Northrop Grumman Technical Services, Inc., of Herndon, VA received a 4-year, $252.3 million firm-fixed-price C-20 Contractor Logistics Support (CLS) follow-on contract. The U.S. Air Force, Army, Navy and Marine Corps all operate C-20 aircraft, which is the military designation for Gulfstream III/IV business jets. The Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center at Tinker AFB, OK manages this contract (FA8106-08-C-0010).
Northrop Grumman’s release adds additional members of the team: M7 Aerospace of San Antonio, TX; Jet Aviation subsidiary Savannah Air Center in Savannah, GA; and Rolls-Royce North America in Montreal, Canada. Together they will provide depot maintenance, supplies, flight line maintenance and field team support for the C-20s at Ramstein Air Base in Germany; Hickam Air Force Base and Marine Corps Air Station Kaneohe Bay in Hawaii; Sigonella, Italy; and Andrews AFB in MD.
C-20A-D models are Gulfstream IIIs, while C-20G/H models are the longer range Gulfstream IV. They can carry up to 12 passengers, or light cargo. VIPs, including American political figures, are frequent passengers. Past Speakers of the House have used C-20s, for example. The jets briefly made the news in 2007, when current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi [D-CA] tried to pressure the Pentagon to grant her larger planes, and carry “supporters” on her flights. The Pentagon responded with a denial of the aircraft request, and an explicit list of conditions regarding the passengers and purposes that were considered appropriate on these military flights.
After a public bidding process, Embraer and the Chilean Air Force (FACH) signed an August 2008 contract for 12 EMB 314 Super Tucano advanced turboprop trainers and light attack aircraft. The Embraer proposal chosen by the FACh includes a broad Integrated Logistic Support (ILS) package, and an advanced Training and Operation Support System (TOSS) with 3 sub-systems: navigation and attack Mission Planning Station (MPS), Mission Debriefing Station (MDS), and Flight Simulator (FS).
Chile became the Super Tucano’s 3rd customer, after Brazil and Colombia. Its predecessor the EMB 312 Tucano has been ordered by 13 countries, and a UK-built S.312 variant is in service with 3 more…
Small business qualifier and industrial safety and security specialist BriarTek, Inc in Alexandria, VA received a $19 million indefinite-delivery/ indefinite-quantity contract to install and test Man Overboard Indicator (MOBI) systems on approximately 105 US Navy ships. Work will be performed in Alexandria, VA and is expected to be complete by August 2013. This contract was not competitively awarded by the Naval Surface Warfare Center Panama City Division in Panama City, FL (N61331-08-D-0036).
On a huge, noisy ship like a 500+ foot long destroyer or 1,000 foot aircraft carrier that’s moving at over 20 knots, alerting the entire crew to a man overboard incident is a difficult challenge. Seconds count, however, especially if the ship is traveling in frigid regions like the North Atlantic. MOBI systems help to solve this problem, and BriarTek’s ORCA system goes a step beyond previous versions.
ORCA consists of a water-activated beacon worn by an individual, a receiver mounted on the ship’s bridge, and a directional finder that can pinpoint a beacon’s location even if the waves are too tall to see the person. Unlike previous systems, ORCA provides each person with a unique ID. This lets it track multiple alarms, and displays the number of people in the water during an incident. A digitally encoded message can be used to trigger or reset the bridge alarm if manual activation is needed, or an “all clear” is required due to confirmed false activation.
