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April 27, 2020 By cs

OTAs given greater flexibility to foster innovation in coronavirus response

Defense Department leaders and agencies have been granted much-needed flexibility to respond to the coronavirus pandemic. 
Click on image above to open memorandum.

Last week, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition & Sustainment Ellen Lord delegated approval authority for Other Transaction Agreements (OTAs) related to the coronavirus response, consistent with Section 13006 of the CARES Act.

In an April 5 memorandum, Under Secretary Lord designated approval authorities for OTA prototype projects and follow-on production contracts and agreements as follows:

  • Above $100 million, and up to $500 million, to the Directors of Defense Agencies/Field Activities with contracting authority, as well as the Director of the Defense Innovation Unit. This authority was otherwise vested in the Senior Procurement Executives (SPEs) of the Military Departments, the Director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (“DARPA”), and the Director of the Missile Defense Agency (MDA).
  • Above $500 million, to the SPEs of the Military Departments, and the Directors of DARPA and the MDA. This authority was otherwise restricted to the Under Secretaries for Acquisition & Sustainment and Research & Engineering. Approval authority for OT prototype actions between $100 million and $500 million may now be further delegated by the SPE or Director.

In addition, in lieu of providing 30 days’ advance notice to congressional defense committees of OTAs above $500 million that are related to COVID-19, Section 13006 permits Under Secretary Lord or the Under Secretary of Defense for Research & Engineering to provide notice as soon as practicable after the OTA’s commencement.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.insidegovernmentcontracts.com/2020/04/other-transaction-authorities-given-greater-flexibility-to-foster-innovation-in-coronavirus-response/

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/

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: acquisition workforce, CARES Act, coronavirus, COVID-19, DARPA, DoD, FAR, flexibility, guidance, innovation, MDA, Missile Defense Agency, nontraditional, OTA, other transaction authority, pandemic, Pentagon, prototype, prototyping, SBIR, small business

October 28, 2019 By cs

How ‘night court’ will impact the Pentagon’s acquisition office

When U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper launched a review this summer of the departmentwide offices known as the “fourth estate,” he made it clear that everything, including cuts to programs and personnel, were on the table.

Two months into that review, clear themes have emerged, according to Pentagon acquisition head Ellen Lord: Esper isn’t looking to cut just to cut, and if offices aren’t tied directly into war-fighting needs, they may no longer belong in the Department of Defense.

Speaking on a panel at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference last Monday, Lord said several of her offices, including the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and the Defense Acquisition University, have gone through the review process.

“What we’ve seen there is more, perhaps, a pushing back of certain functions to either services or to intel,” Lord said. “Where I’ve seen a question of actually cutting the workforce is non-true DoD missions. As we’ve gone through a lot of the different areas, if it isn’t war fighting, if it’s something that one of the other agencies or the other departments across government has asked us to do, or if it’s something that should be a function of another department because it’s not about lethality, it will get cut.”

Keep reading this article at: https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/ausa/2019/10/15/how-night-court-will-impact-the-pentagons-acquisition-office

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: agency mission, DAU, Defense Information Systems Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, DoD, efficiency, government spending, Missile Defense Agency, mission, Pentagon, spending

September 18, 2018 By AMK

GAO to DoD: Fix ‘fourth estate’ inefficiencies

The Government Accountability Office is telling the Defense Department to clamp down on inefficiencies in its 19 agencies and 8 field activities — collectively known as the “Fourth Estate.”

While DoD spends billions annually on these defense agencies and DoD field activities to maintain business functions, it “does not comprehensively or routinely assess the continuing need” for them, according to a report published last week by the watchdog agency.

The Defense Department has agreed to act on GAO’s five recommendations to fix the problems. However, the DoD official who signed off — Chief Management Officer John Gibson — is reportedly being terminated by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis for non-performance.

A former U.S. Air Force finance official with a long defense industry resume, Gibson is the first-ever CMO. The job was established last year in the largest reorganization of the DoD since the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2018/09/11/gao-to-dod-fix-fourth-estate-inefficiencies/

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: Defense Finance and Accounting Service, Defense Information Systems Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, Defense Logistics Agency, DFAS, DLA, DoD, efficiency, Fourth Estate, GAO, Missile Defense Agency, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, National Reconnaissance Office

August 3, 2017 By AMK

This is the Pentagon’s new acquisition structure

The Pentagon’s new acquisition plan creates almost a dozen new offices, in what the department hopes will be a streamlined organization better able to manage the needs of today while developing the technologies of tomorrow.

On Aug. 1, 2017 the department delivered to Congress its plan for devolving the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, sustainment and technology, or AT&L, into two smaller organizations — the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, or USDR&E, and the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, or USDA&S.

Those changes are required to be implemented by Feb. 1, 2018.

Among the notable changes, three quasi-independent offices — the Strategic Capabilities Office, the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency — will be folded two levels under the USDR&E, while a new analysis cell will be set up to drive how the Pentagon invests its money for the future.

The Missile Defense Agency will also be rolled under the USDR&E, at a time when the Trump administration has made missile defense a priority for the department.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.defensenews.com/breaking-news/2017/08/02/this-is-the-pentagons-new-acquisition-structure

See DoD’s complete restructuring plan at: https://www.scribd.com/document/355353372/Section-901-FY2017-NDAA-Report

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: acquisition planning, acquisition policy, AT&L, DA&S, DARPA, DIUx, DoD, DR&E, Missile Defense Agency, NDAA, Pentagon, reorganization, research, research and engineering

August 12, 2014 By AMK

Georgia Tech Research Institute’s Huntsville operation works to shorten modeling and simulation testing

Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) researchers are working with a Huntsville, AL company and the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) to test high-altitude missiles without ever firing a shot.

AEgis Technologies, specialists in modeling and simulation, contracted GTRI’s Applied Systems Laboratory to collaborate with MDA on testing high-altitude air defense missiles. ASL is in its second phase of a multi-year project utilizing “hardware-in-the-loop” testing to enable more accurate modeling and simulation for its customer.

“Testing a missile can be very expensive,” said GTRI Senior Research Engineer and principal investigator Glenn Parker. “Additionally, because of the large number of control variables in a real exercise, it isn’t technically feasible to get complete testing coverage. High-fidelity simulation addresses many of these concerns, but even with modern processors it can take days to compute the trajectory and heat signature of a complex ballistic target.”

Hardware-in-the-loop simulations use portions of the real missile hardware, such as the seeker, with any missing pieces made up by simulated components.

“We use the missile’s actual guidance system and manipulate simulated inputs to make the hardware think it is flying,” Parker said. “By using real hardware in tests, confidence in the results is much higher than in fully simulated models. For non-reusable portions of the missile like the motor and warhead, the use of simulation models makes it possible to run thousands of test cycles without leaving the laboratory, and for less than the cost of one live test.”

With current testing models, thermal signature databases must be computed offline prior to the test, and can take up to three days for a mere fifteen minutes of simulation time. Any alteration to the parameters—altitude, weather, terrain, or even the position of the sun—requires a total re-coding of the database. Testing a missile launch from Hawaii, for example, to intercept a target at a certain distance, altitude and speed takes a long time to calculate all of the missile hardware inputs that are used in the test.

What GTRI is working on, according to Parker, will enable the simulated components to be “looped in” for real-time calculation, eliminating the need for database computation ahead of time. Using off-the-shelf NVIDIA graphics cards, the group will work to provide the seeker with simulated thermally emissive ballistic targets heated by atmospheric effects in real time. The team will be using CUDA, NVIDIA’s parallel computing architecture.

“Our goal is to calculate and provide inputs at up to 200 Hz, which means simulated measurements are sent to the seeker unit 200 times each second,” Parker said. “This will allow us to run dozens of tests in the amount of time we used to spend calculating data for a single run. Test parameters can be changed on the fly—MDA will be able to run many more ‘what if’ scenarios before fielding a defense system.”

AEgis Technologies in Huntsville is the prime contractor of the project. They will operate the Army-owned, hardware-in-the-loop test bed and generate scenarios for use in simulations. GTRI provides the expertise in real-time computing. Prior to this, AEgis had worked indirectly with GTRI’s Electro-Optical Systems Laboratory (EOSL) on the same program, which supported ultraviolet sensor testing.

“We selected GTRI based on what I knew of EOSL’s capabilities, and their expertise in GPU technology,” said AEgis Program Manager Dennis Bunfield. “GTRI’s CUDA expertise is a great value, and their expertise in verification and validation is invaluable.”

The system will be scalable, and the plan is to take what they learn from this project and use it elsewhere in the defense industry. The thermal solver aspect of the project, for example, will be useful for any simulation requiring a real-time solution for thermal image simulation.

“I think with some enhancements to the code framework, the capabilities can be extended to generate signatures in other regions, such as UV, the visible spectrum and for LADAR,” Bunfield said. “Aside from military applications, it could be possible to use the thermal solver for commercial and manufacturing applications, such as thermal analysis simulation.”

“We’re working with AEgis Technologies to best model and simulate firing and the performance of these missiles by providing scenario inputs at the true hardware rate,” Parker said. “Our main goal—writing a massively parallel NVIDIA CUDA thermal differential equation solver—will enable faster and more effective testing of high-cost components at hardware-in-the-loop testing centers.”

Source: http://gtri.gatech.edu/casestudy/gtri-huntsville-works-shorten-modeling-and-simulat

Filed Under: Georgia Tech News Tagged With: DoD, Georgia Tech, GTRI, MDA, Missile Defense Agency, modeling, testing

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