By Calvin Biesecker
The Department of Homeland Security recently awarded Northrop Grumman [NOC] a task order to advance to the field testing phase of a next-generation biological monitoring program while United Technologies Corp. [UTX], which was offering a competing solution, will not move on in the Gen-3 BioWatch effort, according to a department official.
Northrop Grumman last month said it had received an $8.4 million task order to build and deliver 12 prototype units of its Next Gen Automated Detection System for indoor and outdoor field testing in Chicago that is expected to begin in January or February and last until late spring or early summer. The task order is part of a potential $37 million contract the company received last fall to continue moving ahead on the Gen-3 effort.
UTC’s Hamilton Sundstrand division also received a potential $37 million contract last November to enter Phase 1 of Gen-3 (Defense Daily, Nov. 13, 2009). The initial task orders for both firms required delivery of various components of their respective systems for laboratory testing, particularly testing of the core detection technology–which are the assays–to see how well they would perform with live samples of the biological threat agents that DHS wants to monitor.
In the case of Hamilton Sundstrand, “Unfortunately, the company’s technology just isn’t meeting our performance characteristics that would warrant us buying more units and going into field testing,” Bob Hooks, deputy assistant secretary for Weapons of Mass Destruction and Biodefense at the DHS Office of Health Affairs, told Defense Daily this week.
Laboratory testing is still ongoing, Hooks said.
The Gen-3 program represents the state-of-the-art in development of automated biological threat detection. The program has suffered a number of delays due to the high-risk nature of the development and also because it is part of the ongoing BioWatch program, which involves coordination with multiple partners at the federal, state and local levels of government and the public health community.
The National Academy of Sciences in October released a report commenting on the challenging scientific and technical hurdles facing Gen-3 development while noting the potential payoff from a successful program from more timely detection (Defense Daily, Oct. 28).
Under the current BioWatch effort, which is managed by OHA, Gen-1 and Gen-2 aerosol sample collectors are deployed in more than 30 cities and major urban areas in the United States, each requiring manual retrieval of samples for laboratory analysis. The sample to response time is typically a day or more, meaning precious time has been spent before authorities know to react to an event.
With Gen-3, DHS wants the deployed units to be able to collect samples, process them several times a day, and report the results over communications links in real time, allowing health authorities to quickly respond to an event.
Moving forward with just one technology increases the risk profile of the program. Still, the laboratory testing results from Northrop Grumman’s system have “gone well and we’re confident that the rest of this testing will go as well,” Hooks said. “We’re comfortable that it’s a good investment for the government to go ahead and procure the additional units” and proceed to field testing, he said.
But Hooks is leaving his options open to reduce technology risk in the program and OHA is considering opening another acquisition channel so that it doesn’t necessarily have all its eggs in one basket.
“Is it going forward with the Northrop technology alone because it at this point been successful in testing and we’ll continue to evaluate this on a day to day basis based on the results we get in from testing, or does it make sense also to be continuing to look at potentially Hamilton upgrading their system or other companies that have on their own developed the equipment while we’ve been going through this testing?” Hooks said.
DHS is currently discussing how it might proceed with its other options, including a Request for Information or a draft Request for Proposals (RFP) leading to a full and open competition and another acquisition contract about a year from now, Hooks said. It would be after summer 2011 before any additional contracts would be awarded, giving OHA time to analyze the results of the upcoming Gen-3 field tests to see if it makes sense to try and bring on another company and because the procurement process takes a while to set up and go through, he said.
“We haven’t fully resolved what that process ought to look like,” Hooks said. “We’re exploring different options and will continue evaluating those up until the point of releasing the RFP.”
Once the Gen-3 field testing is done, which will include not just Northrop Grumman and OHA but other federal, state and local partners and overseers, the test data will be analyzed and vetted by DHS. The next decision is whether to buy the 476 units the office is seeking in FY ’11 to begin operational test and evaluation of the Gen-3 system in several cities, which would likely start late in FY ’12, Hooks said.
Once a contract is awarded to proceed to OT&E, it would likely take six to 12 months for production to ramp up and units to begin being delivered, Hooks said. However, it will be important to fully understand the results of the field tests before proceeding further.
“I don’t want to award that contract too early and then say, ‘Oops, there’s something that we don’t like. Now we’re going to need you to do a major engineering change to your production units,’ because that will drive the costs up and that’s frequently where major acquisition programs get in trouble.”