Satellite Smorgasbord
NEW ARMY CONTRACT WILL CREATE AN
EXPRESS LANE FOR BUYERS OF
SATELLITE EQUIPMENT AND SERVICES.
Reflecting the military’s heavy reliance on commercial satellites, the Army is moving ahead this spring on a $5-billion contract that will enable users to rapidly purchase a comprehensive array of satellite equipment and services in a competitive environment.
The procurement vehicle, known as the World Wide Satellite System (WWSS) is an example of a government contracting trend in which program managers include the gamut of hardware, software and services in a single contracting vehicle.
The project manager, Defense Communications and Army Transmission Systems (PM DCATS) and project manager, Warfighter Information Network-Tactical (PM WIN-T) jointly issued a request for proposal (RFP) for WWSS early this year. Proposals from vendors were due in March, and awards are anticipated during the third quarter of the year.
The contract will include $5-billion spending ceiling over five years to acquire six satellite terminal types, operating on a variety of military and commercial satellite bands, including C, Ku, X and Ka, together with all necessary hardware, software, services and data for operation and sustainment of the systems. The six terminal types are: combat support service very small aperture terminal (VSAT); fixed station satellite terminal; flyaway VSAT satellite terminal; military certified satellite terminal; prime mover/trailer mounted satellite terminal; and deployable satellite earth terminal.
The contract will be open to the Department of Defense and other federal government agencies for the acqusition of satellite equipment related to the global transmission of data, video and voice communications. Bidders must respond by detailing their capabilities with respect to six sample task orders.
The WWSS program is significant on a number of levels, analysts say. First, it represents the consolidation of much of the military’s satellite hardware, software and services needs into one contract vehicle, which will mark a departure from earlier practices.
Another noteworthy feature is the double-tiered competition for task orders. The first contest takes place with respect to the RFP, through which the government intends to award between four and six prime contracts (including two to small businesses) to bidders that can provide the gamut of terminal types and associated services.
The second tier will involve competition among the prime contractors for actual delivery orders. As requirements arise, the Army will issue a request for task execution plan, which will be competed among the prime contractors.
Many companies, especially those with integration and project management expertise, claim that this process will deliver a combination of value and speed to the government. But others, including terminal manufacturers, are questioning the Army’s approach.
A large and growing proportion of the bandwidth used by U.S. forces in the Middle East come off commercial satellites. As the military continues to emphasize net-centric transformation, its bandwidth needs will continue to grow. The WWSS program may represent a new DoD preference for commercial satellites over their military counterparts for in-theater communications, analysts suggest.
RAPID RESPONSE
The structure of the contract is intended to ensure that the military can speedily satisfy the emerging needs of warfighters. “Its goal is to quickly respond to troops to meet their satellite communications equipment needs in an expeditious way,” said Julius Asmus, director of sales at NARDA Satellite Networks, an L-3 Communications division. “The intent is to expedite the normal procurement flow to accommodate the needs of the warfighter.”
NARDA is participating in the WWSS bidding process as a subcontractor.
“In the past, individual program managers would purchase specific equipment by issuing a request for proposals and letting the contract six to nine months later,” said Arthur Reiff, deputy project manager for DCATS. “If the need was urgent, they could identify a vendor on a sole-source basis. WWSS offers the ability for DoD to purchase satellite equipment and services in a competitive environment in about 30 days.”
The Army also wants to narrow its number of prime contractors in order to focus responsibility for the timing and quality of deliverables to a small number of parties. “They want to go to one contractor for responsibility to deliver anything they need,” Asmus said “If something goes wrong, they want to go to the entity responsible for the delivery of the equipment. This is something you see more and more of in government contracting today, although it has usually been reserved for services contracts rather than hardware procurements.“
Besides the equipment purchases, services under the contract will include provision of technical expertise, life-cycle support packages, training, configuration management, system installation, operations, maintenance, terminal leasing and spares depot management. “We believe this contract covers everything we’ll need from this industry,” said Reiff.
The WWSS requirements will be divided roughly evenly between hardware, software and services, said Marcus Fedeli, manager for federal opportunity products at INPUT, a market research firm.
“The Army is looking for a turnkey solution except for the bandwidth,” noted Ed Allman, vice president of capture and contracts at Arrowhead Global Solutions, a WWSS prime contract bidder. “The sample task orders involve different scenarios. The government will judge how bidders respond to each of these to see if they meet program requirements.”
In fact, the contract specifically excludes the purchase of satellite time. “That is reserved for the Defense Information Systems Agency [DISA],” Reiff explained.
TEAM EFFORT
“WWSS represents a way of satisfying the military’s need for increased reliance on satellite communications,” said Tom Michelli, president of Michelli Associates, which advises companies on defense contracting. “The Army has realized through recent operations in the Middle East that satellite communications gives them command and control and logistics reachback that they’re not going to get from ground mobile systems.”
This is the first time the Army has grouped together all these different segments of satellite technology in one contract vehicle, according to Michelli. In the past, separate contracts were issued for discrete hardware and services needs. “This covers the Army and DoD in a one-stop shop vehicle,” he added.
As director of the Army Information Systems Management Activity and deputy PEO for Strategic Information Systems, Michelli was previously responsible for implementation of Army telecommunications and information systems. Among his clients participating in the WWSS solicitation are Northrop Grumman’s Baltimorebased electronic systems division and Eyak Technology, an Alaska native-owned company.
The variety of products being sought under the WWSS umbrella means that candidates for the prime contractor slots will have to team with others in order to fulfill the vehicle’s requirements. That prospect could present problems, Fedeli cautioned. “Contractors in this space don’t always do things that way. Many of them may not be used to teaming up together.”
For that reason, Michelli believes that integrators have the inside track when it comes to WWSS. “It creates a vehicle in which integrators, rather than terminal manufacturers, enjoy the lead,” he said.
Among the four to six prime contractors and their teams, the WWSS program may be able to draw on as many as 30 contractors and subcontractors under one vehicle, Asmus suggested.
Mary Ann Elliott, chief executive officer of Arrowhead, agreed that companies that provide expertise in integration, engineering design and major project management have advantages when it comes to winning a WWSS prime contractor slot. “We like to think of ourselves as an honest broker providing independent analysis to offer the best from among the plethora of available products and services,” she said. “Only companies such as Arrowhead that can provide a broad base of support, including ongoing help desk and client interfaces, will be chosen for WWSS.”
For Elliott, WWSS’s comprehensive scope is an important element of the government’s contracting strategy. “As the government has downsized the overall force, they no longer have a large body of experts on staff to be able to do the technical selection for each of these contracts and task orders,” she explained. “By getting multiple bidders to go around and find the best solutions to offer back to the government, it allows the government to continue functioning in a high-quality manner with limited people devoted to oversight.”
The Army’s approach to WWSS will prove to be advantageous and cost effective, Elliott said. “In the past, Army procurements involved the research and development of new types of terminals. This involved a two- or three-year procurement cycle, and when the product finally came out, it was obsolete. With WWSS, commercial off-the-shelf hardware will be only a task order away.”
Arrowhead has already won a number of satellite-related military contracts and tasks, including a DISA task order to design, equip, install, support and monitor a VSAT satellite network for the Defense Commissary Agency and Consolidated Distribution Centers. That task, awarded under the Defense Information Systems Network Satellite Transmission Services-Global contract, involves 280 commissary and distribution installations worldwide.
SKIP THE MIDDLEMEN?
A different perspective comes from Ric Vandermeulen, director of government broadband for ViaSat, who questions whether the government’s contracting strategy will produce efficiencies. “They will just be selecting four to six resellers or middlemen,” he contended. “The prime contractors will be allowed to take 20 percent off the top of the $5 billion over five years. I’m selling the same products the Army is after in the commercial marketplace and I’m perfectly willing to sell the same products to the government on the same terms and without the red tape.”
ViaSat, which manufactures a variety of satellite network terminals among other products, is preparing a prime contract bid in response to the WWSS RFP. The company is also being asked to provide its products to other prime contract bidders, Vandermeulen said.
“As an equipment provider, I’ve also got to sell myself to the four winners, which makes my job four times tougher,” he said. “I understand the advantages of having integrators as prime contractors in some programs. But I wouldn’t hire an integrator to buy product off the shelf. What does the warfighter get out of this if it ends up paying more for my product? This seems to me to be a limiter and not an enabler of competition.”
NARDA’s Asmus disagreed with this assessment, contending instead that “the government wins twice.”
“In the first place, it gets contractors that are competent through the RFP process,” Asmus contended, “and then those same contractors compete again for task orders.”
The Army could save money, Vandermeulen acknowledged, by having the contract in force for five years, thus obviating the need to draft a new contracting vehicle. But “each one of the task orders coming out over the next five years must be processed independently with its own statement of work,” he added. “This contract vehicle doesn’t make any sense to me from a warfighter or industry standpoint.”
Mike Shakarji, Arrowhead’s vice president for satellite services, said there will be two types of companies vying for the WWSS contracts—integrators and manufacturers—and that equipment manufacturers are likely to be frustrated by the nature of the contract. “Manufacturers are used to marketing their own products and that’s what they know,” he said. “Companies like Arrowhead are above the clouds and know who is doing what in these areas. We can pick and choose to bring value to the government.”
“We’ll be able to offer three or four solutions for each terminal type,” noted Allman, “as opposed to a manufacturer that can provide only its own product.” He added that Arrowhead’s team will consist of at least 15 companies, and perhaps significantly more, including small firms.
As far as the $5-billion ceiling goes, Asmus believes that level is sufficient to meet warfighter needs over the term of the contract. “These things have way of eating pretty quickly into the available funding,” he said. “So the $5 billion is not that extraordinary.”
Elliott predicted that the competition will draw a large number of bidders. “They will be formed primarily by companies such as ours that have consolidated groups that have worked together in the past and that can work together in an efficient and profitable manner in the future,” she said.
“WWSS will bring the warfighter access to a newer satellite constellation, with multiple frequencies, modes of access and types of satcom terminals. As part of the ViaSat team, we’ve leveraged our commercial satcom capabilities to minimize recurring costs for various terminal types—plus offer easy upgrade capabilities to Ka band frequency as those constellations come online,” said Ron Johnson, president of Alcatel Government Solutions. “We’ve focused our efforts to provide some very technically strong, globally proven solutions, including the ability to easily interface with other communication systems, for example GSM, maximizing flexibility in real-world deployment.” ♦
