The Navy’s top acquisition official approved a $400 million and two-year performance period extension for the Naval Information Warfare Systems Command’s (NAVWAR) Information Warfare Research Project (IWRP).
IWRP was established in 2018 as a consortium-based approach and uses Other Transaction Authority (OTA) to streamline acquisitions, rapidly develop prototypes and provide advanced technologies to the Navy.
Advanced Technology International manages IWRP and was awarded an intial three-year $100 million management contract in 2018 running through summer 2021 (Defense Daily, June 27, 2018).
Now Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition James Geurts increased the project’s total monetary ceiling and extended the period of performance.
The Navy noted that by this past June the IWRP team has already allocated 100 percent of the initial $100 million ceiling. With this $400 million increase, the total project ceiling now stands at $500 million with a five-year total period of performance.
“This incredible milestone is a first for the Navy and really highlights the way NAVWAR is leading the way in Non-FAR-based acquisitions in order to provide rapid capabilities to our Sailors and Marines,” Kevin Charlow, IWRP Executive Steering Group chair and Naval Information Warfare Center (NIWC) Atlantic deputy executive director, said in a statement.
“The fact that we expended the ceiling well within the period of performance really illustrates the demand and interest from industry and the government for agile acquisition,” Lisa Rosenbaum, IWRP agreements officer and NIWC Atlantic non-FAR agreements lead, added.
The IWRP user-base includes NAVWAR, NIWC Atlantic, NIWC Pacific, Naval Sea Systems Command Logistics, Maintenance and Industrial Operations, Program Executive Office (PEO) for Digital Enterprise Services, PEO for Manpower, Logistics and Business Solutions, PEO Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence Space Systems, PEO Integrated Warfare Systems, Marine Corps Systems Command, Naval Analytics Office and the Office of Naval Research.
NAVWAR argued the project’s use of OTAs allows different ways for traditional and non-traditional industry partners to move technology ideas from concept to prototype quicker than more traditional methods. It said over 800 opportunities were made available to members to partner and discuss prototyping projects in the last 18 months.
IWRP now has more than 580 consortium members, over 78 percent from non-traditional industry partners.
“There are endless possibilities to harness in the information warfare and IT space among our non-traditional industry partners. We want to take those ideas originally created for commercial application and marry them to the critical needs of the warfighter,” Peter Reddy, NIWC Atlantic executive director, said in a statement.
The Navy said the leadership team expects opportunities for more prototyping projects via IWRP to “grow significantly” over the next three years while the service expects to use OTAs for production to make awards by the end of fiscal year 2020.
According to the IWRP website, project technology focus areas include cyber warfare, data science/analytics technologies, assured communications, cloud computing, enterprise resource tools, collaboration and social networking, autonomy, internet of things embedded systems, mobility, model based systems engineering, on-demand manufacturing, assured command and control, integrated fires, battlespace awareness, and DEVSECOPS.