CACI International received a $75 million task order to support the US Army’s Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center (CERDEC) Intelligence and Information Warfare Directorate (I2WD) under the Technical Engineering Support Services (TESS) contract.

CACI was awarded the 5-year, $900 million TESS contract on Aug 19/09. York Telecom Corp. and DSCI also were awarded TESS contracts.

Under this task order, CACI will provide engineering and technical support to assist I2WD in developing and deploying US Army intelligence and information warfare systems…

Continue Reading… »

Stanley in Arlington, VA received $61 million in contracts to support the US intelligence community. One contract, worth $23 million, is a 2-year blanket purchase agreement with a ceiling of $23 million supporting the US Army Intelligence Center of Excellence (USAICoE) at Fort Huachuca, AZ.

Two other contracts, worth a combined $38 million, are a 5-year fixed-price contract and a 10-year time-and-materials contract to provide systems engineering, cybersecurity and network engineering support services to unidentified US intelligence agencies.

Based at Fort Huachuca, the USAICoE trains and educates military intelligence personnel…

Continue Reading… »

SOS International in Reston, VA won a $136.2 million fixed-rate contract for linguist services in support of US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The contract is expected to run through Sept 25/14. Bids were solicited via the General Services Administration with 4 offers received. The US Army Corps of Engineers and Defense Intelligence Agency manage the contract (WHHM402-09-F-0658).

Commercial Satellite Imagery
(click to view full)

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), a US Department of Defense combat support agency, awarded GeoEye (formerly Orbimage) in Dulles, VA a $214.2 million firm-fixed-price contract modification to supply satellite imagery to US government customers from the company’s satellite constellation.

Under the modification, the basic contract service level agreement (SLA) will be extended 4-month through Mar 31/10 ($50 million SLA value, $51.7 million miscellaneous), followed by one 9-month option (April 2010 to December 2010, $112.5 million). Work will be performed in Dulles, VA.

GeoEye’s predecessor Orbimage received the original NextView contract (HM1573-04-C-0014), worth up to $500 million, in 2004…

Continue Reading… »

BAE Systems National Security Solutions in Burlington, MA received a $7 million cost-plus-fixed-fee contract to provide support to the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Urban Reasoning and Geospatial Exploitation Technology (URGENT) Phase II Program. The purpose of the URGENT program is to improve the quality and timeliness of geospatial intelligence about threats in urban environments to assist US troops in conducting urban warfare.

BAE will perform the work in Burlington, MA (93%) and Los Angeles, CA (7%) with an estimated completion date of May 15/11. Bids were solicited on the Web with 1 bid received by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Arlington, VA (HR0011-09-C-0101).

Under the contract, BAE is developing a design concept that promises to speed the collection and processing of geospatial data about urban environments and deliver them to US troops on the ground for mission planning, navigation, and targeting. BAE will do this by fusing different intel systems…

Continue Reading… »

The IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY won a $9.7 million cost-reimbursement contract modification to support the intelligence analyst research effort called Rosetta: An Analyst Co-Pilot.

Rosetta will tightly couple speech transcription, language transition, and adaptive, multi-source information distillation in ways that permit English-speaking intelligence analysts to focus on and understand the most important information in their area of expertise.

Rosetta is IBM’s name for the work it is doing under the US Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s (DARPA) Global Autonomous Language Exploitation (GALE) Program, according to DARPA’s Jan Walker…

Continue Reading… »

US ORNL laser test
(click to view full)

Readers who follow the tech press may be familiar with the concept of quantum computing. Computers use binary bits: on/off, yes/no, represented by 0 or 1. A quantum bit, or qubit, can be 1, or 0… or both. Whereas 111 = 7 in binary, and each number is a single choice among all the possibilities in the number of binary digits, 3 qubits can hold all 8 possibilities (0-7), which means you can do calculations on all of them at once. The more qubits used, the more computation, so 32 qubits theoretically gets you 2 to the 32nd power computations (about 4.3 billion) at once – much more power than conventional computing, and it keeps on rising exponentially.

It’s worth noting that quantum computing has limits, and areas where it will not be suitable for computing tasks. They are not fully understood yet, but have been shown to exist at the theoretical level. So far, all we can say is that certain kinds of problems will be solved much, much more quickly. The uses of such a system for searching large domains of information, cracking codes, creating codes, or running simulations that include the quantum level as a number of modern physical and medical science applications do, are clear. As an additional benefit, quantum cryptography methods benefit from quantum principles whereby eavesdropping is not only incredibly difficult, it will create noticeable interference.

The USA’s DARPA is interested, of course, and they’re handing out contracts…

Continue Reading… »

IqAF King Air 350-ISR
(click to view full)

The Ottawa Citizen’s defense reporter David Pugliese reports that the US military is about to spend $100 million to upgrade the facilities at Kandahar, Afghanistan, in order to accommodate up to 26 aircraft for “Task Force ODIN” in Afghanistan. At first glance, this might seem like just another infrastructure play – unless one realizes that Task Force ODIN (Observe, Detect, Identify & Neutralize) may be the second-most underrated fusion of technology and operating tactics in America’s counter-insurgency arsenal.

Task Force ODIN was created on orders of Gen. Richard A. Cody, the Army’s outgoing vice chief of staff. Its initial goal involved better ways of finding IED land mines, a need triggered by the limited numbers of USAF Predator UAVs in Iraq, and consequent refusal of many Army requests. Despite its small size (about 25 aircraft and 250 personnel) and cobbled-together nature, Task Force ODIN became a huge success. Operating from Camp Speicher near Tikrit, it expanded its focus to become a full surveillance/ strike effort in Iraq – one that ground commanders came to see as more precise than conventional air strikes, and less likely to cause collateral damage that would create problems for them. From its inception in July 2007 to June 2008, the effort reportedly killed more than 3,000 adversaries, and led to the capture of almost 150 insurgent leaders.

With Secretary of Defense Gates paying particular attention to improving ISR capabilities, replication in Afghanistan was inevitable. The coming construction at Kandahar marks the beginning of that effort…

Continue Reading… »

CACI International Inc. recently announced a prime contract with a ceiling value of $452 million, in order to continue providing mission support services to the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) under the GENESIS III contract. the contract is awarded for one base year and 4 option years, and will significantly increase both the size and scope of CACI’s business with INSCOM.

The GENESIS III program includes engineering support for ground and aerial intelligence systems include Signals Intelligence (SIGINT), Imagery Intelligence (IMINT), Electronic Intelligence (ELINT), Human Intelligence (HUMINT), Measurement and Signature Intelligence (MASINT), and Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) systems. The GENESIS program is designed to help the Army control and integrate data from its myriad of collection systems, and ensure that these systems and facilities are developed, deployed, repaired and maintained at the highest state of readiness.

CACI will provide facility engineering and maintenance support for ISR facilities, including relocating and closing sites when required, supporting environmental assessments, and taking care of associated systems like power generation and physical security systems. New work may also be required, including engineering and building portable electronic intelligence systems for ground and airborne use. Work is performed around the world, including “hostile areas.” FBO solicitation | CACI release.

Trident Technology Solutions, of Fairfax, VA received a maximum $49.9 million indefinite-delivery/ indefinite-quantity contract. Trident will design an Information Sharing Environment (ISE) for the Air Force, Department of Defense (DoD), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) tha incorporates multi-level security and “encompasses all aspects of information sharing including file sharing text chat, audio and video teleconferencing, blogs, and wikis.” At this time $868,281 has been obligated by the Air Force Research Laboratory/RIKF in Rome, NY (FA8750-08-D-0206).

Ironically, at press time, the Trident Technology Solutions web site and the parent firm site for Trident Systems, Inc. were both unavailable.