AUKUS allies developing undersea capabilities they can field this year

Sur le même sujet

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  5 novembre 2018 | International, C4ISR

  After Hurricane Michael, the Air Force moved Tyndall AFB’s contracting data to the cloud

  By: Valerie Insinna WASHINGTON — After Hurricane Michael ravaged Tyndall Air Force Base in October, airmen took on an unusual mission: recovering the servers base officials used to write, release and award contracts. Reclaiming those servers — which contain data and contract vehicles used by Tyndall's two contracting squadrons to order everything for the base from supplies for the base to spare parts for aircraft — was a relatively minor victory when compared to the larger devastation faced by the installation. But the mission was an important one in that it allowed remaining base personnel to manage contracts in the wake of the disaster, Air Force officials told Defense News. “Obviously, the base is devastated ... but it's clear that there were open, existing contracts whether that was for simple things like cutting the lawn or delivering food to the chow hall on base,” said Richard Aldridge, the Air Force's program executive officer for business and enterprise systems. “Someone has got to either terminate them, or put them on pause or make sure vendors are getting paid for work that they had already done before the contract.” In the days after the hurricane, airmen from Gunter Annex in Alabama worked with the state's civil air patrol to fly into the Florida panhandle, obtain Tyndall's servers and transport them back to Maxwell Air Force Base, where Gunter is located. Then, the service transferred data from the legacy contract writing system into a new cloud-based system called CON-IT, short for Contracting Information Technology. The servers from Tyndall weren't necessary for base officials to use CON-IT, said Mike Allen, the Air Force's CON-IT program manager. But without them, contract officers would be left with no digital record of past contracts, and would be forced to draw up new contracts for mundane goods and services that would normally be bought through indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contracts that allow for multiple orders. "We were then able to migrate [the data from the servers] into CON-IT so that existing [indefinite delivery-indefinite quantity contracts] or ordering vehicles were available to them, and all of their existing contracts would be available to work with,” said Allen. “They weren't starting from a blank piece of paper.” And moving to a cloud-based environment means that Tyndall's contracting data will no longer be vulnerable to future disasters, Aldridge added. “It's ubiquitous; it doesn't matter where you are, you can access it,” he said. Allen and Aldridge said the program office was able to transition Tyndall's data and train users on the new system, but were unable to provide details on how Tyndall's contracting officers had since used the new system. The plan is to move all of the Air Force's current contract data from existing legacy systems to CON-IT by the end of 2019. The system, built by and originally developed by Appian for use by the Defense Information Systems Agency, has deployed to 1,100 users in 30 locations so far, Allen said. CON-IT will replace three legacy systems: the standard procurement system that supports operational users; ConWrite, which supports the weapon system acquisition and research and development; and the automated contract preparation system for logistics contracts. https://www.c4isrnet.com/it-networks/2018/11/02/after-hurricane-michael-the-air-force-moved-tyndall-afbs-contracting-data-to-the-cloud

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  19 février 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  USAF Braces For NGAD Sticker Shock On Capitol Hill

  The U.S. Air Force's acquisition chief said Feb. 18 that he expects a congressional backlash over how a recent revamp of the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) procurement strategy could drive up the average procurement unit cost (APUC) of a sixth-generation fighter. But the Air Force remains committed to an acquisition strategy for an F-22 replacement that accepts higher upfront costs in order to save money during the sustainment phase of the program, said Will Roper, assistant secretary of the Air Force, speaking during an “Ask Me Anything” webinar for the service's acquisition workforce. The Pentagon calculates APUC by dividing total procurement costs, including recurring and nonrecurring bills, by the number of units purchased. “I already see that being the big discussion with Congress. [They would ask:] ‘The APUC is WHAT?' And we're going to have to have a really good analysis to show that by operating this way the total cost of ownership is better,” Roper said. The Air Force initially planned to structure the NGAD program using a conventional procurement process, in which a contractor typically loses money during the design phase, breaks even at a program level during development and reaps profits over an exclusive, multidecade sustainment period. But Roper, who was appointed in 2017, said in early 2019 that the strategy had changed. The details of the highly secretive NGAD program are murky, but Roper has compared the new acquisition strategy to the business model for the Apple iPhone. Apple does not sustain the iPhone beyond a few years, so it makes profits by charging a premium on the design at the point of sale. Although the upfront cost is higher, Apple's business model incentivizes an external community of software developers to create applications for the iPhone at little to no cost. Roper wants to apply a similar philosophy to the development of the next generation of combat aircraft. He wants traditional defense prime contractors to transition away from a sustainment model for profits and incentivize them to focus on design by offering them a premium. “The next generation air dominance [program] is thinking what's the new business model that really reward the companies that use the [design] tools well, but not the sustainment, locked-in paradigm,” Roper said. Roper did not specify how much a sixth-generation fighter will cost to procure under the new acquisition approach. The Congressional Budget Office, which assumed a conventional acquisition process, estimated the average flyaway cost of a sixth-generation fighter in late 2018 to be about $300 million, based on a program of record for 414 penetrating counter-air aircraft. The Air Force's new acquisition takes a different approach to quantities compared to the “program of record” format, such as the one used for the Lockheed Martin F-35. Roper said he expects production quantities to fall somewhere between numbers generally associated with one-off X-planes and F-35-like production. The new approach is currently applied to the NGAD program, but Roper said he intends to stay in his position as the approach becomes institutionalized in Air Force acquisition. “I am not planning to go anywhere, anytime soon,” he told the roughly 1,000-member audience of the webinar, “because I learned so much working with all of you.” https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/usaf-braces-ngad-sticker-shock-capitol-hill

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  10 juin 2022 | International, Naval

  Navy SEALs new underwater stealth vehicle? | MilTech

  The sleek submersible that delivers Navy SEALs from ships and submarines to onshore locations has been in service for decades. Now, the fleet wants new ones.