Air Force | The Contracting Education Academy

September 16, 2020 By cs

Pentagon, Defense contractors are out of step on tech innovation, GAO finds

The Pentagon wanted to fund ambitious research into future tech breakthroughs but contractors spend most of their money on safer bets, GAO has found.

Two years after the Pentagon set out to spend billions on 10 breakthrough research and engineering efforts, defense contractors instead are putting most of their money in less ambitious research projects.

The development gap between the military and its suppliers troubled investigators at the Government Accountability Office, or GAO, who determined in a report released last Thursday that the Defense Department isn’t keeping good watch over those private efforts and doesn’t know how much of it would fit into the military’s tech goals.

The Pentagon’s undersecretary for research and engineering in 2018 laid out several big idea research areas that would be most relevant to maintaining an edge on China or Russia. Many are in the very early stages of maturation; the biggest breakthroughs are expected in the second half of the coming decade.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2020/09/pentagon-defense-contractors-are-out-step-tech-innovation-gao-finds/168237/

April 13, 2020 By cs

Pentagon seeks innovative commercial tech to address COVID-19 pandemic

The U.S. Air Force — on behalf of the Defense Department — is looking outside the military for innovative commercial technology, processes, methods and research that could address the national crisis posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

On April 6, the Air Force Acquisition COVID-19 Task Force issued a solicitation for new technologies to address seven mission areas:

combating the COVID-19 spread;
welfare of citizens;
readiness;
logistics;
industrial base impacts;
medical; and
other areas that support the national response to the pandemic.

The Air Force seeks those technologies under the Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Joint Acquisition Task Force, which was launched last month to “synchronize and support the acquisition” of the Defense Department’s response for COVID-19 resources.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2020/04/pentagon-seeks-innovative-commercial-tech-address-covid-19-pandemic/164435/

The Contracting Education Academy at Georgia Tech has established a webpage where all contract-related developments related to the coronavirus (COVID-19) are summarized. Find the page at: https://contractingacademy.gatech.edu/coronavirus-information-for-contracting-officers-and-contractors/

March 5, 2020 By cs

GAO declines to limit DoD’s ‘experimental purchasing’ authority

In its recent decision in Air Tractor, Inc., the Government Accountability Office (GAO) held that the Department of Defense (DoD) may, at its own discretion, begin a project with agreements under its prototyping Other Transaction (OT) authority, and award later phases of the same project on a sole source basis under its experimental purchasing authority.

In the decision, GAO discussed distinctions between these avenues, and gave a broad reading to the DoD’s authority to award contracts for experimental work.

The past few years have seen a swell of interest in DoD’s ability to sidestep the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) and use more flexible OT authority to enter into contracts. Thus far, the majority of this interest has centered on DoD’s OT authority to enter into prototype projects, now codified at 10 U.S.C. § 2371b.

One of the most powerful features of DoD’s prototype OT authority is that DoD may award a sole source follow-on production contract for a successful prototype. Congress included some limitations on this authority to award sole source follow-on production contracts at 10 U.S.C. § 2371b(f). For example, in its decision in Oracle America, Inc., GAO confirmed that DoD must comply with all notice and other specific preconditions at the prototyping stage in order to award a sole source follow-on production contract.

However, prototype OT authority is not DoD’s only authority to award sole source contracts. The Competition in Contracting Act (CICA) itself allows for sole source awards in certain circumstances. In DRS Sustainment Systems, GAO held that DoD need not comply with 10 U.S.C. § 2371b(f) to award a sole source production contract where DoD invokes one of CICA’s exceptions to separately justify the sole source award. In addition, under 10 U.S.C. § 2373, DoD has authority to make sole source purchases for items it “considers necessary for experimental or test purposes in the development of the best supplies that are needed for the national defense.”

In Air Tractor, GAO held that DoD properly relied on its “experimental purchasing” authority under 10 U.S.C. § 2373 to purchase a set of full production light attack aircraft for use in “experiments” to determine the best use of such planes in combat support. GAO found that this purchase was acceptable because it met the requirements of § 2373 alone, regardless of the Air Force’s initial use of its § 2371b prototype OT authority to compare various candidate aircraft. GAO confirmed that while it will exercise jurisdiction to ensure agency compliance with various statutory authorities to award non-procurement contracts, GAO will not impose requirements beyond those stated in the statutes. In upholding the Air Force’s acquisition strategy, the Air Tractor decision provides valuable insight as to the broad scope of § 2373 “experimental purchasing” authority.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/Government-Public-Sector/895672/GAO-Declines-To-Limit-DoD39s-Experimental-Purchasing-Authority

January 14, 2020 By cs

How the Air Force is breaking down perceptions of Federal procurement

The Air Force’s pitch days have become so popular that several of the squadrons are excitedly borrowing the idea.

These squadrons have a good reason to expand this approach to attracting new and different companies. About 80% of all participants in the pitch days are non-traditional defense contractors.

Maj. Gen. Cameron Holt, the deputy assistant secretary for contracting in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, said he wasn’t surprised by the number of new contractors participating in this new approach to finding emerging technologies.

“We are hoping for those kinds of returns. After all, the idea of Air Force pitch days is specifically for that purpose,” Holt said at the National Contract Management Association’s Government Contract Management Symposium. “A lot is said about government contracting and the barriers being so high. In fact, many venture capital firms will be very open with young tech startups in America and tell them if their business model includes doing business with DoD, then they will not back them because the cash flows are too long, the time periods are too long and the processes are too long.”

Holt said the Pitch Days are breaking down all of those perceptions.

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/air-force/2019/12/how-the-air-force-is-breaking-down-perceptions-of-federal-procurement/

October 29, 2019 By cs

Air Force adds attitude to governmentwide category management

In the dog-eat-dog world of raising and training canines for government patrol and detection duties, federal agencies increasingly are competing not only among themselves, but also with foreign governments for a dwindling supply in a global market.

The Air Force is the executive agent for Defense Department working dogs — buying, training and breeding them at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, where the Transportation Security Administration also trains its dogs.

Late last year, Jaclyn Rubino, the director of the strategic sourcing program office at the Homeland Security Department and manager of the governmentwide security and protection category, appointed the Air Force to lead creation of the governmentwide working dog category intelligence report (CIR). In so doing, Rubio signaled support for the robust, analytics-based, requirements-focused and market-facing category management approach the Air Force follows.

Rubino flew to San Antonio and actively participated in the CIR requirements workshop. In addition, she helped reach across federal agencies including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Customs and Border Patrol, the U.S. Marshals, the FBI, the Transportation Safety Administration, and the Defense Department to win their participation and brief their working dog programs.

Not only is the Air Force leading the pack in the working dog category, it also has been charged by the Defense Department to help its fellow services learn from the Air Force approach to category management.

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/commentary/2019/10/air-force-adds-attitude-to-governmentwide-category-management/

The Pentagon wanted to fund ambitious research into future tech breakthroughs but contractors spend most of their money on safer bets, GAO has found.

The U.S. Air Force — on behalf of the Defense Department — is looking outside the military for innovative commercial technology, processes, methods and research that could address the national crisis posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Air Force’s pitch days have become so popular that several of the squadrons are excitedly borrowing the idea.

In the dog-eat-dog world of raising and training canines for government patrol and detection duties, federal agencies increasingly are competing not only among themselves, but also with foreign governments for a dwindling supply in a global market.

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