Thai air force wants to acquire Swedish Gripen 39 fighter jets

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  February 24, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  Contract Awards by US Department of Defense - February 20, 2020

  NAVY Lockheed Martin Rotary and Mission Systems, Baltimore, Maryland, was awarded a $233,036,890 firm-fixed-price undefinitized contract action for the procurement of Mk 41 Vertical Launching System vertical launcher module assemblies, modernization kits and spare components. This contract combines purchases for the Navy (74%) and the governments of Korea (18%), Finland (4%), and Germany (4%) under the Foreign Military Sales program. Work will be performed in Baltimore, Maryland (40%); Indianapolis, Indiana (36%); Farmingdale, New York (9%); Saginaw, Michigan (5%); Waverly, Iowa (2%); Thomaston, Connecticut (2%); Chaska, Minnesota (2%); St. Peters, Missouri (1%); Hampstead, Maryland (1%); Santa Rosa, California (1%), and Peachtree City, Georgia (1%), and is expected to be completed by March 2025. Fiscal 2018, 2019 and 2020 shipbuilding and conversion (Navy) and foreign military sales funding in the amount of $46,607,377 was obligated at time of award and will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was competitively procured via the Federal Business Opportunities website, with one offer received. The Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington, District of Columbia, is the contracting activity (N00024-20-C-5310). (Awarded Feb. 14, 2020) Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. a Lockheed Martin Co., Stratford, Connecticut, is awarded an $11,967,528 modification (P00003) to a cost-plus-fixed-fee delivery order (N00019-19-F-2972) against a previously issued basic ordering agreement (N00019-19-G-0029). This modification provides non-recurring engineering to replace existing subsystems, such as the Data Transfer Unit, Defense Electronic Countermeasure System and ARC-210 radio, with the CH-53K production aircraft. Non-recurring engineering efforts include investigation, systems engineering support, risk analysis, integration development, weight impact, publication updates including maintenance, training, update tooling and qualification testing. Work will be performed in Cedar Rapids, Iowa (55.82%); Stratford, Connecticut (35.7%) and Fort Worth, Texas (8.48%), and is expected to be completed in August 2021. Fiscal 2018 aircraft procurement (Navy) funds in the amount of $11,967,528 will be obligated at time of award, all of which will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Maryland, is the contracting activity. Bath Iron Works, Bath Maine, is awarded an $8,462,959 fixed-price incentive (firm target) modification to previously awarded contract N00024-14-C-2305 to exercise an option for accomplishment of post-delivery availability work items for Guided Missile Destroyer 118. Work will be performed in Bath, Maine (93%), Brunswick, Maine (6%), and other locations below 1 % (collectively totaling less than 1%) and is expected to be completed by February 2021. Fiscal 2013 shipbuilding and conversion (Navy) and fiscal 2013 other procurement (Navy) funding in the amount of $8,462,959 will be obligated at time of award and funding in the amount of $1,962,124 will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington, District of Columbia, is the contracting activity. AIR FORCE Dark Wolf Solutions LLC, Chantilly, Virginia, has been awarded a $75,000,000 blanket purchase agreement for cyber innovation services. This award was made from GSA Professional Services Schedule number: GS-00F-086GA. The contractor is a Phase III, Small Business Innovation and Research program participant. The location of performance is Hill Air Force Base, Utah. The work to be conducted includes software penetration testing and adversarial assessment. The work is expected to be complete by Oct. 19, 2020. Fiscal 2020 research development test and evaluation funds in the amount of $7,093,286 are being obligated at the time of award via task order FA7014-20-F-0041. Air Force District of Washington, Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, is the contracting activity (FA7014-20-F-0041). Williams Aerospace & Manufacturing (formerly Merex Aircraft Co.), a Kellstrom Defense company, has been awarded a $40,000,000 ceiling indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for the acquisition of A-10 Speed Brake assemblies. This contract provides for upper and lower left speed brakes assembly and upper and lower right speed brakes assembly. Work will be performed in Camarillo, California, and is expected to be complete by February 2026. This award is the result of a competitive acquisition and three offers were received. Consolidated sustainment activity group working capital funds in the amount of $10,501,432 are being obligated at the time of award. The Air Force Sustainment Center, Hill Air Force Base, Utah, is the contracting activity (FA8212-20-D-0001). Chemring Energetic Devices Inc., Downers Grove, Illinois, has been awarded a $24,000,000 indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for supply of various Cartridge Actuated Devices/Propellant Actuated Devices for various U.S. and Foreign Military Sales (FMS) aircraft. Work will be performed in Downers Grove, Illinois, and is expected to be completed by August 2027. The contract involves foreign military sales to Greece, Taiwan, Thailand, Switzerland, Uruguay, India, Saudi Arabia, Israel, United Arab Emirates, Belgium, Denmark, Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan, South Korea, Oman, Pakistan, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, Turkey, Poland, Bahrain, Tunisia, Egypt and The Netherlands. This award is the result of a sole-source acquisition. Air Force fiscal 2018 funding in the amount of $1,882,272; Air Force fiscal 2019 funding in the amount of $1,065,552; U.S. Navy fiscal year 2019 funding in the amount of $134,032; Foreign Military Sales funding in the amount of $2,539,705 are being obligated at the time of award under delivery order FA8213-20-F-2525. The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, Hill Air Force Base, Utah, is the contracting activity (FA8213-20-D-0002). C. Martin Company Inc., North Las Vegas, Nevada, has been awarded a $7,462,086 option exercise modification (P00007) to previously awarded contract FA8601-18-D-0004. This modification provides for the exercise of an option for additional facility and equipment support under the basic contract. The location of performance is Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. The work is expected to be completed by March 31, 2021. Fiscal 2020 research development test and evaluation funds are being obligated shortly after award on a task order. The total cumulative face value of the contract is $21,941,348. Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, is the contracting activity. DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY Stonewin LLC,* New York, New York, has been awarded a minimum $59,678,523 fixed-price with economic-price-adjustment contract for marine gas oil. This was a competitive acquisition with 41 responses received. This is a 56-month base contract with one six-month option period. Locations of performances are Alabama, California, Florida, Massachusetts, Texas and South Carolina, with an Oct. 31, 2024, performance completion date. Using customers are Army, Navy, Coast Guard and federal civilian agencies. Type of appropriation is fiscal 2020 through 2025 defense working capital funds. The contracting activity is the Defense Logistics Agency Energy, Fort Belvoir, Virginia (SPE608-20-D-0350). EMIT Corp., Houston, Texas, has been awarded a maximum $20,000,000 fixed-price with economic-price-adjustment, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for hospital equipment and accessories for the Defense Logistics Agency electronic catalog. This was a competitive acquisition with 104 responses received. This is a five-year contract with no option periods. Location of performance is Texas, with a Feb. 19, 2025, performance completion date. Using military services are Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps. Type of appropriation is fiscal 2020 through 2025 defense working capital funds. The contracting activity is the Defense Logistics Agency Troop Support, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (SPE2DH-20-D-0030). ARMY K S Ware & Associates LLC, Nashville, Tennessee, was awarded a $12,500,000 firm-fixed-price contract for value engineering services. Bids were solicited via the internet with seven received. Work locations and funding will be determined with each order, with an estimated completion date of Feb. 19, 2025. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Fort Worth, Texas, is the contracting activity (W9126G-20-D-0012). *Small business https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Contracts/Contract/Article/2089858/source/GovDelivery/

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  September 29, 2020 | International, Aerospace

  KC-46 Progress Revives Next-Generation Tanker Talks

  Steve Trimble Proposals for a next-generation tanker that would come after the last Boeing KC-46 delivery in fiscal 2029 have popped up every few years since 2006, only to get sidetracked by yet another acquisition process misstep or technical problem afflicting the program's frustrating development phase. As a fresh sense of optimism gathers among senior U.S. Air Force leaders about the direction of the KC-46 program, a new discussion has started between Defense Department officials and the Air Mobility Command (AMC) about the future of the air-refueling mission. Some proposals in the discussions include revived versions of various older concepts for weaponized larger tankers and smaller stealth tankers. But this time, discussions involve taking a wider view of the overall need to defend and deliver fuel to aircraft in combat, with implications for base defenses, the size and range of future fighters and next-generation tanker designs. A perceived turnaround in the fortunes of the KC-46 program allows the Air Force to reopen the next-generation discussion. Since at least 2016, a heated dispute over Boeing's original design—and, later, proposed fixes—for the KC-46's remote vision system (RVS) sidetracked planning for a next-generation tanker. Air Force officials complained that Boeing's original RVS design fell short of operator requirements, especially when the receiver aircraft was backlit by the Sun. In addition, the canted layout of the belly-mounted, panoramic cameras created subtle distortions in the displayed video that proved bothersome to some RVS operators, Air Force officials say. The Air Force and Boeing finally agreed to a redesign plan in January 2019. The Air Force is finalizing a test report on an enhanced RVS, which was formerly known as RVS 1.5. AMC officials have committed to review the test data but offered no promises on whether they would approve the enhanced RVS to be installed in the KC-46. The installation would require parking a fleet of more than 36 delivered KC-46s to complete the retrofit, and the AMC remains unsure whether the improvement is worth the delay. The enhanced RVS offers only software updates to the current system, but the AMC clearly wants more. Boeing has committed to a more dramatic upgrade called RVS 2.0. Including hardware and software changes, this Boeing-funded, second-generation RVS system is expected to meet the image-resolution standards demanded by the Air Force and create a path to inserting the software algorithms necessary to give the KC-46 an optional autonomous-refueling mode. Boeing is scheduled to deliver the first 12 RVS 2.0 shipsets by the end of 2023 and begin the retrofit process on delivered KC-46s, says Gen. Jacqueline Van Ovost, the AMC commander. The AMC expects a production cutin for RVS 2.0 starting in 2024, although Boeing's KC-46 global sales and marketing director, Mike Hafer, says the first RVS 2.0-equipped aircraft could start rolling off the assembly line in late 2023. Will Roper, the Air Force's assistant secretary for acquisition, technology and logistics, says the progress toward fielding the RVS 2.0 makes him feel “excited” about the KC-46 program. “I think we've turned a new page,” he says. In mid-September, Roper and Van Ovost met to discuss what will follow the KC-46. The next-generation tanker discussion comes after a series of dramatic acquisition decisions surrounding Air Force aircraft. Most visibly, Roper led a push in 2018 to cancel the Joint Stars recapitalization program, which was replaced with the Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS). More quietly, Roper also drove the Air Force to rethink the acquisition strategy for the Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program. The ABMS and NGAD are now characterized by an architecture of multiple systems, with no single-aircraft silver bullet solution. Roper acknowledges that the nature of tanker operations does not immediately lend itself to a distributed multiplatform solution. “We can break up a J-Stars [replacement into multiple systems],” Roper says. “We may be able to break up an [E-3 Airborne Warning and Control System] in the future, but we can't break up fuel easily.” Still, Roper prefers to address the future air-refueling problem in an era of great power competition with a similar architectural approach as ABMS and NGAD. “When there's a solvable problem and you need to turn multiple knobs, the Pentagon likes to turn one and only one,” Roper says. “And [aerial refueling] sounds like a really good architectural question that you'd want to have an architected solution for—[rather than] design a one-solution candidate in the form of a platform.” Roper's turnable knobs for a future air-refueling system cover a wide range of options, including two with only indirect impacts on a tanker aircraft design. To Roper, the problem of air refueling includes defending the bases closest to an adversary where aircraft can be refueled on the ground. Likewise, another part of the solution is to move away from relatively small fighter aircraft that lack sufficient range for a Pacific theater scenario. “Maybe having small, currently sized fighters is not the way to go in the future,” Roper says. “Thinking about bigger fighters is a natural question to lay alongside the question, ‘How does your future tanker force look?'” Air-refueling capacity also is partly a function of the vulnerability of the tanker aircraft. Fewer and perhaps smaller tankers may be possible if existing tanker aircraft could operate closer to the battlefield. The Air Force now uses fighters on combat air patrols to defend high-value assets, such as tankers, surveillance and command-and-control aircraft. Those fighters conducting the patrols also add to the refueling burden. A possible solution is to weaponize tankers such as the KC-46 and KC-135. The Air Force is developing podded defensive lasers and miniature self-defense munitions. “We don't put weapons and sensors on tankers to shoot down aircraft, but the current KC-46 is a big airplane with the ability to mount sensors and weapons on the wings,” Roper says. “We're going to look at all those [options].” The Air Force also believes a new tanker aircraft is necessary. As far back as 2002, research began on stealthy mobility aircraft under the Air Force Research Laboratory's Speed Agile program. As the KC-X acquisition program kicked off, the Air Force released a tanker road map in 2006 that called for launching a KC-Y acquisition program in 2022 and a KC-Z program by 2035. By 2016, AMC leaders openly discussed proposals for leapfrogging the KC-Y requirement, which sought to buy a larger version of a commercial derivative. Instead, AMC officials began investigating concepts for an autonomous stealthy aircraft. By 2018, Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works had defined a concept for such an aircraft, which featured an undisclosed refueling technology that could dock with a receiver aircraft without compromising radar stealth. As discussions have reopened in September, the Air Force is again considering the acquisition of a mix of larger and smaller aircraft to fulfill the demand for in-flight refueling in the 2030s and 2040s. “One trade we can do is having bigger tankers that stand off a lot farther,” Roper says, “[and] having smaller, microtankers that do that last mile, the dangerous mile—and we expect to lose some of them.” The Air Force's budget justification documents suggest research on a next-generation tanker will continue at a low level: Nearly $8 million was requested in fiscal 2021 to “assess promising configurations in high- and low-speed wind tunnels.” The Air Force also is designing a small, pod-mounted tactical air-refueling boom, according to budget documents. The latter suggests that one option for increasing refueling capacity for aircraft equipped with boom receivers is to integrate a podded fuel-delivery system on tactical aircraft, such as a Lockheed Martin C-130. “I expect that as we really look at airpower in the truly contested environment, we'll be looking at fuel very strategically,” Roper says. “We may have a different solution for outside [a threat area] versus inside. And I think we will value, increasingly, aircraft that have range for the last mile.” https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/aircraft-propulsion/kc-46-progress-revives-next-generation-tanker-talks

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  December 2, 2019 | International, C4ISR, Security

  How the Defense Digital Service revamped Army cyber training

  Earlier this year, the Defense Digital Service — the Pentagon's cadre of coders and hackers performing a short stint in government — finished the second phase of a pilot program to streamline cyber training for the Army. The Army wanted to streamline two phases of cyber training: the Joint Cyber Analytics Course, or JCAC, which takes 27 weeks in Pensacola, Florida, and provides basic cyber training for joint forces that have no prior experience in cyber; and the more tactical training that happens at Fort Gordon in Georgia. Combined, the two phases take a minimum of 36 weeks. To accomplish this, the Defense Digital Service, working with the Army Cyber Center of Excellence and a private vendor, built a course to conduct training in three months — everything a cyberwarrior needed to know from JCAC, said Clair Koroma, a bureaucracy hacker at DDS. Phase two — which combines tactics involving hardware, offensive and defensive cyber, and networking — takes seven months. It excluded the classified course, Koroma added. At this point, she said, DDS has transitioned all of its materials to the Cyber School, which will pick up the third phase of the pilot training, though DDS will still be available for assistance. “The plan is that eventually the 17Cs, [who execute offensive and defensive cyberspace operations], will come to Fort Gordon on inception and do their entry and mid-level training at Gordon. They will run this as the course for those soldiers,” she said. Koroma said success of the pilot will be measured from the operational world — evaluating the skill sets of the soldiers that graduate from the pilot program and comparing them to prior classes. Thus far, she added, no graduates from the pilot program have been overwhelmed in operations. Students during the second pilot were also evaluated by senior leaders within the Army cyber community and commands where they might be assigned during their final project and presentation. Students needed to identify issues on the network and conduct an outbrief to these leaders. “Senior leaders then got an opportunity to ask them questions,” Koroma said. “Every single person who was in that presentation said that they were impressed by the delivery of the students and the quality of the presentation that the students gave.” In fact, Koroma said, there are two students she's aware of whose orders were changed at the conclusion of training because leaders who attended the presentation wanted them on their team. https://www.fifthdomain.com/dod/army/2019/11/29/how-defense-digital-service-revamped-army-cyber-training/