Rapid Fire 2011-10-03: Materiel Readiness | Commercial Item Handbook

* NATO’s Undersea Research Centre (NURC) in Italy is testing small autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV) equipped with sonars to detect mines in shallow waters, among other applications. * The British Royal Navy plans to make up to 3,250 people redundant in the next 3 years. * When dealing with US federal contracts, it takes a lawyer to untangle whether and why a business is considered small or not. * If a US House or Senate Appropriations Committee marks a program below its President Budget amount, how do the services and DoD appeal? It’s a complex process but the Defense Acquisition University has a good walkthrough. * After a delay of more than 2 years, the US DOD releases a new 2.0 draft [MS Word] of its Commercial Item Handbook and is asking for comments by Nov. 30, 2011. The first version was published 10 years ago and covers “any item of a type customarily used by the general public, or by nongovernmental entities, for purposes other than governmental purposes”. This includes but is not limited to Commercially Available Off-the-Shelf (COTS) products. * Lousy logistics loses wars. The US GAO reckons the Department of Defense has improved its prepositioned stock management […]