The NATO Communications and Information (NCI) Agency announced March 27 it will be putting 40 contracts out to tender in the following 18 to 24 months as part of a $3.3 billion tech refresh.
The agency will provide more details of the contract opportunities at its annual industry conference, the NCI Agency Industry Conference and AFCEA TechNet International (NITEC 17), which will be held on April 24-26 in Ottawa, Canada.
NATO said its Service Line Chiefs and Program Managers will discuss tangible opportunities coming to market. The international competitive bids will include expanding satellite communications bandwidth for deployed forces (over $1.8 billion); a refresh of NATO’s cyber shield as part of investments in Cyber Security Services ($77 million); command and control ($869 million); a continuing upgrade of NATO’s networks ($239 million); and advanced software improving NATO’s situational awareness and command and control in operations ($196 million).
The 40 contract opportunities are part of NATO’s common funding, which is finalized by all 28 member nations. The $3.3 billion in opportunities for 2017 is roughly the same as announced in 2016 and both are large increases over 2015’s $869 million.
“They [the 2016 and 2017 contracts out to tender] represent a steady, continuing and significant investment in maintaining NATO’s technological edge, the ability to rapidly deploy and sustain forces and to address new threats and challenges (such as cyber threats),” the NCI Agency said in a statement,
The agency highlighted that one key aim of the NITEC 17 conference will be to further expand NATO’s industry partnerships to engage small and medium enterprises as well as innovative, cutting-edge businesses. This is particularly important in the wake of increasing cyber threats and is a process that started at the 2014 Wales Summit and 2016 Warsaw Summit, the NCI Agency said.
The conference will offer participants with the opportunity for one-on-one meetings with NCI Agency acquisition experts, workshops on common mistakes in bid proposals, and the fundamentals of doing business with the agency.
NITEC 17 will be held in cooperation with AFCEA Europe and Canada’s Department of Defence.