20 septembre 2018 | International, Naval, C4ISR
By: Amber Corrin
The Navy released a long-awaited final request for proposals Sept. 18 for the re-compete of its Next Generation Enterprise Network contract. But it's part one of two, covering only the hardware side of things as the service looks to overhaul its Navy-Marine Corps Intranet.
According to analysts at Deltek, each piece of the NGEN-R request is valued at roughly $250 million over a three-year period, per estimates from Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command. That's significantly lower than NGEN's original $3.5 billion price tag.
Specifically, the RFP seeks hardware devices for use on the Department of Defense's classified and unclassified networks, including desktops, laptops, two-in-one detachable devices, tablets, ultra-small desktop computers, as well as thin- or zero-client devices. A single device could serve multiple users and associated accounts, according to the RFP.
But for the roughly 400,000 devices NGEN-R looks to replace, the service in particular is looking at an end-user hardware-as-a-service arrangement.
“It's breaking out the services that are being provided in a way that allows us to gain most effective advantage of how industry does business today,” Capt. Don Harder, deputy program executive officer for Navy enterprise information systems, told Federal Times in a recent interview.
“The end user of hardware and devices as its own separate contract, there are those suppliers out there that that's what they specialize in. By breaking that out into its own contractual component within the NGEN-R construct ... we believe will allow us to get more effective advantage to pricing on those components.”
The language in the RFP solidifies Harder's thoughts as part of the statement of work.
“In acquiring EUHWaaS, the Government is only acquiring the service of using an EUHW device. This is not a purchase, and titles for all EUHWaaS devices remain with the Contractor,” the RFP states. “EUHWaaS includes the provisioning, storage of spares, configuration, testing, integration, installation, operation, maintenance, [end-of-life] disposal of NIPRNet and SIPRNet EUHW, and internal storage device removal and destruction requirements.”
Bids for the hardware piece of NGEN-R are due Nov. 19.
The second part of the NGEN-R RFP, service management integration and transport or SMIT, is expected in the next 30 days, according to a Navy spokesman. SMIT will cover much of NMCI's backbone and functionality, including services ranging from help desk to productivity suites to network defense — and how they're technically provided.
Splitting NGEN-R into two separate contracts was an intentional move designed, at least in part, to give the Navy greater flexibility in the capabilities available to users, and the options for buying them, as technology evolves.
“We are modifying how the services are broken out in a way that it allows us to sever some of those services as new mechanisms [and] provide [them as they are] brought into play or brought to our attention,” Harder said, using cloud capabilities as an example.
“We may allow a mechanism to pull some of those into either a hybrid cloud or a cloud solution in the future. If so, it may go on a separate contractual vehicle at which point in time we would sever those services away from the SMIT vehicle. So, we're looking at how we take those services and how we manage them contractually, which would allow us, again additional flexibility later on down the road.”
Harder said that throughout the development of NGEN-R, he's been eyeing not just the Navy, but also the broader government to benefit from the new approach.
“We're building in that flexibility that allows the government the ability in the future even to find components of services that can be done in a more effective or efficient way [and] either sever them or modify them separately as opposed to having to break apart the entire contract to do something,” he said.
The hardware piece of NGEN-R was released less than two weeks after Navy officials announced a one-year, $787 million extension to the incumbent provider, Perspecta.
Harder declined to put a dollar figure on the NGEN-R contract, as did other Navy officials.
The RFP comes after several delays — officials previously had said the contract would be up for bidding this summer. According to Harder, prior to release the RFP had to be approved by leadership at the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition, as well as the Office of the Secretary of Defense's Defense Procurement and Acquisition Policy office.
Harder said the Navy has taken extra time to shore up “the education piece” — ensuring the contracting process meets leaders' expectations, particularly with the new strategy. And IT modernization also has come into play, with officials from the broader DoD looking to NGEN as a possible model or even contract vehicle for defense networks down the line, he said.
“We need to ensure that what we have placed in the contract and how we're going about the contract meets leadership expectations. And because we are doing things in a different way, that's taking a little bit of time,” Harder said. The Navy's approach to running NMCI today is “one of the more cost-effective ways of managing networks. And there is a desire as part of one of the many IT reform efforts [for possible] integration of networks in the future to mimic or, potentially, even ride on our contracts.”
https://www.federaltimes.com/acquisition/2018/09/19/ngen-r-what-is-the-navy-thinking
24 février 2021 | International, Aérospatial, Terrestre, C4ISR
Officially launched in October 2020, the VL MICA NG system is based on the integration of the MICA NG missile into the existing VL MICA point and close area air defence...
17 novembre 2020 | International, Aérospatial
by Gareth Jennings Lithuania signed for four Sikorsky UH-60M Black Hawk transport and utility helicopters on 13 November, the country's Ministry of National Defence (MND) announced. The USD213 million procurement, which will be paid off over five years, includes additional equipment, spares, and a training, repair, and logistical support package. The US government is providing USD30 million to support the purchase, and has cleared the sale of a further two helicopters should the Lithuanian Armed Forces request them. “The decision to pass on to a modern western technology that meets all criteria and requirements was made in order to ensure proper readiness of armed forces to face the challenges of modern armed conflicts, as well as excellent compatibility and interoperability with allies. The new platform will fully substitute for the [Mil] Mi-8Ts currently used by the Lithuanian Armed Forces. The Soviet-made helicopter fleet is in its thirties, and its airworthiness has come to the deadline, its operation is also difficult: expensive maintenance, prone to failures, risky repair because of complicated provision of spares from Russia,” the MND said. News of the contract came some four months after the US State Department approved the sale to Lithuania of six Black Hawks for USD380 million. The Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) notification on 6 July followed an announcement by the MND in late 2019 that the country was to begin negotiations with the US government to acquire the Black Hawks to replace three Soviet-made Mi-8 ‘Hips' and three French-built Aerospatiale AS365 N3+ Dauphins. https://www.janes.com/defence-news/news-detail/lithuania-signs-for-black-hawk-helos
22 juillet 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
Andrew Eversden ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md. — The U.S. Army is moving forward on a number of projects to bolster its tactical network, thanks to a new pool of money dedicated to prototyping and maturing emerging technology. Additions to the Army's tactical network will come every two years as part of modernization efforts called capability sets. Previously, prototypes of emerging technology would fall into the “valley of death,” where technology projects that didn't have enough funding to transition into programs of record would die, said Maj. Gen. Peter Gallagher, director of the Army's Network Cross-Functional Team. The CFT received nearly $30 million to support prototyping efforts for science and technology efforts as well as industry work in fiscal 2020, according to Justine Ruggio, communications director for the CFT. According to a May news release from Army Program Executive Office Command, Control, Communications-Tactical, the Army network modernization team has identified eight “promising,” Army-led science and technology efforts as well as six industry-led prototyping projects. The Army is particularly interested in low-Earth orbit satellite constellations to improve bandwidth and reduce latency for Capability Set '23 and Capability Set '25, said Michael Breckenridge, acting associate director for the Office of Science and Technology. His office falls under the purview of the Army's Combat Capabilities Development Command C5ISR (Command, Control, Communication, Computers, Cyber, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) Center. The S&T team is researching how the service can move and secure traffic through these constellations. “While those are very much in their infancy as far as the commercial LEO constellations coming together, we're already working with those vendors to try and get satellite time to be able to do experimentation to understand the capability and how do we shape, then, future investments in that space,” Breckenridge said. The Network CFT is also excited about the survivability and mobility of the Army's command posts, said Donald Coulter, senior S&T adviser for the CFT. It's also focused on spectrum obfuscation capabilities as well as an identity management project that explores new ways of verifying users' identities (for example, through wearables) to ensure the security of Army systems if equipment falls into enemy hands, he added. The S&T community and the CFT are also working on a secure communications link between manned and unmanned fighting vehicles, something that may be used for other parts of the network, Breckenridge said. For example, the C5ISR Center is also experimenting with that link for distributed command post nodes and between command post links, he noted. Previously, a lack of funds made it difficult to create an “entire road map to field” prototypes, he added, and teamwork between the network team and S&T community suffered. But with the newly allocated funds, the S&T community and the Network CFT are able to work more closely. The dollars have been “the key to have the groups from across all those different communities come together focusing on what specifically we need to take viable concepts and promising concepts from idea to demonstration to real ... tangible and robust thing[s] that we can acquire and field,” said Coulter. With the prototyping dollars now in place, the CFT is expected to have an easier time developing technologies for the service's network modernization plan, driven by capability sets. Capability Set '21, which completed critical design review in April, is focused on addressing immediate gaps in the Army's network with currently available technologies. The Army has begun buying those new network tools, which focus on smaller, lighter, faster communication systems for soldiers, and will begin fielding the technology in fiscal 2021. Meanwhile, Capability Set '23, which has preliminary design review scheduled for April next year, is focused on high-capacity, low-latency communications that aren't mature enough today, Gallagher said at the C4ISRNET Conference in May. Future capability sets will include emerging technologies that improve network resiliency. For example, after Capability Set '23, soldiers will have more bandwidth at the tactical edge, allowing for the increased adoption of machine learning and other emerging technologies. The Army is also in the planning stages of Capability Set '25. Even as the Army identifies key technologies for future capability sets, it must work within the constraints of budgets, meaning that the Network CFT and the C5ISR Center have to work together to identify S&T priorities. Coulter said the “key thing” that the CFT does is prioritize its portfolio and provide guidance on critical capability gaps. Breckenridge said the S&T community brings an understanding of adversarial threats to the network and what investments can be made to mitigate those threats to inform the CFT's prioritization. “One of the key things that S&T community does is ... identify those opportunities,” Coulter said. “So we're threat-informed and -aware, but we also are looking from a technology perspective of where can we get the leap-ahead opportunities that can impose challenges to our adversaries and take our network to the next level. So we have to rely on them heavily, not only for some threat information, but also ... those unique potential opportunities from a technology perspective as well.” https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/it-networks/2020/07/20/how-new-prototyping-dollars-will-help-army-network-modernization/