$165.3M for US Aircraft Carrier Maintenance and Materials

CVN 65: Where no carrier
had gone before…

Earl Industries LLC in Portsmouth, VA received a five year Multi-Ship Multi-Option (MSMO) cost-plus-award-fee contract with a total evaluated cost of $165.3 million. This contract covers work on four CVN-68 Nimitz Class Aircraft Carriers, which include Planned Incremental Availabilities, Docking Planned Incremental Availabilities, and scheduled/ unscheduled continuous maintenance repairs. The vessels involved are USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69), USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71), USS George Washington (CVN 73), and USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75). The contract also allows for options to accomplish scheduled and unscheduled repairs on the USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70) and the Enterprise Class carrier USS Enterprise (CVN 65), the world’s first nuclear carrier.

Iran’s RPG Surprise

Back on December 8, 2005, DID ran a story about Forecast International’s market forecast for the $5.33 billion man-portable anti-armor and bunker buster weapons market over the next decade. We mentioned that the Russians were poised to dominate production with the RPG-26/27, and that the market itself was bifurcating into state-of-the-art, high cost designs (mostly from Europe) and cheaper, simpler weapons (mostly Russian and ex-Soviet) – but there was also a piece of interesting information embedded deeper in the report.

“Iran’s Defense Industries Organization (DIO) will be the most significant player involved in RPG-7 production during the forecast period. Iranian licensed production of the RPG-7 will account for 4.25 percent of all new man-portable anti-armor and bunker buster weapons production, worth 2.88 percent of the total market value, through 2014.”

That translates into a production total of over 80,000 weapons, with half of that estimated production occurring in the 2005-2008 period. Three guesses where many of those RPG-7s will end up… and have a look at “Phase Four Operations in Iraq and the RPG-7” by the US Center for Army Lessons Learned. Readers interested in the full report should contact FI.

BAE Receives $20M to Rebuild More Bradleys

BAE Systems Land & Armaments in York, PA received a $20 million cost-reimbursable contract for FY 2006 RESET of M2/M3 Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles. Reset programs restore used vehicles to like-new condition, then return them to service.

Work will be performed in York, PA (83%), Aiken, SC (5%), San Jose, CA (8%), and Fayette, PA (4%), and is expected to be complete by Dec. 31, 2006. This was a sole source contract initiated on Oct. 18, 2005 by the Army Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command in Warren, MI (W56HZV-05-G-0005).

MPRI to Operate Iraq Artillery Range for Another Year

On March 11, 2005, DID noted that MPRI, Inc. of Alexandria, VA had won a $7.4 million contract to operate the Butler Military Artillery Range near Baghdad, Iraq until Dec 31, 2005. The US government has apparently renewed it for a full year via an $8.8 million modification to their firm-fixed-price contract (W27P4C-05-C-0796). Work will be performed in Baghdad, Iraq, and the contract will end on Dec. 31, 2006. Bids were solicited via the World Wide Web on Dec. 11, 2004, and three bids were received by the Victory Contracting Office in Baghdad, Iraq.

NAVSEA Web Sites Down

Some DID readers may have noticed that the US Naval Sea Systems Command’s (NAVSEA) public access web sites have been down for several days.

DID asked about this at NAVSEA and was told that their system was taken offline for investigation and cleanup, that there may have been problems with the firewall, that investigations are still on going, and that the systems will remain down until further notice.