Officials award $589 million Weapon System Integrator contract

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HANSCOM AIR FORCE BASE, Mass. (AFPN) --  Officials with the Electronic Systems Center's 350th Electronic Systems Group awarded a $589 million contract Sept. 12 to Lockheed Martin Corp. to serve as the Air and Space Operations Center Weapon System Integrator.

With this contract, Air Force specialists will be able to aid the government's management, integration, fielding and sustainment of the AOC weapon system. 

"The overarching objective of the WSI is to improve AOC weapon system operational effectiveness and efficiency," said Capt. Tony Monnat, the WSI deputy program manager here. 

The WSI aims to do this by establishing robust metrics and systems engineering processes across the weapon system, he said. 

"In addition, it will accomplish in-depth analysis and trade studies on requirements, priorities, existing and future capabilities and infrastructure, and then make recommendations to the government and implement solutions as directed," said Captain Monnat. 

An AOC WS enables commanders to exercise command and control of air, space, information operations and combat support forces to achieve the objectives of the joint force commander and combatant commander in joint and coalition military operations. As such, it is the planning and execution engine of any air campaign. 

The WSI provides trained personnel and integrated, interoperable information systems and applications to achieve decision and execution superiority of C2 functions and processes. 

The WSI will perform numerous critical tasks, to include: 

-- systems engineering activities that address risk management, metrics, and support for the government's efforts to achieve operational safety, suitability and effectiveness;
 
-- establish and maintain configuration and performance baselines;

-- deliver an integration environment that will help third-party developers bring applications to the AOC that are more easily integrated; 

-- evolve the weapon system infrastructure to a more open, "net-centric" architecture that is Netcentric Enterprise Solutions for Interoperability compliant; 

-- accomplish objective analysis of alternatives and make recommendations to the government for new and existing capabilities and the best way to integrate them (taking net-centricity and total ownership cost into account); 

-- help the government divest itself from unnecessarily duplicative or low-return-on-investment applications; and, 

-- optimize fielding (while minimizing operational disruption), sustainment, and training. 

The initial contract award has a base of three years with priced options that can take the period of performance out to five years. The total value of the contract is estimated at approximately $1 billion for the entire five-year period of performance, including priced options. 

In addition, there are five more years of unpriced options, bringing the potential total contract period of performance to 10 years at an estimated value of $2 billion. 

The operational user has been involved from the beginning in defining the requirements and selecting the eventual WSI contractor. 

Currently, there are 19 AOC sites around the world. In April, program guidance received from the Air Staff directed the support of 23 AOC sites, grouped according to level of operations and fidelity of systems installed. 

These 23 sites include five Falconer AOCs for theater operations; four tailored Falconer AOCs for homeland and strategic defense; two functional AOCs for space and mobility; and 12 AOC support functions for integration/testing/assessment, technical support, training, backup and augmentation.