Contracts for July 1, 2021

On the same subject

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  January 15, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  Contract Awards by US Department of Defense - January 14, 2020

  AIR FORCE Lockheed Martin Corp., Fort Worth, Texas, has been awarded a $32,860,395 hybrid cost-plus-fixed-fee and firm-fixed-price modification (P00068) to previously-awarded contract FA8615-12-C-6016 for contractor logistics support to the Taiwan F-16 Peace Phoenix Rising program. This modification provides for contractor logistics support, repair and return and diminishing manufacturing source management services for Taiwan F-16s Active Electronically Scanned Array Radar. Work will be performed in Fort Worth, Texas; and Taiwan, and is expected to be complete by Dec. 31, 2025. This modification involves 100% foreign military sales to Taiwan. Foreign Military Sales funds in the amount of $25,001,279 are being obligated at the time of award. The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, is the contracting activity. NAVY Noble Sales Co. Inc., Rockland, Massachusetts, is awarded a $30,000,000 indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity, fixed-price contract that includes provisions for economic price adjustment to acquire supplies and provide related store operation services required by Naval Supply Systems Command Fleet Logistics Center, Norfolk, for two commercial retail stores on the Naval Support Activity, Crane, Indiana, for materials needed by the Naval Facilities Command Public Works Department. The contract includes a five-year base ordering period with an option to extend services for a six-month ordering period pursuant to the Federal Acquisition Regulation 52.217-8. All work will be performed in Crane, Indiana. The ordering period is expected to be completed by January 2025; if the option is exercised, work will be completed by July 2025. Fiscal 2020 operations and maintenance funds (Navy) in the amount of $100,000 will be obligated to fund the contract's minimum amount, and funds will expire at the end of the fiscal year. This contract was competitively procured with the solicitation posted to the Federal Business Opportunities website with five offers received. Naval Supply Systems Command Fleet Logistics Center, Norfolk, Contracting Department, Norfolk, Virginia, is the contracting activity (N00189-20-D-0009). ARMY CEMS-RS&H ABQ JV,* San Antonio, Texas, was awarded a $9,500,000 firm-fixed-price contract for architect and engineer services. Bids were solicited via the internet with 22 received. Work locations and funding will be determined with each order, with an estimated completion date of Jan. 9, 2025. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Albuquerque, New Mexico, is the contracting activity (W912PP-19-D-0017). Goodwill Industries of San Antonio Contract Services, San Antonio, Texas, was awarded a $7,858,420 modification (P00006) to contract W81K04-18-C-0002 for record processing services, inventory, track and store service treatment records for Army service members who have separated or retired from the Total Force. Work will be performed in San Antonio, Texas, with an estimated completion date of Jan. 25, 2021. Fiscal 2020 and 2021 Defense Health Program, defense funds in the amount of $7,858,420 were obligated at the time of the award. U.S. Army Health Contracting Activity, San Antonio, Texas, is the contracting activity. DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY Alamo Strategic Manufacturing,** San Antonio, Texas, has been awarded a maximum $8,625,000 modification (P00005) exercising the first one-year option period of a one-year base contract (SPE1C1-19-D-1122) with two one-year option periods for knee and elbow pads. This is a firm-fixed-price, indefinite-quantity contract. Locations of performance are Texas, Puerto Rico and Massachusetts, with a Jan. 30, 2021, performance completion date. Using military services are Army, Air Force and Marine Corps. Type of appropriation is fiscal 2020 through 2021 defense working capital funds. The contracting activity is the Defense Logistics Agency Troop Support, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. *Small Business **Small Disadvantaged Business https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Contracts/Contract/Article/2057245/source/GovDelivery/

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  September 8, 2020 | International, Aerospace

  Drones on Military Bases: Easy Aerial Competes to Create the Air Force “Base of the Future”

  Automated drone solutions have significant value in applications from surveillance to inspections of aircraft, buildings, and infrastructure. Drones on military bases have the same value – and drone startup Easy Aerial is competing to bring their tethered drone technology to the Air Force Base of the Future. AFWERX, the catalyst for fostering innovation within the U.S. Air Force, announced Easy Aerial as one of the top 92 participating teams selected from across the globe competing to build the Base of the Future Challenge. “The AFWERX Challenge is centered around six topics – Base Security, Installation Resilience, Leveraging Technology for Operational Effectiveness, Reverse Engineering, Culture of Innovation, and Airman and Family Wellbeing,” says an Easy Aerial press release. Easy Aerial is competing in the Leveraging Technology for Operational Effectiveness Challenge – a challenge to leverage artificial intelligence, additive manufacturing and machine learning to build an Air Force base “that becomes a leader in innovation.” The Base of the Future theme was inspired by Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida, which was destroyed in 2018 by Hurricane Michael. Congress has approved a $ 3 billion military construction rebuild program: the Base of the Future Challenge is based on the hope that Tyndall will be rebuilt as a model of innovation for military services around the world. Easy Aerial provides drone-based monitoring and inspection solutions designed and built in the U.S. Easy Aerial solutions “are fully autonomous, all-weather capable, portable, rugged, and specifically designed for military applications,” says the announcement. Among Easy Aerial's applications is an autonomous solution for rapid maintenance inspection of large aircraft. “The system features a tethered drone attached to a self-directing base station that moves around an aircraft capturing and securely storing high-resolution images and video from multiple angles. The system dramatically reduces the time needed for current routine and emergency maintenance inspections in large hangars with scaffolding erected around the aircraft.” “We are honored to be the only participant selected to compete in three of the six Air Force base of the future challenges,” said Ido Gur, Co-Founder, and CEO of Easy Aerial. “As we move into the next phase of the challenge, we look forward to further demonstrating the capabilities and advantages of our autonomous rapid maintenance inspection system of large aircraft.” “The AFWERX Base of the Future Challenge is critical to our mission of increasing collaboration between large businesses and entrepreneurs to accelerate solutions for the Air Force,” stated Mark Rowland of AFWERX. “On behalf of AFWERX and the Department of Defense, we congratulate the teams advancing to the next phase. Their contributions are invaluable and have the potential to create game-changing results across the Air Force enterprise.” Miriam McNabb is the Editor-in-Chief of DRONELIFE and CEO of JobForDrones, a professional drone services marketplace, and a fascinated observer of the emerging drone industry and the regulatory environment for drones. Miriam has penned over 3,000 articles focused on the commercial drone space and is an international speaker and recognized figure in the industry. Miriam has a degree from the University of Chicago and over 20 years of experience in high tech sales and marketing for new technologies. For drone industry consulting or writing, Email Miriam. https://dronescrunch.com/drones-on-military-bases-easy-aerial-competes-to-create-the-air-force-base-of-the-future/

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  July 10, 2020 | International, Aerospace, C4ISR

  Air Force Expands AI-Based Predictive Maintenance

  By THERESA HITCHENSon July 09, 2020 at 4:23 PM WASHINGTON: The Air Force plans to expand its “predictive maintenance” using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to another 12 weapon systems, says Lt. Gen. Warren Berry, deputy chief of staff for logistics, engineering and force protection. “I continue to believe that predictive maintenance is a real game changer for us as an Air Force,” he told the Mitchell Institute today. “There's a lot of power in moving unscheduled maintenance into scheduled maintenance, and we're firmly convinced that it will improve our readiness and improve our combat capabilities by doing so.” “We have long been a fly-to-fail force,” he explained, simply waiting for aircraft to quit working and then trying to fix them by moving parts to wherever the planes were grounded. But today's unpredictable and relatively slow approach to getting fighters and bombers back in the air simply won't be possible in future conflicts, as Russian and China seek to degrade US communications including via cyber attacks and attacks on US bases. The service has made “logistics under attack” one of its key priorities as it shifts focus to deal with globalized peer conflict, asking for $3 billion in 2021 to fund various efforts. Berry noted that the Air Force is “talking to” the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) about best practices and lessons learned as it pushes ahead with its two key predictive maintenance initiatives: “condition-based maintenance plus (CBM+) and “enhanced reliability centered maintenance (ERCM). The service has been using CBM+, which involves monitoring platforms on three aircraft: the C-5, the KC-135 and the B-1. “They've been doing it for about 18 to 24 months now, and we're starting to get some real return on what it is that the CBM+ is offering us,” he said. ERCM, he explained, “is really laying that artificial intelligence and machine learning on top of the information systems that we have, the maintenance information system data, that we have today, and understanding failure rates and understanding mission characteristics of the aircraft and how they fail,” he said. While he said he didn't have the list at his fingertips, Berry said the dozen weapon systems being integrated would come under the ERCM effort by the end of the year. Berry said that there are a number of other changes to how the Air Force does logistics that will require future focus, especially the question of how best to preposition supplies in the European and Pacific theaters. He noted that the Pacific region presents particular problems because of the wide geographic dispersement of allies there. “I think we need to fundamentally change how we think about prepositioning our assets,” he said. “And that really does require partners and allies, in not just prepositioning the material and equipment, but prepositioning capacity and capability — whether that's through operational contracting support or whether that's through things that are actually on the installation that we can take advantage of.” “We're not going to be able to bring what we could bring in the past,” he added, “and so much of what we are going to use is probably going to have to be there.” This is going to require new ways to partner with allies and friendly nations in those regions, he said, noting that the European Deterrence Initiative and the Pacific Deterrence Initiative might help. “But, we're gonna have to make those a little bit more foundational moving forward,” he said. Finally, Berry stressed that improved command and control is going to be the base of all of the Air Force's efforts to establish “adaptive operations and agile combat employment” — concepts for operating in a distributed manner from a large number of small operating locations in a peer conflicts. As a 2019 study on “distributed operations” by RAND explains, “this type of distributed air operations in a contested environment represents a significant shift in the way the Air Force has operated since the end of the Cold War.” Berry said that “Log C2” is related to Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2), another top Air Force priority as Breaking D readers are well aware. “JADC2 is about having the decision advantage in multi- domain operations, and so in the log enterprise sustainment we want to have that same decision advantage in order to support multi-domain operations because sustainment and logistics follows operators,” he said. “And so we've got to be able to have the sense orient and respond posture ... to be able to support multi-domain operations in the way that the operators plan to employ.” This involves moving to replace old IT systems with modern capabilities, including cloud storage and data fusion from multiple sensors — whether those be onboard an aircraft such as the F-35 or from a machine doing specific maintenance. “That data really is the key to our awareness of what's happening in the environment, and what's happening in the broader enterprise, to include at home and the depots and the broader supply system,” he said. https://breakingdefense.com/2020/07/air-force-expands-ai-based-predictive-maintenance/