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July 20, 2020 | International, Land

US Army releases draft RFP for Bradley vehicle replacement

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WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army on Friday issued a draft request for proposals for the preliminary design phase of its delayed optionally manned fighting vehicle, or OMFV, the first major step in a relaunched competition to replace the Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle.

The preliminary phase will be open for 40 days, with the goal of gathering industry feedback ahead of the final RFP, which will come later this year. That final RFP will award of up to five design contracts in June 2021, setting the next stage in the competition.

“As we continue to progress through the first phase of our five-phased approach for the OMFV program, communication, inclusive feedback and innovative thinking from industry remains key,” Maj. Gen. Brian Cummings, the Army's program executive officer for ground combat systems, said in a statement. “We are looking forward to receiving feedback and learning from industry what's in the realm of the possible as we continue to develop this truly transformational vehicle for our Soldiers.”

Added Brig. Gen. Ross Coffman, director of the Next Generation Combat Vehicles Cross-Functional Team: “Accurately defining the desired set of capabilities without over-constraining the design is critically important.

“The Army is committed to open communication with industry to ensure the characteristics and eventual requirements of the OMFV are informed by technological advances.”

The focus on gathering industry feedback should not be a surprise, given the recent history of the program. When the OMFV program was conceived, the Army planned to hold a prototyping competition, selecting two winning teams to build prototypes with a downselect to one at the end of an evaluation period.

But in October, the Army ended up with only one bidder in the OMFV competition — General Dynamics Land Systems — after other competitors dropped out, citing requirements and schedule concerns.

As a result, the Army in January announced it would be relaunching the program to ensure more competition going forward — a decision that led to service leaders taking heat from Congress during testimony in March. OMFV is the first large acquisition effort to come out of Army Futures Command.

The draft RFP, posted on a government contracting website Friday, drives home the point by stating: “To permit industry design freedom and promote innovation, the Army has avoided quantifying or prescribing critical levels of performance wherever possible.”

“We do not want to box industry into a solution,” Cummings said. “We want to incentivize industry as they lean forward and think creatively to bring the Army innovative technologies and solutions necessary to achieve our vision — both in terms of the ability to integrate newer technology we are seeing today and leaving space for future growth on the OMFV platform.”

https://www.defensenews.com/land/2020/07/17/army-drops-draft-rfp-for-bradley-replacement/

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  • Here’s the No. 1 rule for US Air Force’s new advanced battle management system

    July 10, 2019 | International, Aerospace, Other Defence

    Here’s the No. 1 rule for US Air Force’s new advanced battle management system

    By: Valerie Insinna LE BOURGET, France, and WASHINGTON — The U.S. Air Force has started work on a data architecture for its Advanced Battle Management System, the family of platforms that will eventually replace the E-8C JSTARS surveillance planes. But the “biblical” rule for the program, according to the service's acquisition executive Will Roper, is that “we don't start talking platforms until the end,” he told Defense News at the Paris Air Show in June. “It is so easy to start talking about satellites and airplanes and forget what ABMS is going to have to uniquely champion, which is the data architecture that will connect them,” Roper explained. “I'm actually glad we don't have big money this year because we can't go build a drone or a satellite, so we've got to focus on the part that's less sexy, which is that data architecture,” he said. “We're going to have to do software development at multiple levels of classification and do it securely. All of those are things that are hard to get people energized about, but they're going to be the make-or-break [undertakings] for this program.” Some initial work has begun on identifying the requirements for ABMS data architecture. The service in March named Preston Dunlap, a national security analysis executive at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, as the program's “chief architect.” Dunlap will be responsible for developing the requirements for ABMS and ensuring they are met throughout the menu of systems that will comprise it. The Air Force Warfighter Integration Center, or AFWIC — the service's planning cell for future technologies and concepts of operation — provided feedback to Dunlap about how ABMS should work, Roper said. The Air Force is still deliberating what ABMS will look like in its final form, although officials have said it will include a mix of traditional manned aircraft, drones, space-based technologies and data links. The effort was devised as an alternative to a replacement for the E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System. While the service first considered a traditional recapitalization program where it would buy new JSTARS aircraft equipped with more sophisticated radars, leaders ultimately backed the more ambitious ABMS proposal, believing it to be a more survivable capability. But defense companies are hungry for more information about the platforms that will comprise ABMS, seeing the opportunity to develop new systems or upgrade legacy ones as a major potential moneymaker. Once the service has defined an ABMS data architecture — which Roper believes will occur before the fiscal 2021 budget is released — it will need to form requirements for the data that will run through and populate it as well as the artificial intelligence that automatically sorts important information and passes it to users. “Maybe one sensor needs to be able to fill a gap that others are creating,” he said. “We're going to have to look at requirements at a systems level and tell satellites that you need to be able to provide this level of data at this refresh rate. UAVs, you need to be able to do this rate and so on and so forth. Once we do that, then we'll be in the traditional part of the acquisition, which will be building those satellites, building those UAVs.” The Air Force intends to conduct yearly demonstrations throughout this process, the first of which will involve “ad hoc mesh networking,” which will allow platforms to automatically begin working together and sharing information without human interference. By FY21, full-scale prototyping could start, he said. In the commercial sector, where devices can be seamlessly linked and monitored over the internet, this concept is known as the internet of things. But that construct — where companies build technologies from the get-go with open software — is difficult to replicate in the defense world, where firms must meet strict security standards and are protective of sharing intellectual property that could give competitors an edge. “Openness in the internet of things makes sense because you can monetize the data,” Roper said. “That's not going to exist for us, so we're going to have to have a contracting incentive that replicates it. The best theory we have right now is some kind of royalty scheme that the more open you are and the more adaptation we do on top of your system, the more you benefit from it.” The service wants to hold a series of industry days to see whether such a construct would be appealing to defense companies, and how to structure it so that it will be fair and profitable. One unanswered is how to incentivize and compensate defense firms that build in new software capability. “If you create the system that allows us to put 100 apps on top of it, you benefit differently than if we can only put one. But the details are going to be difficult because maybe that one app is super important,” Roper said. “But if we can't replicate profit and cash flow on which their quarterlies depend, then they're going to have to go back to the old model of saying they are for open [architecture] but secretly giving you closed.” https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/paris-air-show/2019/07/09/rule-no1-for-air-forces-new-advanced-battle-management-system-we-dont-start-talking-platforms-until-the-end/

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