The Washington Times carries a story noting that the US State Department has canceled its installation of about 16,000 personal computers made by Chinese company Lenovo (formerly IBM’s PC division). The State Department had already installed about 900 of the PCs on its secure network in Washington, and at embassies around the world.
The move follows strong objections from the bi-partisan U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. It has significant implications for agencies and companies in the national security sector.
Small business qualifier Datapath Inc. in Duluth, GA received a $73 million firm-fixed-price contract for equipment and support services, for portions of the Joint Network Node network. Work will be performed in Duluth, GA and is expected to be complete by Aug. 31, 2007. This was a sole source contract initiated on April 5, 2006 by the Army Communications-Electronics Command in Fort Monmouth, NJ (W15P7T-06-C-G205).
Major General Michael R. Mazzucchi, Program Executive Officer Command, Control and Communications Tactical (PEO C3T), has described the origins and development of the JNN program this way:
Datapath equipment
“The recent conflict [i.e. the Global War on Terror] clearly showed that our terrestrial network fell woefully short in three areas: radio ranges did not meet the need; isolated yet critical nodes could not be readily defended; and bandwidth to battalion echelon was virtually non-existent…”
The German Ministry of Defence and the U.S. Department of Defense signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on May 16, 2006 establishing the base conditions for U.S./German cooperation on the RQ-4 Global Hawk-derivative “Euro Hawk” UAV. The government-to-government MoU is cited by EADS and Northrop Grumman as a critical step towards the Euro Hawk risk-reduction contract, which is expected in autumn of 2006.
The TEC, Inc. Joint Venture in Charlottesville, VA received a firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/ indefinite-quantity contract for architect-engineer services for environmental planning. The total contract amount is not to exceed $40 million (base year and four options years) with a guaranteed minimum of $56,000. Work will be performed predominantly at Hawaii, Guam, Saipan and various locations under the Naval Facilities Engineering Command Pacific (NAVFAC Pacific), other NAVFAC components, or other governmental agencies for which NAVFAC Pacific is tasked to provide assistance. The exact location of individual efforts will be designated on individual contract task orders, and the contract will expire in May 2007 (May 2011 if all options are exercised.
This contract was competitively procured via the NAVFAC e-solicitation website with four proposals received. The Naval Facilities Engineering Command, Pacific in Pearl Harbor, HI issued the contract (N62742-06-D-1870).
