FMTV Extension. The Army plans to extend its Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles (FMTV) contract with Oshkosh Defense for an additional three years, estimating it may order an additional 1,343 vehicles over that period. The contract extension covers vehicle, trailer and kit production and logistics, fielding and maintenance and system technical support, according to a notice published on Jan. 29. “Anticipated service requirements include engineering, configuration management, quality assurance, integrated logistics support, maintenance, test support and other support related to [Army]-initiated changes and improvements to the FMTV vehicles,” the Army wrote. Along with FMTVs, the Army said the contract extension may include procurement of production and installation of Arctic kits, underbody armor kits and B-kits for supplemental cab armor.
AI Bias. The Pentagon’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) on Jan. 29 detailed its first AI Bias Bounty exercises, which it described as “crowdsourced efforts to help detect bias in AI systems.” “The exercises are conducted to generate novel approaches to algorithmically auditing and red teaming AI models, facilitating experimentation with addressing identified risks, and ensuring the systems are unbiased, given their particular deployment context,” the Pentagon said in a statement. The first public bounty began on Jan. 29 and runs through Feb. 27, with the second to follow soon. The first event is focused on identifying “unknown areas of risk in Large Language Models, beginning with open source chatbots,” according to the Pentagon.
Medium Tactical Truck. The Marine Corps announced on Feb. 1 it has selected Mack Defense and Navistar Defense for the first phase of its Medium Tactical Truck (MTT) development program. MTT is intended to find a replacement for its Medium Tactical Vehicle Replacement (MTVR) fleet, including the cargo, dump, wrecker, tractor and resupply variants. “This pivotal phase, spanning an estimated 12 months, will see the performers leveraging the Corps’ top-level requirements to submit innovative design concepts and comprehensive project plans for Phase I,” the Marine Corps said in a statement. The Marine Corps said the competitive prototype phase will focus on the cargo variant and that key requirements for MTT include integration of hybrid-electric technologies, on-board power generation, mobility capability for a 70 percent off-road and 30 percent on-road mission profile and a modular and scalable armor system.
PSC Progress. Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Linda Fagan is “pretty optimistic” that the first polar security cutter (PSC) will begin construction in 2024. Fagan, in an interview with Defense Daily last week, reiterated that the PSC is a “complex ship” to design and construct and the focus now is “getting the design maturity so that we can begin cutting steel with a sense of confidence.” The Coast Guard has used its authority for a Prototype Fabrication Assessment (PFA) that allows PSC prime contractor Bollinger Shipyards to begin production of ship modules, allowing the company “to progressively build workforce capability, test new processes and equipment, and reduce construction risk,” a spokesman for Fagan wrote in an email. In January, the Coast Guard and Navy authorized Bollinger to begin the third of up to eight PFA modules, he said.
E-2D’s Radar. Lockheed Martin delivered the 75th APY-9 radar for Navy E-2D Advanced Hawkeye aircraft, it announced on Jan. 29. Lockheed Martin delivers the radars under contract for prime aircraft builder Northrop Grumman. The APY-9 is the primary airborne early warning sensor for the aircraft. Lockheed Martin noted the Navy has funded 80 of 86 planned E-2Ds while Japan has bought 18 and France purchased three. This combined U.S. and international demand means the APY-9 is expected to remain in production into the late 2020s while modernization and sustainment for the sensor will last into the 2040s.
Navy S&T Meeting. A closed Department of the Navy Science and Technology Board (DON S&T Board) meeting was due to take place on Jan. 29 and 31, according to a Jan 29 Federal Register notice. The meeting was held at Naval Station Pearl Harbor, Honolulu, Hawaii to meet with relevant military and civilian officials in and around Pearl Harbor. The board planned to discuss classified strategy and requirements discussions relevant to topics tasked by the Secretary of the Navy. It specifically said the board sought to collaborate with Navy and Marine Corps operational leadership “on opportunities to expand warfighting advantage through technologies that have the potential to disrupt the nature of warfighting.” The board is due to use this information to develop practical recommendations to give to the Secretary of the Navy.
Top Gun Spectrum Warfare. The U.S. Air Force’s 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing at Eglin AFB, Fla., says that the wing “for the first time integrated with the U.S. Air Force Weapons School” at Nellis AFB, Nev., “to provide students realistic pacing threats in the electromagnetic operational environment in their capstone exercise.” The recent Weapons School Integration 23B capstone exercise is to inform future large force exercises so that aircrew, maintenance, support, and intelligence personnel are better prepared to counter Chinese systems and tactics. “Historically, the wing provided assessment of EW integration to WSINT, but this year they revamped and expanded their role and objectives,” the 35oth SWW said. For WSINT 23B, the 350th EWW “aimed to rapidly reprogramming mission data files for priority combat platforms, acquire and analyze Crowd-Source Flight Data, further develop electronic warfare assessment and operation experience and to test the ability to download advanced mission applications in flight,” the wing said.
More DIB Capacity. The Defense Department’s Industrial Base Policy office last week awarded $192.5 million to seven companies to strengthen the defense industrial base (DIB) for the manufacturing of critical chemicals. “The awards will result in the domestic production of military grade chemicals by establishing, expanding, and modernizing the manufacturing capacity of 22 critical chemicals used in defense systems, including non-energetic chemicals and precursors for both energetic and non-energetic chemicals,” Laura Taylor-Kale, assistant secretary of defense for industrial base policy, said in a statement. The awardees are CoorsTek ($49.6 million), Goex/Estes Energetics ($13 million), Lacamas Laboratories ($86.2 million), Magrathea Metals ($19.6 million), METSS Corp. ($14 million), Powdermet ($1.9 million), and Synthio Chemicals ($8.2 million). The contracts were let through the Defense Production Act Investments.
…Simplify Thy RFP. The Defense Department’s Defense Innovation Board, which also enjoys the DIB acronym, on Jan. 26 approved a new study, Lowering Barriers to Innovation, that includes a recommendation to limit requests for proposal (RFP) to three pages. Anything longer would need an exception. This would “streamline the acquisition process and attract more innovative and non-traditional contractors,” says the 13-page report that was directed last October by David Honey, deputy under secretary of defense for research and engineering. An RFP “need only to clearly state the desired outcomes, mission capability, and features of the solution—rather than impose extensive and rigid specifications that may limit the creativity and flexibility of the contractors,” the study says. The report overall presents “good ideas to pursue but nothing ground breaking,” Jerry McGinn, executive director of the Baroni Center for Government Contracting at George Mason Univ., told Defense Daily last week. “Not crazy about the three-page RFP limit but sentiment is right to simplify.”
CUAS Industry Day. The Army C5ISR Center Research and Technology Integration Directorate will host a counter-unmanned aerial system (CUAS) industry day on May 7 and 8 at Fort Belvoir, Va., and is seeking information on capabilities to help protect soldiers, vehicles, and infrastructure from emerging and future UAS threats. The directorate wants information on novel sensor and non-kinetic defeat technologies that are between Technology Readiness Levels 3 to 7 that could “significantly reduce size/weight/power/cost or improve performance of existing Army systems.” Responses are due by Feb. 29.
USBP sUAS RFI. The U.S. Border Patrol wants a look at the latest technologies that could be integrated within small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) that are used to fill gaps in the agency’s ability detect items of interest illegally entering the U.S. The USBP issued a similar request for information (RFI) in 2022 but wants to see how technology has advanced since then to determine whether any investments it makes will “produce measurable mission results/benefits.” The technical topical areas of interest are artificial intelligence and machine learning, Team Awareness Kit integration, and onboard detect, sense, and avoid. Responses are due by Feb. 12.
Advanced Air-Launched Effects. General Atomics announced that one of the company’s MQ-20 Avenger drones tested an inflight release of the company’s Advanced Air-Launched Effects (A2LE) from the drone’s internal weapons bay on Nov. 28 last year over Dugway Proving Ground, Utah. The company said that the demonstration A2LE’s airframe was all from additive manufacturing and designed to meet “the captive carriage and ejection loads of the jet-powered aircraft with internal weapons bays.” Mike Atwood, vice president of advanced programs at General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc., said in a company statement that A2LE paves the way for “continued maturation of affordable, modular SUAS platforms that can be tailored to meet warfighter needs at a fraction of the cost and lead time of currently fielded systems.”
Delivering Program of Record. The Air Force has said that the Northrop Grumman B-21 has been meeting goals, while the company’s LGM-35A Sentinel future ICBM has run into projected cost overruns due to military construction needs. Asked what U.S. Strategic Command needs to do over the next decade to modernize the nuclear triad, STRATCOM head Air Force Gen. Anthony Cotton says, “Delivering the program of record.” That encompasses effective sustainment of current systems and fielding future delivery/weapons platforms, he says. “All of those have to happen,” Cotton says. “I wish I could say we’re at FOC [full operational capability] on all the systems because over the last 30 years we modernized them, Well, that’s not what happened, but that’s okay. We are where we are so what do we do to ensure that I have the forces that I can present to the president that are safe, secure, and effective and credible and a transition to the modernized forces. That’s gonna be key for us. The other piece of that is the defense industrial base because that’s what’s gonna help us or hurt us in regard to the timelines we face on being able to close the challenges that we see before us.”