Boeing [BA] officials soon expect to receive the request for the final proposal revision in its competition with Lockheed Martin [LMT] for the military’s next generation Airborne Maritime and Fixed Station Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS AMF).
The Defense Department FY ’09 budget requests $834.6 million in research, development, test and evaluation for JTRS-Navy. The JTRS program is a DoD-wide program led by the Navy through the Program Executive Office-JTRS, located at Naval Sea Systems Command, San Diego. The FY ’09 program is to design, develop and manufacture JTRS engineering development hardware and software models.
“The next step is to receive the request for final proposal revision…similar to a [best and final offer] BAFO, updated costs and so on, and we’ll be providing that, it won’t take us long,” Leo Conboy, Boeing AMF program manager, said in a recent interview.
The Air Force is expected to award a contract “sometime this quarter,” he said.
JTRS is a family of advanced communication systems expected to replace current radios in all the services and provide secure Internet-like capabilities and networking to include voice, text, audio, and video. AMF JTRS will be integrated into more than 150 airborne, shipboard and fixed-stations.
The main request for proposal for the AMF JTRS program was released in late January 2007, proposals from Boeing and Lockheed Martin were received and the companies stood by for any questions (Defense Daily, April 2).
Last summer, the program Milestone B was delayed, but in September the program was back on track and the competing contractors updated their proposals.
“The proposal request was resubmitted in mid-October, and the next three months were spent responding to questions from the government,” Conboy said. The main process wrapped up in late December.
The questions to Boeing on the proposal “makes sure the evaluation team completely understands our approach,” Conboy said.
Boeing and Lockheed Martin supported and completed the Pre-System Design and Development (SDD) in October (Defense Daily, Oct. 17). In 2004, Boeing won a 25-month, $81 million Pre- SDD contract. Lockheed Martin was awarded a 15-month, $51 million pre-SDD contract. The work was to develop initial architectures and system designs.
The pre-SDD phase incorporated a lot of risk mitigation that could be leveraged for the program, Conboy said. If the company wins the competition, requirements would be revisited and the design validated through preliminary and critical design reviews that would lead up to low rate initial production.
Conboy said for AMF JTRS Boeing took the low risk approach, leveraging work done by Boeing on the JTRS Ground Mobile Radio (GMR), the Family of Advanced Beyond-Line-of-Sight Terminals and the Future Combat Systems.
AMF JTRS is able ity to utilize the ad-hoc mobile wireless network of vehicular and airborne platforms using the Wideband Networking Waveform created under JTRS GMR.
Also the pre-SDD focus on size, weight and power (SWA) led the program to be able to reduce power needs while still maintaining the capability warfighters wanted. SWA is important since the AMF JTRS is going in an airborne platform and is smaller than the GMR version.
Making sure maritime and fixed station key components are the same as the airborne version provides a cost break, reduces risk and aids the schedule, Conboy said.
As the Boeing AMF JTRS program awaits the Air Force decision, Conboy said they’ve been getting their team together, firming organization and details and gathering staff to hit the ground running.
The Boeing team includes BBN Technologies, Harris [HRS], L-3 Communications [LLL], Milcom Systems Corp., Northrop Grumman [NOC] and Rockwell Collins [COL].
The Lockheed Martin team includes BAE Systems, General Dynamics [GD], Raytheon [RTN] and Northrop Grumman.
A positive aspect about the wait for the contract award is that the program benefits from the maturation of other programs, such as the JTRS GMR. Some of the teammates for AMF JTRS teammates also participate on JTRS GMR.
“The program’s on track, it has more support than ever, it’s set and ready to go, the team is in place eager to go, and we’re looking forward to an award in this quarter,” Conboy said.