ATABS J-A - REDACTED.pdf

DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY

NAVAL AIR WARFARE CENTER AIRCRAFT DIVISION

IN REPLY REFER TO:

J&A_18_0558

JUSTIFICATION AND APPROVAL

FOR USE OF OTHER THAN FULL AND OPEN COMPETITION

1. Contracting Activity.

Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWC-AD) Lakehurst, NJ

2. Description of the Action Being Approved.

This justification and approval authorizes and approves on a sole source basis the acquisition of

342 modifications kits, including installation, to upgrade the Automated Track and Balance Set

Computer Indicator Power Supply, ATABS CIPS, P/N 1576AS110-3, NIIN 01-546-0108, to address obsolescence issues. This effort includes NRE for qualification and verification

(functional, software, environmental), and logistics updates.

3. Description of Supplies/Services.

The ATABS is PMA-260 Common Support Equipment used at USN/USMC Organizational maintenance activities to perform propeller and rotor blade tracking and balancing for C-2, E-

2C/D, H-3, H-53, and H-60 aircraft. ATABS has experienced significant obsolescence issues.

Failure to address obsolescence issues will lead to significant degradation of system availability.

The ATABS Obsolescence ECP will upgrade the Computer Integrated Power Supply (CIPS) using Commercial off the Shelf (COTS) components to replace the outdated and obsolete components. Changes to the existing CIPS will include an upgraded Central Processing Unit

(CPU), replacement of the obsolete floppy drive with newer media, and an upgraded display. No software changes are anticipated that affect aircraft peculiar functionality for tracking or balancing of rotor blades or propellers. The effort will be accomplished by ACES-Dynamic

Instruments, who is the OEM and the commercial depot. ACES-Dynamic Instruments will develop and install an upgrade kit for the ATABS Computer Indicator Power Supply (CIPS) to address the obsolete components that they are no longer able to obtain to perform repairs.

The ACES-Dynamic Instruments contract will include the purchase of up to 342 upgrade kits, including installation, and efforts to qualify, and verify the kits will successfully upgrade the equipment to a new supportable configuration that will meet all requirements. The estimated contract value also includes: non-recurring engineering costs, and data deliverables to assess the technical progress of the effort.

Estimated Dollar Value in Thousands

FY 18 FY 19 FY 20 FY 21 FY 22 Total

APN7 1538 1128 2376

OPN

O&MN

Total $5042 K

4. Statutory Authority Permitting Other Than Full and Open Competition.

10 U.S.C. 2304(c)(1), Only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements.

5. Rationale Justifying Use of Cited Statutory Authority.

ACES-Dynamic Instruments is the original designer, developer and manufacturer of the ATABS and is the only source with the requisite knowledge, experience and technical expertise to develop and deliver a modification kit to address the obsolescent parts in the unit. ACES-

Dynamic Instruments was competitively selected as the source for the ATABS, P/N

1576AS100-4 Rotary Wing Set and 1576AS100-5 Fixed Wing Set on contract N68335-98-D-

0058. The selected contractor was not willing to provide data rights for the design as part of this contract. The design is proprietary and drawings are owned by the OEM. The vibration solutions provided by the unit were established with considerable time and effort invested by the government and contractor. These process used by the maintainers, as directed by technical manuals, are developed around this unit. Changing to a “new” unit with different processes and solutions would ripple through aircraft manuals and training programs. Updating the unit without changing the processes or solutions will have a far less impact on fleet operations.

The time and cost to develop a new source would be significant. To field new equipment would take a minimum 3.5 years, consisting of two years to go through technical reviews, and verification, 1 year to go through validation, and to get to a production decision, and then another 6 months to a year to reach an IOC. The cost to field a new unit is approximately

$9.6M. This includes approximately $2M of contractor NRE, $1M of contractor ILS efforts, $3M of government workload for efforts ranging from technical reviews, testing, and oversight.

In addition, the recurring cost of $3.6M, based $25K more per new unit for 144 units. Therefore, award of a contract to any other source would result in substantial duplication of costs that are not expected to be recovered through competition.

6. Description of Efforts Made to Solicit Offers from as Many Offerors as Practicable.

ATABS RFI N68335-17-R-0429 was posted 30 August 2017 on the FEDBIZOPS website and closed 02 October 2017. Two companies responded to the RFI TEC-ACES-Dynamic

Instruments and Helitune. TEC-ACES-Dynamic Instruments response was to address the obsolescence by providing and upgrade kit to replace the obsolete components, with all other established capabilities, solutions, and processes being preserved. This approach has minimal impact to fleet operations. Helitune’s submission addressed a complete replacement system.

This approach has significant impact to fleet operations. Revisions to aircraft vibration manuals, development of logistic support for the new support equipment, revisions to training for the aircraft maintainers on vibration analysis. Because we have no history with Helitune’s unit the government would require the contractor to go through a lengthy and costly process to field a fully supported product. The contractor would be required to perform design reviews with

CDRL’s to back them up in order to assess the unit’s capability to meet our functional and environmental requirements. After successfully completing these efforts the contractor would be required to deliver a pre-production unit for qualification. Qualification would consist of performing environmental testing, including: temperature, shock, vibration, altitude, humidity, etc. Another environmental requirement would be EMI. Functional testing will be performed, which would entail an extensive side by side test between this unit and our legacy equipment to show that in every situation both units provide the same solutions. To accomplish this would require significant reverse engineering as this design is proprietary. If the contractor government team is unable to address the functional requirement in this manner, then we would have to resort to a full software integration effort on all of the platforms we are required to support: H-

60, H-53, E-2. This integration effort would likely take at least 1year to complete and because the testing is on aircraft it is very expensive. No additional market research was conducted because it is not practicable, for the reasons discussed in paragraph 5 above, for any company other than ACES-Dynamic Instruments to provide the required supplies and services.

7. Determination of Fair and Reasonable Cost.

The negotiation and establishment of a fair and reasonable price will be conducted in accordance with FAR 15.4. As stated in FAR 15.402, the Contracting Officer shall purchase all supplies and services at a fair and reasonable price. The proposal will be reviewed by experienced technical analysis, cost analysis and contract specialists with the aid of necessary field pricing support.

The contracting officer will utilize commercial pricing and certified cost and price data for analysis as the basis for negotiating a fair and reasonable price.

8. Actions to Remove Barriers to Future Competition.

For the reasons set forth in Paragraph 5, PMA260 has no plans at this time to compete future contacts for the types of supplies/services covered by this document. If another potential source emerges, PMA260 will assess whether competition for future requirements is feasible.