The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) awarded Northrop Grumman [NOC] and
Owl Cyber Defense Solutions LLC spots on a potential five-year $249 million contracts for development, testing and implementation support of the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) Cross Domain Solutions (CDS) work.
MDA is the implementing agency for the FMS CDS, which the contract announcement described as a means of information assurance “that will provide the ability to manually or automatically access or transfer information between two or more differing security domains.”
The companies spots are on competitive multiple-award, indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity firm-fixed price and cost-reimbursement contracts with a five-year ordering period that will end on June 2027. The ceiling value of $249 million is shared across all awardees.
FMS funds will be used to fund the task and delivery orders under the contracts in the next stage. MDA said it specifically received FMS CDS cases with Qatar and Morocco for an FMS CDS solution.
The award notice added each awardee will be “provided a fair opportunity to be considered for each order,” unless an exception applies for the order.
The announcement said these contracts were competitively procured.
According to a 2019 Defense Security Cooperation Agency memo, CDS devices are intended to protect U.S. classified military information that will exist on partner nations’ network architectures after U.S. sensors or weapons systems are transferred via a Foreign Military Sale (FMS).
The memo also noted CDS devices are “integrated systems of hardware and software that enable the transfer of information among otherwise incompatible security domains or levels of classification. They also allow the DoD to transfer classified and unclassified information from U.S. Government networks to partner networks by filtering unauthorized messages and malicious files and protect both U.S. and FMS customer systems, networks, and data.”
MDA was designated the implementing agency responsible for standalone FMS Cross Domain Solutions in the memo.