JA24-042 - F-35 Lightning II JPO_Redacted.pdf

CUI

Controlled By: DISA Controlled By: PSD/PS85 CUI Category: PROCURE Distribution/Dissemination Control: FEDCON POC: Lara Chiaurro, JWCC Mailbox: disa.scott.ditco.mbx.ditco-jwcc@mail.mil

JUSTIFICATION & APPROVAL FOR FEDERAL ACQUISITION

REGULATION SUBPART 16.5 ACQUISITIONS

EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY

Multiple Award Contract

Orders under Fair Opportunity Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 16.505, Defense FAR Supplement 216.505-70, Procedures, Guidance, and Information 216.505-70

Purchase Request Number: To be Determined (TBD) Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) Contract Number: HC105023D0005 Task Order Number: TBD Procurement Title: F-35 Lightning II Joint Program Office (JPO) Estimated Value:

Statutory and Regulatory Authority: 10 United States Code (U.S.C.) 2304c(b) and FAR 16.505(b)(2)(i)(B)

EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY

Number: JA24-042

Upon the basis of the following justification, I, as the Head of Contracting Authority (HCA), hereby approve this exception to fair opportunity pursuant to the Statutory Authority of 10 U.S.C. 2304c(b) and Regulatory Authority of FAR 16.505(b)(2)(i)(B).

1. REQUESTING AGENCY AND CONTRACTING OFFICE:

Requesting Agency:

Office Secretary of Defense (OSD)/F-35 Lightning II JPO 200 12th Street South, Suite 600 Arlington, VA 22202

Contracting Activity:

Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA)/Defense Information Technology Contracting Organization/PS85 - Provisional

2300 East Drive Scott Air Force Base, IL 62225-5406

2. NATURE/DESCRIPTION OF ACTION(S):

This action is to issue a firm-fixed-price (FFP) Task Order (TO) against the JWCC Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity Contract for the F-35 Lightning II JPO. This TO will be issued directly to Amazon Web Services (AWS). The anticipated period of performance (PoP) is for a 1-year base period, plus three (3) 1-year option periods. The total estimated value is

JA24-042 F-35 Lightning II Joint Program Office of which the base period will be funded by FY24 Research, Development, Test, & Evaluation funds.

3. DESCRIPTION OF SUPPLIES/SERVICES:

This requirement is for the transfer of cloud services and support for the development, modernization, and sustainment of the F-35 Air System, to include the weapons system and related offboard components like training devices, mission planning systems, maintenance & logistics systems, etc. This includes cloud computing, consulting, and support services for public, unclassified, and classified cloud consumption capabilities.

4. SUPPORTING RATIONALE, INCLUDING A DEMONSTRATION THAT THE

PROPOSED CONTRACTOR’S UNIQUE QUALIFICATIONS OR THE NATURE OF THE

ACQUISITION REQUIRES USE OF AN EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY:

(a) Exception to Fair Opportunity.

FAR 16.505(b)(2)(i)(B) - Only one awardee is capable of providing the supplies or services required at the level of quality required because the supplies or services ordered are unique or highly specialized.

(b) Description of the Justification.

As directed by the Honorable John B. Sherman within the “Memorandum for Senior Pentagon Leadership dated on 13 July 2023 detailing Department of Defense Joint Warfighting Capability and Next Steps to Rationalize Cloud Use Across the Department of Defense.”, JPO has a need to transfer its current cloud contract from Air Force Basic Ordering Agreement (BOA) to JWCC.

The purpose of this effort is to obtain cloud services and support for the F-35 Lightning II JPO cloud platform. The cloud services shall enhance the effectiveness, efficiency, and productivity of the F-35 Program by providing the Government with a full range of cloud services to support the mission of the F-35 JPO.

Additionally, the JPO has progressed extensively in developing a custom environment using FENCES, native AWS cloud services. These services are the backbone of an automated and highly integrated IL5 and IL6 cloud infrastructure. The Government requires services which can be seamlessly integrated into the current infrastructure to meet the Government’s requirement.

(c) Justification.

(1) Minimum Government requirements.

Services for Impact Level 5 (IL5) and IL6 (included but not limited to):

a) Compute, storage, database, analytics, and machine learning

b) Networking & Content Delivery

c) Security, Identity & Compliance

d) Integration

e) Management & Governance

f) Marketplace Software Tools

g) Capability and authorization to host FENCES Platform on the cloud environment.

(2) Proposed sole source contractor. AWS

(3) Discussion regarding the cause of the sole source situation.

Since the inception of JPO Cloud, the Government has invested in development and sustainment costs into its infrastructure. This investment established the JPO Cloud on AWS, achieved an Authority to Operate (ATO), and continues to provide services to over 800 users. As part of its investment into its infrastructure, JPO developed a custom environment using FENCES and native AWS cloud services, and established connections with Department of Defense (DoD) classified networks as the backbone of an extensively automated and highly integrated IL5 and IL6 cloud infrastructure. Thus, in order to meet JPO’s need for cloud services to support the F-35 Program, the Government requires a Cloud Service Provider (CSP) that can seamlessly integrate with the JPO Cloud’s existing infrastructure.

Furthermore, moving to a different CSP from AWS will take up to 36 months and a substantial cost of approximately for parallel development and transition, which drive’s the Government’s current compatibility requirement. The new environment must be customized, configured, and approved to work with JPO and DoD networks and infrastructure, including an additional team of 30+ members to recreate the JPO cloud on another CSP. Transitioning to another provider would require rebuilding and moving cloud services, applications, and processes, that will substantially delay and severely impact the mission in ways that are unacceptable.

(d) Demonstration of unique source.

The foundational capabilities of the JPO Cloud are built on critical technologies specific to AWS. The first and most unique is the FENCES platform, which brings inherited security controls and Infrastructure as a Code (IaaC) to the JPO Cloud. The FENCES platform comes from a United States Air Force (USAF)-managed program that provides the ability to build Special Access Level workloads in the AWS SECRET Cloud region.

FENCES is foundational to the Special Access Level F-35 program as it is the most mature approach to developing and managing workloads at that classification level in DoD. No other product is available within the DoD that supports this capability, and AWS is the only CSP authorized to protect FENCES data. The JPO Cloud uses UFEN, a product that is part of FENCES and provides parity of the IL6 environment at an IL5 level. The technology and implementation of UFEN is unique to AWS Cloud as well.

FENCES platform has an ATO only on AWS environment.

JPO Cloud uses the FENCES Data Transfer as a Service (DTaaS) capability, which leverages AWS's Diode service. FENCES DTaaS is critical to the rapid movement of data from IL5 up to IL6 and IL6+ or across impact levels laterally. AWS Diode is a cloud-based cross-domain service designed for dependable and scalable data transfer from one cloud security domain to another. Although other CSPs do offer similar cross-domain solutions, AWS Diode is the only solution that has undergone evaluation to confirm its capability to transfer the specific data types needed and meet the required data volume. This service is essential to meet the JPO IL6 Secret Cloud requirements data requirements.

JPO's DevSecOps Pipeline and software development workflows are intricately integrated with various AWS services Application Programming Interface, and third-party tools specifically designed to work with AWS. Some of the AWS Cloud services are native to AWS, such as Amazon EC2 Simple Systems Manager, Parameter Store, Cloud Key Management Services, Transit Gateway, Workspaces, Directory Services, and Kubernetes clusters.

Due to the above technologies only being available and authorized on AWS Cloud, a transfer to another CSP will immediately halt software development, data science, and classified activities for 800+ JPO users. This will cause a significant F-35 mission failure.

Currently, the JPO Cloud supports at least 10 DoD Information Networks (DoDIN) across the United States Government and Defense Industrial Base networks. If another CSP is selected, the network designs would be terminated and re-established to a different network, which will immediately halt connections to these networks and severely impacts the F-35 mission to support the warfighter.

(e) Procurement discussion. None.

(f) Impacts.

JPO Cloud supports the five JPO Program Management Offices, including Air Vehicle, Training Systems and Simulations, Maintenance Systems, Combat Data Systems, Propulsion, and numerous other functional offices, such as the Director of Engineering team. As such, transitioning to another CSP would not allow for the JPO to meet critical development and modernization milestones to include weapons system and related offboard components like training devices, mission planning systems, maintenance & logistics systems, etc. AWS provides critical SAP program separation through the utilization of FENCES and this software is the only software available to separate SAP programs at the IL6 level. The impact of not retaining the current CSP could halt IL6 cloud capability as no other CSP can meet minimum JPO requirements. This would impact the entire JPO enterprise as USAF, United States Navy, United States Marine Corps, seven Cooperative International Partners, and seven Foreign Military Sales organizations utilize critical services and tools in IL6. Work stoppage, security risks, and decreases in efficiency are not an option due to mission criticality of this program.

A shift to another CSP will not be able support the F-35 Air System modernization schedule. The JPO Cloud offerings would be rendered inoperable and incapable of delivering essential mission capabilities without using AWS's proprietary services.

While other CSPs might offer similar features, the JPO Cloud architecture cannot seamlessly integrate into a different program's environment. It would function differently than intended because it was designed to operate exclusively within the AWS cloud infrastructure.

5. COST/PRICE FAIR AND REASONABLE DETERMINATION:

A determination that the price is fair and reasonable will be based on a comparison of the contractor’s proposal to the independent government cost estimate and the JWCC catalog pricing, including any discounts, which was previously found to be fair and reasonable and based on the contractor’s commercial pricing.

6. MARKET RESEARCH:

After a survey of the market, it was concluded that the JWCC Contract is in the Government's best interest due to technical feasibility and cost to the Government. Additional research was conducted in June 2023, by reviewing the specific capabilities in the JWCC contracts, and it was determined that AWS is the only source capable of meeting the Government's minimum requirements.

7. ANY OTHER SUPPORTING FACTS: None.

8. ACTIONS THE AGENCY MAY TAKE TO REMOVE OR OVERCOME BARRIERS

THAT LED TO THE EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY:

(a) Procurement History:

Contract Number: N0001922F0963 Task Order Number: Not applicable PoP: December 20, 2022 - December 21, 2023 Competitive Status: Sole Source Business Size: Large business

(b) The JPO recognizes the importance of staying current with the latest technologies and tools and as part of ongoing efforts to enhance cloud capabilities, the JPO will explore new technologies and continue to monitor emerging technologies for better agility and capabilities to further enhance the future F-35 program as well as promote competition.