Since winning a major soldier-training support contract in 2008, Raytheon [RTN] has conducted five million training events and claims to have saved the Army $400 million in training sustainment costs.
Through the $11.2 billion Warfighter Field Operations Customer Support (FOCUS) program contract, Raytheon and hundreds of other subcontractors provide field logistics and other support services to training installations and events for the U.S. Army and to both the Afghan and Iraq national Armies.
Warfighter FOCUS consolidated three training support domains–live, simulated and constructive (computer programs and virtual gaming)–into one, massive 10-year training support contract that Raytheon took in 2008. Raytheon’s FOCUS contract with the Army’s program executive office for simulation, training and instrumentation (PEO-STRI) has only a couple of years left.
When it expires, former contract holders like Computer Sciences Corp. [CSC] and General Dynamics [GD] could be back into contention, though they and Engility [EGL] are major Raytheon subcontractors for the FOCUS work, however.
For now, Raytheon leads the Warrior Training Alliance (WTA), a team of more than 150 companies that conducts training and provides global sustainment services for the U.S. Army. That includes 92 digital training ranges and more than 250,000 training aids, devices, simulators and simulations.
The recent NATO Exercise Swift Response 15 was directly supported by the Raytheon-led WTA. The exercise included the largest airborne drills held in Europe since end of the Cold War, with more than 5,000 troops from 11 NATO allies taking part in exercises across Germany, Italy, Bulgaria and Romania. The event culminated Aug. 26 with more than 1,000 paratroopers making a simulated combat airborne assault at the Hohenfels training area in Germany. The WTA provides life-cycle maintenance, operations and sustainment at Hohenfels.
The milestone of five million training events was reached in August, and included soldiers who were trained on the Army’s digital ranges, as well as at the service’s combat training centers and other installations around the world. The $400 million in savings was achieved by eliminating redundancies, cross-leveling resources, and cross-training personnel, Raytheon said in a statement. The company oversees nearly the entire range of the Army’s training aids, devices, simulators and simulations, including individual laser training devices and sophisticated multi-media and virtual reality trainers.
“Reaching these unprecedented milestones was only possible as a result of the investments Raytheon has made in information systems, technology and logistics capabilities, our partnership with the WTA companies and our domain knowledge as one of the Department of Defense’s largest training partners,” Dave Wajsgras, president of Raytheon Intelligence, Information and Services, said in a statement.
Raytheon has demonstrated through the Warfighter FOCUS program that training can be effectively and competitively delivered using an integrator model, he added. “And we are very proud that 32 cents of every dollar spent on this contract has gone to small businesses,” he said.
The company also helped to make training support more predictable and collaborative by developing and deploying its Automated Toolset for Lifecycle Activities and Services Management Information System, which daily tracks more than 30 million Army spare and repair parts, while linking more than 6,000 users across 400 sites around the world with the same real-time, metric-driven information to provide accurate program situational awareness, the company said.