commandONE_RFI_Final.pdf

Solicitation Number: RFI-RIK-20-095

Notice Type: Special Notice

SECTION 1 - INTRODUCTION

1.1 SYNOPSIS

Requests for Information (RFI) For Advanced Battle Management Family of Systems commandONE

1.2 FEDERAL AGENCY NAME

Department of the Air Force, Air Force Materiel Command, AFRL – Rome Research Site, AFRL/Information Directorate.

AFRL/RI

RFI-AFRL-RIK-20-095

26 Electronic Pkwy

Rome, NY 13441

1.3 REGULATORY INFORMATION

This notice constitutes a Request for Information (RFI) as defined in Federal Acquisition

Regulation (FAR) 15.201(e), “RFIs may be used when the Government does not presently intend to award a contract, but wants to obtain price, delivery, other market information, or capabilities for planning purposes. Responses to these notices are not offers and cannot be accepted by the

Government to form a binding contract.”

This RFI is issued solely for information and planning purposes and does not constitute a

Request for Proposal (RFP) or a promise to issue a RFP in the future. Please do not include any proprietary or funding information in any documents submitted for review. Any submitted material is subject to review by non-government personnel with non-disclosure agreements. Respondents should note that no funding has been specifically reserved for this announcement. We are soliciting RFI abstracts only. Do not submit a white paper or proposal at this time. Submission of an abstract is voluntary. Responders are advised that the U.S.

Government will not pay for any information or administrative costs incurred in response to this

RFI. All costs associated with responding to this RFI will be solely at the interested party's expense. Not responding to this RFI does not preclude participation in any future RFP, if any is issued. Respondents are advised that the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and the Air

Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC) are under no obligation to provide feedback with respect to any information submitted under this RFI.

SECTION 2 - REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI)

2.1 BACKGROUND

The Air Force Research Laboratory, Information Directorate (AFRL/RI) and AFLCMC are seeking information to assess existing software systems, packages, applications, and microservices to support the Advanced Battle Management Systems (ABMS) commandONE line of effort. Operators within the Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) battlefield ingest large amounts of information from all domain sensors and collection sources. Therefore, JADC2 operators require applications that have the ability to process data and to assist decision making at speeds required to fight in complex and highly contested battlefields. The future Air, Space, and Cyber Battle Manager at both the Operational Level (Global) and Tactical Level

(Local) require applications provided by commandONE to facilitate the ingestion of hundreds, if not thousands, of sensors and collection sources. These applications must be mission focused across all domains and tailored to meet Joint Operational requirements for the JADC2 operator at all security levels. CommandONE serves as the Command and Control (C2) application component to the broader ABMS line of effort. It is described in the ABMS Product book and seeks to provide the Application Layer Architecture needed to meet Battle Management

Command and Control (BMC2) mission requirements across Air, Space, Cyberspace and other designated domain. Specifically, the commandONE Program is intent on accomplishing the following:

• Survivability through a cloud based approach with access anywhere geographically.

• Configurability within applications to be able to meet the ever changing needs of warfighters.

• Resiliency to provide the ability to be deployed to various strategic, operational, or tactical nodes with ability to support distributed operations and cloud synchronization.

• Agility for applications to achieve continuous integration, development, and deployment.

• Interoperability through adhering to community data exchange standards and to operate with a myriad of sensor and effector systems

• Identifying existing or in-development applications and systems that can fulfill commandONE All-Domain Battle Management Functions

• Identifying application gaps in the Application Layer Architecture that can be addressed by AFRL and industry partners

• Providing a framework for performing verification and validation of systems

• Providing C2 battle management across Air, Space, and Cyber mission sets to support and improve legacy Theater Air Control System (TACS), including

AWACS, JSTARS, and Control and Reporting Center (CRC)

• Providing C2 battle management across all mission sets utilizing all domain sensing and collection sources and across all security levels

• Rapidly assigning weapon to target pairing across all domains for the Find, Fix, and Track (F2T) portion of the kill chain

• Leveraging joint capabilities and data feeds such as the following: Cooperative

Engagement Capability (CEC)/Naval Integrated Fires Counter Air (NIFCA) for assisting AEGIS and CEC/NIFCA forces, the Army’s Integrated (Air and Missile

Defense) Battle Command System (IBCS) for employment of Patriot and

THAAD, and directing and assigning Air to Air fighter employment for the Air

Force

• Developing applicable routing options, weapons pairing, and sensor placement and tasking based on Commander’s Intent to enable JADC2 mission effectiveness

The ABMS commandONE line of effort has also established a set of non-functional requirements (NFRs) and best practices that are used for evaluating applications. RFI respondents should indicate the NFR areas that their solutions have met in order to streamline the evaluation process. Please ensure that any response considers and addresses the following NFRs and best practices:

Non-Functional Requirements

Structured Logging Format for logging aggregation

Single Sign-on

Platform One on-boarding

Security Compliance/Vulnerability

Scanning Placeholder

Release Strategy

Outage time to first response < 1hr

Non-initial Request Response time

Performance Scan

No less than 2 app instances

Stateless apps

Schema Migrations

Browser support

Minimum Screen Resolution

Contract (User Acceptance criteria) /

Integration Tests

Best Practices

12 Factor App

Maintaining Continuous Authority to

Operate

Test-Driven Development

Ability to address defects

Continuous Integration and

Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) Path to

Production

Language and Service selection

Created and Last Updated timestamps

Major Theater of War test criteria

Publish scaling criteria

SD Elements

Attribute Based Access Control

Input validation

Application Programming

Information (API) Documentation

API Versioning

API Deprecation Strategy Resiliency

2.2 TECHNICAL CHALLENGE

The commandONE technical challenge has been divided into five functional areas that the RFI seeks to answer. RFI responses should address one or more of these five functional themes and should be fine-grained in addressing specific capabilities. The RFI is NOT seeking a “one application fits all” solution for the entire commandONE program. Instead the RFI seeks to determine the existing technology that addresses specific capabilities in the functional themes and the attached questionnaire. The responses will also help to determine gaps in the functional themes that will drive S&T investments in the future.

Below are five functional themes that describe the technical challenge of the commandONE

Program. These are functional themes and do not precisely mirror the functional decomposition included in the questionnaire. Respondents to the RFI should clearly discuss and identify data inputs and outputs, and system dependencies with other ABMS product lines (if known), resources, and assumptions for potential solutions in terms of the five functional themes.

Additionally, the desired Technology Readiness Level (TRL) for this RFI is level 5 or higher.

Below are the five functional themes:

2.2.1 All-Domain Battle Management Functions will uncover intersections of Air, Land, Maritime, Space, and Cyber to better support multi-domain effects. The operational focus of the effort is to ensure applications leverage distributed, resilient, cloud/edge computing capabilities and look at the lines of authorities between distributed ops. The attached questionnaire charts the components of the All-Domain Battle Management Functions, so potential solutions should clearly indicate the components they most involve. For the sake of functionality, data will be required to be standardized among commandONE applications.

2.2.2 Doctrine is the body of knowledge that guides the Air Force through principles and best practices. In the context of commandONE, relevant Doctrine drives how the Air Force conducts joint all-domain planning and the resulting joint all-domain operations. However, joint strategy is rapidly evolving to counter threats, which also requires a rapid technological response. In some cases, Doctrine does not changed fast enough for the technological response that is needed. The opportunity exists for technology to help shape new Doctrine, especially in the ISR Planning

Cycle and the Joint Planning Cycle, and to push the boundaries of what is known today.

Therefore, the manner that technological solutions adhere to current Doctrine or improve current

Doctrine should be addressed. RFI responses should consider how a capability enables advances in Doctrine or how it fits within existing Joint or Air Force Doctrine.

2.2.3 Integration is focused on bringing the All-Domain Battle Management Functions together in a manner that enables seamless interoperability amongst applications and amongst all ABMS lines of effort. Integration involves ensuring applications function properly together within their respective target operating systems and target cloud platforms. RFI responses should demonstrate how capabilities could integrate between ABMS product lines, applications, sensors, data lakes, communication networks, hosting environments, access devices, and other critical linkages. Additionally, integration involves the on-boarding of new microservices developed via Air Force software factories and development environments. Integration activities will utilize existing applications and tools at various functional levels when applicable.

2.2.4 Modeling and Simulation applications are designed to model and test the All-Domain

Battle Management Functions to determine application gaps, validate functionality, model and test interfaces, and application interoperability. Model environments that are representative of the battle management functions will be necessary for complex scenario creation. Test cases will also be necessary to establish success criteria for simulations to provide accurate application gaps. Solutions that provide modeling and test environments are welcomed.

2.2.5 Verification and Validation (V&V) is required to ensure commandONE systems produce expected results. The vision for V&V applications is to have a framework for newly developed microservices, legacy applications, and existing applications that can be turned on and off via a

“Feature Toggle”. A Feature Toggle capability enables the various functional applications to be tested independently and in conjunction with each other and compared against a test case for errors. More specifically, V&V applications shall also ensure the proper integration between All-

Domain Battle Management Function applications. All applications must follow a DevSecOps model and include Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD). Furthermore, all submitted applications will have built-in automated testing such as unit level testing enabled by a

Modeling and Simulation (M&S) environment.

SECTION 3 – RFI RESPONSES

3.1 FORMAT

A response to this RFI shall be in the form of an abstract with a completed questionnaire attached, as detailed in Sections 3.1.1, 3.1.2, and 3.1.3 of this RFI. All abstracts shall state that they are submitted in response to this announcement. The abstracts shall be limited to 8 pages and shall be double spaced with a font no smaller than size 12. The abstract shall be submitted electronically as a Microsoft Word document. The questionnaire shall be submitted electronically via the provided link. Respondents should attempt to provide unclassified abstracts and completed questionnaires. However, classified responses will be accepted as necessary.

Section 5 references the appropriate points of contact (POC) for each type of submission.

3.1.1 Abstract Section A: A cover page identifying the company or organization, street address, and the names, emails, and telephone numbers of the POC. In the case of partnerships, please provide the appropriate information for the lead POC. Also provide a short summary statement of the company’s or party’s experience/capabilities and a short summary of the organization’s experience in the areas described above. This section is not included in the page count.

3.1.2 Abstract Section B: A Technical Summary should be included to address the following:

Identify potential solutions to the Technical Challenge by addressing the five functional areas. Describe the solution’s approach and how it may be used in a joint operational environment

Describe the technical solutions in terms of specific capabilities contained in the functional themes

Clearly identify what functional area that the solution most directly supports

Identify the NFR and best practice areas that the solution have met

Provide an assessment of the value added by the identified solutions and the value of the investment

Provide a description and a rough order of magnitude for the cost of any proposed prototype or integration activity

Provide a description of the TRL of the identified solutions

Expand on questionnaire as necessary (see Section 3.1.3)

3.1.3 Attached Questionnaire: A link to the questionnaire can be found at the bottom of this document. The questionnaire shall be completed in its current form and completed in conjunction with the abstract submission. Completion of the questionnaire involves entering application information relevant to specific commandONE challenge areas as listed below:

Target Environment. Determine the DoD networks where the application is targeted to operate and include its Certificate to Field (CTF) status. Solutions targeting NIPR and capable of achieving a CTF (if not already achieved) are of highest preference.

Inputs and Outputs. Details the input data required by the application and the data output by the application.

Deployment. Indicates the deployment environment, operating systems, and system requirements to execute the application.

Functional Decomposition. The Functional Decomposition chart is the basis for all of the functional areas within All-Domain Battle Management. At the lowest level possible, respondents should list the functional areas performed by their application.

Doctrine. Determine where the application falls within the ISR Planning Cycle or Joint

Planning Cycle and how it addresses Air Force C2 Doctrine.

ABMS Categorizations. Indicates the specific ABMS systems that the application seeks to improve or integrate.

Operational-Echelon Workflow. Describe how the application fits within the

Operational-Echelon Workflow described in the questionnaire.

Target Duty Positions. Indicates the C2 operational duty positions that the application is intended to assist or complement.

3.2 ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

The submitted documentation and content thereof becomes the property of the U.S. Government and will not be returned. No solicitation documents exist at this time. This is NOT an Invitation for Bid (IFB) or a Request for Proposal (RFP). The Government does not intend to award a contract on the basis of this request. This is a request for information (RFI) announcement for planning purposes only. The Government will not reimburse costs associated with the documentation submitted under this request. Responders are solely responsible for all expenses associated with responding to this inquiry. Although proposal terminology may be used in this inquiry, your response will be treated as information only and will not be used as a proposal. This announcement is not to be construed as a formal solicitation. It does not commit the Government to reply to information received, or to later publish a solicitation, or to award a contract based on this information.

3.3 PROPRIETARY INFORMATION

This notice is part of Government market research. Information received as a result of this request will be considered as sensitive and will be protected as such. Responses to this RFI should not include any propriety information and the level of distribution should be clearly marked on all included information. The Government will safeguard all information received and protect it from unauthorized disclosure. If a response requires proprietary information to be included for completeness, the responder should contact the Submission point of contact prior to responding to the RFI.

3.4 SUBMISSION OF RFI RESPONSE

All responses to this announcement must be addressed to the Submission POC listed in Section

5.0, however, the submission itself shall be sent electronically to the submission email org box list in Section 5.0. Respondents are required to submit at least one electronic copy of the abstract and questionnaire in Microsoft Word and PDF format respectively. AFRL/RI is not responsible for undelivered emails, however, a confirmation email will be sent when a submission is received. Please contact Submission POC if you do not receive a confirmation email.

Multiple abstracts within the purview of this RFI announcement may be submitted by each respondent. For each additional abstract, an additional questionnaire should only be included if the questionnaire answers are different from one abstract to another.

RFI abstract due no later than 30 September, 2020.

SECTION 4 - INDUSTRY DISCUSSIONS

AFRL/RI representatives may, or may not, choose to meet with respondents. Such discussions would only be intended to get further clarification of potential capability to meet the requirements.

SECTION 5 - AGENCY CONTACTS

Verification of government receipt can be sent to the submission POCs and questions of a technical nature can be directed to the technical POCs:

Primary Technical POC:

Mr. John LaCreta

Telephone: 719-439-1073

NIPR Email: john.lacreta.3@us.af.mil

SIPR Email: john.m.lacreta.civ@mail.smil.mil

JWICS Email: john.lacreta@af.ic.gov

Secondary Technical POC:

Mr. John Myers

Telephone: 315-330-4812

NIPR Email: john.myers.28@us.af.mil

Primary Submission POC:

mailto:john.lacreta.3@us.af.mil mailto:john.m.lacreta.civ@mail.smil.mil mailto:john.lacreta@af.ic.gov mailto:john.myers.28@us.af.mil

Captain William “Will” Dallmann

Telephone: 315-330-2479 NIPR Email: william.dallmann.1@us.af.mil

The questionnaire itself is unclassified and we request it be completed as best as possible at the unclassified level. If there is additional classified information that would be pertinent, please contact Mr. John LaCreta, by phone or NIPR Email, to coordinate classified responses.

Classified Submission POC:

Mr. John LaCreta

Telephone: 719-439-1073

NIPR Email: john.lacreta.3@us.af.mil

SIPR Email: john.m.lacreta.civ@mail.smil.mil

JWICS Email: john.lacreta@af.ic.gov

Questions of a contractual/business nature shall be directed to the cognizant Contracting Officer, as specified below:

Ms. Alexandra Wessel

Telephone: 312-845-6064

Email: alexandra.wessel.1@us.af.mil

6.0 ATTACHMENTS

2020 CommandONE RFI Questionnaire Link

2020 CommandONE RFI Questionnaire mailto:william.dallmann.1@us.af.mil mailto:john.lacreta.3@us.af.mil mailto:john.m.lacreta.civ@mail.smil.mil mailto:john.lacreta@af.ic.gov mailto:alexandra.wessel.1@us.af.mil https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/b49e1db2686f46a9b0d54b2aec248cab