Back to news

August 12, 2020 | International, C4ISR, Security

Pentagon requests 30-day extension for re-awarding JEDI

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Defense has requested 30 extra days to review vendor proposals as it prepares to make another award decision for its massive enterprise cloud contract, according to a Monday night court filing.

The DoD is currently reviewing new revised proposals for its Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract, which it awarded to Microsoft over Amazon Web Services in October last year. In the filing, the DoD said that it “recently identified the need to reopen limited discussions related to certain aspects of the offerors' pricing proposals.”

The request, made in the Court of Federal Claims, is yet another delay for the controversial JEDI cloud. The department was supposed to re-award the contract by Aug. 17 after receiving a 120-day stay to take corrective action on the contract. It's now asking to delay that decision to Sept. 16.

“During the remand, DoD has identified areas of concern with respect to the revised proposals received from both offerors, resulting in multiple solicitation amendments, rounds of proposal revisions, and exchanges with the offerors,” the court filing said.

AWS, which filed the protest late last year in the Court of Federal Claims after losing the contract, argues that the department made several technical errors while evaluating its proposal and also accuses President Donald Trump of political interference in the contract.

AWS does not oppose the Pentagon's new motion, the court document said.

In late July, DoD CIO Dana Deasy told reporters that the DoD would “probably sometimes towards the very end of August, barring any last minute, unforeseen additional issues that are raised.” The court filing says that the department “anticipates” that the re-evaluation process will wrap up in early September.

The JEDI cloud has been delayed continuously throughout the entirety of the procurement process. Last year, the initial award decision was delayed for months due to a pre-award protest by Oracle. Earlier this year work on JEDI was further delayed when the court placed a temporary restraining order on any work on the JEDI cloud, finding that AWS was “likely to succeed” in proving DoD erred in the evaluation process.

https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/it-networks/2020/08/11/pentagon-requests-30-day-extension-for-re-awarding-jedi/

On the same subject

  • Essor de l’industrie spatiale chinoise et enjeux stratégiques mondiaux

    April 9, 2021 | International, Aerospace

    Essor de l’industrie spatiale chinoise et enjeux stratégiques mondiaux

    Le Figaro consacre un article à la montée en puissance de l'industrie spatiale chinoise et à ses enjeux stratégiques, notamment face aux Etats-Unis. La Chine a lancé plus de fusées dans l'espace que tout autre pays au cours des trois dernières années, ainsi que des missions vers la Lune et vers Mars, et développe des systèmes d'armement spatiaux capables de menacer les satellites militaires et commerciaux, relève Le Figaro. « Les activités spatiales de la Chine et de la Russie représentent des menaces sérieuses et croissantes pour la sécurité nationale des États-Unis », a déclaré le nouveau secrétaire américain à la Défense, Lloyd Austin, lors de son audition par le Sénat en janvier dernier. « Les doctrines militaires chinoises et russes indiquent également qu'elles considèrent l'espace comme essentiel à la guerre moderne et envisagent l'utilisation de capacités antisatellites comme un moyen de réduire l'efficacité militaire des États-Unis et de gagner les guerres futures », a-t-il souligné, ajoutant :« Si la Russie est un adversaire de premier plan, la Chine est une menace grandissante ». Le Figaro du 9 avril

  • USAF’s Future Fighter Plan May Limit Growth, Study Says

    October 30, 2019 | International, Aerospace

    USAF’s Future Fighter Plan May Limit Growth, Study Says

    By Jen DiMascio The U.S. Air Force's plan for acquiring future fighter aircraft may crimp the service's ability to grow in the future, a study of the USAF's force structure plans indicates. The study, “The Air Force of the Future,” compares the service's force structure plans during times of peak budgets—in fiscal 2020 and fiscal 1985. In fiscal 2020, a budget of $205 billion could support 5,300 aircraft. This is a little more than half of the number that the same amount of money, adjusted for inflation, could support in 1985—9,400. The same holds true for the number of personnel, the report says. It was released Oct. 29 by Todd Harrison, director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which examined three different studies of the size of the future force. As part of the report, Harrison drills further into the Air Force's spending habits to find that one factor underlying the inability to afford a larger force is the increase over time in operation and maintenance costs. “The average O&M cost per plane is 74% higher today in real terms than in fiscal 2001,” the report says. Looking more closely at maintenance costs, he finds that the most expensive aircraft to operate are the smallest fleets, such as the Boeing E-4 Advanced Airborne Command Post aircraft, the Northrop Grumman E-8 Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System and Northrop's B-2 bomber. “This is because the fixed costs of operating the fleet are distributed across more aircraft in large fleets, which brings down the overall ownership cost per plane,” the report says. “The data suggest that the Air Force could reduce operating costs by divesting aircraft that are maintained in small numbers in the current inventory and consolidating the capabilities they provide into common multimission platforms.” Air Force acquisition chief Will Roper is recommending an acquisition strategy dubbed the “digital century series.” It aims to build new fighter aircraft designed to last 3,500 flight hours in batches of hundreds, rather than the current model of pursuing advanced technology for an aircraft type that will last for decades. But Harrison estimates that the operation and sustainment cost of sustaining five different aircraft types of 72 aircraft, or 360 total aircraft, would cost about the same as sustaining 1,800 aircraft of the same type. “That's something the Air Force has got to consider,” Harrison said. “With the digital century series approach, they may end up with a bunch of small fleets and may limit the ability of the Air Force to grow in the future.” https://aviationweek.com/defense/usaf-s-future-fighter-plan-may-limit-growth-study-says

  • Airbus livre le premier A330 MRTT à l'OTAN

    June 30, 2020 | International, Aerospace

    Airbus livre le premier A330 MRTT à l'OTAN

    Le premier avion ravitailleur MRTT (Multi Role Tanker Transport, avion militaire de transport et de ravitaillement en français) doit s'envoler ce 30 juin pour la base militaire d'Eindhoven, aux Pays-Bas, depuis l'usine d'Airbus de Getafe, en Espagne. Sous l'égide de l'OTAN il s'agit du premier appareil sur les huit commandés dans le cadre du programme MMF (Multinational MRTT Fleet initiative, en français, l'initiative de ravitaillement en vol) réunissant six pays européens (Allemagne, Pays-Bas, Luxembourg, Belgique, Norvège et République Tchèque). Le contrat, qui lie Airbus Defence and Space et les pays initiateurs du MMF depuis 2016, prévoit la livraison des sept autres appareils d'ici 2024, avec des options portant sur trois appareils supplémentaires. L'Usine Nouvelle du 29 juin 2020

All news