Lord Paul Drayson was an accomplished man when he entered government. The founder of the needle-free vaccination firm PowderJect reaped over GBP 80 million, rose to a seat in the House of Lords, and went from an under secretary position to a full Ministry. He then went on to accomplish a great deal over 30 months as Britain’s Minister of State for Defence Equipment and Support. Britain has become the world’s leading practitioner of availability-based support contracts for a wide range of weapons systems, major mergers of government departments have been undertaken to move that approach forward, and NAO audits have confirmed the effectiveness of the new approach. A Defense Industrial Strategy has been put in place that outlines key technical skills Britain believes it must retain, and industry consolidation and changes have followed in its wake as the industrial base moves to adjust. The country is now on track to buy full-size aircraft carriers for the first time in decades, and other shifts have begun, albeit slowly, in the land sector.
How do you top that? How about by submitting the most unusual, way-out, and flat-out interesting senior official government resignation letter we’ve ever seen. Or are likely to see in our lifetimes…
The Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington Navy Yard, DC has issued a cost-plus-award-fee, fixed-price incentive/ firm-fixed-price hybrid, indefinite-delivery/ indefinite-quantity contracts for the Phase II development, qualification, production, and support of the Common Enterprise Display System (CEDS) Display Consoles. The contract will provide CEDS Display Consoles in support of the DDG 1000 Zumwalt Class and and AEGIS destroyer & cruiser Modernization. The CEDS is a family of displays that will be implemented across platform systems on Navy surface ships, submarines, and aircraft, providing a common interface to the Platform Open Architecture Computing Environment. Remote displays will be used in conjunction with display consoles.
This is not a completely new idea. The AN/UYQ-70 (Q-70 program) builds commercial off the shelf computing into a set of ruggedized consoles that are widely used on land, airborne, naval, and undersea platforms in the USA and beyond. Winners of recent CEDS contracts include:
The American Office of the Secretary of Defense sent this on to DID, and we thought we’d pass it on to all of our readers in the Washington area. The American Veteran Center’s 10th Annual Conference begins today, and will take place November 8-10 at the Renaissance Washington Hotel. there is still time to register and attend.
The AVC conference is one of the largest annual gatherings of decorated military combat veterans, and will host some of the greatest heroes of WWII, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq/Afghanistan. It features 3 days of speaker panels, wreath laying ceremonies at the World War II, Korea, and Vietnam memorials and an awards banquet. The conference also features salutes to Medal of Honor recipients and service members wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of the participants include:
