Ukraine plans big rise in defence spending in 2024 draft budget | Reuters

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  1 juin 2020 | International, Naval

  Exercise to unite four combatant commands to test homeland defenses for the first time

  Geoff Ziezulewicz For the first time, four U.S. combatant commands are coming together this week for an exercise that simulates how the military would respond to an attack on its home turf. Headed by U.S. Northern Command, the four-day exercise began this week off the East Coast and also involves U.S. Space, Transportation and Strategic commands, according to NORTHCOM. The aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman strike group and its air wing will join Canadian fighter jets and Air Force F-15s in conducting intercepts against adversary aircraft during the exercise, which began Thursday and will wrap up Sunday. This week's exercise continues a long stint at sea for the Truman's crew. The ship left Norfolk in November for its third overseas cruise in the past four years. While the strike group's deployment began to wrap up this spring, it spent its time as a rapid-response force at sea instead of pierside in order to protect the crew from exposure to COVID-19. An Air Force B-1B bomber will be used as the enemy aiming to infiltrate U.S. airspace as well. Along the way, brass hope the exercise can strengthen the military's ability to communicate and share real-time information in such a scenario, according to NORTHCOM. U.S. Transportation Command is providing refueling tankers along the coast to support defending forces during the exercise, and Space Command is providing satellite communications and GPS. “Leading complex multi-combatant command operations across multiple domains demonstrates our readiness to defend our homeland regardless of COVID-19,” Air Force Gen. Terrence O'Shaughnessy, the head of NORTHCOM, said in a statement. Correction: this article incorrectly stated when the Truman deployed last year. The carrier deployed in November. https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2020/05/29/exercise-to-unite-four-combatant-commands-to-test-homeland-defenses-for-the-first-time/

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  11 mai 2020 | International, C4ISR

  Amazon challenges the Pentagon’s revised JEDI solicitation directly to the department

  Andrew Eversden Amazon Web Services filed a bid protest directly to the Department of Defense challenging “ambiguous aspects” of the Pentagon's revised solicitation for its embattled enterprise cloud contract. AWS' challenge is in response to a revised solicitation from DoD regarding a specific technical requirement of the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud contract that AWS had challenged. Back in mid-April, a Court of Federal Claims judge granted the department's motion allowing DoD to “reconsider certain aspects” of the JEDI award. “AWS is committed to ensuring it receives a fair and objective review on an award decision that the court found to be flawed," an AWS spokesperson said. "AWS repeatedly sought clarity from the DoD around ambiguous aspects of the amended solicitation and the DoD refused to answer our questions. We simply want to ensure a common understanding of the DoD's requirements and eliminate ambiguity that could impact a fair evaluation.” The JEDI cloud, potentially worth $10 billion over 10 years, was awarded to Microsoft in October last year. Amazon protested the award in the Court of Federal Claims in December and won a temporary restraining order in March preventing the DoD and Microsoft from building out the cloud infrastructure after the court decided that AWS was likely to show that DoD erred in its technical evaluation. AWS also opposed the DoD's motion to reconsider specific aspects of the JEDI award because the DoD's request didn't account for all six technical errors Amazon alleged were made during the contract's evaluation process. "Even if taken at face value, DoD's proposed corrective action fails to address in any meaningful way how it would resolve the technical issues AWS has raised, or which specific technical challenges it intends to address,” Amazon lawyers wrote in a March 24 court filing. In response to Amazon's protest, the content of which is not publicly available, Microsoft spokesperson Frank Shaw wrote in a blog post that the filing by AWS was “disappointing but not surprising.” “The only thing that's certain about Amazon's new complaint is that it will force American war fighters to wait even longer for the 21st-century technology they need – perpetuating Amazon's record of putting its own interests ahead of theirs,” Shaw wrote May 7. A spokesperson for AWS called Shaw's post “not surprising," and touted AWS' cloud computing capabilities. “We're eager to see the full array of mistakes considered and assessed,” the spokesperson said. Lt. Col. Robert Carver, Department of Defense spokesman, said in a statement that the department is trying to get the JEDI capability to war fighters quickly. “DoD continues to execute the procedures outlined in the Motion for Voluntary Remand granted last month with the intent of delivering this critically-needed capability to our warfighters as quickly as possible,” Carver said. This story has been updated with a comment from the Department of Defense. https://www.federaltimes.com/it-networks/cloud/2020/05/07/amazon-challenges-the-pentagons-revised-jedi-solicitation-directly-to-the-department/

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  31 juillet 2018 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR

  How GSA is Helping Small Businesses Get Contracts Faster

  By Jack Corrigan A newly launched pilot program lets the agency's contracting experts help push deals over the finish line. Officials at the General Services Administration on Monday said a new pilot program will speed up the government's adoption of innovative technologies by helping companies in the Small Business Innovation Research program more quickly strike deals with federal agencies. Last week GSA launched a pilot that would open up Assisted Acquisition Services to agencies and vendors in the third and final phase of the SBIR program. Run by the Small Business Administration, SBIR is divided into three phases. The first and second phases focus primarily on research and development, and during the third, companies work to commercialize their products. Under the pilot, GSA would collaborate with both customer agencies and SBIR vendors to hammer out initial contracts. After the products become commercialized, GSA would work to make them more widely available across government. Most of the 13 agencies involved in SBIR don't have specialists dedicated to finalizing phase three contracts, and delegating that responsibility to GSA would enable speedier deals and make products more widely available, said Mark Lee, assistant commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service Office of Policy and Compliance. “Currently there isn't a shared services offering that provides assisted acquisition for SBIR contracts,” Lee said in a conversation with reporters. “[The pilot] would be setting up that capability across government.” While GSA will offer the additional services to all SBIR participants, Lee said he sees the program making a particular impact on the acquisition of cybersecurity and threat detection products, as well as emerging battlefield technologies. The pilot will be led by the GSA Assisted Acquisition Services' Great Lakes regional office and run through the end of fiscal 2019. Depending on the program's success, GSA will determine whether it can offer the service more broadly, said Senior Procurement Executive Jeff Koses. Koses told reporters the program originated after defense agencies approached GSA looking for ways to streamline the contracting process. The pilot comes as part of the administration's larger push to simplify acquisition policy, he said, while still including “a set of guardrails to make sure that we're innovative but with essential controls.” Koses added he hopes accelerating the contracting process would help attract more small businesses to the federal marketplace, which agencies have historically struggled to do. “I think this is a great example of us listening to our customer agencies, our industry partners and the Small Business Administration and [figuring out] where we can provide value in the federal marketplace,” said Lee. “We think this is an opportunity to inject innovation into the federal marketplace, help support commercialization of these unique solutions and ultimately help grow jobs.” https://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2018/07/how-gsa-helping-small-businesses-get-contracts-faster/150151/