Airbus parent company EADS recently announced its choice of a site in Alabama to build a new refuelling plane for the US military, as part of its bid to win the USAF’s $23.5 billion contract to supply the next generation of air-air refuelling aircraft. EADS said the Brookley Industrial Complex in Mobile, AL had beaten off competition from Florida, Mississippi and South Carolina as part of a very competitive process to host the “KC-330 Advanced Tanker” production facility, which would hire up to 1,100 personnel if EADS should win against Boeing’s KC-767. The A330 was selected as Britain’s next-generation tanker aircraft, for instance, in an innovative leasing arrangement that echoes some aspects of the cancelled Boeing KC-767 deal.
This effort is also interesting in light of EADS recent corporate and legislative challenges.
Rockwell Collins in Cedar Rapids, IA received a $351.8 firm fixed price, cost-plus award-fee, time and materials contract for the GEMS systems. GEMS will provide strategic posts and associated mobile support teams with survivable inter-site/ intra-site communications paths to receive emergency action messages (EAMs) and force management messages from nuclear command and control nodes (inter-site), then disseminate them to their bomber, tanker, and reconnaissance aircrews (intra-site).
Small business qualifier The Avraham Y. Goldratt Institute (AGI) in New Haven, CT is being awarded a $6.3 million modification to a previously awarded firm-fixed-price, cost-reimbursable, indefinite-delivery/ indefinite-quantity contract (N00421-03-D-0066) to provide additional Theory Of Constraints (TOC) design and deployment, training, and certification support for Naval Aviation Enterprise training.
Lockheed Martin in Grand Prairie, TX received a $50.8 million modification to a firm-fixed-price contract for the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System. Work on this contract will be performed in Grand Prairie, Texas (20%), and East Camden, Ark. (80%), and is expected to be complete by Sept. 30, 2007. This was a sole source contract initiated on March 1, 2005 by the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command, Redstone Arsenal, AL (W31P4Q-05-C-0018).
The GMLRS will allow the potent M270a1 MLRS and smaller wheeled M142 HIMARS rocket artillery systems to get into the fight in urban areas and other locations where precision targeting is key, by incorporating GPS/INS guidance into MLRS rockets.
Raytheon Co. in Bedford, MA received a $79.5 million modification to a cost-plus-incentive-fee contract for Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor Systems with Surveillance Radar. JLENS aerostats are used in Iraq and Afghanistan to provide consistent surveillance as well as their role in air defense networks.
Work will be performed in Bedford, MA and is expected to be complete by July 31, 2010. This was a sole source contract initiated on Dec. 29, 2004 by the Defense Space and Missile Command in Huntsville, AL (DASG60-98-C-0001).
U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) will host a joint urban operations information-sharing event at the Chesapeake Conference Center in Chesapeake, VA on July 13, from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m.
USJFCOM’s Joint Urban Operations Future Capabilities focused forum will facilitate a dialogue between the command and industry, academia, and other organizations that may be able to provide innovative technology concepts. During the July forum, USJFCOM officials will outline joint urban operations challenges in several areas, to include: command and control, weapons, training, models and simulations and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. The command is also looking for ideas to improve the realism of urban environment training via facility construction and training program improvements. See this USJFCOM page for more details.
McDonnell Douglas Corp., a wholly owned subsidiary of The Boeing Co. in St. Louis, MO, received a $102.4 million modification to a previously awarded firm-fixed-price contract (N00010-03-C-0054) to exercise an option for the procurement of 22 AN/APG-79 low-rate-initial-production III (LRIP III) Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar systems for the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet aircraft. DID has covered the APG-79 radar before. The U.S. Navy eventually plans to buy over 400 of them, and potential foreign sales span seven countries now using the F/A-18 aircraft.
Work on this contract will be performed in El Segundo, Calif. (88%); St. Louis, Mo. (6%) and Marion, Va. (6%), and is expected to be completed in December 2007. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Air Systems Command in Patuxent River, MD issued the contract.
