April 30, 2021 | International, Aerospace
The offer to Finland’s HX fighter replacement programme is backed by the Governments, air forces and industries of the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and Spain, which make up the Eurofighter...
https://www.epicos.com/article/693555/eurofighter-submits-offer-best-all-round-package-finland
June 16, 2023 | International, Aerospace
Defense News has confirmed which contractor is sending drones to Ukraine, after the U.K. released a video without identifying the systems shown.
March 5, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security
NAVY Perspecta Enterprise Solutions LLC, Herndon, Virginia, is awarded $62,143,412 as part of receiving a modification (N00039-13-D-0013_P00205) to the previously awarded indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract with a maximum potential value for the existing Next Generation Enterprise Network contract. Current and future work for the affected end user hardware seat services will be performed throughout the U.S. No additional funding will be placed on contract or obligated at the time of modification award. This modification will extend various end user hardware services from a six month (October 2019 to March 2020) to a 10 month ordering period (October 2019 to July 2020) during the contract's Option Year Six. This contract modification was not competitively procured because it is a sole-source acquisition pursuant to the authority of 10 U.S. Code 2304(c)(1) and one source or limited sources (Federal Acquisition Regulations, subpart 6.302-1). This action is the result of a justification and approval that authorizes extending the ordering period by up to four months for end user hardware seat services through July 31, 2020. The Naval Information Warfare Systems Command, San Diego, California, is the contracting activity (N00039-13-D-0013). Serco Inc., Reston, Virginia, is awarded $60,747,812 which provides for exercise of the fourth option period under a fixed-price contract for lifecycle sustainment of physical security/access control and command, communications, computers and intelligence systems in support of the Naval Facilities Engineering Command anti-terrorism/force protection ashore program at various Navy installations worldwide. Work will be performed in California (12.47%); District of Columbia (11.70%); Florida (7.98%); Italy (7.61%); Virginia (7.23%); Washington (6.59%); Hawaii (5.65%); Japan (5%); Maryland (4.52%); Guam (4.31%); Texas (2.67%); Rhode Island (2.57%); Bahrain (2.21%); Spain (2.06%); Mississippi (2.02%); Illinois (2%); Georgia (1.53%); Connecticut (1.23%); Tennessee (1.22%); Indiana (1.21%); Greece (1.10%); New Jersey (1.08%); Pennsylvania (0.98%); United Kingdom (0.86%); New Hampshire (0.81%); Cuba (0.72%); Nevada (0.63%); Louisiana (0.63%); Republic of Korea (0.54%); New York (0.52%); Singapore (0.26%); and Maine (0.09%). The work to be performed provides for preventive maintenance of hardware, associated firmware and software; response and resolution of service calls for corrective maintenance to include equipment repair, overhaul, or replacement; information assurance vulnerability alert to include version control, patch management and vulnerability scanning; asset management to track, maintain, upgrade and dispose of systems; configuration management to establish and maintain consistency of the system attributes with operational requirements and evolving technical baseline; technical refreshments, upgrades and installation of new systems; and programmatic trend analysis to identify systemic sustainment issues such as technology obsolescence. After award of this option, the total cumulative contract value will be $245,745,412. This option period is from March 2020 to March 2021. Fiscal 2020 operations and maintenance (Navy) funds in the amount of $55,365,560 are obligated on this award and will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. Naval Facilities Engineering and Expeditionary Warfare Center, Port Hueneme, California, is the contracting activity (N39430-16-C-1811). VLJM LLC,* Fullerton, California, is awarded an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract with a maximum amount of $35,000,000 for 8(a) small business set-aside at various government installations within Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton and Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach, California. No task orders are being issued at this time. The work to be performed provides for alterations, repairs, renovations and new construction within the North American Industry Classification System Code 237310 for paving projects. The terms of the contracts are not to exceed 60 months, with an expected completion date of March 2025. Fiscal 2020 operations and maintenance, Navy (O&M, N) contract funds in the amount of $5,000 are obligated on this award and will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. Future task orders will be primarily funded by military construction (Navy); O&M, N; O&M, Marine Corps; and Navy working capital funds. This contract was competitively procured via the Navy Electronic Commerce Online website with five proposals received. Naval Facilities Engineering Command Southwest, San Diego, California, is the contracting activity (N62473-20-D-0033). Larsen and Toubro Ltd., Mumbai, India, is awarded an $11,500,000 firm-fixed-price contract in the support of the government of Chile for an existing twin-screw Anchor Handling, Towing, Supply and Standby Vessel (AHTSSV) with hybrid propulsion and dynamic positioning system, hull number 71010. Work will be performed in Chennai, India, and is expected to be completed by May 2020. This contract involves foreign military sales (FMS) to Chile. FMS national funding in the amount of $11,500,000 will be obligated at time of award and will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was not competitively procured, in accordance with 10 U.S. Code 2304(c)(4) (international agreement). The Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington, District of Columbia, is the contracting activity (N00024-20-C-2214). Progeny Systems Corp.,* Manassas, Virginia, is awarded a $9,304,227 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract for the "Automation Entity Classification in Video Using Soft Biometrics." The contractor, with support from the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and other stakeholders, has developed a suite of machine learning, image processing and computer vision capabilities that collectively serve as building blocks for intelligent solutions to real-world data analytics problems. Work will be performed in Manassas, Virginia. The work to be performed is aimed at maturing these capabilities through further research and development, integrating them into operational systems, supporting testing and evaluation and transitioning into programs of record. The proposed research extends prior Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and is in scope of decision support, artificial intelligence, machine learning and graph analysis. Work is expected to be completed by March 2024. The total cumulative value of this contract is $9,304,227. The base period is $9,304,227 with no options. The action will be incrementally funded with an initial obligation of $1,566,206 utilizing fiscal 2020 research, development, test and evaluation (Navy) funds and will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was competitively procured under Navy SBIR Solicitation 2008.1 (SBIR Phase III; Topic Number N08-077). One proposal was received in response to the solicitation. ONR, Arlington, Virginia, is the contracting activity (N00014-20-C-2014). Lampson International LLC, Kennewick, Washington, is awarded a $7,907,692 firm-fixed price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for reactor compartment disposal land haul services. Work will be performed in Richland, Washington, and is for the off-load, transport and placement of defueled, decommissioned reactor compartment disposal packages from a barge at the Port of Benton in Richland, Washington, to a burial trench located on the U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford site in support of Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility. Work is expected to be complete by March 2025. Fiscal 2020 operations and maintenance (Navy) funding in the amount of $987,730 will be obligated at time of award and will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was competitively procured via the beta.sam.gov website with three offers received. The Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility, Bremerton, Washington, is the contracting activity (N4523A-20-D-4000). Huntington Ingalls Industries, Newport News Shipbuilding Division, Newport News, Virginia, is awarded a $7,532,422 cost-plus-fixed-fee option exercise modification to previously-awarded contract (N00024-18-C-2102) for engineering and technical design effort to support research and development concept formulation for current and future submarine platforms. Work will be performed in Newport News, Virginia (80%); Modesto, California (13%); East Aurora, New York (3%); Bayview, Idaho (2%); and Westerly, Rhode Island (2%), and is expected to be completed by September 2020. This contract procures advanced submarine research and development, including studies to support the future development, production and sustainment phases of submarine platforms. Fiscal 2020 research, development, test and evaluation (Navy) funding in the amount of $795,000 will be obligated at time of award and will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington, District of Columbia, is the contracting activity. AIR FORCE The Boeing Co., Seattle, Washington, has been awarded a not-to-exceed $36,721,743 undefinitized modification (P00206) to contract FA8625-11-C-6600 for KC-46 engineering, manufacturing and development contract. This modification is for the component build and development of the hardware system integration lab to conduct lab verification and ground test verification for the boom telescope actuator redesign. Work will be performed in Seattle. Fiscal 2019 research and development funds in the amount of $27,541,307 are being obligated at the time of award and is expected to be completed February 2023. The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, KC-46 Program Office, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, is the contracting activity. ARMY Heckler & Koch Defense Inc.,* Ashburn, Virginia, was awarded a $33,500,000 modification (P00028) to contract W15QKN-16-D-0051 for the Compact Semi-Automatic Sniper Systems and the Squad Designated Marksman Rifle. Bids were solicited via the internet with one received. Work locations and funding will be determined with each order, with an estimated completion date of March 16, 2022. U.S. Army Contracting Command, New Jersey, is the contracting activity. Sauer Inc., Jacksonville, Florida, was awarded a $31,412,000 firm-fixed-price contract for Volar Barracks renovations at Fort Polk, Louisiana. Bids were solicited via the internet with six received. Work will be performed in Fort Polk, Louisiana, with an estimated completion date of Oct. 25, 2021. Fiscal 2020 sustainment, restoration and modernization; and operations and maintenance, Army funds in the amount of $31,412,000 were obligated at the time of the award. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Fort Worth, Texas, is the contracting activity (W9126G-20-C-0014). DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY Base Utilities Inc.,* Grand Forks and Cavalier, North Dakota, has been awarded a maximum $7,244,277 modification (P00009) to a 50-year utilities privatization contract (SP0600-18-C-8322) with no option periods for additional utility services for two water and two wastewater systems. This is a fixed-price with economic-price-adjustment contract. Location of performance is North Dakota, with a Jan. 31, 2069, performance completion date. Using military service is Air Force. Type of appropriation is fiscal 2020 through 2069 Air Force operations and maintenance funds. The contracting activity is the Defense Logistics Agency Energy, Fort Belvoir, Virginia. *Small business https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Contracts/Contract/Article/2102247/source/GovDelivery/
July 3, 2018 | International, Naval
By: Megan Eckstein A $50,000 investment in laser scanning equipment saved the Navy nearly $2 million during the planning effort for USS George Washington‘s (CVN-73) refueling and complex overhaul. A small team of engineers with a LIDAR system did the work of the usual 20-person team, inspecting the nooks and crannies of the carrier to inform the overhaul plans. Now the Navy is looking to leverage that win and expand its use of laser scanners to not only cut down costs for aircraft carrier maintenance planning and execution but also tie into virtual reality trainers and other cutting-edge technologies. In the case of the George Washington RCOH, a team of two or three engineers from Newport News Shipbuilding flew out to the forward-deployed carrier in Japan with a LIDAR scanner atop a tripod. As the tool slowly spins around it gathers millions of data points depicting how far away objects are from the scanner. The resulting 3D point cloud shows the precise location of items in the room – not where a server rack was supposed to be according to the blueprints, for example, but where it actually is. Capt. John Markowicz, the in-service carrier program manager, told USNI News in an interview that the $1.8-million savings from that one ship check effort was about 15 percent of the total cost of that portion of the RCOH planning, and that his office was already employing the laser scanning technology ahead of the next RCOH for USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74). He said it was too early to guess a percent savings the laser scanning will yield this time around, but that it would likely be on par or better than with George Washingtonbecause Newport News Shipbuilding has continued to invest in the laser scanners and learning how to best leverage them. Markowicz said the tripod-mounted scanners cost about $3,600 each, and smaller handheld ones for scanning small spaces cost about $600. The actual scanning service can cost between $50 and $250 an hour, and post-production work can cost $100 to $300 and hour. USNI News visited Newport News Shipbuilding last October, and during a lunchtime meeting a company engineer scanned the whole conference room and produced a point cloud model of the room within about 30 minutes, as an example of how quickly the scanners can work. Once those point cloud models are created, the Navy and Newport News have already found several uses during the RCOH and other carrier maintenance planning and execution phases. First, for the actual planning, the point cloud models can offer some spatial perspective that flat blueprints can't, as well as an updated “as-is” assessment of the space instead of the “as-designed” view the blueprints contain. Mark Bilinski, a scientist at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific and its Battlespace Exploitation of Mixed Reality (BEMR) Lab, and his team are working on laser scanning technology and ways to leverage the 3D point cloud product. He showed off some of the technologies to USNI News during the U.S. Naval Institute and AFCEA's WEST 2018 conference in San Diego in February. During a panel presentation at WEST, he said that sometimes the 3D scans just show discrepancies between where an item was supposed to be installed versus where it actually was installed. However, he ran into a case where the blueprints depicted an escape hatch of a certain size, but it was larger in reality; in that case, a planner might have thought there was room to install something nearby, when in reality putting the equipment there would actually partially block the hatch and cause a safety issue. In another case, the blueprints showed a hatch as being much larger than it actually is, and so the planner might have thought the space was unusable. “That's an opportunity cost because that might be some space that you could use for an install that you don't think is available to you,” Bilinski said. Once the planning is done and execution is set to begin, Markowicz said the 3D models, unlike 2D blueprints, can help identify interferences and obstructions, help find the best route down narrow passageways for bringing in bulky equipment to install, aid in laying in pipes and wires and more. “That is valuable, it cuts down time in the shipyard,” which ultimately cuts down cost and allows the next carrier to come in for maintenance quicker. Norfolk Naval Shipyard and Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility are beginning to embrace this technology, which could spread to the other two public shipyards to support submarine maintenance activities too, and Newport News Shipbuilding is “all in” on the private sector side, he said. Markowicz noted that taking the scans and making mockups in a 3D digital environment can not only save time on major efforts like finding the best routing for piping, but can also help with little things – for instance, there was a case of trying to install a laptop in a phone booth area, but it turned out that the laptop couldn't open all the way without hitting the phone. “We stumble upon these things sometimes a little late in the design process, or actually the install process. It's not as efficient as it can be,” he said. Every time a maintenance or modernization activity takes place, the scan would become slightly outdated, but Markowicz said the idea would be to rescan periodically and maintain records of all the scans as “selected records” that accompany the 2D drawings for the Nimitz class today. “Once we have this digitally, I think that's pretty useful. We can share it with multiple activities and have the documentation for future use and future availability planning,” he said. Bilinski also noted the ways laser scans could help during a major maintenance period, when multiple program offices are trying to get their own equipment in and don't always have a great way to coordinate. In many availabilities, Bilinski said, someone goes to install a piece of equipment in a space, only to find that that space is taken. Instead, he will just take the next closest space that meets his need. Then the next person comes in to use that space and finds that it was just taken, causing a cascading effect. If everyone involved in the maintenance period were working off a shared digital plan that could be updated in real time as systems were installed, conflicts could be identified sooner and plans could be rearranged as needed without any on-ship confusion. “If you have that collaborative environment where everyone is planning off of the scan data, the installer can see not only that this space is physically available, but hey, it's also available in the planning environment; no one is planning to put anything there. Or, maybe someone is planning to put something there but you've got to put your equipment somewhere, so you put it there, but you at least know who to notify so that we can start fixing this problem earlier than discovering it when the next program office shows up to install their equipment,” he said. Virtual reality application Virtual and augmented reality tools are already changing how ships are built, with Newport News Shipbuilding telling USNI News during the October visit that the use of VR goggles while laying pipes and cables for the future John F. Kennedy (CVN-79) has cut the required man-hours in half. Newport News is also sending its shipbuilders out with tablets that can use VR to show what's on the other side of a wall or where to cut a hole into a wall, and can also include how-to videos to show step-by-step how to do the day's tasks. Markowicz said there would likely be less applicability for that technology on the ship repair and maintenance side compared to the ship construction side, but he hopes to explore how the public shipyards can use VR and tablets to drive efficiency up and cost down. Where VR and laser scanning could converge, though, is on training. Because each ship has a different set of navigation and steering systems, surface search radars and other systems, allowing a sailor to train on his or her own ship is more useful than training on a generic ship. Markowicz said his office is working with Bilinski's BEMR Lab to create ship-specific VR training tools for while ships are in maintenance. They scanned destroyer USS John S. McCain (DDG-56) after its collision last year, and while the ship undergoes a lengthy repair process, sailors could use VR goggles to practice maintenance and repair work on McCain's specific configuration without having to actually be on the destroyer. The BEMR lab already has Virtual Eqiupment Environment (V2E) tools that let the user walk into a room, spot a server rack, for example, and begin to take apart and put back together the server rack. Similarly, when a carrier is in RCOH for four years, sailors are often times flown around the world to get training time on other carriers. Though the ship is safe for them to be in while in RCOH, the systems are all ripped out. If the Navy had scans of the last carrier that came out of RCOH and could insert a finished product view into VR goggles, sailors could train on their own ship at Newport News while the RCOH goes on around them. “We've got to find creative ways to do training. Normally they leave ... and they go out to the fleet and ride another ship and get their training that way. But a lieutenant had the idea of, okay, you can go up to pri-fly (primary flight control), any everything's ripped apart but you can put on these goggles and see what your space is going to look like 48 months from now ... and visualize it all and stand there in your space without having to go to another ship,” Markowicz said. “I definitely see a partnership with the BEMR Lab and laying that out for training for ship's force, closing that gap in readiness. Because I was part of the Carl Vinson (CVN-70) overhaul, and our skills atrophied as we stayed in overhaul for that length of time. So we have to find opportunities to sharpen our skills.” Bilinski said there could be other uses for combining a current ship scan and VR goggles or tablets. For example, if scans of ship spaces were taken correctly, they could be woven together to create essentially a Google Maps of sorts. New sailors could use it to learn their way around the ship. Or, more importantly, “let's say a fire breaks out on a ship and you need to go into a compartment and fight that fire – it's going to be smoke-filled, it can be dark, you may not have ever been in that space, there could be plenty of places where you can fall, you could twist your ankle, you could bump into equipment in the space. If you were to understand where you were, you could look through that wall and see what the last as-is condition of the ship was and sort of get an idea of what you're getting into before you go into that space,” then firefighting or other emergency response efforts could be done potentially more safely and quickly. Policy and technical barriers Much like other emerging technologies, Markowicz said those trying to implement laser scanning are facing the usual set of challenges: how does the Navy balance the need to ensure technical rigor while also not being too proscriptive and excluding potential scanners or data formats that could be useful? What legal and ethical concerns need to be addressed through policy changes? “That's the rub right now,” Markowicz said. “You see us working with Newport News. I'm sure there's other pockets within NAVSEA that are working on it. But alignment across the whole NAVSEA equities hasn't happened yet. So where we are successful at NAVSEA (Naval Sea Systems Command) is where we have a singular tech warrant holder who owns turbines or fire protection or what have you. So we're really successful in employing that model across NAVSEA. I see a vision someday where you have a tech warrant holder for a laser scanner that's able to establish standards, policy, requirements to go forward and articulate that to industry.” His team is hosting a laser scanning summit later this month to identify barriers and develop courses of action to begin to address them – everything from how many dots per inch are needed for the scan to be useful, to, are there any engineering decisions that cannot or should not be made based on laser scanning and 3D point cloud modeling work. Markowicz suggested that anything related to the nuclear propulsion system is going to require much more technical rigor than other parts of the ship, but he said he still sees great potential for savings with laser scanners beyond what the Navy and Newport News Shipbuilding are doing today. “I think across the board we will save money, and in that way the leadership is behind it if it helps us be more efficient,” he said. Back when the Navy and Newport News first did the George Washington ship check, then-Navy acquisition chief Sean Stackley's message to Markowicz was, “I absolutely needed to make it my mission to leverage new technologies and be more efficient in the repair business,” the captain said, and he believes this is a prime example of how to do that. To be successful enterprise-wide, he said, “I think the real key is setting the standards, which will provide a framework where contractors and Navy can plug into. To get there, we need to provide technical leadership, host conferences ... flush out all the issues. At least create a standard so that we can contract and have deliverables. One software package or one laser scanner, I don't think we need to be that proscriptive. I think we set a standard for industry, like an ISO standard, and people will come around to it.” He likened the point cloud image to a PDF that could be opened on a Mac or a PC and is readily sharable among users, and said it would be important that, regardless of what scanner is used, the output has these qualities too. He suggested that some scans would need to be precise while others could forsake precision for speed if the user just needed a general idea of how a room is laid out, and all those types of issues would eventually become written out and standardized. https://news.usni.org/2018/07/02/navy-use-of-laser-scanning-already-showing-big-savings-summit-this-month-to-refine-plans