New details emerge on a nearly $1B cyber contract

By: Mark Pomerleau

The Army provided new details about its nearly $1 billion cyber training contract that will serve as the cornerstone of the Department of Defense's much needed cyber training platform.

The Army released Nov. 25 updated information regarding the scope of work for the Persistent Cyber Training Environment (PCTE), which is the main component for the nearly $957 billion Cyber Training, Readiness, Integration, Delivery and Enterprise Technology (TRIDENT) contract.

PCTE, an online client in which members of U.S. Cyber Command's cyber mission force can log on from anywhere in the world for training and to rehearse missions, is one of the more critical needs for Cyber Command. Currently, no integrated or robust cyber training environment exists.

The updated statement of work, posted in advance of the Dec. 2 industry day, provides details regarding the overall TRIDENT contract, which will extend training services beyond Cyber Command to the joint services. It is expected that a single vendor will be selected for TRIDENT, serving as the integrator for various efforts that will be strung together to make up PCTE.

At a general level, the updated documents describe a variety of management, maintenance and evolution services the contractor shall provide for PCTE. Included among those services:

• Platform architecture and product management
• Agile development and delivery systems engineering processes
• Development and automation
• Hardware and software infrastructure management
• Event or exercise support
• Cyber Innovation Challenge (CIC) capability integration and event support
• Development Operations (DevOps) environment management
• Distributed configuration management among various vendors and stakeholders
• PCTE infrastructure tool management
• License management
• Onsite and remote support

Additional documents include details on three separate delivery orders. The first involves support for infrastructure and maintenance, the second involves support for the integration factory of PCTE capabilities, and the third provides details on platform capability production of PCTE.

Currently, the Army is in the prototype phase of PCTE. Using what are known as Cyber Innovation Challenges to award smaller companies a piece of the program, they are incrementally building a platform. That platform, which is being used by forces currently, is helping to prove out the concept for PCTE, refine requirements for the final contract, and reduce risk.

Regarding the future of the TRIDENT contract, industry sources have explained that a request for proposals was expected in November with a final proposal expected in March 2020. An award for TRIDENT is expected in late 2020.

https://www.fifthdomain.com/dod/2019/11/26/new-details-emerge-on-a-nearly-1b-cyber-contract/