Small business qualifier Qualis Corp. in Huntsville, AL received an $8 million indefinite-delivery/ indefinite-quantity, time and materials contract to provide technical, management, and logistics services in support of the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps Robotics Systems Joint Project Office. This Congressionally-mandated entity exists to coordinate robotic vehicle development across the DoD, and works according to the DoD’s “UGV Master Plan 2005.” Programs under its influence include MTRS (iRobot & TALON) mine-disposal robots, the USMC’s Gladiator light combat robot, MDARS UAV carrier, and others. DID covered one of their working groups in its June 2005 article “Battlefield Robots: to Iraq, and Beyond.”
Services to be provided by Qualis include management and technical support and service for management of robotic systems and related life cycle logistics and acquisition. Work will be performed in Huntsville, AL (80%); and various Army and Marine Corps repair facilities located in Iraq and Afghanistan (20%), and is expected to be complete in January 2008; but all contract funds will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was competitively procured under an electronic request for proposals as a 100% small business set-aside, with 6 offers received by the Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Division in Orlando, FL (N61339-06-D-0020).