DOD hands down $800M microelectronics contract

The Defense Department’s primary microelectronics design and prototyping organization has awarded three small businesses positions on a potential 10-year, $800 million contract for engineering services to support the development of technology insertions and applications.

Eleven bids were submitted for the small business portion of the Defense Microelectronics Activity’s Advanced Technology Support Program IV vehicle. ATSP IV also can support foreign military sales efforts during the ordering period, the Defense Department said in its Friday contracts digest.

Awardees are RF Integration, Teledevices and a three-way joint venture of Alpha Research & Technology, Desert Microelectronics Associates and MicroNet Solutions. The contract has a base period of two-and-a-half years, three two-year options and another option of one-and-a-half years.

They will bid for task orders to help DOD resolve issues with obsolete, unreliable, unmaintainable, underperforming, or incapable electronics hardware and software. The companies will focus on new technology insertions and applications to help DOD establish more quick reaction capabilities.

DMEA took a different approach for this iteration of ATSP contracts with the award of separate small business and full-and-open tracks.

The agency awarded ATSP IV’s full-and-open portion in March 2016 to eight large businesses. That contract has a ceiling of $7.2 billion for up to 10 years that cover a base period of two-and-a-half years, three two-year options and another option of one-and-a-half years.

Those awardees are Aeroflex (acquired by Cobham), BAE Systems Inc., Boeing, General Dynamics, Honeywell, Lockheed Martin, Northrop and Raytheon. All of those except for Aeroflex were incumbents from the third iteration.