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  • 5 questions with the deputy director of DISA’s contracting arm

    December 2, 2020 | International, C4ISR

    5 questions with the deputy director of DISA’s contracting arm

    WASHINGTON — Mass telework brought on by the coronavirus pandemic has made 2020 a busy year for the Defense Information Systems Agency. Throughout the year, the Pentagon's top IT organization has had a hand in the department's Commercial Virtual Remote Environment, which provides collaboration tools for more than 1 million users. DISA has also helped set up IT capabilities for the Navy's two hospital ships as they docked in New York City and Los Angeles to assist with the COVID-19 response. As a result, it has also been a busy year for Debra Daniels, DISA's vice procurement services executive and deputy director of the Defense Information Technology Contracting Organization. Daniels started at DISA in March, right as workers were being sent home. She joined from the Small Business Administration after about 30 years with the Army and now helps oversee a $17 billion portfolio at DISA. C4ISRNET interviewed Daniels about her new position, the unexpected tool she uses to communicate and meeting small business goals. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. What is it like to take over a massive IT portfolio during a pandemic? It makes you think differently and do things differently. It definitely increases communication as DISA provides IT and cybersecurity support. One of the most basic things that I use to make sure to communicate and get on board is the telephone. It works well on picking up and introducing yourself to not only the workforce but the mission partners themselves, stakeholders, small business, in order to do the job. It just makes you reach out more. But I'm going to tell you: DISA has all of the tools in place that allow us to stay in and keep connected so far. DISA never shut down during the pandemic. We just moved from a federal workspace to our own home workspaces and kept going. And what I can say about the contracting force is they never lost momentum, they never lost focus on the priorities at all in doing that. How have your first six months gone? As our contracting operations moved to a home space, it never shut down, never closed, it never lost a beat. I would say probably the momentum increased with the contracting force on just what they were doing in reaching out, making sure that the war fighter had the capability. I'm proud of the fact that, again, we definitely met or exceeded our small business goals. [Specifically], there's about five new records that were [recently] set that continue to build the small business industrial base. This fiscal year, we did $7.6 billion in obligations, which was about a billion dollars more than they did in FY19, I would say just with increasing requirements in the need for the IT and cyber solutions across the Department of Defense but also probably related to some of the pandemic-related urgent and emerging requirements that we provided in that. This is a very difficult time for small business. What should small businesses expect when interacting with your office? What I would want small businesses to know is they're definitely vital to us meeting our goals and our demands and capabilities for the war fighter. And they help us meet those demands. More often, as you know, we get great support — even greater support from them. We could not do it without them. So for industry I would like to say they always want to know how can they participate in the request for information. I would definitely say to continue to reach out, but I would ask them [to] definitely do [your] homework [related to] whatever product or solution they're seeking to provide to make sure that it fits within DISA's capability and its needs. We also partner right now in contracting; definitely a key member at the table at the beginning of acquisition planning is our Office of Small Business Programs here in DISA. Definitely reach out to them, I would say, particularly if [you] want to partner with us to be invited to one of the DISA one-on-one small business orientation offerings that says how you can partner with us. I'll also say that as we get ready in this season to prepare for the DISA Forecast to Industry virtual conference, we will give our industry partners, particularly to include small business, our forecasts. I would say if you want to, you can probably see on the DISA website the forecast from fiscal 2019, and we actually updated that forecast of offerings for the upcoming years. We posted that earlier this summer. So you get an indication of what we're looking for. I would also say a biggie for industry to participate with us is answer requests for information and attend the industry days so you can definitely learn about DISA's mission and what it's seeking, particularly war fighter-specific [needs] and the capability we're looking for. What do small businesses need to know about the cybersecurity requirements at DISA? That is one of the main focuses of DISA as the premier IT support agency and [a trusted provider that] connects and protects the war fighter in cyberspace. So cybersecurity is very important to us, and also should be important to our industry and our small business partners. I think they want to protect their intellectual property and capital just as much as we do. So if you're wanting to work with DISA and the DoD, be accountable also for cybersecurity throughout the life cycle of the capability you're providing. What is DISA doing in relation to the new Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification — the new cybersecurity audit standards? As we're tracking right now, we do have new requirements that are coming out [because of] the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification in the DoD. So as that starts in its implementation process, the Procurement Services Directorate is definitely working to understand these new interim rules — and following [those rules] so we can implement that cybersecurity process once we have the application and accreditation requirements. So we definitely know it will impact all of our industry partners. It will not impact or affect our cybersecurity posture. So if you're going to work with us, cybersecurity is definitely a key. There's a perception that we want to prioritize speed of delivery in deployment over cybersecurity. No. In DISA, in the department — again, I can't harp on [enough] — cybersecurity is one of our utmost priorities, and that is something that we will not diminish or lower the standard on. So it's important that while we deliver with speed and relevance to meet the needs, we're also maintaining our cybersecurity. https://www.c4isrnet.com/show-reporter/disa-forecast-industry/2020/12/01/5-questions-with-the-deputy-director-of-disas-contracting-arm

  • US Navy awards major contract to Huntington Ingalls for its newest class of amphibious vessels

    August 3, 2018 | International, Naval

    US Navy awards major contract to Huntington Ingalls for its newest class of amphibious vessels

    By: David B. Larter WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy awarded shipbuilder Huntington Ingalls a $165.5 million contract to procure long lead-time materials for the LPD-17 Flight II, according to a contract dated Aug. 2 and released Friday. The amphibious transport dock, designated LPD-30, is the first of the 13-ship LPD-17 Flight II class that will replace the current dock landing ships. The program, which was until April known as LX(R), is expected to be built exclusively at HII's yard in Pascagoula, Mississippi. “This is a significant milestone as we embark toward a new flight of LPDs,” Ingalls Shipbuilding President Brian Cuccias said in a statement. “The Flight II LPDs will be highly capable ships meeting the requirements and needs of our Navy-Marine Corps team. We look forward to delivering this series of affordable LPDs to our nation's fleet of amphibious ships.” The Navy is anticipating awarding a detailed design and construction contract either late in 2018 or early 2019. The Navy's cost goal for the program is $1.64 billion for the first ship and $1.4 billion for each subsequent ship, according to the Congressional Research Service. LPD-30 is going to come equipped with Raytheon's Enterprise Air Surveillance Radar, an upgrade over the AN/SPS-48 currently on the LPD-17 class. https://www.defensenews.com/breaking-news/2018/08/03/us-navy-awards-huge-contract-to-huntington-ingalls-for-its-newest-class-of-amphibious-vessels

  • Saab puts marketing effort for Swordfish maritime plane on hiatus

    December 7, 2018 | International, Aerospace

    Saab puts marketing effort for Swordfish maritime plane on hiatus

    By: Valerie Insinna BANGKOK — Over the past two years, Swedish aircraft manufacturer Saab has put its advertising muscle into promoting a maritime patrol aircraft it called Swordfish. But in the absence of a launch customer and no immediate sales prospects, the company is ending its marketing campaign — at least for now, the head of its Asia-Pacific business said Thursday. “From a product perspective, we are no longer marketing it. So it was a concept. It was an opportunity that we looked at on the back of GlobalEye, and we're just concentrating on GlobalEye,” Dean Rosenfield said in a roundtable with journalists in Saab's Bangkok office. Defense News traveled to Thailand the week of Nov. 26 to learn more about the country's air warfare capabilities, accepting airfare and accommodations from Saab. Swordfish was initially conceived as a derivative of Saab's GlobalEye airborne early warning aircraft. Both are based on Bombardier's Global 6000 airframe and contain a suite of cutting-edge sensors, with Swordfish also adding torpedoes, sonobuoys, anti-ship missiles, an acoustics processor and a magnetic anomaly detector. But while GlobalEye has landed a launch customer in the United Arab Emirates, Swordfish is still looking for a buyer. Saab hoped to position Swordfish as a lower-cost alternative to Boeing's P-8 Poseidon, which is used by the U.S. Navy to hunt submarines and conduct surveillance over open waters. The firm targeted a handful of international countries who had expressed interest in upgrading their legacy maritime surveillance inventories. One such country was South Korea, which was looking for up to six additional aircraft to augment its fleet of Lockheed Martin P-3 Orions. In March, one Saab official told Defense News that — should South Korea chose Swordfish as its future maritime patrol aircraft — the company was prepared to allow South Korea to have a hand in producing the aircraft, with the first few aircraft being produced in Sweden and the rest assembled in South Korea. Saab had responded to South Korean requests for more information about Swordfish, Rosenfield said. But in June the country decided to award a sole-source contract valued at about $1.7 billion to Boeing for the P-8 Poseidon, eschewing the Swordfish and Airbus' C295. In July, another sales opportunity for Swordfish was dashed, when New Zealand announced that it would buy up to four P-8s to replace its P-3s. Rosenfield said that even if Saab wasn't successful in the Korean competition, the company's efforts may still prove fruitful as it goes forward marketing its GlobalEye early warning plane. “But the good thing about what we did there is that it gave us great recognition — brand recognition — particularly as we were marketing a GlobalEye capability like what we are delivering to the UAE,” he said. “That's where we see it going.” Rosenfield said there may be opportunities in the future to resurrect the Swordfish sales initiative. “If there is a customer who has a need for a maritime patrol aircraft, like Singapore for example, and they are prepared to invest in the technology to take something that hasn't been delivered before to a first customer, then we're happy to entertain that discussion,” he said. But currently, “the product, per se, doesn't exist in the Saab portfolio,” he added. https://www.defensenews.com/air/2018/11/30/saab-puts-marketing-effort-for-swordfish-maritime-plane-on-hiatus

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