Weapon Systems | The Contracting Education Academy

December 18, 2018 By AMK

The ingredients powering DoD’s new nonlethal weapons

We may never know whether Cuba attacked American diplomats with microwave weapons — but we do know similar devices exist.

The U..S Department of Defense’s Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, along with a host of private arms companies, has spent decades testing everything from long-range wireless Taser bullets to sonic guns that can disable a car engine from 150 feet away.

The one requirement: These weapons must emit less than 10,000 joules, the amount of energy it takes to kill a person. Bombs incite wars, the thinking goes — but North Korea miiight forgive the “accidental discharge” of a directed-energy laser pulser (also, as it happens, in the works).

Keep reading this article at: https://www.wired.com/story/ingredients-powering-defense-department-new-nonlethal-weapons/

April 30, 2018 By AMK

Military seeks faster cyber acquisition turnaround

The U.S. military is employing a mixture of procurement contracts and innovative practices to speed up the acquisition of defensive and offensive cyber technology as the volume and intensity of cyber attacks and threats against government agencies — both civilian and Defense — continues to rise.

Cyberspace is a warfighting domain that is critical to ensuring the military’s capability to operate going forward. The concept of operations for defensive cyber is complex because capabilities are dispersed across the battlespace and must continually adapt to evolving threats. The capabilities must protect data, networks and net-centric operations as well as be interoperable with other IT and software-dependent systems, according to Lt. Col. Scott Helmore, director of the Army Defensive Cyber Operations office (DCO).

Traditional requirements, funding, development, production and fielding of capabilities usually span years. However, technology is advancing so rapidly, and cyber threats are becoming so much more sophisticated, that cyber weapons and tools can become obsolete within months after deployment. As a result, Army DCO is looking to reduce the acquisition process to 30 days.

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsradio.com/cyber-exposure/2018/04/military-seeks-faster-cyber-acquisition-turnaround/

April 16, 2018 By AMK

Pricetag for Pentagon’s major weapon systems grows by 10 percent

The estimated cost for procuring the Pentagon’s major weapon systems increased 10 percent in 2017, growing from $1.74 trillion to $1.92 trillion in projected costs.

Those numbers were released as part of the department’s annual Selected Acquisition Reports. The SARs cover the 83 major defense acquisition programs that make up the largest programs managed by the former undersecretary of defense for acquisitions, technology and logistics.

However, that increase is not necessarily the result of problems within the acquisition programs, with the report starting that the cost increase is due in part to adding a new major program — the CH-47F Modernized Cargo Helicopter (CH-47F Block II) — to the SAR list, as well as increased quantities on various programs.

Only two programs had Nunn-McCurdy breaches, the government standard in judging unit cost increases, both from the Navy.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.federaltimes.com/pentagon/2018/04/03/pricetag-for-pentagons-major-weapon-systems-grows-by-10-percent/

March 30, 2016 By AMK

Pentagon’s procurement system is so broken they are calling on Watson

IBM’s Watson, the computational genius that has bested Jeopardy champions, published a cookbook and even been unleashed in the fight against cancer, now has what is perhaps its greatest challenge — taking on the morass of federal procurement process.

For years, government agencies have tried to find ways to make the purchasing process more efficient. But now the Air Force has come to the conclusion that humans cannot on their own manage the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR), 1,897 pages of the densest prose on the planet. The only way to navigate a stifling bureaucracy that virtually everyone agrees it is broken, is to turn to the power of the machine.

The Air Force is currently working with two vendors, both of which have chosen Watson, IBM’s cognitive learning computer, to develop programs that would harness artificial intelligence to help businesses and government acquisitions officials work through the mind-numbing system.

The idea is to create a “bureaucracy buster, or let’s call it a decoder,” said Camron Gorguinpour, a senior official in the Air Force’s acquisitions office.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/the-pentagons-procurement-system-is-so-broken-they-are-calling-on-watson/2016/03/18/a6891158-ec6a-11e5-a6f3-21ccdbc5f74e_story.html

December 3, 2015 By AMK

Outgoing Air Force official debunks acquisition myths

Few Washington policy makers truly understand how the Pentagon develops and acquires weapon systems, and they tend to throw barbs at the Defense Department based on innuendo rather than hard data, said Air Force Assistant Secretary William LaPlante, who leaves office this week after three years as the service’s top weapons buyer.

Dr. William A. LaPlante, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition

“That’s what surprised me when I got into this job,” he told reporters Nov. 24.

There is an abundance of data that show a sharp drop in cost overruns and improved performance in Air Force big-ticket programs in recent years, but the widespread conviction on Capitol Hill and among the general public is that military procurement is broken. LaPlante believes there is a wide gap between perception and reality, and that has been a constant source of frustration. He announced last week he would leave his post to join The Mitre Corporation. He had planned to leave sooner, over this summer, but decided to stick around until the completion of the contract award for the Air Force long-range strike bomber, the service’s largest procurement in decades. Richard Lombardi, principal deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, is expected to take over as acting assistant secretary.

Keep reading this article at: http://about.bgov.com/blog/outgoing-air-force-official-debunks-acquisition-myths/

We may never know whether Cuba attacked American diplomats with microwave weapons — but we do know similar devices exist.

The estimated cost for procuring the Pentagon’s major weapon systems increased 10 percent in 2017, growing from $1.74 trillion to $1.92 trillion in projected costs.

IBM’s Watson, the computational genius that has bested Jeopardy champions, published a cookbook and even been unleashed in the fight against cancer, now has what is perhaps its greatest challenge — taking on the morass of federal procurement process.

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