L3 Awarded Comprehensive F-16 Pilot Training Contract Valued at $350 Million

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  12 décembre 2019 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

  Contract Awards by US Department of Defense - December 11, 2019

  ARMY Galveston Coastal Services JV, Houston, Texas, was awarded a $228,000,000 firm-fixed-price contract for architect and engineering services. Bids were solicited via the internet with four received. Work locations and funding will be determined with each order, with an estimated completion date of Dec. 10, 2027. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Galveston, Texas, is the contracting activity (W912HY-20-D-0001). Lockheed Martin Corp., Grand Prairie, Texas, was awarded a $22,441,319 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract to design, develop and validate system prototypes for a combined arms squad. Bids were solicited via the internet with one received. Work will be performed in Grand Prairie, Texas, with an estimated completion date of Jan. 31, 2021. Fiscal 2019 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency funds in the amount of $11,323,800 were obligated at the time of the award. U.S. Army Contracting Command, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, is the contracting activity (W912CG-20-C-0005). NAVY Ahtna-CDM JV,* Irvine, California (N62473-20-D-0026); R. A. Burch Construction Inc.,* Ramona, California (N62473-20-D-0027); Bristol Design Build Services LLC,* Anchorage, Alaska (N62473-20-D-0028); Insight Pacific LLC,* Brea, California (N62473-20-D-0029); I.E.-Pacific Inc.,* Escondido, California (N62473-20-D-0030); Patricia I. Romero Inc., doing business as Pacific West Builders,* National City, California (N62473-20-D-0031); and Heffler Contracting Group,* El Cajon, California (N62473-20-D-0032), are each being awarded an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity, multiple award design-build construction contract for construction projects located primarily within the Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC) Southwest area of operations (AO). The work to be performed provides for, but is not limited to, new construction, renovation, alteration, demolition and repair work by design-build or by design-bid-build of commercial and institutional facilities, administrative and industrial facilities, housing facilities, child care centers, lodges, recreational/fitness centers, retail complexes, warehouses, offices, community centers, medical facilities, operational airfield facilities, hangars, armories, fire stations, auditoriums, religious facilities and manufacturing facilities. The maximum dollar value including the base two-year performance period and one three-year option period for all seven contracts combined is $99,999,000. No task orders are being issued at this time. All work on this contract will be performed primarily within the NAVFAC Southwest AO which includes California (55%); Nevada (40%); Arizona (1%); Colorado (1%); New Mexico (1%); Utah (1%); and remainder of the U.S. (1%), with an expected completion date of December 2024. Fiscal 2020 operations and maintenance (Navy) (O&M,N) contract funds in the amount of $35,000 are obligated on this award and will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. Future task orders will be primarily funded by O&M,N. This contract was competitively procured via the Navy Electronic Commerce Online website with 33 proposals received. These seven contractors may compete for task orders under the terms and conditions of the awarded contract. NAVFAC Southwest, San Diego, California, is the contracting activity. Etolin Strait Partners LLC,* Norfolk, Virginia, was awarded a $30,000,000, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity, firm-fixed-price job order contract for minor construction projects located primarily within the Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC) Washington, District of Columbia, area of responsibility (AOR). The work to be performed provides for the accomplishment of various maintenance, repair, alteration and minor new construction projects to government facilities located primarily within the NAVFAC. The contractor shall provide all labor, supervision, engineering, materials, equipment, tools, parts, supplies and transportation to perform all work described in the task order's request for proposal. Work will be performed primarily in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia, and is expected to be completed by September 2020. Fiscal 2019 operations and maintenance, Navy (O&M) funding in the amount $10,000 and will expire at the end of fiscal 2019. Future task orders will be funded primarily by military construction (Navy); O&M (Navy); O&M (Defense Logistics Agency); and Navy working capital funds. This contract was competitively procured via the Navy Electronic Commerce Online website with 11 proposals received. The Naval Facilities Engineering Command, Washington, District of Columbia, is the contracting activity (N40080-19-D-0007). (Awarded Sept. 30, 2019) AIR FORCE Nightingale Corp., Tonawanda, New York (FA8003-20-A-0001); Great Journey West LLC, Saint Charles, Missouri (FA8003-20-A-0002); SCS Integrated Support Solutions LLC, Manassas, Virginia (FA8003-20-A-0003); Feigus Inc., Wall, New Jersey (FA8003-20-A-0004); Govsolutions Inc., Virginia Beach, Virginia (FA8003-20-A-0005); SLM Contract Furniture Inc., San Diego, California (FA8003-20-A-0006); Workplace Solutions Inc., Virginia Beach, Virginia (FA8003-20-A-0007); NxVet LLC, Woodbridge, Virginia (FA8003-20-A-0008); Seating Inc., Nunda, New York (FA8003-20-A-0009); and Trade Products Corp., Fairfax, Virginia (FA8003-20-A-0010), have been awarded an $80,000,000 multiple award blanket purchase agreement for executive, task, conference room and side chairs. This agreement provides for delivery of office chairs at a discount off General Services Administration Federal Supply Schedules pricing to Air Force offices in the continental U.S. Work will be performed at Tonawanda, New York; Hawthorne, California; Buena Park, California; Bryan, Texas; Hillsboro, Oregon; and Nunda, New York, and is expected to be completed by December 2024. This award is the result of a 100% small business set-aside competitive acquisition and 26 offers were received. Current fiscal year operations and maintenance funds will be obligated with each order and no funds are being obligated at the time of award. The 771st Enterprise Sourcing Squadron, Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, is the contracting activity. DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY Thomas Scientific LLC, Swedesboro, New Jersey, has been awarded a maximum $49,000,000 fixed-price with economic-price-adjustment, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for laboratory supplies. This was a competitive acquisition with 15 responses received. This is a five-year contract with no options. Location of performance is New Jersey, with a Dec. 18, 2024, performance completion date. Using customers are Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and federal civilian agencies. Type of appropriation is fiscal 2020 through 2025 defense working capital funds. The contracting activity is the Defense Logistics Agency Troop Support, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (SPE2DE-20-D-0006). KaVo Dental Technologies LLC, Charlotte, North Carolina, has been awarded a maximum $45,000,000 fixed-price with economic-price-adjustment, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for hospital equipment and accessories for the Defense Logistics Agency electronic catalog. This was a competitive acquisition with 101 responses received. This is a five-year contract with no option periods. Location of performance is North Carolina, with a Dec. 10, 2024, performance completion date. Using military services are Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps. Type of appropriation is fiscal 2020 through 2025 defense working capital funds. The contracting activity is the Defense Logistics Agency Troop Support, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (SPE2DH-20-D-0026). Duck Delivery Produce Inc.,* Portland, Oregon, has been awarded a maximum $26,000,000 firm-fixed-price with economic-price-adjustment, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for fresh fruits and vegetables. This was a competitive acquisition with one response received. This is a 48-month contract with no option periods. Locations of performance are Oregon and Washington state, with a Dec. 10, 2023, performance completion date. Using customers are Department of Agriculture schools and reservations. Type of appropriation is fiscal 2020 through 2024 defense working capital funds. The contracting activity is the Defense Logistics Agency Troop Support, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (SPE300-20-D-S740). Chemring Sensors and Electronic Systems Inc., Charlotte, North Carolina, has been awarded a maximum $12,141,494 firm-fixed-price, definitive type contract for Biological Agent Warning System 4 Plus Assembly units. 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 one-year contract with one one-year option period being exercised at the time of award. Location of performance is North Carolina, with an April 30, 2021, performance completion date. Using military service is Army. Type of appropriation is fiscal 2020 through 2021 Army working capital funds. The contracting activity is the Defense Logistics Agency Land and Maritime, Warren, Michigan (SPRDL1-20-C-0014). KBRwyle Technology Solutions LLC, Rockville, Maryland, has been awarded a maximum $9,690,076 cost-plus-fixed-fee, bridge contract for hydrant fueling automation maintenance. 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 17-month base contract with one three-month option period. Locations of performance are all 50 states, Japan, Wake Island, South Korea, Guam, Diego Garcia, Portugal, Crete, Spain, Germany, Italy, Turkey and the United Kingdom, with a May 12, 2021, performance completion date. Using customers are Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, National Guard and Coast Guard. Type of appropriation is fiscal 2020 through 2021 defense working capital funds. The contracting activity is the Defense Logistics Agency Contracting Services Office, Columbus, Ohio (SP4702-20-C-0006). KBRwyle Technology Solutions LLC, Rockville, Maryland, has been awarded a maximum $7,936,316 cost-plus-fixed-fee, bridge contract for automated tank gauging, independent alarm system, and overfill protection equipment maintenance. 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 21-month base contract with one three-month option period. Locations of performance are Belgium, Djibouti, Germany, Greece, Greenland, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Turkey and the United Kingdom with a Sept. 12, 2021, performance completion date. Using customers are Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, National Guard and Coast Guard. Type of appropriation is fiscal 2020 through 2021 defense working capital funds. The contracting activity is the Defense Logistics Agency Contracting Services Office, Columbus, Ohio (SP4702-20-C-0005). U.S. TRANSPORTATION COMMAND Marine Terminals Corp., San Pedro, California, has been awarded a firm-fixed-price contract, HTC711-20-D-R003, in the amount of $34,025,191. The contract provides stevedoring and terminal services at Port Naval Base Ventura County-Port Hueneme and the Port of San Diego. Work will be performed at Port Naval Base, Ventura County-Port Hueneme and the Port of San Diego, California. The contract base period of performance is from Feb. 7, 2020, to Feb. 6, 2025. Fiscal 2020 transportation working capital funds were obligated at award. U.S. Transportation Command, Directorate of Acquisition, Scott Air Force Base, Illinois, is the contracting activity. *Small Business https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Contracts/Contract/Article/2038047/source/GovDelivery/

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  25 octobre 2018 | International, Naval

  To combat Russian subs, NATO allies are teaming up to develop unmanned systems at sea

  By: David B. Larter WASHINGTON — The U.S. and its NATO allies are teaming up to more closely cooperate on the development and fielding of unmanned maritime systems, according to an agreement signed by the defense heads of 13 NATO allies. During the July summit, the powers signed onto a plan to jointly pursue technologies aimed at mine and sub hunting, according to an October news release making the agreement public. “The use of unmanned systems is a potentially game changing leap forward in maritime technology,” the release read. “Working alongside traditional naval assets, these unmanned systems will increase both our situational awareness and our control of the seas.” The release, while short on details, seems to open up the possibility that development of underwater and surface drones could be even more lucrative for companies involved, as it hints at the alliance seeking common, interoperable systems. That means a proven drone might be competing for business in 13 markets simultaneously instead of just one. “Through this initiative, Allies will also be able to exploit economies of scale to reduce costs, allowing increasing defence budgets to go even further,” the release said. The countries involved in the agreement are Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States. For NATO watchers, the agreement is the latest sign of just how seriously the alliance is taking the threat from Russian submarines. “NATO members are alarmed by the growing threat from Russian submarines, and are investing more resources to deal with it,” said Jorge Benitez, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who previously served as the lead on NATO issues for the Office of the Secretary of Defense. “Under [President Vladimir] Putin, Russia has deployed new, stealthier submarines in the north Atlantic that are much harder for NATO navies to track. “This new multinational cooperation in undersea drones is the most recent example that NATO is taking the Russian threat in the north Atlantic much more seriously than it has in the past quarter century.” Expanding role The agreement also reflects the ever-expanding role of unmanned systems in the underwater domain, which countries are banking on to offset the ever-quieter and more advanced submarines. As the U.S. submarine fleet has dipped to 56 attack and guided-missile boats, and the Navy projects that number is slated to further drop to 42 by 2028 and hold below 48 boats through 2032, according to a recent Congressional Research Service report. The Navy's 2019 30-year shipbuilding plan shows the number of attack submarines dropping precipitously in the mid-2020s, something CRS has warned about for years as the Los Angeles-class boats begin to retire in numbers. That shortfall is prompting an all-out push on developing unmanned systems that can perform some functions to free up the big hunters for missions where they are more needed. When it comes to cooperating in development of drones, monitoring the littorals in and around the Baltic — and in the Greenland, Iceland and the United Kingdom gap — is an area where this kind of cooperation could be helpful, said Bryan Clark, a retired submariner and analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. The Battle of the Atlantic The renewed threat from Russian submarines has triggered what the U.S. Navy's Europe commander, Adm. James Foggo, has dubbed “The Fourth Battle of the Atlantic,” harkening back to the fight with German U-boats in World War I, World War II and the standoff with Russia in the Cold War. But with the expansion of NATO to former Soviet satellite states, the Battle of the Atlantic will sprawl from the Eastern Seaboard all the way to the Baltic and Black seas, areas that Russia has fortified with anti-access, area denial weapons and other capabilities in recent years. That battlespace, however, extends not only to the undersea domain but all the way to the ocean floor, which is home to everything from pop-up mines to undersea internet cables that transmit the vast majority of the world's data. That means the alliance will need to know more than ever about what's on the sea floor, a job that simply can't be done with the declining number of attack submarines needed to shadow nuclear missile subs and conduct high-risk intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions around the globe. In that arena, experts say that underwater systems — be it drones or stationary systems — will be necessary to monitor crucial chokepoints. "We don't have to know everything everywhere,” retired Vice Adm. Michael Connor, former head of American's submarine forces, told the House Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee in a 2015 hearing. “But there are places where you would like to have very good knowledge. We have critical things we want to protect, like some of the undersea infrastructure that is so critical to our economy. “There may be places we decide we want to have some volume of systems and that relatively small area around that infrastructure where you would have sufficient vehicles to obtain perfect knowledge.” Pawns Developing and using autonomous underwater unmanned vehicles has proven to be a challenge. The issues are multifarious, but they boil down to three core problems: communications, navigation and endurance. Communicating underwater is a challenge in the best of circumstances, and surveillance drones aren't worth much if they can't tell others what they find. To that end, they must either have a home base to which they can navigate and upload data, or they need to surface and transmit, said Clark, the CSBA analyst. A second challenge is navigating around obstacles. Fish, which know quite a bit about navigating underwater, have trouble avoiding commercial fishing nets that are common in sea lanes. Likewise, drones have issues finding and avoiding them, and that's just one example. Endurance is another challenge. Some of the best underwater drones in the U.S. Navy's inventory, under ideal usage conditions, last a day underwater, Clark said. “UUVs can only go a few knots, and that's of limited duration,” he said. Underwater drones are showing promise in the areas of mine hunting and mine sweeping, but perhaps even more promising — in terms of becoming an adequate stand-in for an attack boat — are some of the surface drones in development. Clark said programs such as the Sea Hunter, a medium-displacement unmanned surface vessel, could be a huge leap forward for monitoring chokepoints. Developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Anti-Submarine Warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel, or ACTUV, was designed to track enemy subs while avoiding collisions and abiding by the rules of the road. The first Sea Hunter was christened in 2016, and in January the project transitioned to the Office of Naval Research for further development. The idea behind Sea Hunter is that one can field a multitude to cover a lot of area at a fraction of the cost of a frigate of destroyer. “ACTUV represents a new vision of naval surface warfare that trades small numbers of very capable, high-value assets for large numbers of commoditized, simpler platforms that are more capable in the aggregate,” Fred Kennedy, head of DARPA's Tactical Technology Office, said in a January news release. “The U.S. military has talked about the strategic importance of replacing ‘king' and ‘queen' pieces on the maritime chessboard with lots of ‘pawns,' and ACTUV is a first step toward doing exactly that.” Other technologies have also shown promise. Liquid Robotics' Wave Glider, which uses ocean current and solar panels to power itself, can stay at sea for months at a time and provide persistent surveillance for anywhere from $250,000 to $300,000 a unit, a company representative told Defense News last year. The agreement reached by 13 NATO powers is just the latest indication of how countries see unmanned systems impacting the future of warfare. “It's an important statement that NATO allies and partners are thinking seriously about these emerging capabilities — and they need to think about them,” said Michael Horowitz, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania whose research has centered on unmanned systems. “It's a reflection of how they see these systems impacting the maritime domain.” https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2018/10/21/to-combat-russian-subs-nato-allies-are-teaming-up-to-develop-unmanned-systems-at-sea/

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  29 septembre 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  Europe Switzerland’s $6.5 billion fighter jet plan narrowly passes referendum

  Sebastian Sprenger COLOGNE, Germany — Swiss voters have approved a government plan to spend $6.5 billion on new fighter aircraft by a margin of 8,670 votes, with the two U.S. vendors in the race feeling the backlash of anti-Trump sentiments. Sunday's vote translates into a razor-thin majority of 50.1 percent, or 1,605,700 votes, in favor of the acquisition. There was 49.9 percent, or 1,597,030 votes, against. The voter turnout was 59.4 percent, according to figures published online Sunday evening by the Federal Chancellery. Defence Minister Viola Amherd told reporters she considers the result, however close, a mandate to continue ongoing evaluations of the Eurofighter, the Rafale, the F-18 Super Hornet and the F-35A. “The vote represents a long-term investment in the security of the Swiss population and infrastructure,” she said. Prodded by reporters about the the narrowness of the vote, she said: “In a democracy it's a given that we respect the majority decision.” The Swiss legislature last week approved the budget for the Air 2030 modernization program, which includes $6.5 billion for 30-40 new aircraft and $2 billion for a complementary ground-based, air defense system. Amherd stressed that the aircraft budget is to be seen as a ceiling. “If we can get suitable aircraft for less, we will certainly look at that,” she said. All vendors must meet a deadline of Nov. 18 to deliver final proposals. The government will then evaluate the bids throughout the first half of 2021 and make a decision on the aircraft type and missile defense hardware by June. Opponents of the plan could still derail it by seeking another referendum, a step that would require 100,000 signatures and could take years to unfold. The Swiss opposition was energized in part by voters' views about the government of U.S. President Donald Trump, according to local media reports. During the pre-referendum campaign, the two U.S. vendors in the running, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, saw themselves lumped in with his foreign policy approach, considered reckless by many in the wealthy European countries such as Switzerland. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2020/09/28/switzerlands-65-billion-fighter-jet-plan-narrowly-passes-referendum/