The U.S. Air Force has awarded an additional eight spots on a potential five-year, $950M contract to develop and operate across ground, air, sea, space, electromagnetic spectrum and cyber domains in support of the Joint All Domain Command and Control program.
The companies will compete for task orders under the indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity to demonstrate, mature and proliferate capabilities across domains and platforms using open systems design and modern software, the Department of Defense said Friday.
The Air Force Life Cycle Management will use fiscal 2020 research, development, test and evaluation funds to finance initial orders and expects work to conclude by May 28, 2025.
The additional contractors are:
- ARES Security
- AT&T (NYSE: T)
- Centauri
- Cogniac
- NanoVMs
- Pacific Defense
- SRC
- Systematic
The service initially selected 27 companies in late May and added 18 vendors to the IDIQ contract in early July to develop, test and integrate new capabilities for the Advanced Battle Management System as part of JADC2.
“With ABMS we are stretching the limits of possibility for both joint all-domain operations and for defense acquisition,” Will Roper, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics and a 2020 Wash100 Award winner said in a statement published Friday. “To overcome technically sophisticated adversaries, our forces need relevant data at machine speeds. ABMS is building a militarized Internet of Things to deliver it.”
The Air Force conducts “on-ramp” exercises as part of the acquisition strategy for ABMS to experiment and evaluate technologies to help determine their capabilities in a complex operational scenario. An on-ramp exercise is set to occur by late August and another one in September.
