide four MQ-25 aircraft to the U.S. Navy for Initial Operational Capability by 2024. “The MQ-25 program is vital because it will help the U.S. Navy extend the range of the carrier air wing, and Boeing and our industry team is all-in on delivering this capability,” said Dave Bujold, Boeing's MQ-25 program director. “The work we're doing is also foundational for the future of Boeing – where we're building autonomous systems from seabed to space.” BAE Systems is an industry leader in the design, development, production, and support of highly reliable flight control systems for commercial and military aircraft. It was the first to introduce fly-by-wire in both military and civil applications. BAE Systems is also a world leader in IFF equipment and this program expands its footprint to approximately 150 platforms worldwide. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190617005088/en

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  September 13, 2019 | International, C4ISR

  How the Army is modernizing the old, introducing the new

  By: Mark Pomerleau Maj. Gen. Randy Taylor led the Army's sustainment efforts for the past two years as leader of Communications-Electronics Command at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland. CECOM works to repair, restore and maintain all the Army's communications, electronics, cyber and intelligence equipment once it's been used by soldiers. In June, Maj. Gen. Mitchell Kilgo took over Taylor's position at CECOM and Taylor departed for U.S. Strategic Command. Before he left, Taylor spoke with C4ISRNET staff reporter Mark Pomerleau. C4ISRNET: You are leaving CECOM this summer after two years. What's changed? MAJ. GEN. RANDY TAYLOR: Fifty-five to 70 percent of, not just time, but expense is in sustainment. Every dollar that we don't use appropriately on the sustainment side takes a dollar away from [new programs]. One simple, but not glamorous thing that has made a tremendous impact is just making sure that — when it comes to sustaining C5ISR on the battlefield — the parts we need are at the right place at the right time. We've gone from, no kidding, like 77 percent supply availability with these parts two years ago to now this year we are currently at 90 percent and we're going to finish this fiscal year at 93 percent supply availability. Transformational. In our world, a part — the piece of a complicated platform or just the mission command system — might be the difference between it working or not, between somebody fighting or winning or not ... living or dying. C4ISRNET: Are you using any emerging technologies to get those parts in the right place at the right time? TAYLOR: We're looking at these platforms that already have built-in sensors and built-in discipline of really getting that feedback on usage, on wear and sustainment demand. We're starting there when it comes to applying AI to sustainment. I see C5ISR being a natural progression of that, but not the best place to start because even though things are becoming more and more connected, a lot of this is still very disparate networks, the disparate ability to monitor usage and age, etc. C4ISRNET: What about using AI with the network? TAYLOR: That's incredibly interesting because it is so tempting for us as an institution to go out and modernize the network by buying the latest and greatest, spiral develop it — field a different capability set every two years and get all this new stuff and all the varieties between different units and this piece of network gear and that piece of network gear and then forget about sustainment in our hubris or excitement to modernize. Then this all comes crashing down a couple years from now because we didn't have the demand history to know how to start the parts, train the technicians, and different units have different equipment. Organically, we just haven't prepared ourselves to take all that on. So, on the new modernized network, we have a mnemonic device to help remember this: Five-three-one. Starting with five: that is acquire these new C5ISR capabilities with a five-year warranty from the manufacturer. Even though that doesn't sound exciting, it is very significant. Most of the time this stuff just comes with a one-year warranty. And these warranties cost money and every dollar a program manager spends on a warranty is one less dollar he can put toward a quantity increase. That five-year warranty gives us the lead time we need as an Army and at CECOM; it gives us lead time so by year three — that's the three in five-three-one — the Army makes a decision to keep or kill. Basically, to sustain or not the thing we just modernized. Some of it we'll kill by saying, “Okay, that technology is perishable, Moore's Law. We want to replace it with the next best thing so why sustain it?” Or we might say, “It's low cost; it's essentially disposable.” C4ISRNET: Is that a new approach from years past? TAYLOR: Absolutely. Institutionally, we do a terrible job deciding to end things. We have a tendency to perpetuate indefinitely until there's some kind of compelling decision point that forces us to that. We're not really designed now to think about it that deliberately, that early. So, we're working with Army Futures Command, who can help lead that decision-making. And then — if the Army decides to sustain it, keep it past its warranty period ... five years in most cases — we have to decide, okay, then who's going to sustain it? Most of that will be sustained by CECOM. Then we have to work out a plan to transition it over to sustainment. C4ISRNET: Does that change how the network will look? TAYLOR: The network writ large, for as long as this discussion is relevant, will consist of new parts and old parts. Modernized network cross-functional team parts and legacy? That's already in the field that will be out there in some form. The biggest thing on an enterprise level that's keeping the rates from being higher is the fact that a large amount of what is fielded in the network has never gone back to the depot for reset, repair, overall, anything like that. When you pick that apart, the reason it hasn't gone back is we've made it, in the past, too hard to get it back to the depot. It's taken too long. All of the legacy radios. All of the WIN-T components to include Point-of-Presence and Soldier Network Extension, radars, generators, night-vision devices ... Back under the [Army Force Generation] model when we had about six months to reset, this was alright. But still, people didn't turn their stuff in. Nobody wanted to be without their equipment for six months because we were taking all of six months and then some at the depot to turn this thing and send it back to them. We've since completely changed that. C4ISRNET: How so? TAYLOR: Now, the C5ISR units can bring in basically all their major C5ISR platforms, turn them all in and then almost immediately drive away with something that's been totally refurbished. We've started already to do that in partnership with Forces Command, which gives us the priorities. We've seen a big spike in turning this stuff around, which really helps improve operational readiness. At the same time, we're doing all that. We made great strides in something we call “repair cycle time.” Take something like a Satellite Transportable Terminal. We used to take over six months to turn an STT to overhaul it, send it back. We do that now in less than two months. But units don't even have to wait that long because they have a repair cycle flow. Everything is accelerated now so that we can better modernize the old, introduce the new and keep this capable as we go forward. C4ISRNET: What kinds of challenges are ahead in software? TAYLOR: A big challenge with software is intellectual property. It used to be the way we looked at intellectual property rights is we kind of saw it as a binary decision. The government either bought it or we didn't. Most times we didn't because it was very expensive to buy it ... They developed it, they give us capabilities we contracted for, but they own the inner workings of it. Same thing on the hardware side. We have someone build a platform, they give us a platform, but they don't give all the engineering diagrams and all the specs on how to build the subcomponents. But we found we were at these very vulnerable points where something became obsolete, meaning we had a part on a platform and then, for example, the manufacturer stopped making it because there was no business case or maybe a sub vendor went out of business, and now we had to manufacture it organically or hire someone else, but we didn't have the intellectual property. So, it took forever to re-engineer it. C4ISRNET: And the same with software? TAYLOR: Same thing on the software side. We didn't have the code and it would just be too expensive then to try to figure it out on our own. What we do now is we have an agreement saying if any of these trigger events occur in the future, I'm going to have rights to this intellectual property you developed. I, the government, will have rights, and it's going to be at a pre-negotiated price. And what we're going to do to protect each one of us here is we're going to hold your intellectual property with a third, neutral party that will hold your software. You'll be required to update it, keep it current, they will protect it from the government or any competitor seeing it until these trigger events occur and then I will pay you for what I need when I need it. That is a brand-new way of doing business. It's been in practice a little bit in industry but not in the Department of Defense. C4ISRNET: That's important if a new radar signature comes up and you need to make a quick change. TAYLOR: Absolutely. Anything. The threat environment changes, you've got to get in there. C4ISRNET: What about software licenses? TAYLOR: If you look at the trend of how software sustainment was going, before we did a big course correction, we were approaching the point theoretically where all our sustainment dollars would go to software and [we would] have nothing left for the hardware. We got that under control now. A big part of that rebalancing is reducing the licensing cost. It first started with getting to fewer baselines because it kind of got away from us in the surge and in the war years. We had so many different versions of different software and different platforms. So, we worked with the [program executive offices] and consolidated that down to the minimum feasible number of baselines. We've also negotiated some better enterprise licenses and there have been some efficiencies there. Right now, on the sustainment side, the folks that go in and make these modifications for the government, we're going from what was 43 contracts now being reduced to 34 sustainment contracts. That's still a lot but that's a huge inefficiency there. https://www.c4isrnet.com/opinion/2019/09/12/how-the-army-is-modernizing-the-old-introducing-the-new