Contract Awards by US Department of Defense - August 20, 2019

Sur le même sujet

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  13 juillet 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  GKN Aerospace continues to support the Gripen’s RM12 engine

  GKN Aerospace has signed a follow-on performance based logistics (PBL) contract with the Swedish Armed Forces for the provision of comprehensive support for the GKN Aerospace RM12 engine. The RM12 engine powers the JAS 39 Gripen C/D fighter. This contract follows a series of multi-year RM12 PBL agreements and is expected to be worth approximately USD440M. Under the agreement, GKN Aerospace will continue its support for the day-to-day operations of JAS 39 Gripen C/D users. The company will ensure engine availability for every Swedish Air Force mission as well as for Gripen C/D export customers: the Czech Republic, Hungary and Thailand. This will include the provisioning of technical product support as well as comprehensive maintenance, repair and overhaul including repair development and spare parts supply. Joakim Andersson, president GKN Aerospace Engines said: “We are totally committed to ensuring RM12 engine availability and its secure and safe performance in all operations. At the same time GKN Aerospace closely monitors every aspect of product life cycle cost effectiveness. “With the recognition and award from the customer GKN Aerospace will continue to do its best in keeping this engine's excellent track record, ensuring it is one of the best single engine installations in the world. The company understands the importance of keeping the engine system in active service for many years to come.” The GKN Aerospace RM12 engine has powered the JAS 39 Gripen throughout the approximately 310,000 flight hours this aircraft has already achieved. It is based on the General Electric F404 engine from which it has been developed to include single engine safety criteria, higher performance and greater durability. The primary focus of the development programme for the RM12 engine was to deliver the highest possible operational effectiveness with the most favourable life-cycle cost. GKN Aerospace holds the military type certificate (MTC) for the RM12 engine. www.gknaerospace.com https://www.aero-mag.com/gkn-aerospace-gripen-rm12-08072020/

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  2 décembre 2019 | International, C4ISR, Sécurité

  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/

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  3 juillet 2018 | International, C4ISR

  Cyber Command moves closer to a major new weapon

  By: Mark Pomerleau The Air Force issued a formal proposal earlier this month for the Department of Defense's long-awaited cyber weapon system, known as the Unified Platform, sources tell Fifth Domain. DoD officials have said the Unified Platform is one of U.S. Cyber Command's largest and most critical acquisition programs to date. Industry officials have said it is necessary to conduct cyber operations and is critical to national security. Just as sailors rely on an aircraft carrier, pilots need airplanes or soldiers need tanks, cyber warriors require a system to which they launch their attacks. Pentagon leaders have said the Unified Platform will house offensive and defensive tools, allow for command and control, situational awareness and planning. Industry officials have referred to the programs as a “cyber carrier” used to launch cyber operations and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. But details on what the Air Force, which issued the request on behalf of Cyber Command, wants in a Unified Platform are scarce. Sources told Fifth Domain a formal request for proposal was released through the General Services Administration's premier enterprise Alliant Governmentwide Acquisition Contract vehicle, which “provides flexible access to customized IT solutions from a large, diverse pool of industry partners ... [and] allows for long-term planning of large-scale program requirements.” Under this model, GSA completes much of the initial contracting legwork and, in this case, allows the Air Force to focus on the specific technical requirements, sources said. Companies compete to be eligible for task orders under the Alliant contract and then GSA selects contractors who compete against each other for individual task orders on the final program. This means, only vetted companies would work on the program. Alliant is also designed to streamline contracts for IT projects only, eschewing some of the documentation and financials in typical contracts enabling faster awards. The Unified Platform proposal was only released to companies on the contract about two weeks ago, sources said, and is due in mid-July. Today, each of the individual services use their own disparate systems, many of which are not linked together. The spokesman added that efforts are underway to review and consolidate existing service and Cyber Command's platforms. Unified Platform seeks to take the best of breed of these and provide all cyber warriors a consolidated system. “In concert with US Cyber Command and all Services, the Air Force as Executive Agent is directing development and deployment to ensure timely and relevant full-spectrum capabilities for our cyber warriors,” an Air Force spokeswoman said. An Air Force spokeswoman said that the Air Force's Life Cycle Management Center will serve as the system integrator and will lead a multi-contractor, agile development/operations effort to launch and expand the Unified Platform. Currently, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and Booz Allen Hamilton are known to be competing for the contract. Sources said other companies may also be considering a bid. The Air Force, in its research and development budget for fiscal 2019, asked for $29.8 million for the Unified Platform program this year. It requested $10 million for fiscal year 2020 and $6 million in fiscal 2021. The total cost of the program is not immediately clear. Other companies are also working on Unified Platform prototypes in the interim. Enlighten IT Consulting, a Maryland based company, was awarded earlier this year a sole source contract to provide a Unified Platform prototype, Duane Shugars, Enlighten's vice president of operations, told Fifth Domain. Enlighten is providing a capability Cyber Command's cyber mission force is using in real world missions today in which they collect data, push it into their analytics to run and share it for intelligence fusion. As the command continues to grow and mature leaders have said it will need its own infrastructure to conduct operations. As recently as 2015, top Pentagon officials acknowledged Cyber Command did not possess a robust joint computer network infrastructure capability, a robust command and control platform and systems to plan and execute fast-moving, large-scale cyber operations. During his confirmation process to lead Cyber Command, Gen. Paul Nakasone said the organization needs its own infrastructure separate from the National Security Agency, which is currently co-located with Cyber Command and has traditionally shared personnel and infrastructure. “Operating under the constraint of the intelligence authorities that govern NSA infrastructure and tools would severely limit USCYBERCOM's ability to effectively support wartime cyber operations,” he said. https://www.fifthdomain.com/dod/cybercom/2018/06/29/cyber-command-moves-closer-to-a-major-new-weapon/