Up to $168.2M to Alutiiq-Melle for China Lake Support Services

Naval Air Weapons Station
China Lake

Small business qualifier Alutiiq-Melle in Anchorage, Alaska, won a $15.7 million firm-fixed price, indefinite-delivery/ indefinite-quantity contract for base operating support services at the US Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake in California. The contract includes a base period, 4 option periods and 5 award option periods for a total contract value, if all options are exercised, of $168.2 million.

Alutiiq-Melle expects to complete the work by September 2019. This contract was competitively procured as an 8(a) set-aside via the Navy Electronic Commerce Online Web site, with 5 proposals received by the Naval Facilities Engineering Command Southwest in San Diego, CA (N62473-09-D-4003).

China Lake is the home of the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division…

Hardware Standards and Virtualization: 2 Summer 2009 Snapshots

Military Embedded Systems magazine recently covered a couple of industry trends worth noting, in a pervasive but frequently overlooked area of military procurement. Despite OpenVPX’s somewhat rocky journey to replace VME, one area is continued progress toward important new hardware standards, as computer board suppliers turn to the defense market segment as a safe haven:

“Work on specifications that benefit technology used in military applications is getting an extra dose of attention, as this market is holding steady during this economic slowdown. One common theme appears to be the emphasis on smaller form factors such as the 3U VPX, FMC, and MicroTCA sizes. Many programs are very space and power limited, driving the need for smaller boards. Suppliers are refocusing efforts on this market and working to ensure that they will have a steady stream of technology to consider for possible defense programs. It is no secret that the military will continue to increase its reliance on embedded electronics in future programs.”

Software virtualization is making steady progress in businesses, as computing makes the difficult shift from a craftsman model to a utility model. It also has significant implications for military systems, which last a very long time and must often deal with legacy code based on electronically ancient systems. Real-time requirements can sometimes present problems when utilizing classic virtualization techniques, but an approach called Safe and Secure Virtualization (SSV) may one day allow entire subsystems to be retained from an original platform and inserted, unchanged, into new or drastically upgraded platforms.

India Buys Israeli “SPYDER” Mobile Air Defense System

SPYDER Mobile Firing Unit

Israel’s SPYDER air defense system follows a recent trend of using advanced air-air missiles designed for fighter jets as ground-launched surface-to-air missiles (SAM). This truck-mounted system mixes radar and optical tracking with any combination of short to medium-range Derby 4 and ultra-agile short-range 5th generation Python 5 air to air missiles, in order to create a versatile system adapted for a wider range of threats. Hence its inclusion in in our AMRAAM FOCUS article’s “international competitors” section.

India has become the system’s inaugural export customer. SPYDER will reportedly replace India’s Russian-made OSA-AKM/SA-8 Gecko and ZRK-BD Strela-10M/ SA-13 Gopher SAM systems, and the purchase has decisively shelved the Indian DRDO’s failed Trishul project.

More success may be on the way. As India’s Air Force gears up, the Army is reportedly about to follow suit with an even bigger contract…

• The SPYDER System
  
• Contracts and Key Events: India
  
• Additional Readings
  

Harper Construction to Build USMC Recruit Facilities in San Diego

The Few. The Proud.

Harper Construction in San Diego, CA won a $56.2 million firm-fixed-price contract for design and construction of a physical conditioning recruit barracks, a recruit training barracks and a sports medicine and reconditioning therapy clinic at Marine Corps Recruit Depot (MCRD) San Diego. The 2 barracks will house a total of 1,729 Marines and will both include company offices and laundry facilities.

The contract also contains 3 unexercised options, which, if exercised, would increase the cumulative contract value to $65.6 million. Work will be performed in San Diego, CA and is expected to be completed by May 2011. This contract was competitively procured via the Navy Electronic Commerce Online website, with 15 proposals received by the Naval Facilities Engineering Command Southwest in San Diego (N62473-09-C-1205).

MCRD San Diego is a major USMC recruit training base in the United States…

Honeywell Gets $25.3M to Supply F-16 Circuit Card Assemblies

USAF F-16s over Iraq

Honeywell International in Albuquerque, NM received a maximum $25.3 million firm-fixed price, sole-source, indefinite delivery/ indefinite quantity contract for aircraft circuit card assemblies for the US Air Force’s F-16 fighters.

The date of performance completion is Aug. 16, 2014. There was originally 1 proposal solicited with 1 response received by the Defense Supply Center Richmond. The assemblies will be delivered to Ogden Air Logistics Center, Hill Air Force Base, in Utah (SPRHA4-09-D-0001).

The assemblies are an upgrade replacement for ones currently in the F-16 Digital Flight Control Computer (DFLCC) box…

Rosetta By Any Other Name: IBM Gets GALE-Related Work

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…