The Air Force is generating competition for space launch range support contracts like communications upgrades by targeting small businesses, according to the service’s top range officer.
Air Force Spacelift Range and Network System Division Chief Col. Janet Grondin said Friday when the service modernized how it contracts for range services, it took the ones for support and held a competition for small businesses. She said by competing some of these support contracts to small businesses, the Air Force is develop competition and interest.
Grondin said competing niche capabilities like communications upgrades to small businesses works well because they don’t require the manpower that only large prime contractors can provide.
“I think it’s because of the niche capabilities that we’re modernizing and because of the fact that you probably only need a few people to do the development for some of the things we need,” Grondin told an audience at a Peter Huessy congressional breakfast series event on Capitol Hill. “That really does lend itself nicely to small businesses.”
Grondin said the Air Force has a small business developing its command destruct. A large business will integrate the program, she said, but the small business is developing the hardware and software for the program.
The Air Force, Grondin said, is in source selection for the Range Operations Support (ROS) contract, which covers base operations and support at both Vandenberg AFB, Calif., and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. She said the service also separately competed the communications upgrade for the Cape and that this program is just past its preliminary design review (PDR) and on its way to its critical design review (CDR). Grondin said the Air Force is also in source selection for a small business set aside competition for Vandenberg.
The Air Force likes competing the support contracts to small business, Grondin said, because they really want the work and, for example, a contract worth less than $100 million makes a bigger difference to a small business as opposed to a large prime. Small businesses, she said, also want the prestige of working with the Defense Department.
The Air Force in recent years has reformed the way its contracts services to maintain its launch ranges by consolidating many launch range sustainment contracts into one. It recently awarded its long awaited Launch Integrated Support Contract (LISC) to a joint venture of Raytheon [RTN] and General Dynamics [GD] called Range Generation Next LLC. LISC is initially worth $86 million, but could be worth as much as $2 billion if all options are exercised (Defense Daily, Jan. 9).