Budget strain pauses MC-130J amphibious project for special forces

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  22 janvier 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

  Contract Awards by US Department of Defense - January 21, 2020

  ARMY BAE Systems Land & Armaments LP, Sterling Heights, Michigan, was awarded a $400,905,801 modification (P00080) to contract W56HZV-15-C-A001 to procure 160 armored multi-purpose vehicles. Work will be performed in York, Pennsylvania, with an estimated completion date of Feb. 28, 2023. Fiscal 2019 and 2020 European reassurance initiative, defense; and procurement of weapons and tracked combat vehicles, Army funds in the amount of $400,905,801 were obligated at the time of the award. U.S. Army Contracting Command, Warren, Michigan, is the contracting activity. TechTrans International Inc., Houston, Texas, was awarded a $231,277,398 cost-no-fee contract for non-personal services to provide event planning, coordination and logistical support for training requirements. 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 Aug. 31, 2025. U.S. Army Mission and Installation Contracting Command, Fort Sam Houston, Texas, is the contracting activity (W9124J-20-D-0004). Arcadis U.S. Inc., Highlands Ranch, Colorado, was awarded a $32,000,000 firm-fixed-price contract for architect and engineering services. Bids were solicited via the internet with one received. Work locations and funding will be determined with each order, with an estimated completion date of Jan. 21, 2025. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, New York, New York, is the contracting activity (W912DS-20-D-0002). Agate Construction Co., Cape May Courthouse, New Jersey, was awarded a $9,265,354 firm-fixed-price contract for repairs to the Hereford Inlet seawall. Bids were solicited via the internet with three received. Work will be performed in Cape May, New Jersey, with an estimated completion date of April 30, 2021. Fiscal 2019 civil construction funds in the amount of $9,265,354 were obligated at the time of the award. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is the contracting activity (W912BU-20-C-0006). DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY AM General LLC, South Bend, Indiana, has been awarded a maximum $40,469,946 firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery requirements contract for transmission hydraulics. This was a sole-source acquisition using justification 10 U.S. Code 2304 (c)(1), as stated in Federal Acquisition Regulation 6.302-1. This is a three-year contract with no option periods. Location of performance is Indiana, with a Jan. 23, 2023, performance completion date. Using military service is Army. Type of appropriation is fiscal 2020 through 2023 Army working capital funds. The contracting activity is the Defense Logistics Agency Land and Maritime, Warren, Michigan (SPRDL1-20-D-0064). Lions Services Inc., Charlotte, North Carolina, has been awarded a maximum $24,502,400 firm-fixed-price, indefinite-quantity contract for hydration carriers. This was a sole-source acquisition using justification 10 U.S. Code 2304 (c)(5), as stated in Federal Acquisition Regulation 6.302-5. This is a three-year contract with no option periods. Location of performance is North Carolina, with a Jan. 31, 2022, performance completion date. Using military service is Army. Type of appropriation is fiscal 2020 through 2022 defense working capital funds. The contracting activity is the Defense Logistics Agency Troop Support, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (SPE1C1-20-D-B080). Federal Prison Industries Inc.,* Washington, District of Columbia, has been awarded a maximum $24,465,000 firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for trousers. This is a one-year base contract with four one-year option periods. Locations of performance are District of Columbia, Texas, Alabama and Mississippi, with a Sept. 30, 2021, performance completion date. Using customers are Army and Air Force. Type of appropriation is fiscal 2020 through 2021 defense working capital fund. The contracting activity is the Defense Logistics Agency Troop Support, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (SPE1C1-20-D-F056). NAVY Transoceanic Cable Ship Co. LLC, Baltimore, Maryland, is awarded an $18,375,084 for a firm-fixed-price modification with reimbursable elements to a previously awarded contract N32205-19-C-3506. This modification provides for the first, six-month option for one cable ship, CS Global Sentinel. This vessel will be utilized to lay and repair cable for the Department of Defense worldwide. Work will be performed worldwide, and is expected to be completed, if all options are exercised, by Dec. 22, 2023. This contract includes a 12-month base period, two six-month option periods, two 12-month option periods, and one 11-month option period. Fiscal 2020 operations and maintenance (Navy) funds in the amount of $10,500,000; and procurement Navy funds in the amount of $7,875,084 are obligated at time of award and will expire at the end of the fiscal year. The Military Sealift Command, Norfolk, Virginia, is the contracting activity. Ternion Corp., Huntsville, Alabama, is awarded a $13,300,000 firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for the sustainment and upgrade of the Flexible, Analysis, Modeling, and Exercise System Automated System Trainer software applications, software maintenance, and upgrade and modification services in support of the Common Aviation Command and Control Increment I system. The program is managed within the portfolio of Program Executive Officer Land Systems, Quantico, Virginia. Work will be performed in Huntsville, Alabama, and is expected to be completed by Jan. 31, 2025. The ordering period of the indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract will be for five years and will begin on Feb. 1, 2020. Fiscal 2020 operations and maintenance (Marine Corps) funds in the amount of $670,480; fiscal 2020 other procurement (Navy and Marine Corps) funds in the amount of $742,542; and fiscal 2020 research, development, test and evaluation (Marine Corps) funds in the amount of $160,900 for a total amount of $1,593,092 will be obligated on the first delivery order at time of award. Fiscal 2020 operations and maintenance (Marine Corps) funds will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was not competitively procured, in accordance with Federal Acquisition Regulation 6.302-1 and 10 U.S. Code § 2304(c)(1). The Marine Corps Systems Command, Quantico, Virginia, is the contracting activity (M67854-20-D-0013). BAE Systems Controls Inc., Endicott, New York, is awarded a $7,727,763 cost-plus-fixed-fee modification (P00007) to a previously award firm-fixed-price delivery order (N00019-18-F-2483) against basic ordering agreement N00019-18-G-0019. This modification provides for non-recurring engineering for the Forward Defense Weapons Systems cockpit controls and cabin intrusion reduction effort and associated prototypes in support of the tiltrotor aircraft, CV-22. Work will be performed in Endicott, New York (88.7%); Fort Worth, Texas (11%); and Fort Wayne, Indiana (0.3%), and is expected to be completed in June 2022. Fiscal 2019 research, development, test and evaluation (Air Force) funds in the amount of $1,566,750; and fiscal 2020 research, development, test and evaluation (Air Force) funds in the amount of $494,000 will be obligated at time of award, $1,566,750 of which will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Maryland, is the contracting activity. *Mandatory source https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Contracts/Contract/Article/2062046/source/GovDelivery/

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  28 juillet 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

  We know why innovation is important. Here’s how to do it.

  Tommy Sowers This month, thousands of units across all branches of the U.S. military will execute a change of command. New commanders will seek to set priorities for their command and leave their mark. However, commanders are asked to do something new: innovate. From the National Defense Strategy to the Army Operating Concept that states innovation “is critical” and defined as “the result of critical and creative thinking and the conversion of new ideas into valued outcomes,” why the military must innovate is doctrine. Yet, there is no playbook for how to innovate. Until now. For the past two years, an Air Force wing built an innovation playbook — leadership, buy-in, experimentation and speed. Leadership In July 2018, Col. Donn Yates took command of the 4th Fighter Wing. An intellectual and warrior, he wanted, and was directed, to be more innovative. He knew that the challenges he and the Air Force would face in the future — from fighting when satellite communications capabilities were down, to using data to predict parts failure, to using social media to communicate during a hurricane — were new, with no available checklist and playbook. He set out to develop one and make innovation a priority. A few weeks after taking command, he hosted me to discuss innovation. As the southeast regional director for the Defense Department's National Security Innovation Network, I helped lead the department's innovation efforts across the region. NSIN's mission is to help commanders innovate by tapping into new networks of innovators in the venture technology and academic space to deliver solutions. As a former Green Beret, venture-backed startup CEO and professor at Duke University, I speak the languages of these three different communities. Buy-in He immediately requested one of our programs — a Design Bootcamp — bringing professors from University of California, Berkley to train his innovation team in design thinking. The concepts are different than military thinking — talk with end users to understand their problems; create minimal viable products, or MVP, to solve their problems; test those MVPs and collect data; and use that data to develop better solutions quickly. Col. Yates had the teams work a problem that bedevils commanders across Air Force bases — the long wait times at the pharmacy. The trainers broke the 28 trainees into four-person teams, who camped out at the pharmacy interviewing pharmacists, staff, airmen and retirees. At the end of the week, the teams proposed solutions, from self-serve kiosks to mobile clinics to text notifications. Six months later, pharmacy wait times were down more than 50 percent and those trained teams could apply the same thinking to other problems. Experimentation with new problem solvers New ways of thinking are just the start. Moving from idea to an actual product that the military can use is difficult. While our military hardware remains the best in the world, the software running our military is woefully inadequate. As the chair of the Defense Innovation Board and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt stated: “The DoD violates pretty much every rule in modern product development.” And with virtually no positions for app developers and data scientists within any Department of Defense operational unit, getting solutions means tapping into new communities of problem solvers. Seymour Johnson Air Force Base sits 35 miles from the Research Triangle, one of the leading startup centers in the nation and host to 50,000 students. Could we tap into these problem solvers for a limited tour of duty to build solutions and serve their country? One of NSIN's programs is a university course called Hacking for Defense, or H4D. Delivered at Duke and universities across the nation, H4D teaches teams of students to build a startup to solve a DoD problem. Col. Yates' wing sponsored multiple H4D problems — from using data to predict F-15 part failure to developing new procedures to allow distributed forces to communicate in a SATCOM-denied environment, to an app for optimizing Reserve drill weekends. Working with new problem solvers takes tolerance and openness to new ideas. These teams, beginning with little knowledge of the military, ask first-principle questions. Yet, after 100-plus end-user interviews and working through multiple prototypes, these students become world experts on the specific problems and the likely solutions. Many go on to join the DoD. NSIN is now putting problems in H4D, tech fellowships called X-Force and courses at universities around the nation. These programs use product teams to craft better social media strategies, data dashboards and apps to fill critical needs. (If you are military and need solutions now, you can submit your problem here.) Speed The most important attribute in a venture-backed startup is speed. So, too, for the modern military. In testimony, a former undersecretary of defense stated: “Innovation will remain important always, but speed becomes the differentiating factor.” Two years of command can fly by. Unless new commanders make innovation not only a priority but also commit to do something now, the deployments, requirements and taskings of running any military unit will subsume any desire to innovate. A month after our first meet, Col. Yates brought 30 airmen to Duke to hear from entrepreneurs and academics. The next month, he sent a half-dozen leaders to learn how to work with university teams and carved out the training time for the Design Bootcamp. The following year, he sponsored two H4D teams and an X-Force fellow. This year, we've seen four H4D teams, more X-Force product teams and another boot camp. None were perfect. All could have been delayed. But the 4th Fighter Wing prioritized speed and innovation. The innovation playbook The military knows why it must innovate. The next conflicts will require not only the best hardware, but also a force that rapidly converts new thinking to outcomes; a force that can tap into the wealth of talent in America that will never wear a uniform but want to apply their entrepreneurial and technical skills to solve national security problems. The how — the things new commanders must do to innovate — has been opaque. Now, with the leadership, buy-in, experimentation and speed of the 4th Fighter Wing as an example, there is an innovation playbook. https://www.c4isrnet.com/opinion/commentary/2020/07/27/we-know-why-innovation-is-important-heres-how-to-do-it/

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  17 septembre 2021 | International, Naval

  British defense boss commiserates a bit with France over Australia submarine breakup

  '€œI understand Frances's disappointment at the cancellation of the diesel-electric deal,'€ Wallace said at the DSEI defense exhibit in London on Sept. 16.