JA_Redacted.pdf

Single Source Justification (Simplified Acquisition)

UNCLASSIFIED

20 Apr 2017 UNCLASSIFIED Page 1 of 3

Section A: General Contract Information

Contracting Activity: AFLCMC/PZITA

Project/Program Name: STK Orbit add-ons

Purchase Request/Identification Number:

Estimated Contract Cost (including Options): $57,750.00

Section B: Description of the Supplies/Services Required

NASIC needs STK Orbit software in order to fulfill NASIC's missions including intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and imagery objectives. STK, coupled with other software and hardware layers, is a crucial functional layer of NASIC's imagery processing infrastructure, responsible for maintaining a 2-Dimensional (2-D) and 3-Dimensional (3-D) space analysis environment operating at the optimum level. The PoP covers 6 months of maintenance and support from the date contract award is initiated. This action will be awarded as a new Firm-Fixed Price (FFP) contract with an estimated value of $57,750

Section C: Justification for Soliciting from a Single Source or Brand Name

This acquisition is for the procurement of the AGI's STK Orbit software license which is essential to support the Government's Intelligence Community, mission partners, and the warfighter.

The procurement of the software license for STK Orbit is essential support NASIC's intelligence mission. This acquisition is for continued use of highly specialized software license which is only available from Analytical Graphics, Inc. NASIC is the Air Force center of excellence for air and space intelligence support, which provides timely intelligence information to strategic policy makers and war fighters alike. STK will be used daily by NASIC's specialized analysts. STK provides NASIC with the ability to accomplish this mission by delivering highly functional, extremely reliable, independently verified & validated software with the ability to perform complex analyses of ground, sea, air , and space assets and provide orbit determination and orbit analysis support for the entire life cycle of satellite support for the entire life cycle of satellites ad their systems. There is no other software that provides all of these required capabilities in a single, well-integrated flexible package. Therefore, this acquisition is a follow-on contract for licenses for highly specialized software.

Analytical Graphics, Inc.'s STK has proven to be integral to the work of NASIC's analysts. STK provides all the capabilities necessary to perform simulation of orbit analysis and access calculations (when a satellite can see a ground-station or image target) as well as calculations to support communications systems, radar, interplanetary missions, and orbit collision avoidance. STK provides orbit determination and orbit analysis support for the entire life cycle of satellite support for the entire life cycle of satellites ad their systems. Many of STK's orbit analysis algorithms have been independently validated and approved for use by the Air Force for space operations. An analyst using STK has the ability to create, save, and edit scenarios for any number of satellites, aircraft, targets, ships, communications systems or other object. STK also provides a scripting interface that enables STK to act within a client/server environment and a development kit for embedding STK capabilities into third-party applications. The difference between STK and applications such as Google Earth and ESRI's ArcGIS is that STK provides the physics-based packages required for moving objects and for performing the associated analysis. The difference between STK and MATLAB or other scientific analysis packages is that STK is an analysis environment that provides a high level of usability and directly applicable tools and applications to the NASIC mission whereas the others would have to be developed from scratch.

STK's RF toolbox is critical for performing complex analysis of counter-space scenarios in quick turnaround. Further, the way in which STK (professional) has enabled analysts to visualize aspects of the scenario along with real time link budget information promotes discovery of critical information and rapid development of analytical workflows that

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20 Apr 2017 UNCLASSIFIED Page 2 of 3 would not otherwise be pursued due to their complexity. STK's API allows integration with MATLAB on all levels and continues to support the automation of frequently-reoccurring analytical workflows, to include the processing of large data sets. Additionally, analysts use astrogator for analysis of terrestrial launches which may have an anti-satellite mission. Combining all of these tool-sets into one platform, allows NASIC's missions to run at higher levels than with any other software capabilities.

NASIC believes that an award to any other source would result in substantial duplication of cost to the Government that is not expected to be recovered through competition and unacceptable delays in fulfilling NASIC's mission requirements in the intelligence community. The cost to effectively bring alternative commercially available software up to the capability level present in STK is estimated in excess of $8.9M. NASIC has already invested approximately $3.7M developing customized applications to STK that integrate the application with other Government off the Shelf (GOTS) tools in use at NASIC and across the Intelligence Community. NASIC has also developed a library of STK scenarios that has taken more than 7,000 man hours (3,000 of these contractor man hours equating to approximately $420K AND 4,000 Government man hours equating to approximately $1.5M) of effort to create over the past 7 years. These scenarios are specific to the STK application and will need to be re-created to provide similar functionality for any other tool. Should an application other than the requested application be chosen in lieu of STK, NASIC would realize approximately $2.5M of additional cost associated with procuring new hardware, new peripheral software and re-training NASIC's analysts (on use of hardware and peripheral software). Additionally, switching to an alternative source would add costs associated with the re-training of NASIC's analysts (on use of primary software) which can be as high as $5K per analyst for 158 analysts, resulting in another unplanned expense in excess of $790K.

In terms of the delay to critical mission capabilities, NASIC will realize almost a 12-16 month delay in providing specific types of intelligence analysis and production. This delay is the result of a combination of factors, primarily (1) accrediting a new application to work on NASIC classified networks; (2) re-training the work force to use the new application; (3) re-developing the immediate use scenarios; and (4) re-working the customized interfaces to NASIC GOTS tools. This assumes the new application has also been verified and validated - if this is not the case another 3-6 months of mission delay will add on to the existing 12-16 months. This estimated delay does not account for the delays to finding contractor support adequately qualified and trained on the new application.

The modification of the Satellite Orbit Analysis Program (SOAP), a Government off the Shelf (GOTS) software solution, is another completely separate alternative to STK. Prior to the selection of AGI's STK software 8 years ago, NASIC considered SOAP. At that time SOAP (developed by Aerospace Corporation) was found to be an inadequate replacement to STK as it was designed for more basic orbit analysis and access calculations involved with remote guidance of orbiting satellites. In addition, it was determined that SOAP's graphical user interface (GUI) did not allow analysts to quickly and easily utilize the tool and had limited capabilities outside of satellite orbit analysis, nor did it have the capability to interface with any of the $3.7M dollars customized STK applications. To switch from STK to SOAP would result in the commercial impacts detailed above along with the additional costs of having to pay Aerospace Corporation or an alternative developer to add the capabilities SOAP is lacking - namely, Time Dynamic 3D globe imaging, which makes both sun independent lighting and true star positioning possible, while providing flight path/ ground track vectors, and sensor pointing features of STK. While SOAP does provide some limited variations of these features only STK has been proven to include these features fully and with the fidelity required for Senior Leader briefings and visualizations produced by the analysts. It is for this reason NASIC continues to depend upon STK for the majority of its analysis work related to STK. The cost to bring the SOAP application up to the capability level of STK is conservatively estimated to be in excess of $5M.

Accordingly, Analytical Graphics, Inc. is the only firm capable of providing the supplies described in Section III above without the U.S. Air Force experiencing substantial duplication of cost that could not be expected to be recovered through competition and unacceptable delays in fulfilling its requirements.

Section D: Efforts to Obtain Competition

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A Request for Information (RFI) was issued via GSA/NASA Sewp from 28 May to 17 June 2020. No vendors were capable of providing a quote for this product. NASIC also consulted DoD ESI (software purchase) for vendor options, and there were none providing the STK Tool line nor were there any Government Purchase agreements in place. Analytical Graphics Inc. provided a sole source vendor letter for this product, confirming that alternative resellers would not be found and that it is the sole manufacturer and developer.

Listed below is the only available source for this acquisition:

Analytical Graphics Inc.

220 Valley Creek Blvd.

Exton, PA 19341

Section E: Steps to Preclude Future Single Source or Brand Name Awards

The National Air and Space Intelligence Center will continue to query for commercially available hardware and software products of this kind to determine if the capabilities are able to meet the government's requirements. The Center's Subject Matter Experts will also review technical publications, expositions, trend guidelines, Air Force regulations and instructions as well as confer with other agencies and experts so that future actions may be solicited under full and open competition procedures. To the best abilities, all competing products, available in the current market, have been evaluated prior to purchasing this solution and were not feasible for incorporation into the current architecture at this time. As new trends formulate in production, NASIC will continue to inquire about these devices, and research ways to develop, test, and integrate them if possible.

Section F: Contracting Officer's Determination

I have determined, in accordance with FAR 13.106-1(b)(1), that the circumstances of this contract action deem only a single source is reasonably available.

Date

15-Jul-2020

Typed Name and Rank/Grade of Contracting Officer

Carrie R. Adams GS13

Signature of Contracting Officer

ADAMS.CARRIE.R.14016549

Digitally signed by

ADAMS.CARRIE.R.1401654972

Date: 2020.07.15 14:46:12 -04'00'

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