Congress Returns. Fresh off its week-long Memorial Day recess, Congress plans to receive testimony from military service leaders on the Pentagon’s fiscal year 2018 budget request. The Senate Armed Services Committee will hear from the Air Force on June 6 and the Navy and Marine Corps on June 8. The Senate Appropriations Committee’s defense panel will hold an Army hearing on June 7. Other congressional hearings will address the Coast Guard, combat aviation, the Department of Homeland Security, Marine Corps ground modernization, missile defense, NASA and nuclear acquisition programs.
F-35 Contract. The U.S. Department of Defense and F-35 prime contractor Lockheed Martin are negotiating the 11th low-rate initial production (LRIP) contract for the fighter jet, according to Pratt & Whitney, which makes the plane’s F135 engine. The LRIP 10 agreement, announced in February, includes 90 aircraft – 55 for the United States and 35 for allies.
B-21 Silence. At a May 31 media event, Pratt & Whitney, a division of United Technologies Corp., had little to say about its engine work on the U.S. Air Force’s secretive B-21 bomber development program. “We’re thrilled to be on the program, and we’re laser-focused on development,” says Matthew Bromberg, president of Pratt & Whitney Military Engines, declining to elaborate. “We can’t even spell B-21,” adds Bob Leduc, Pratt & Whitney’s president.
ER Only. The $413.9 million Lot 15 contract that the U.S. Air Force recently awarded to Lockheed Martin to build 360 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile-Extended Range (JASSM-ER) cruise missiles is the first “all-ER production buy,” meaning it excludes the baseline JASSM, according to the company. “The current Air Force plan is transitioning to the ER variant moving forward,” a Lockheed Martin spokeswoman says. “Future production of the baseline variant will be at the discretion of the Air Force program office.”
In-Q-Tel Investments. In-Q-Tel, a non-profit venture capital firm that serves the intelligence community, closed strategic investments and technology development agreements with two California-based firms, AREVO Inc., and Evident.io. AREVO has developed an additive manufacturing solution for making lightweight, “ultra-strong” composite parts to replace metal parts for on-demand production applications. IQT says the solution is unique. The investment in Evident.io will help the intelligence community secure its infrastructure in all Amazon Web Services environments and allowing deployment of FedRamp High compliant architectures. FedRamp is a government-wide program that provides a standardized approach to security assessment and authorization for cloud products and services.
Advanced Manufacturing. Additive manufacturing is useful in some situations, such as making a complex part used in development, but it needs to become much faster before it can be used in high-rate production, according to Bob Leduc, president of Pratt & Whitney, a division of United Technologies Corp. “They can lay metal today and not change metallurgy; it’s just not at a rate that you would say could sustain high-volume production, and I think that’s the issue,” Leduc says at a May 31 media event. “For development tooling, for development parts, it probably makes a lot of sense. For high-rate production, we don’t believe the technology is quite there yet.”
Good News, Bad News. Douglas Bryce, director of the Defense Department’s Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical and Biological Defense, says the “good news” over the last 16 years is that the Pentagon has continued to work on technologies related to chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear defense although at reduced levels due to ongoing wars. He adds that sequestration and other issues have “caused us to take a little bit of backward steps in how much we do but we’re still working it.” The “bad news,” he says at a national security conference sponsored by Battelle, is that the “threat just keeps growing and growing and growing,” adding that the old threats still exist and on top of those are mutations, and then there are manmade variants of threats.
…A New Way Needed. Bryce, who is DoD’s material developer for CBRN defense, says medical countermeasures and treatments, and defense equipment, can be developed for certain of these threats, but then there are still “hundreds upon hundreds of them” to still contend with. “So we must find a better way, and this is where our challenge to industry comes in, we have to find a better way to do this,” he says. “We must find how we get in front of this threat instead of chasing this threat.”
…Advanced Detector Solution. Bryce says that chemical and biological detection equipment needs to have just about zero false alarm rates and operate at very low costs. The U.S. military is currently testing in South Korea a system supplied by Battelle that so far hasn’t generated any false alarms and costs half as much to purchase as the existing operational system and costs “pennies to operate.” He says the system detects “several of the agents” of concern “and we believe we’re headed in the right direction. It is a low-cost life-cycle solution.” Battelle touts its REBS system as a “major advance in chemical and biological warfare-agent collection and identification.”
New Board Members. BAE Systems, Inc., the U.S.-based arm of Britain’s BAE Systems plc, appointed former U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte to its board of directors for a three year term. Ayotte, a Republican from New Hampshire, served one term in the Senate before being defeated by Democrat Maggie Hassan last November. Meanwhile, Textron Inc.elected former Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James to its board. James served as Air Force secretary for the last three years of the Obama administration. Before that, she spent 11 years in various executive positions at Science Applications International Corp.
SpaceX Launch Delayed. Lightning on June 1 forced SpaceX to delay launching its 11th commercial resupply services mission to the International Space Station, the company tweeted. The Falcon 9 liftoff from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida is now scheduled for June 3. The rocket’s Dragon spacecraft is supposed to deliver almost 6,000 pounds of science research, crew supplies and hardware to the orbiting laboratory.
A-Plus. The Department of Homeland Security for the eighth straight year earned an “A” grade or higher on the Small Business Administration’s annual small business procurement scorecard, achieving an “A+” in FY ’16. DHS awarded 37 percent of its contracting dollars to small businesses last year, topping the government-wide goal of 23 percent. The department awarded $5.2 billion in prime contracts to small businesses in FY ’16.
NATO Cyber. NATO’s Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCD COE) added two new members, Belgium and Sweden, an began the initiation process for Bulgaria and Portugal. Last week the CCD COE held its annual International Conference on Cyber Conflict in Tallinn, Estonia bringing together cyber experts from its member nations. The CCD COE was founded in 2008 as an international military organization gathering researchers and analysts to devise solutions for future global cyber threats.
Cyber Security Insurance. A survey of 350 U.S. executives finds 50 percent of companies have no cyber security insurance in place to deal with potential breaches, compared to 40 percent in other countries surveyed. In data analytics company FICO’s findings, 27 percent of executives say their firm has no plans to seek out cyber security insurance despite 61% responding that they expected the number of cyber threats to increase over the next year. The survey notes the cyber vulnerability of the U.S. healthcare industry, with no executives responding that they had insurance that covered all risks and 74% have no form of cyber security insurance at all.
Unmanned Systems. North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (R) announces the formation of an industry-led task force focused on supporting the development and advancement of technologies to protect and defend against threats posed by rogue unmanned aerial systems (UAS). The UAS Detection and Counter-UAS Task Force coordinates testing countermeasures in North Dakota and helps identify opportunities for technology development. Initial goals of the task force include developing a test and evaluation area within North Dakota, identifying emerging and potential threats posed by UAS technologies in both military and civilian environments, and enabling UAS operators to develop and deploy protective technologies in response to identified threats. “The UAS industry is rapidly evolving, so having the ability to develop countermeasures, test them, and put them in place before they become obsolete is crucial to our nation’s continued safety and ability to compete on a global scale,” says Thomas Swoyer Jr., president of Grand Sky Development Co. and co-chair of the task force.
… Major Investment. North Dakota has wagered much on the future of UAS applications and testing. The state is investing $43 million into advancing UAS research and development, says Burgum. “This task force underscores our commitment to investigating UAS detection and countermeasures for the safety of our citizens and our airspace, as well as opportunities to further diversify our economy.” Interested parties are encouraged to contact task force co-chairs Nicholas Flom ([email protected]) or Swoyer ([email protected]) for more information on research and development opportunities and testing area amenities.
Army IT. Textron Systems says it is a prime contractor on the Army Responsive Strategic Sourcing for Services (RS3) contract. The RS3 contract has an expiration date of May 14, 2022 and an additional five-year operational ordering period. The contract, with command based out of Aberdeen Proving Ground, will provide command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) knowledge-based professional services to the U.S. Army and may be extended to other governmental agencies. The multiple award, IDIQ contract offer opportunities in engineering, research, development, test and evaluation, logistics, acquisition and strategic planning, education and training services.
F-35 Spares. The Naval Air Systems Command awarded Lockheed Martin a $244 million firm-fixed-price modification to provide for the procurement of initial air vehicle spares in support of the F-35 for the Air Force, Marine Corps, Navy, non-Defense Department participants, and foreign military sales (FMS) customers. Funding is split between the services, non-department participants, and FMS customers. The work is expected to be finished by June 2021.
F-18 Upgrades. The Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division awarded Boeing an $86 million contract modification to design, develop, and implement upgrades to software and ancillary hardware for F/A-18 A/B, C/D, E/F and EA-18G aircraft for the Navy as well as the governments of Australia, Finland, Switzerland, Kuwait, Malaysia, and Canada. Funds will be obligated against task orders as they are issued.
D5 Production Support. The U.S. Navy’s Strategic Systems Programs awarded Lockheed Martin a $44 million cost-plus-incentive-fee modification to a contract in support of the Trident II (D5) missile production and D5 deployed systems support. The full award is obligated at award time in Fiscal 2017 Navy operations and maintenance funds and will expire at the end of the current fiscal year.
U.S.-Japan Discussions. U.S. military and Japan Self-Defense Force personnel from 34 separate commands across services met for bilateral amphibious and mine warfare discussion on May 22-24, hosted by the Maritime Self-Defense Force’s Mine Warfare Command. This 14th meeting aimed to maintain and enhance the bilateral partnership and continue a dialogue on increasing integration for training and operations.
HII Staff. Huntington Ingalls Industries named Ashley Godwin as director of federal policy, reporting to Jay Donnerly, vice president of program integration and assessment. In the role Godwin will support the development of legislative and federal policy priorities to support future campaigns for shipbuilding programs and initiatives. Previously she served as senior defense and government affairs advisor for the Shipbuilders Council of America and corporate director of government and customer relations for Northrop Grumman. Earlier she served as deputy chief financial officer of the Department of the Navy from 2005 to 2007.
Navy Training. The Naval Surface Warfare Center awarded General Dynamics a potential $244 million single-award contract to provide training and training-related program support services for the Center for Surface Combat Systems (CSCS). The contract has a one-year base period with four option years. General Dynamics began providing CSCS with domain training and tactical warfare support in 2012.