The Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) version of the FY ’11 Defense Authorization Bill includes a budget request of $10 million for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for the National Cyber Range (NCR), but also prohibited spending any funds until the agency provides a report to lawmakers on moving the NCR to sustainment and operations.
The NCR will be used to test and validate advanced cyber research technologies.
In the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010, the conferees noted concerns with DARPA that it had “not yet identified a transition partner for the NCR, nor were there funds programmed in any other organization’s budget to support continued operations of the NCR. The committee remains concerned about the lack of a transition path.”
The committee recommended a provision to prohibit any expenditure of funds for the NCR until 90 days after the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics submits a report to the SASC and the House Armed Services Committee on plans for transitioning the NCR to sustainment and operations.
Furthermore, funds expended on the NCR 90 days after the report is submitted can only be for research and development activities to ensure and assess the functionality of the NCR.
“This required report should determine the possible options for transition recipients, and for each option described, should clearly articulate the steps that should be taken, proposed milestones, and funding necessary for full transition. Included in the range of options, the report should consider the establishment of a government consortium of the NCR as a government-owned government-operated, or a government-owned contractor operated facility,” the report said.
In January 2009, DARPA awarded seven contracts for engineering plans for a National Cyber Range (Defense Daily, Jan. 15, 2009).
The seven awardees were: SPARTA, Inc., $8.6 million; Johns Hopkins Univ. Applied Physics Laboratory, $7.3 million; Lockheed Martin‘s [LMT] Simulation, Training and Support business, $5.4 million; BAE Systems, Information and Electronic Systems Integration, $3.3 million; SAIC [SAI], $2.8 million; General Dynamics [GD], Advanced Information Systems, $1.9 million; and Northrop Grumman [NOC], Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Systems, $344,097.