Nouvelles

By: Kelsey D. Atherton Picture the scene: A rural compound in northwest Syria. An underground tunnel beneath the compound, where a cornered man with a suicide vest and two children hides from a raid by the U.S. Army's Delta Force. Outside the compound on Oct. 26, waiting and at the ready, was a robot. The vested man was later identified as Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph of the Islamic State of Syria and the Levant. “We had a robot just in case because we were afraid he had a suicide vest and if you get close to him and he blows it up, you're going to die. You're going to die. He had a very powerful suicide vest,” President Donald Trump said in a press conference about the raid in the following days. “The robot was set, too, but we didn't hook it up because we were too — they were moving too fast. We were moving fast,” the president continued. “We weren't 100 percent sure about the tunnel being dead ended. It's possible that there could have been an escape hatch somewhere along that we didn't know about.” In this case, the robot never went in the tunnels. Picture the scene, four months later, in the damp subterranean levels of the never-finished Satsop nuclear power plant outside Elma, Washington. There, engineers and scientists are testing the machines and algorithms that may guide missions for a time, preparing for a time when the robots won't remain on the sidelines. None of the robots fielded at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Subterranean Challenge urban circuit in Elma in February are particularly battle-ready, though a few could likely work in a pinch. Apart from a single human commander able to take remote control, the robots navigate, mostly autonomously. As captured on hours of video, the robots crawled, floated, rolled and stumbled their way through the course. They mapped their environment and searched for up to 20 special artifacts in the special urban circuit courses, built in the underground levels around a never-used cooling tower. The artifacts included cellphones emitting bluetooth, Wi-Fi and occasionally video. They included red backpacks and thermal manikins warmed to the temperature of humans playing an audio recording, and they included carbon dioxide gas and warm blowing vents. This urban circuit is the second of three underground environments that DARPA is using to test robots. Phones, manikins and backpacks are common across the tunnel, urban and cave settings that constitute the full range of subterranean challenges. The straightforward mission of the contest is to create machines that are better at rescue in environments that are dangerous and difficult for first responders, who are humans. If robots can find people trapped underground, then humans can use their energy getting to those same people, rather than expend that energy searching themselves. A subtext of the Subterranean Challenge is that the same technologies that lead robots to rescue people underground could also lead infantry to find enemies hiding in tunnel complexes. While Delta Force was able to corner al-Baghdadi in Syria, much of the military's modern interest in tunnel warfare can be traced back to Osama bin Laden evading capture for years by escaping through the tunnels at Tora Bora. Underground at Satsop, the future of warfare was far less a concern than simply making sure the robots could navigate the courses before them. That meant, most importantly, maintaining contact with the other robots on the team, and with a human supervisor. Thick concrete walls, feet of dirt, heavy cave walls and the metals embedded in the structure all make underground sites that the military describes as passively denied environments, where the greatest obstacle to communication through the electromagnetic spectrum is the terrain itself. It's a problem military leaders, particularly in the Army, are hoping to solve for future iterations of their networks. Team NUS SEDS, the undergrad roboticists representing the National University of Singapore Students for Exploration and Development of Space, arrived in Washington with one of the smallest budgets of any competitor, spending roughly $12,000 on everything from robot parts to travel and lodging. One of their robots, a larger tracked vehicle, was held up by U.S. Customs, and unable to take part in the competition. Not to be deterred, at the team's preparation area, members showed off a version of the most striking design innovation at the competition: droppable Wi-Fi repeaters. As designed, the robots would release a repeater the moment they lost contact with the human operator. To lighten the data load, the onboard computers would compress the data to one-hundredth of its size, and then send it through the repeater. “It's like dropping bread crumbs,” said Ramu Vairavan, the team's president. Unfortunately for NUS SEDS, the bread crumbs were not enough, and the team only found one artifact in its four runs between the two courses. But the bread-crumb concept was shared across various teams. Besides the physical competition taking place underground at Satsop, the urban circuit held a parallel virtual challenge, where teams selected robots and sensors from a defined budget and then programmed algorithms to tackle a challenge fully autonomously. The repeaters, such a popular innovation in the physical space, will likely be programmed into the next round of the virtual challenge. The first DARPA Grand Challenge, launched in 2004, focused on getting roboticists together to provide a technological answer to a military problem. Convoys, needed for sustaining logistics in occupied countries, are vulnerable to attack, and tasking humans to drive the vehicles and escort the cargo only increasing the fixed costs of resupply. What if, instead, the robots could drive themselves over long stretches of desert? After much attention and even more design, the March 2004 challenge ended with no vehicle having gone even a tenth the distance of the 142-mile track. A second Grand Challenge, held 18 months later, delivered far more successful results, and is largely credited with sparking the modern wave of autonomous driving features in cars. Open desert is a permissive space, and navigation across it is aided by existing maps and the ever-present GPS data. This is the same architecture that undergirds much of autonomous navigation today, where surface robots and flying drones can all plug into communication networks offering useful location data. Underground offers a fundamentally unknowable environment. Robots can explore parts of it, but even the most successful team on its most successful run found fewer than half of the artifacts hidden in the space. That team, CoSTAR (an acronym for “Collaborative SubTerranean Autonomous Resilient robots) included participants from Jet Propulsion Laboratory, CalTech, MIT, KAIST in South Korea and Lulea University of Technology in Sweden. CoSTAR used a mixture of wheeled and legged machines, and in the off-hours would practice everywhere from a local high school to a hotel staircase. Yet, for all the constraints on signal that impeded navigation, it was the human-built environment that provided the greatest hurdle. On a tour of the courses, it was easy to see how an environment intuitive to humans is difficult for machines. Backpacks and cellphones were not just placed on corners of roofs, but on internal ledges, impossible to spot without some aerial navigation. Whereas the tunnel course held relatively flat, the urban circuit features levels upon levels to explore. Stairs and shafts, wide-open rooms with the jangly mess of a mezzanine catwalk, all require teams and robots to explore space in three dimensions. Between runs, the humans running the competition would adjust some features, so that completing the course once does not automatically translate into perfect information for a second attempt. “How do we design equally hard for air and ground?” Viktor Orekhov, a DARPA contractor who designed the course, said. “There's an art to it, not a science. But there's also a lot of science.” Part of that art was building ramps into and out of an early room that would otherwise serve as a run-ending chokepoint. Another component was making sure that the course “leveled up” in difficulty the further teams got, requiring more senses and more tools to find artifacts hidden deeper and deeper in the space. “Using all senses is helpful for humans. It's helpful for robots, too,” said Orekhov. Teams competing in the Subterranean Challenge have six months to incorporate lessons learned into their designs and plans. The cave circuit, the next chapter of the Challenge scheduled for August 2020, will inevitably feature greater strain on communications and navigation, and will not even share the at least familiarity of a human-designed spaces seen in the urban circuit. After that, teams will have a year to prepare for the final circuit, set to incorporate aspects of tunnel, urban and cave circuits, and scheduled for August 2021. DARPA prides itself on spurring technological development, rather than iterating it in a final form. Like the Grand Challenges before it, the goal is at least as much to spark industry interest and collaboration in a useful but unexplored space. Programming a quadcopter or a tracked robot to find a manikin in a safety-yellow vest is a distant task from tracking and capturing armed people in the battlefields of the future, but the tools workshopped in late nights at a high school cafeteria between urban circuit runs may lead to the actual sensors on the robots brought along by Delta Force on future raids. The robots of the underground wars of tomorrow are gestating, in competitions and workshops and github pages. Someday, they won't just be brought along on the raid against a military leader. Wordlessly — with spinning LiDAR, whirring engines, and millimeter-wave radar — the robots might lead the charge themselves. https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/it-networks/2020/03/20/the-trouble-when-military-robots-go-underground/

By: Aaron Mehta Updated 3/20 at 6:45 PM EST with new comment from Bialos. WASHINGTON — The U.S. Defense Department has declared that defense contractors are “critical infrastructure” to national security, a designation that comes with an expectation to maintain a consistent, normal work schedule amid the outbreak of the new coronavirus, COVID-19. In a Friday memo to industry, Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Ellen Lord made it clear that she wants defense companies to continue to deliver their products and services to the Pentagon on time. “If you work in a critical infrastructure industry, as designated by the Department of Homeland Security, you have a special responsibility to maintain your normal work schedule,” Lord wrote. “We need your support and dedication in these trying times to ensure the security of this Nation. I understand that this national emergency presents a challenge and we are dedicated to working closely with you to ensure the safety of the workforce and accomplishments of the national security mission.” Lord also spelled out large swaths of the industrial base for which this order applies, including the aerospace sector; mechanical and software engineers; manufacturing/production workers; IT support; security staff; security personnel; intelligence support; aircraft and weapon systems mechanics and maintainers; suppliers of medical suppliers and pharmaceuticals; and critical transportation. Included in the designation are personnel working for companies as well as subcontractors who perform under contract for the department. Contractors who perform tasks such as providing office supplies, recreational support or lawn care are not considered essential. By designating the defense industry in such a way, companies involved may be able to get around state-directed shutdowns such as the one in New York right now. Similarly designated workers include, among many others, law enforcement, health care providers, water and power authorities, and IT support for emergency services — all of whom are still on duty in the current crisis. In the memo, Lord noted, companies involved should “follow guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well as State and local government officials regarding strategies to limit disease spread.” Some companies have instituted work-from-home policies where applicable, although in cases such as production of defense equipment or work in secure facilities, that option appears unrealistic. Force of law? Things may not be as cut and dry as Lord's memo makes it seem, warned Jeff Bialos, a partner with the Eversheds-Sutherland law firm and former deputy under secretary of defense for industrial affairs. He notes that Lord's memo is based on guidance, put out the day before by the Department of Homeland Security, which does not carry with it the force of law to override decisions on work stoppage that may come from a state. “These are guidelines only. They do not have the force of effect of law,” Bialos warned. Bialos thinks the memo may be a useful tool for industry to turn to local governments that are eyeing a work shutdown and say they should be given an exemption. But should the local government decide not to grant that exemption, how much force the memo may have is unclear. “Thee's no slam dunk here. Everyone is struggling with these issues. And I think what this memo does is put another arrow in the quiver of a company that wants to keep doing business to meet defense needs. And it also is a document companies can provide to localities and states, and say ‘please give us an exemption.'” In a statement released late Friday, Lt. Col. Mike Andrews, a spokesman for Lord, said the undersecretary met today with Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Ok., on the memo and other issues. Lord “remains committed to daily communication and collaboration with the defense industrial base, especially the defense industry trade associations. In addition, she'll be contacting several state Governors to discuss state-specific critical infrastructure and essential workforce efforts,” Andrews said, adding that a daily call between members of Lord's team and industry associations continues. Jerry McGinn, a longtime official at the department's Office of Manufacturing and Industrial Base Policy, said the move was the right one to make. “You're essentially trying to keep that workforce engaged and supporting that customer. This is trying to give DoD organizations flexibility to reduce contract disruptions, stop-work orders, and other actions that could impact the contractor workforce” said McGinn, now executive director of the Center for Government Contracting at George Mason University. “And that in general is a good thing. It's not something you want to do for six months, because then you might have trouble monitoring performance, but for this critical time it seems like a reasonable kind of thing to do.” https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2020/03/20/pentagon-declares-defense-contractors-critical-infrastructure-must-continue-work/

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By: Andrew Chuter LONDON — Former British national security adviser Peter Ricketts has urged the government to put the brakes on its plan to complete an integrated review of defense, security, foreign policy and development by July. The new coronavirus pandemic is partly to blame, he said. “I do not see how a deep, thorough and integrated review covering the entire spectrum [of requirements] can now be done by July,“ Ricketts told a March 17 parliamentary Defence Select Committee hearing on the government's plan. Conservative Party Prime Minister Boris Johnson initiated the review following his general election win in early December. Johnson promised it would be the most fundamental review of its kind since the end of the Cold War. Analysts and others have been concerned that the review will be fudged in the rush to complete the promised deep dive into defense, foreign policy and security strategy reform. The defense committee already called for a delay, and it has questions about how the review is being run. Tobias Elwood, the recently appointed committee chairman, said the panel is “not impressed” by the initial way the review is progressing. Elwood said at the March 17 hearing that the Army had been told to submit their requirements by Mar 20, before they had been informed by the government what its new foreign policy will look like. The committee met with Army chiefs last week. The Foreign Office has produced five separate essays on its view of Britain's role in the world, and the Army had not seen the documents, said Elwood. One government lobbyist said that Elwood's remarks showed that Dominic Cummins, Boris Johnson's special adviser and one of the main proponents for radical change in the defense sector, had settled on an answer even before the review questions had been asked. “He's not listening and doesn't appear to care much how he gets the outcome he wants, particularly around areas like technology and procurement,” he said. Ricketts told the committee the already tight timescale had been further jeopardized by the government's concentration on the unfolding COVID-19 pandemic. “I do not see how you could possibly complete the review over the [coming] months, not least because of the bandwidth available for senior ministers and the government more generally [as a result of the virus],” he said. COVID-19′s influence on defense matters was further illustrated March 19 when the Ministry of Defence announced that thousands of regular and reserve troops are being put on standby to assist public services as part of a new support force. Ricketts, who led the Conservative government's 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review, said that given the situation, it is possible Johnson might want to put off the review as well as the comprehensive spending review that's running in parallel. The spending review sets the level of departmental spending across government for several years ahead. Alex Ashbourne-Walmsley of Ashbourne Strategic Consulting also believes the defense and funding reviews should be postponed. “It makes no sense to me that the U.K. should continue with either the defense review process or the comprehensive spending review when it is still too soon to determine the long-term economic and social impacts of coronavirus. It would be more sensible to defer everything for at least a year,” she said. Ricketts has suggested the government could come up with baseline foreign policy principles and some initial military priorities while leaving the more detailed work until later. Both he and Jock Stirupp, the former chief of the Defence Staff, told the committee that it is important the defense review and the comprehensive spending review are done in tandem to ensure the money and military requirements went hand-in-hand. The MoD is facing a serious funding shortfall, which is likely to lead to further cancellations or delays to major programs. A recent report by the National Audit Office, the government financial watchdog, said the MoD's 10-year defense equipment plan shows there is a potential funding shortfall of up to £13 billion (U.S. $15 billion). The funding gap is shrinking, but this is the third year in a row the National Audit Office has deemed the plan unaffordable. Defence Procurement Minister Jeremy Quin told Parliament during a session on defense questions March 16 that the government had every intention of continuing with the review. “It's important we get on with it," he said. "We need to take firm decisions, and the swifter, the better.” Defence Secretary Ben Wallace was quizzed about the integrated review timetable in the March 16 session. He said the government is regularly reviewing the decision on timing. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2020/03/19/uk-should-rethink-deadline-for-defense-foreign-policy-review-says-former-national-security-adviser/

By: Mike Gruss The Navy plans to test next year whether it can push new software — not just patches but new algorithms and battle-management aids — to its fleet without the assistance of in-person installation teams. Navy officials plan to send the first upgrades to the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln's C4I systems for a test in early 2021, officials said during a March 3 media roundtable at the West 2020 trade show in San Diego. Today, Navy teams frequently deliver security patches to ships, but that process does not allow for new capabilities. The reason is because service officials fear that one change to the ship's software could have unintended consequences, creating a cascading effect and inadvertently breaking other parts of the system. But in recent years, Navy officials have embraced the idea of digital twins, which are cloud-based replicas of the software running on a ship's systems. This setup allows Navy engineers to experiment with how new code will react with the existing system. It also helps software developers work on the same baseline and avoid redundancies. Ultimately, the setup offers Navy officials a higher degree of confidence that the software they're uploading will work without any surprises. The Navy completed its first digital twin, the Lincoln, in fall 2019 and has started building a digital twin of the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt. Eventually Navy leaders expect to complete a digital twin of all the service's ships. However, only those in the fleet that have already been upgraded to a certain version of the Navy's tactical afloat network, known as the Consolidate Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services program, or CANES, would be eligible for the over-the-air updates. “In the Information Warfare community, software is a weapon,” Rear Adm. Kathleen M. Creighton, the Navy's cybersecurity division director in the Office of the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Information Warfare, told C4ISRNET in a March 17 statement. “If we were to ask a warfighter if it would be valuable to conceptualize, order and receive additional kinetic capability at sea, of course the answer would be yes. The same is true of software. “In an ever-dynamic warfighting environment, the ability to improve, add to, or build new capabilities quickly has extraordinary value. We believe our sailors on the front line are the best positioned to tell us what they need to win. That is what we are trying to accomplish. Put the warfighter's perspective at the center of the software we deliver and do it iteratively at speed.” In this case, think of a capability update for a ship much like downloading a new app on a smartphone. Today, some ships in the fleet can receive security updates for applications they've already downloaded, but they cannot download new applications. Navy officials expect that to change. The new capability would arrive as an automatic, over-the-air update or come pierside, but would not require an installation team as is the case today. “Anytime there's a new capability or a new change, we're just going to do it the same way that you get that done on your smartphone,” said Delores Washburn, chief engineer at the Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific, which is leading the change. “What we will be able to [do] now is do a rapid update to the ships.” Navy engineers hope to be able to push the updates as quickly as war fighters need them. “We're going to try to go slowly here because, again, we're having to tackle simultaneously cultural, technical and operational problems,” said Robert Parker, the deputy program executive officer for command, control, communications, computers and intelligence. The Navy plans to test this new arrangement by installing a set of software, performing an update and then fairly quickly pushing that update to the ship. https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/it-networks/2020/03/19/the-navy-will-test-pushing-new-software-to-ships-at-sea/

By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — It's realistic for the U.S. Army to wait and see how the new coronavirus might affect its ambitious plans to modernize the force, Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville told Defense News in a March 18 interview. With major economic centers on both U.S. coasts restricting public gatherings, and with most of the country attempting social distancing to avoid the spread of the virus, industry as of this week appeared to still be sorting out how it would handle its own workforce and keep employees safe from infection. Much of what the Army is doing to address its top modernization priorities depends on industry collaboration and efforts. “We're watching what is happening,” McConville said. “We do have some high-priority tests that we think are continuing to go, and industry is doing the same thing that we're doing — they're putting measures in place with their people. They're weighing risks to the force and, really, risk to their missions as they do that.” Some high-priority tests will continue, he said, while “other ones will slow down.” While he did not list all high-priority tests that would likely go on, McConville noted that the Army is still moving forward with contract awards and making progress where it can. He pointed to the service's recent contract awards to Bell and Sikorsky to continue to develop and test aircraft for the Army's Future Long Range Assault Aircraft program. That contract was awarded on the expected timeline. The Army also tested its Extended Long-Range Cannon Artillery system at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona, on March 6, but that was only as uncertainty was just beginning to build in the U.S. regarding the spread of COVID-19. The service has an abundance of important milestones planned across its modernization priorities this year, to include a robust flight test program for the Precision Strike Missile at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, and a likely imminent flight test of a jointly developed hypersonic glide body. The Army also plans to award contracts to build Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft prototypes this month. But it's unclear how other programs will move forward. The previously troubled Integrated Battle Command System for air and missile defense is finally slated to go into a limited-user test in May this year, which is critical to the program's success. The Army planned to conduct a series of industry days to restart its effort to competitively procure a Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle replacement, but according to sources, a virtual industry day to kick things off has been postponed and the Army plans to post informational slides to industry on Beta.Sam.Gov in the near term instead. “The acquisition cycle continues to move on,” McConville said, “and we'll have a better idea over the next 30 to 60 days, as more measures are implemented in certain states, what and how that really plays out.” https://www.defensenews.com/smr/army-modernization/2020/03/19/army-chief-how-covid-19-will-affect-army-modernization-is-a-wait-and-see-situation/

By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — The new coronavirus pandemic may have dampened the U.S. Army's major division-level exercise in Europe, but the service's chief told Defense News in a March 18 interview that important lessons have already been learned. Defender Europe was slated to be the third-largest military exercise on the continent since the Cold War and was meant to test the Army's ability to deliver a force from forts to ports in the United States and onward to ports in Europe, and from there to operational areas throughout Europe from Germany to Poland to the Baltic states and other Eastern European nations, Nordic countries and even Georgia. The Army began to move troops and equipment into Europe beginning in January, with the meat of the exercise occurring in April and May this year. But as COVID-19 has spread across the globe, with Europe designated as the newest epicenter of the virus, the Army decided last week that it would scale back Defender Europe, according to a statement from U.S. Army Europe. “We have modified exercise Defender Europe 20 in size and scope,” a March 16 statement read. “As of March 13, all movement of personnel and equipment from the United States to Europe has ceased. The health, safety and readiness of our military, civilians and family members is our primary concern.” The Army decided to cancel linked exercises that would have been a part of Defender Europe, which already happen on a regular basis in Europe, to include Dynamic Front, the Army Joint Warfighting Assessment, Saber Strike and Swift Response. The service said it anticipates the armored brigade combat team already deployed to Europe will conduct gunnery and other combined training events with allies and partners as part of a modified exercise, and that forces already deployed to Europe for other “linked exercises” would come back to the U.S. Also last week, U.S. Army Europe announced that its commander, Lt. Gen. Christopher Cavoli, and his staff were exposed to COVID-19 at a land force commanders conference in Wiesbaden, Germany, on March 6. Out of an abundance of caution, the service decided to quarantine those exposed. According to an Army spokesperson, the quarantine has no effect on operations, and the general and his staff continue to carry out duties from an isolated location. Much was riding on Defender Europe when it comes to teaching the Army where it stands in terms of its ability to rapidly deploy a combat-credible force to Europe to support NATO and the U.S. National Defense Strategy. The exercise was also going to help the Army get more clarity on its Multi-Domain Operations concept as it morphs into official doctrine. The service had also hoped to assess through the exercise whether its pre-positioned stock in Europe had the right equipment and was in the right place. The Army made the difficult decision last week to reduce the size and scope of the exercise to “protect our troops,” Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville said. The service had already deployed roughly 6,000 soldiers and 3,000 pieces of equipment from the U.S. beginning in January in support of the Defender Europe exercise, McConville said, and also deployed a brigade combat team and a division-sized headquarters. The Army also has moved about 9,000 vehicles and pieces of equipment from Army pre-positioned stocks in Europe for the exercise, he noted. “One of the big objectives of this exercise was what we call strategic readiness,” McConville said, “the ability to dynamically employ our forces from the United States, and we were able to demonstrate most of those capabilities. We were able to get our forces over there, we have a draw from the pre-positioned stocks and we're still able to train with our allies and partners, although at much less capability.” Those units that won't be able to train through some of the linked exercises in Europe are already “tactically ready” and could maintain readiness through home station training, McConville added. Lessons learned will directly feed into how the Army crafts its future doctrine and help validate that the service is ready to execute what is laid out in the National Defense Strategy. But the other thing the Army has learned from the spread of COVID-19 and its effects on the exercise is that the service is agile, McConville stressed. “We had to adapt the plan, we were re-missioning some units during the actual deployments; some units may go other places, and that's why this was a very good exercise for us,” he added. For those deployed for the exercise, McConville said that the Army has put in place a rigorous screening process for troops returning home when the exercise is complete, where they will be screened for infection before coming back and then screened again upon return to installations and posts, then quarantined as necessary. While the Army has exercised strategic readiness, testing the ability to move seamlessly from country to country throughout the modified exercise may not get a full shake due to how European countries may choose to handle the pandemic. Border crossing was a challenge in past years. For now, there are too many uncertainties to know whether border crossing and mobility across countries will pose a problem or a challenge for the Army, according to McConville. “Italy was a little ahead of us” in coping with the spread of the virus,” McConville said, “but Europe is probably right along the same lines where we are right now, where leaders are taking a hard look at how they want to try to contain this.” Meanwhile in the Pacific region, where COVID-19 originated and where many countries have been hard hit, the Army was able to complete a recent exercise — Cobra Gold in Thailand, McConville said. The service continues to conduct risk assessment for each upcoming exercise in the theater. The Army is also likely to stick to its plan to focus more largely on a division-sized exercise in the Pacific in 2021 and hold a smaller version of Defender Europe, rather than ramp up the European exercise back up to the intended size for 2020, McConville said. But there are still many unknowns, he added, and the Army will continue to assess its options. https://www.defensenews.com/smr/army-modernization/2020/03/18/covid-19-dampens-european-exercise-but-army-chief-says-all-is-not-lost/

NAVY Lockheed Martin Space, Titusville, Florida, is awarded a $601,332,075 fixed-price-incentive, cost-plus-incentive-fee and cost-plus-fixed-fee modification (P00005) to exercise options under a previously awarded and announced contract N00030-19-C-0100 for the submarine-launched ballistic missile (model) Trident II D5 production and deployed systems support. Work will be performed in Magna, Utah (33.5%); Sunnyvale, California (13.7%); Denver, Colorado (10.6%); Cape Canaveral, Florida (6.9%); Titusville, Florida (4.7%); Orange, Virginia (4.4%); Kings Bay, Georgia (3.4%); Kingsport, Tennessee (3.4%); Pittsfield, Massachusetts (3.3%); El Segundo, California (2.4%); Lancaster, Pennsylvania (2.2%); Inglewood, California (1.6%); Clearwater, Florida (1.3%); and other various locations (less than 1% each, 8.6% total). Work is expected to be complete by September 2024. Fiscal 2020 weapons procurement (Navy) funds in the amount of $499,278,762; United Kingdom funds in the amount of $93,325,301; and incremental fiscal 2020 research, development, test and evaluation (Navy) funds in the amount of $500,000 are obligated on this award, none of which will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was awarded on a sole-source basis under 10 U.S. Code 2304(c)(1) and was previously synopsized on the Federal Business Opportunities website. Strategic Systems Programs, Washington, District of Columbia, is the contracting activity. AECOM Technical Services Inc., Los Angeles, California (N62470-19-D-8022); Aptim Federal Services LLC, Alexandria, Virginia (N62470-19-D-8023); CH2M Hill Constructors Inc., Englewood, Colorado (N62470-19-D-8024); Environmental Chemical Corp., Burlingame, California (N62470-19-D-8025); Fluor Intercontinental Inc., Greensville, South Carolina (N62470-19-D-8026); and Perini Management Services Inc., Framingham, Massachusetts (N62470-19-D-8027), are awarded an $85,000,000 modification to increase the maximum dollar value of an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity, multiple award contract for global contingency construction projects. Work will be predominately construction, worldwide and is expected to be complete by March 2024. The work to be performed provides for the Navy on behalf of the Navy, Department of Defense and other federal agencies. The construction and related engineering services will respond to natural disasters, humanitarian assistance, conflict and various projects with similar characteristics. The contractor may be required to provide initial base operating support services in support of the construction effort, which will be incidental to construction efforts. After award of this modification, the total cumulative contract value will be $1,060,000,000. The term of the contract is not to exceed 60 months. No funds will be obligated at time of award; funds will be obligated on subsequent modifications for work on existing individual task orders. Naval Facilities Engineering Command Atlantic, Norfolk, Virginia, is the contracting activity. Environmental Chemical Corp., Burlingame, California, is awarded a $9,788,756 firm-fixed-price task order modification (N62470-20-F-9001) under the global contingency construction, multiple award contract for the exercise of Option One, which provides for the design, fabrication, transportation and installation of a waterside obstacle system at Mina Salman, Naval Support Activity (NSA) Bahrain. Work will be performed at Mina Salman, NSA Bahrain, and is expected to be complete by August 2020. The total task order amount after exercise of this option will be $14,772,620. The task order also contains three unexercised options, which if exercised will increase the cumulative task order value to $16,427,558. Fiscal 2020 other procurement (Navy) funds in the amount of $9,788,756 are obligated on this award and will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. Naval Facilities Engineering Command, Europe Africa Central is the contracting activity (N62470-19-D-8025). KOAM Engineering Systems Inc., San Diego, California, is awarded a $9,711,022 indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity, cost-plus-fixed-fee contract. All work will be performed in San Diego, California, at government facilities (50%) and contractors' facilities (50%). The work provides for systems engineering integration, engineering analysis, installation, testing and evaluation, fleet troubleshooting, configuration management, integrated logistics support, deploying group systems integration testing and combat systems ship qualification trials of tactical data link systems. The period of performance of the base award is from March 19, 2020, to March 18, 2021. If all options are exercised, the period of performance would extend through March 18, 2027. This one-year contract includes six one-year options, which will bring the potential value of this contact to an estimated $71,051,742 if exercised. No funds will be obligated at the time of award. Funds will be obligated as task orders are issued using operations and maintenance (Navy); other procurement (Navy); research, development, test and evaluation (Navy); Foreign Military Sales; and funding from other government agencies such as the Air Force on fiscal year spending plans. This contract was competitively procured as a small business set-aside solicitation by a request for proposal N66001-19-R-0044, which was published on the Federal Business Opportunities website and the Naval Information Warfare Systems Command's e-Commerce website. Four proposals were received and one was selected for the award. Naval Information Warfare Center, Pacific, San Diego, California, is the contracting activity (N66001-20-D-0044). Innovative Defense Technologies LLC, Arlington, Virginia, is awarded an $8,067,432 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract modification to previously awarded contract N00024-20-C-6116 to exercise and fund options for Navy engineering services, required material and travel. Work will be performed in Fall River, Massachusetts, and is expected to be complete by December 2020. Fiscal 2020 research, development, test and evaluation (Navy) funding in the amount of $3,300,000 will be obligated at time of award and will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington Navy Yard, Washington, District of Columbia, is the contracting activity. General Dynamics Electric Boat Corp., Groton, Connecticut, is awarded a $7,307,480 cost-plus-fixed-fee modification to exercise Options 5 through 9 to previously awarded contract N00024-09-C-2104 for planning and execution of U.S. ship South Dakota (SSN 790) guaranty. Work will be performed in Groton, Connecticut, and is expected to be complete by December 2020. Electric Boat Corp. will perform planning and execution efforts and material procurement in preparation to accomplish work on the U.S. ship South Dakota (model SSN 790) during its guaranty period. Fiscal 2020 shipbuilding and conversion (Navy) funding in the amount of $7,307,480 will be obligated at award and will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. These exercised options will bring the total cost-plus-fixed-fee award to $16,889,161. The Supervisor of Shipbuilding Conversion and Repair, Groton, Connecticut, is the contracting activity. AIR FORCE AECOM International Inc., Neu-Isenburg, Germany (FA5641‐20‐D‐0003); Arcadis, London, United Kingdom (FA5641‐20‐D‐0004); Cardno GS Inc., Charlottesville, Virginia (FA5641‐20‐D‐0005); Jacobs Government Services Co., Arlington, Virginia (FA5641‐20‐D‐0006); Tetra Tech Inc., Pasadena, California (FA5641‐20‐D‐0007); and Wood Environment and Infrastructure Solutions Inc., Blue Bell, Pennsylvania (FA5641‐20‐D‐0008), have been awarded a $90,000,000 indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for environmental services and environmental construction. This contract provides a broad range of environmental services including operations and maintenance activities associated with environmental programs, environmental construction, repair and demolition work including remediation, restoration and abatement on real property in support of the Department of Defense environmental mission. Work will be performed at various installations within the U.S. European Command and U.S. Africa Command areas of operation and is expected to be completed by June 14, 2031. This contract is the result of a competitive acquisition and six offers were received. Fiscal 2020 operations and maintenance funds in the amount of $2,500 are being obligated for each awardee at the time of the award. The 764th Enterprise Sourcing Squadron, Ramstein Air Base, Germany, is the contracting activity. ARMY Lagan Construction LLC, Woodbridge, Virginia, was awarded a $29,716,940 firm-fixed-price contract for the design, build repair and replacement of runways and overruns. Bids were solicited via the internet with three received. Work will be performed at Westover Air Reserve Base, Massachusetts, with an estimated completion date of July 9, 2021. Fiscal 2020 operations and maintenance, Defense funds in the amount of $29,716,940 were obligated at the time of the award. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Louisville, Kentucky, is the contracting activity (W912QR-20-C-0010). AECOM Management Services Inc., Germantown, Maryland, was awarded a $22,497,260 modification (P00005) to contract W58RGZ-19-F-0301 for repair or recap efforts of aircraft structures, engines, transmissions, blades, and components for various rotary wing aircraft. Work will be performed in Corpus Christi, Texas, with an estimated completion date of March 31, 2022. Fiscal 2020 Army working capital funds in the amount of $22,497,260 were obligated at the time of the award. U.S. Army Contracting Command, Red Stone Arsenal, Alabama, is the contracting activity. CHC/SJH JV LLC, Miami, Florida, was awarded a $21,481,049 firm-fixed price contract for long-term riprap repair of the Walter F. George Dam. Bids were solicited via the internet with five received. Work will be performed at Fort Rucker, Alabama, with an estimated completion date of Sept. 10, 2021. Fiscal 2019 civil works funds in the amount of $21,481,049 were obligated at the time of the award. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Mobile, Alabama, is the contracting activity (W91278-20-C-0011). AECOM Management Services Inc., Germantown, Maryland, was awarded a $12,177,497 modification (P00003) to contract W58RGZ19-F-0304 to support the Aircraft and Aircraft Components Production Directorate, including facilities maintenance, supply logistics and administrative duties. Work will be performed in Corpus Christi, Texas, with an estimated completion date of March 31, 2022. Fiscal 2020 Army working capital funds in the amount of $12,177,497 were obligated at the time of the award. U.S. Army Contracting Command, Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, is the contracting activity. DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY Federal Prison Industries,** doing business as UNICOR, Washington, District of Columbia, has been awarded a maximum $12,720,000 firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for Army physical fitness uniform jackets. This is a one-year base contract with two one-year option periods. Locations of performance are Florida and Washington, District of Columbia, with a March 18, 2021, performance completion date. Using military service is Army. Type of appropriation is fiscal 2020 through 2021 defense working capital funds. The contracting activity is the Defense Logistics Agency Troop Support, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (SPE1C1-20-D-F055). UPDATE: Kohler Co., Sheboygan, Wisconsin (SPE8EC-20-D-0056), has been added as an awardee to the multiple award contract for commercial portable power equipment, issued against solicitation SPE8EC-17-R-0010 and announced Dec. 10, 2018. (Awarded March 18, 2020) *Small business **Mandatory source https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Contracts/Contract/Article/2118872/source/GovDelivery/

The mobile TITAN satellite ground station is a critical node in Army plans for all-domain operations. By THERESA HITCHENS WASHINGTON: The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) wants commercial vendors to submit prototypes for the Army's planned mobile ground station that can fuse sensor data from multiple ISR satellites — including both national security and commercial — into a common operational picture for battlefield commanders. While this solicitation, released late yesterday, focuses on space-based sensors, ultimately the Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node (TITAN) is envisioned as a “unified” ground station that can take data not just from satellites, but also from high-altitude, aerial and terrestrial ISR sensors to provide targeting data directly to Army Long-Range Precision Fires (LRPF) networks. The Army describes TITAN as a “scalable and expeditionary intelligence ground station.” It is envisioned as a critical enabler of Army all-domain operations command and control. The satellite terminal is the first step in what will be a modular development of the TITAN terminal's capabilities over time — with a goal to deploy and initial operating capability early in fiscal 2022, as Brig. Gen. Rob Collins, Army program executive officer for intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors, explained at the giant Association of the United States Army (AUSA) show in October, DIU's Space Portfolio Director Steve Butow explained in an email that the prototype ground stations should be “capable of rapidly and semi-autonomously tasking, receiving, processing, exploiting, fusing, and disseminating space based sensor data to provide networked situational awareness and direct tactical support to Army commanders at echelon.” One of the key goals is “to reduce sensor to shooter latency.” Latency is the term of art to describe the time it takes to send information from the satellite to the user on the ground. The prototype ground stations — which as with all DIU projects are envisioned to be rapidly fielded — must be capable of “rapid deployment to diverse operational environments via strategic lift and once deployed, be capable of rapid setup, tear down, movement, and assembly to meet operational commander's needs.” They also must be able to function “for a reasonable period of time” through “any loss of non-local communications or networks.” American contractors have until April 3 to put forward a proposal. Proposed prototypes “should include everything required to operate during a designated exercise(s) and demonstration(s) as well during real world operations, including the vehicle/trailers, power generation/conditioning, antennae, communications/network hardware/software (to include line of sight and beyond line of sight), processing hardware/software, and analytical hardware/software,” the solicitation states. Further, prototypes should be able to store and process data from multiple commercial providers. This means that the “access node should be a modular, open systems architecture, making it easy to upgrade software/firmware, analytics/algorithms, and ingest additional data streams as commercial vendors and national data become available.” This includes being able to store and process both classified and unclassified data. The project will run for 24 to 30 months, and will include the delivery of at least two and as many as six working prototypes. They must be ready for immediate testing and evaluation in a theater exercise. DUI is looking at two phases. Phase 1 includes the “development, integration, testing, accreditation and delivery” of two prototypes by January 2022. Phase 2 “includes the testing, assessment, and refinement of the prototype systems based upon participation in and feedback from several exercises and evaluations,” both in the US and theaters abroad. Phase 2 also includes the option of delivering up to four additional prototype systems. DIU generally uses Other Transaction Authorities as a contracting vehicle, as will this program. The solicitation notes that DoD is “also pursuing a separate parallel effort for the objective TITAN ground station design to accommodate Aerial and Terrestrial sensors as well.” Thus, the contractor(s) chosen will need to work ensure designs for the satellite terminal can be integrated with, and that all the software is transportable to, that design via agreements with the other companies involved. The Army issued a Request for Information on Dec. 4 about technologies to enable the “objective” TITAN terminal that can integrate all types of ISR sensors. That RFI was updated on Dec. 18. The RFI explains that TITAN eventually will replace the Army's current Tactical-Intelligence Ground Station, Operational-Intelligence Ground Station, Advanced Miniaturized Data Acquisition System Dissemination Vehicle and Remote Ground Terminal. It also must be “to operate at Brigade, Division, Corps, and Field Army echelons, in vehicles and shelters organic to the formation,” the solicitation said. According to a Q&A transcript of the Army's Dec. 4 industry day on TITAN, the service currently sees potential deployment platforms: a larger version for integration with on one variant of the Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles (FMTV) with a shelter; and a smaller one to be integrated on “a four-seater tactical vehicle — either a Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) or a Humvee. What is unclear is how this DIU effort relates to the earlier sole-source award to Peraton for the Satellite Ground Terminal (SGT) Prototype, that on the face of it is being designed to do exactly the same thing. Under that Nov. 19 award, which supports the Army's Tactical Exploitation of National Capabilities (TENCAP) program, Peraton was to develop a fully-tested prototype to the Army within 20 months. SGT is expected to transfer up to 1,000 times more satellite data to operators than currently possible, according to Peraton. Queries to the Army, DIU and Peraton about this were not answered at press time. https://breakingdefense.com/2020/03/diu-seeks-prototype-sat-terminal-for-army-all-domain-ops