Round 2: Air Force grows roster for multi-domain tech effort
By
Ross Wilkers
The Air Force names more companies eligible for up to $950 million in work to help build out an open data architecture environment for multi-domain operations.
The Air Force has grown the roster of companies eligible to compete for up to $950 million in task orders to help build out an open data architecture environment to support multi-domain operations across the military.
In a release Tuesday, the Air Force said it made awards to 18 new companies on top of the 28 initial selections announced in June. Two bids from legacy Raytheon Technologies businesses were chosen in round one, so 35 companies can be considered winners.
New awards went to:
- Accenture Federal Business
- Ball Aerospace
- Black River Systems
- Booz Allen Hamilton
- CAE USA
- Cubic’s (GATR Technologies subsidiary)
- Global Air Logistics and Training
- Leidos
- Mercury Systems
- Metron
- NetScout Systems
- Octo Consulting
- Omni Fed
- Rincon Research
- Rise8
- Science Applications International Corp.
- Strategic Mission Elements
- Wind River Systems
Companies will vie for funds over the next five years to provide products and services that will become part of the Advanced Battle Management System, which the Air Force views as its primary mechanism to make the Joint All Domain Command and Control concept happen.
The Air Force has requested $3.3 billion in funding for ABMS over the next five years, over which the Air Force will hold on-ramp exercises to test and evaluate how the proposed technologies could work in an operational environment.
Work will take place across seven different product categories of digital architecture, engineering and concepts, sensor integration, all-domain data, all-domain secure processing, all-domain connectivity, all-domain applications and effects integration.
Fair opportunity requests in those categories will go to the companies, which will then bid for the contracts to mature technologies and see how they work during the on-ramps. Validated capabilities then get integrated into current battle network plans.