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By: Mike Yeo MELBOURNE, Australia ― The Philippine government has confirmed that the second phase of its military modernization plan has been approved by President Rodrigo Duterte, clearing the way for the southeast Asian nation to replace some of its elderly and obsolete equipment. The confirmation by Philippine Department of National Defense spokesman Arsenio Andolong on Wednesday will now allow the country to implement sorely needed recapitalization of some of its equipment, the oldest of which dates back to World War II. Andolong also confirmed that the budget for the five-year Horizon 2 modernization program, which will run from 2018-2022, has been set at some 300 billion Philippine pesos (U.S. $5.6 billion). According to sources in the Philippines, this amount will be split into $890 million for the Army, $1.44 billion for the Navy and $2.61 billion for the Air Force, with the rest of the budget going to the military's General Headquarters and the government's arsenal. The list of equipment the Philippines is seeking to acquire under the Horizon 2 program includes multirole fighters, airlifters, maritime patrol aircraft and heavy lift helicopters for the Air Force, while the Army is seeking more artillery, light tanks and multiple rocket launchers. The budget for the Air Force includes an amount set aside for combat utility helicopters. A contract signed in February with the Canadian government for Bell 412 helicopters was canceled after Canadian politicians raised concerns about the Duterte administration's human rights record in its ongoing war on drugs. The Philippines is reportedly now seeking to acquire the helicopters through a commercial sale, while an alternative option of buying the South Korean Korea Aerospace Industires Surion helicopter has also been floated. The Navy's priority will be the acquisition of two corvettes and a similar number of multirole offshore patrol vessels. Other items on its wish list include more anti-submarine helicopters and amphibious assault vehicles, the latter for the country's Marine Corps. Andolong also confirmed that the Navy wants to acquire an unspecified number of submarines under Horizon 2. However, this could prove difficult under a limited budget and because the country's has no experience operating and sustaining a submarine capability. The Philippines, which is an archipelagic nation made up of more than 7,600 islands, faces a myriad security challenges ranging from disputes with China and other southeast Asian countries over the ownership of islands and features in the South China Sea, to ongoing insurgencies with communist guerrillas and Muslim separatists that includes Islamic State-linked militants. In May 2017, the latter seized control of the city of Marawi in the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, leading to a five-month siege by government forces, which resulted in large parts of the city being badly damaged during operations to recapture it. During the operation, the United States, which has a mutual defense treaty with the Philippines, provided intelligence and surveillance assistance to government forces with its manned and unmanned aircraft. https://www.defensenews.com/global/asia-pacific/2018/06/21/heres-the-philippine-militarys-wish-list-for-its-newly-approved-modernization-phase/

By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR. WASHINGTON: China is besting the United States in key military technologies like hypersonic missiles and electronic warfare, Gen. Paul Selva, vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs said today. We can still catch up, he predicted. What about Artificial Intelligence? That's too close to call, said former deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work, so we'd better get a move on. Both men spoke at a CNAS conference on “Strategic Competition: Maintaining The Edge.” “I actually regret talking about the Third Offset Strategy, in hindsight,” Work said, referring to the high-tech initiative he launched in the Obama Pentagon. “It made it sound like we had the advantage and we had the time to think about it and go through the motions.... I wish I would have said, ‘we need to start about upsetting the Chinese offset, which is coming uncomfortably close to achieving technological parity with the US.' “At this point, I would think that the outcome is too close to call,” Work said. “It's time for the US to crack the whip. (Let's) hope it's not too late.” Hypersonics & Electronic Warfare So what are some of these shortfalls? The most high-profile is hypersonics, weapons designed to move through the atmosphere at more than five times the speed of sound. Defense Undersecretary for R&D Mike Griffin has made hypersonics his top priority and has warned that China has conducted 20 times more tests than the US. China has demonstrated some impressive technology, Gen. Selva said today, but the race is far from over. “They haven't mass-deployed hypersonics or long-range ballistic missiles,” he said. “What they have done is proven the technologies, so they are able now to deploy those capabilities on a larger scale. “We are behind in the demonstration of many of those technologies,” Selva admitted, elaborating on a statement he made in January, “but we also can take asymmetric approaches and catch up. We are way ahead in a lot of the sensor integration technologies” — essential for telling the hyper-fast weapons where to go — “and we have to maintain that edge.” What about Electronic Warfare, I asked? Detecting, triangulating, and jamming enemy radio transmissions has long been a Russian strength and is increasingly a Chinese one, while the US disbanded many of its EW forces after the Cold War. Selva's answer got into technical nuances I hadn't heard before. “We're a step behind,” Selva said. “It's not hard to catch up, but as soon as you catch up the fast followers will actually leap over the top of you — and that's the dynamic that's set up by having digital radio frequency management capability.” DRFM, also called Digital Radio Frequency Memory, uses modern computing power to record enemy radio and radar signals, modify them, and copy them, allowing forces to transmit a false signal that the enemy can't tell from the real thing. It's a much more effective way of “spoofing” than traditional analog techniques, which suffered from telltale signal degradation. “We assumed wrongly that encryption and our domination in the precision timing signals would allow us to evade the enemy in the electromagnetic spectrum,” Selva said. It turns that that timing is everything in EW as well as comedy. While GPS is now part of daily life, a much less well-known feature is that GPS requires incredibly precise timing — within about three-billionths of a second — which can be used for other purposes, such as coordinating different radios as they switch rapidly from one frequency to another to avoid enemy detection and jamming. But apparently that wasn't enough to evade DRFM-based jamming, which can create a false timing signal that causes the entire network to fall out of synch. “We took a path that they have now figured out,” Selva said. “The Chinese and the Russians took an alternative path, which was to employ digitally managed radio frequency manipulation, which changed the game in electronic warfare. “We have done an in-depth study of where we are relative to the Chinese and Russians (across) the entire spectrum, and we've got some work to do,” Selva said. “We have to figure out alternative pathways for communications and command and control so it doesn't have to be an RF (Radio Frequency) game...It's an RF game because we chose to make it so.” He didn't specify what the alternatives to radio communication were, but there's been promising work using lasers to beam messages. (Breaking D readers will remember that we first reported the demise of America's lead in spectrum four years ago.) Securing our communications networks isn't enough, Work told me afterwards, because every weapon system now has chips in it that can be hacked into. “We have focused on securing network communications, but our biggest vulnerabilities now, Sydney, are in the DoD Internet of Things — the way you can crack into the network through platforms (e.g. tanks, aircraft, ships) and through components on platforms,” Work said. “The Russians and the Chinese understand these vulnerabilities and really try to exploit them.” So there are really three fronts in cyber/electronic warfare, and Work isn't sanguine about any of them. “Dominating the electromagnetic spectrum, and securing the DoD Internet of Things, and securing networks, all of these three things, in my view, we're well behind in,” he told me. The whole “Chinese theory of victory,” he said, is known (in translation) as “systems destruction warfare” because it focuses on electronically paralyzing command-and-control rather than physically destroying tanks, ships, and planes. Artificial Intelligence Now, artificial intelligence could potentially revolutionize electronic warfare. Computers can identify signals, trace them, and making jamming decisions much faster than human minds — a concept called “cognitive EW.” But that's just one of the many military applications of AI, from advising human commanders to coordinating swarms of combat robots. While Selva didn't address Artificial Intelligence, Work did; it's one of his passions and the central theme of the (now deprecated) Third Offset Strategy. So who's ahead in AI? Defense Innovation Advisory Board chairman Eric Schmidt, a former Google AI guru, told Work he had once thought the US was five years ahead of the Chinese, Work recounted. But after a recent trip to China, Work recounted, Schmidt changed his verdict: “If we have six months, we're lucky.” Schmidt said last year that the US lacks a coherent strategy to counter the Chinese in this area. The US has never been in a competition this intense, Work said. China has made AIan official national priority — something he thinks the White House should do here — and the Chinese have great coders. The Pentagon is now creating a Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, something Schmidt's DIB proposed over a year ago, Work noted. “We've got a lot of advantages and we can do very, very well in this race but don't take anything for granted,” Work told me. Just as politicians are warned never to take victory for granted, neither should DoD. “It's a political rule to always run like you're losing, and that's what we have to do in this area....The Chinese are very clever and very capable competitors, and they're intent on surpassing us.” https://breakingdefense.com/2018/06/us-must-hustle-on-hypersonics-ew-ai-vcjcs-selva-work/

By: Karen Jowers A retired Army major general and former retail executive will lead a Pentagon task force that is examining the case for a possible merger of the military exchange and commissary systems, Defense officials announced Thursday. Keith Thurgood, who was also the chief executive officer of the Army and Air Force Exchange Service from 2007 to 2010, will start work Monday. If the task force business case analysis confirms that consolidation is the right approach, and if Defense Department officials back that finding, Thurgood will serve as the consolidated organization's executive director until the permanent position is advertised and filled, according to a May 29 memo directing the task force's formation. The retired Reserve major general has more than 28 years of military service and has held executive positions at PepsiCo & Frito-Lay Inc., Sam's Club, Overseas Military Sales Corporation, and MedAssets, Inc. He will take a sabbatical from his current position as clinical professor at the University of Texas at Dallas. He could serve up to two years on the task force. The task force will examine “back office” operations of the exchanges and commissaries, such as information technology, human resources and accounting. It will first determine whether the exchange systems ― AAFES, Navy Exchange Service Command, and Marine Corps Exchange ― could be combined with one corporate “backbone.” Then members will determine whether the Defense Commissary Agency could be merged into that system. Consolidation of the stores wouldn't necessarily mean that commissaries and exchanges would be combined into one store. Officials are also looking at keeping the individual branding of the exchange stores on military bases, as they combine behind-the-scenes operations. “With General Thurgood's leadership, understanding of the customer experience, and private sector experience in the retail space, the task force will evaluate our potential to generate efficiencies and scrutinize the above-the-store business aspects of the exchange system, with a goal of validating and defining our execution plan for the way forward,” said John H. Gibson, II, DoD's chief management officer, in the DoD announcement. https://www.militarytimes.com/pay-benefits/2018/06/21/heres-who-will-lead-the-dod-group-that-could-decide-the-future-of-military-shopping/

By: Jill Lawless, The Associated Press LONDON — The bonds between Europe and North America are under strain and there's no guarantee the trans-Atlantic partnership will survive, the head of NATO warned Thursday. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called for an effort to shore up the military alliance amid the divisions between Europe and the United States over trade, climate change and the Iran nuclear deal. “It is not written in stone that the trans-Atlantic bond will survive forever,” Stoltenberg said during a speech in London. “But I believe we will preserve it.” NATO has been shaken by U.S. President Donald Trump's “America First” stance and mistrust of international institutions. Trump once called NATO obsolete and has repeatedly berated other members of the 29-nation alliance of failing to spend enough on defense. Ahead of a NATO summit in July, Stoltenberg said “we may have seen the weakening” of some bonds between North America and Europe. But he insisted that “maintaining the trans-Atlantic partnership is in our strategic interests.” Stoltenberg said the world faced “the most unpredictable security environment in a generation” due to terrorism, proliferating weapons of mass destruction, cyberattacks and an assertive Russia. “We must continue to protect our multilateral institutions like NATO, and we must continue to stand up for the international rules-based order,” he said. After meeting Prime Minister Theresa May in Downing St., Stoltenberg praised Britain, one of a minority of NATO countries to meet a target of spending 2 percent of GDP on defense. He said that despite differences between the U.S. and Europe, NATO delivered “trans-Atlantic unity” every day. “We have had differences before, and the lesson of history is that we overcome these differences every time,” Stoltenberg said. Some European officials worry the Trump administration is cool on efforts to hold Russia to account for misdeeds including election meddling and the nerve-agent poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal in England, which the U.K. blames on Moscow. At a G-7 summit this month, Trump suggested that Russia should be readmitted to the group of industrial powers, from which it was expelled over its annexation of Crimea in 2014. Some U.S. allies are concerned by reports that Trump plans to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin when the American leader travels to Europe for the NATO summit next month. But Stoltenberg said meeting Putin does not contradict NATO policies. “We are in favor of dialogue with Russia,” he said. “We don't want a new cold war. We don't want a new arms race. We don't want to isolate Russia.” https://www.militarytimes.com/flashpoints/2018/06/21/why-the-head-of-nato-says-theres-no-guarantee-that-the-trans-atlantic-alliance-will-survive/

Pierre Tran PARIS — Thales has sealed a deal worth AU $230 million (U.S. $169 million) to boost the sonar capability on the Australian Navy's six-strong fleet of Collins submarines, drawing on teams working in Britain, France and Australia. “Australia's strategic priority on enhancing its submarine capability will be supported by Thales through major upgrades of the sonar system on all six Collins class submarines,” the electronics company said in a June 14 statement. Thales' work is part of a total AU $542 million project to install a modular cylindrical array, based on sonar 2076 submarine technology developed by its British unit, the company said. That modular array replaces a cylindrical array installed in the 1980s. A new flank array from the Thales French unit will replace the existing system. Thales will work with the combat system integrator, Raytheon Australia, which will integrate products from other suppliers including Sonartech Atlas and L3 Oceania. The sonar work will support more than 140 local jobs, of which 50 will be Thales staff at its Rydalmere plant, western Sydney, the company said. That deal follows Thales winning in November 2016 a contract for design and pre-production to upgrade cylindrical and flank array sonars, including onboard processing, on the Collins boats. Separately, Thales hopes to win business worth more than AU $1.6 billion to supply sonars and other equipment on the Australian acquisition of 12 ocean-going attack submarines. Lockheed Martin is combat systems integrator and Naval Group the prime contractor on that program worth some AU $50 billion. https://www.defensenews.com/global/asia-pacific/2018/06/19/australian-subs-to-get-sonar-boost/

David B. Larter WASHINGTON — The Navy's acquisition boss, aiming to get his arms around the long-term maintenance and ownership costs of the world's most complex fleet, has directed Naval Sea Systems Command to undertake an ambitious long-term plan for all the ships in the fleet. James “Hondo” Geurts, the assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition, has asked NAVSEA to compile a 30-year ship repair and maintenance plan that he intends to roll out alongside the annual shipbuilding plan. “The idea is, we have this 30-year shipbuilding plan, that's only as good as our ability to repair and modernize those ships once we build them,” Geurts told a gaggle of reporters Tuesday. “So what we'd like to do is create the companion plan that takes the shipbuilding plan and what we have in inventory, then forecast and plan for all the repair and modernizations that we'll have to do.” The Navy wants to have an idea, as it looks down to road, if it has the needed industrial capacity and infrastructure in place to meet the fleet's needs, which will become especially important as the fleet builds up. In fact, the Navy struggles to adequately maintain the smaller fleet it has today. In testimony last week, NAVSEA head Vice Adm. Thomas Moore told House lawmakers that the net capacity private shipyards that handle surface ship maintenance was only 75 percent of what the Navy required. During the past decade, the increasing demands on a smaller fleet drove deployment lengths to nine months or longer, which racked up a readiness deficit that the Navy is still working through. Deployment lengths have come back down closer to seven months, but the unpredictable operations tempo made it difficult for the Navy to plan yards periods and impacted the business of the private shipyards. Geurts conceded that operations will undoubtedly impact a 30-year maintenance schedule but said having it on paper was the right place to start when managing complicated schedules. “It's a very complex issue with inputs and outputs,” Geurts said. “But the only thing I know is the best way to get after a complex issue is laying out at least what you know and having that at least as a baseline so then when you have to do changes – for operational reasons of whatever — you are changing from a known baseline and you can understand quickly what the second and third order effects are. Like we do on new construction, I'd like to introduce that kind of rigor.” Ultimately the hope is that industry can plan better with a long-term plan in place, Geurts said. “My hope is if we can do that, industry can start planning resources, they can start hiring resources when they see the signal,” he said. “Right now we are not as well positioned in the future as I'd like to be.” https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2018/06/19/the-navys-acquisition-boss-has-a-plan-to-get-fleet-maintenance-back-on-track/

James LaPorta June 19 (UPI) -- The Department of Defense has awarded a contract to General Dynamics Electric Boat for work on the next nine Virginia-class attack submarines. The contract award from Naval Sea Systems Command, announced Monday, is worth $225 million under the terms of cost-plus-fixed-fee contract, which is a modification to a previous Pentagon award, the Defense Department said. The deal will see General Dynamics provide economic ordering quantity material -- parts ordered ahead of time -- for the next nine Virginia-class, nuclear-powered fast attack submarines, for work in fiscal 2019 through 2023. The nine vessels are part of the Block V generation of the Virginia class. The first four have been ordered by the U.S. Navy already, with General Dynamics set to construct SSN-802 and SSN-803 and Huntington Ingalls Industries tapped for SSN-804 and SSN-805. Work on the contract will occur in various locations throughout the United States and is expected to be complete in January 2019. The total cumulative value of the contract will be obligated to General Dynamics at time of award -- the obligated funds will be allocated from Navy fiscal 2018 shipbuilding and conversion accounts and will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year, said the Pentagon press release. https://www.upi.com/Defense-News/2018/06/19/GenDyn-contracted-for-parts-for-future-submarine-construction/8941529412778/

• Canada has awarded Thales Canada Phase II of the MEOSAR (Medium Earth Orbit Search and Rescue) Ground Segment contract. • The contract includes the procurement of two MEOLUTs and maintenance services for five years with options for an additional five years. • Using Thales Alenia Space's powerful and compact MEOLUT Next phased array solution, Canada will benefit from the world's first space borne search and rescue system of this type. Canada has awarded Thales Canada Phase II of the MEOSAR (Medium Earth Orbit Search and Rescue) Ground Segment contract. It will support Canada's ability to respond quickly and effectively to distress signals from land, air and sea from coast-to-coast-to-coast; enabling Canada to meet its obligations under the International COSPAS-SARSAT Programme Agreement. The contract includes the procurement of two MEOLUTs and maintenance services for five years with options for an additional five years. Using Thales Alenia Space's powerful and compact MEOLUT Next phased array solution, Canada will benefit from the world's first space borne search and rescue system of this type. Thales Alenia Space designs, operates and delivers satellite-based systems for governments and institutions, helping them position and connect anyone or anything, everywhere. Since its commissioning in 2016, MEOLUT Next has delivered unrivalled performance, detecting distress signals more than 5,000km away. This new capability saves lives. On July 2, 2017 at 6:30 a.m., 70 kilometres off the coast of Sardinia, a 12-meter sailboat with three people aboard triggered its COSPAS/SARSAT beacon when its rudder broke and its engine failed. Its VHF radio out of range, the sailors quickly realized they were in a critical situation with waves over four meters high and the wind blowing at 40 knots. MEOLUT Next was able to receive and process their distress signals in less than five minutes, providing accurate positioning to authorities. An airplane identified the boat less than two hours after the beacon was triggered and a helicopter airlifted the crew to safety, saving all three lives. “Thales Canada is proud to deliver world class solutions that will make life better and keep us safer,” said Jerry McLean, Managing Director and Vice President, Thales Canada. “From complex C4ISR systems to integrated maritime C3 and diverse aerospace solutions, this contract further reflects Thales' continued commitment to Canadian innovation.” “We are confident that our solution will meet and exceed Canada's MEOSAR expectations, offering Canada a decisive technology for its decisive moments,” said Philippe Blatt, VP Navigation France at Thales Alenia Space. “Today, MEOLUT Next is the only solution in the world capable of processing second-generation beacons in real time. Its operational efficiency was recently recognized by Space & Satellite Professionals International (SSPI) for its humanitarian contributions”. Notes to Editor COSPAS/SARSAT COSPAS/SARSAT is an intergovernmental organization founded by Canada, the United States, Russia and France. In operation in 43 countries around the world, this satellite-based search and rescue distress alert detection and information distribution system is best known for detecting and locating emergency beacons activated by aircraft, ships and backcountry hikers in distress. Today, some 500,000 ships and 150,000 aircraft are equipped with COSPAS/SARSAT distress beacons. To date, the COSPAS-SARSAT service has saved more than 37,000 lives. MEOLUT Next Conventional MEOLUT (Medium Earth Orbit Local User Terminal) systems use large parabolic antennas and are limited by how many satellite signals they can receive. Thales Alenia Space's MEOLUT Next solution is compact, measuring less than six square meters, with the ability to track up to 30 satellites, significantly enhancing the distress beacon detection rate while expanding the coverage zone. Since there are no mechanical components, hardware maintenance costs are the lowest on the market. About Thales The people we all rely on to make the world go round – they rely on Thales. Our customers come to us with big ambitions: to make life better, to keep us safer. Combining a unique diversity of expertise, talents and cultures, our architects design and deliver extraordinary high technology solutions. Solutions that make tomorrow possible, today. From the bottom of the oceans to the depth of space and cyberspace, we help our customers think smarter and act faster - mastering ever greater complexity and every decisive moment along the way. With 65,000 employees in 56 countries, Thales reported sales of €15.8 billion in 2017. About Thales Canada A national leader in research and technology, Thales Canada combines its more than 50 years of experience with the talent of 1,800 skilled people located coast-to-coast. With revenues of $500 million, Thales Canada offers leading capabilities in the urban rail, civil aviation and defence and security sectors that meet the needs of customers' most complex requirements across every operating environment. About Thales Alenia Space Combining 40 years of experience and a unique diversity of expertise, talents and cultures, Thales Alenia Space engineers design and deliver high technology solutions for telecommunications, navigation, Earth observation, environmental management, exploration, science and orbital infrastructures. Governments, institutions and companies rely on Thales Alenia Space to design, operate and deliver satellite-based systems that help them position and connect anyone or anything, everywhere, help observe our planet, help optimize the use of our planet's – and our solar system's – resources. Thales Alenia Space believes in space as humankind's new horizon, which will enable to build a better, more sustainable life on Earth. A joint venture between Thales (67%) and Leonardo (33%), Thales Alenia Space also teams up with Telespazio to form the parent companies' Space Alliance, which offers a complete range of services and solutions. Thales Alenia Space posted consolidated revenues of about 2.4 billion euros in 2016 and has 7,980 employees in nine countries. www.thalesaleniaspace.com PRESS CONTACTS Cara Salci National Director, Public Affairs & Communications Thales Canada Tel.: 613-404-9413 cara.salci@ca.thalesgroup.com THALES ALENIA SPACE Sandrine Bielecki Tel: +33 (0)4 92 92 70 94 sandrine.bielecki@thalesaleniaspace.com Chrystelle Dugimont Tel: +33 (0)4 92 92 74 06 chrystelle.dugimont@thalesaleniaspace.com Cinzia Marcanio Tel: +39 06 41512685 cinzia.marcanio@thalesaleniaspace.com https://www.thalesgroup.com/en/worldwide/space/press-release/canada-acquire-thales-advanced-ground-segment-technology-respond

BY AARON BOYD An accelerated-acquisition office is seeking industry's best ideas for keeping track of parts and repairs ashore and at sea. The U.S. Navy is looking for bleeding-edge technologies to improve its business systems and is using its other transaction authority to solicit ideas. The Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, or SPAWAR, announced June 14 its intention to use the Training and Readiness Accelerator, or TReX, consortium to manage the solicitation. On or about June 25, TReX will release the full solicitation requirements to its members, which includes “the entire innovation ecosystem including companies from—startups to Fortune 1000—universities, technology incubators, investors, public and private laboratories and non-profits,” according to its website. The solicitation will cover four areas under the Naval Operational Business Logistics Enterprise, or NOBLE, family of systems, with the overall goal of improving the Navy's material and shore readiness—including “reduced failure rate, improved repair time, improved resupply time and accuracy, affordable sustainment, mission capable and secure facilities”—and user experience—including “simplified and expedited decision making, integrated and dynamic work prioritization, digitally enabled training and collaboration and easy and intuitive user experience/interface.” The solicitation focuses on three core areas, with an overarching integrated data environment stretching across the enterprise. The core areas include the Naval Operational Supply System, or NOSS, the Naval Aviation Maintenance System, or NAMS, and the Naval Operational Maintenance Environment, or NOME. According to the solicitation, NOSS will provide planning, requisitioning, procurement, inventory control, logistics services and financial accountability of all material and property across all commodities. NAMS will provide Naval aviation—U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps—with a deployable, scalable and streamlined tactical maintenance solution to maintain the operational availability of deployed and deployable aircraft. NOME will provide the Navy with a deployable, scalable and streamlined tactical maintenance solution afloat to maintain the operational availability of deployed and deployable ships and submarines. Along with the core areas, SPAWAR is also looking for an integrated data environment that can work across platforms. While the data environment will have to work with each individual system, it is being treated as a separate solution area under this solicitation. The data environment will need to be hosted in a government-certified cloud with an impact level rating of 4/5, which cover sensitive controlled unclassified information. “The cloud environment combined with a common IDE will provide a highly available and reliable commercial solution,” the solicitation states. “The environment will also be capable of hosting and integrating applications, data, systems and services planned to be transitioned to modern commercial technologies, and accomplish this migration of government-owned applications with no degradation of services.” SPAWAR will conduct the solicitation in two phases. The first phase consists of submitting white papers for each solution—vendors can bid on any or all of them—with a tentative deadline set for July 24. SPAWAR will then down-select from that pool for Phase II, which will consist of two-hour, in-person demos in Orlando, Florida. Interested parties must be a part of the TReX consortium in order to bid. https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2018/06/us-navy-wants-next-gen-supply-network-and-fast/149082/