JA25-060 - Project Harbinger_Redacted.pdf

CUI

Controlled by: NAVY Controlled By: PMS 401 CUI Category: BUDG, PROCURE Distribution/Dissemination Control: FEDCON

POC: CHARLES JOHNSON, +1 202-781-1625, CHARLES.M.JOHNSON383.MIL@US.NAVY.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(b), Defense FAR Supplement 216.505(b), Procedures, Guidance, and Information 216.505(b)

Military Interdepartmental Purchase Request Number: N0002425MP01136 Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) Contract Number: HC105023D0005 Task Order (TO) Number: To be determined (TBD) Procurement Title: Project Harbinger Estimated Value:

Statutory and Regulatory Authority: 10 United States Code (U.S.C.) 3204(a) and FAR 16.505(b)(2)(i)(B)

EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY

Number: JA25-060

Upon the basis of the following justification, I, as the Procuring Activity Competition Advocate (PACA) Official, hereby approve this exception to fair opportunity pursuant to the Statutory Authority of 10 U.S.C. 3204(a) and Regulatory Authority of FAR 16.505(b)(2)(i)(B).

1. REQUESTING AGENCY AND CONTRACTING OFFICE:

Requesting Agency:

United States (U.S.) Navy / Navy Sea Systems Command 1333 Isaac Hull Avenue SE, Bldg. 197 Washington, DC 20376

Contracting Activity:

Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA)/Defense Information Technology Contracting Organization (DITCO)/Cloud Capabilities Section (PS8511)

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 TO against the JWCC Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity Contract for Project Harbinger. This TO will be issued directly to Amazon Web Services, Inc (AWS). The anticipated period of performance (PoP) is for a base period of 12 months. The total estimated value is which will be funded by Research, Development, Test, & Evaluation funds.

JA25-060 Project Harbinger

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3. DESCRIPTION OF SUPPLIES/SERVICES:

The U.S Navy requires leveraging existing, end-to-end, deep learning model development pipelines across multiple lines of effort in a SECRET cloud. The models are required to be deployed to the tactical edge to support submarine, Maritime Patrol Reconnaissance Aircraft, and Integrated Undersea Surveillance mission sets. The pipeline encompasses data uploading tactical edge, data processing, data labeling, data splitting model development, model validation, model test & evaluation, model visualization, model export, and end user feedback.

There are two required and authorized environments, Harbinger impact level (IL) 6 and Australia, United Kingdom, and United States (AUKUS) common development environment (CDE), with separate authorization boundaries. In addition, the Harbinger IL6 environment supports generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) use cases across the undersea enterprise (USE).

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.

AWS is the only cloud service provider (CSP) able to meet the current requirements for this project. AWS has built an environment that has a current Authorization to Operate (ATO) with multiple foreign partners; re-approval under another CSP would result in unacceptable downtime. Additionally, AWS’s unique native services (combination of architecture changes, identity management, systems management, infrastructure-as-a-code, automation/event-driven orchestration) will continue to be leveraged across the six pillars of the current AWS Well-Architected Framework as described below, which is used to guide developers and architects on the necessary architectural decisions that align specifically with Project Harbinger.

(1) Operational AWS CloudFormation: Automates infrastructure provisioning and management.

Amazon CloudWatch: Monitors applications and responds to performance changes.

Lambda: A serverless computing service that runs code in response to events and automatically manages the underlying compute resources.

(2) Security Amazon GuardDuty: Monitors for malicious activity and unauthorized behavior.

AWS Identity and Access Management: Manages access to services and resources.

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(3) Reliability Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3): Provides scalable object storage with high availability and durability.

Amazon Relational Database Service: Managed relational database service with automated backups and failover.

Amazon Dynamo Data Base: Fast and flexible NoSQL database for any scale.

(4) Performance Efficiency Amazon Elastic Compute Capacity (EC2): Provides scalable computing capacity in the cloud.

Amazon ElastiCache: In-memory caching service to improve the performance of web applications.

Amazon CloudFront: Content delivery network to deliver content with low latency.

(5) Cost Optimization AWS Cost Explorer: Provides a detailed breakdown of costs and usage.

AWS Trusted Advisor: Helps plan service usage, service costs, and instance reservations.

(6) Sustainability Amazon CloudWatch: Monitors resource utilization and performance.

AWS Compute Optimizer: Recommends optimal resources for workloads.

(c) Justification.

(1) Minimum Government requirements.

1) An accredited hyper-scaler cloud environment certified at the appropriate classification level, with access to the latest technology releases at the earliest opportunity and accredited for foreign partner access (Australia and United Kingdom).

2) The IL environments should mirror one another in cyber-posture and architecture to ensure security, accessibility, scalability, shareability, and usability.

3) Use existing services, applications, cloud native tools, and current architecture compatibility.

4) Cloud access solutions leverage the USE CDE.

(2) Proposed sole source contractor. AWS.

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

Project Harbinger has an existing commercial cloud enterprise (C2E) TO for the IL6 cloud environments that was to transition from the Chief Digital Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) to the U.S. Navy. However, after the initial work was completed, Acquisition Management and Integration Center (AMIC) Detachment 2 (which focuses on providing contracting services, particularly for Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance and cyber-related contracts for the Sixteenth Air Force), informed the Project Harbinger Program Management Office in January 2025 that it could no longer

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leverage C2E. This abrupt decision made by AMIC Detachment 2 immediately abbreviated Project Harbinger’s cloud transition timeline.

Transitioning to another CSP would significantly disrupt ongoing Harbinger work across several lines of effort, including multiple sprints, generative AI initiatives, and collaboration with external stakeholders across the USE. The team estimates 12 months to begin the transition to another CSP environment, with an additional 12-24 months until the transition is complete.

In addition, taking current systems offline to accomplish this transition would delay development cycles and preclude deployment of operational capabilities to the fleet, driving the need for compatibility with the existing architecture. The environment houses petabytes of curated and labeled data vital to ongoing algorithm development. Migration to another CSP would introduce high risk of data loss, corruption, and potential access delays. The data currently stored represents an accumulation and grooming from disparate Department of Defense (DoD) sources and international partners. This data is not stored digitally elsewhere and would require significant effort to re-upload into the cloud from analog storage. Loss of data would negatively impact development timelines and refinement of models currently in development. Additionally, the data is classified at a SECRET level and any loss would cause serious damage to national security. These risks are unacceptable given the nature of the irreplaceable data and time-sensitive nature of the development work.

(4) Demonstration of unique source.

AWS services are unique in that the security architecture currently in place has an ATO based on approved IL6 services (such as EC2, S3, Virtual Private Cloud, Elastic File System, CloudWatch, CloudTrail, Config, and Elastic Kubernetes Service). No other CSP can provide an architecture that currently meets the ATO requirements within the DoD’s current required timeline.

A change of CSP would negatively impact existing DoD partner agreements and workloads, including multiple generative AI use cases and classified operational workloads. Current agreements exist between Program Executive Office Manpower, Logistics, and Business Solutions, Program Executive Office Unmanned and Small Combatants, and international partners (AUKUS). Project Harbinger is instrumental in AUKUS Pillar II line of effort (AI for Acoustics) success. The Project Harbinger team has leveraged its IL6 environment and expertise to develop an AUKUS IL6 CDE, which has been integral to partner sharing and AI/machine learning model development among AUKUS. Any change to the architecture, automation, native services, security tools, and other development tools will negatively impact both domestic and international partners.

AWS is the only CSP that meets the unique requirement of supporting international users from a program authorization perspective, and from a user perspective.

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(5) Procurement discussion.

Based on outreach to the four CSPs in November 2024, the only CSP that is currently capable of meeting the minimum needs of the Government is AWS. The Harbinger team has optimized cost controls and operations leveraging AWS native services and tools, including the development of policies and mandatory training specific to AWS compute and storage solutions. At this stage, the complexity of moving to a different CSP would require a minimum of 12 months of planning and execution to ensure a successful migration without risking mission failure. Changes to the current architecture and native services and tools would impact domestic and international partners negatively.

In addition, the Harbinger team has an active Memorandum of Agreement with the CDAO that the Navy will collaborate with the CDAO on ATO efforts in the Harbinger cloud environment to minimize the creation of duplicative environments and maximize the effectiveness of the single ATO boundary, as provided by the CDAO’s Authorizing Official in August 2024. The ATO established within AWS services represents a unique, limiting authorization.

(6) Impact.

Migration to another CSP from AWS is not feasible based on the inability of any other CSP to seamlessly integrate with the existing architecture. The impact of not procuring through AWS would result in the Harbinger program facing significant disruptions across several lines of effort, to include multiple sprints, generative AI initiatives, and collaboration with external stakeholders across the USE. A transition to another CSP would delay the Harbinger initiative by at least 12 months, while platforms with algorithms currently deployed would lose support and no longer receive updates. As a result, all future installations would also be delayed. The Harbinger team estimates an additional 12 months to transition to another CSP environment. A critical break in service would delay this program’s ability to deliver cloud capabilities to the warfighter, which would result in mission failure.

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 were previously found to be fair and reasonable and based on the Contractor’s commercial pricing.

6. MARKET RESEARCH:

Market research for the basic JWCC Contracts was conducted and resulted in a signed market research report on November 9, 2021, that was revalidated and recertified on July 29, 2024.

After a survey of the market, it was concluded that the use of the JWCC Contract is in the Government’s best interest due to technical feasibility and cost to the Government.

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Additional research was conducted on November 29, 2024, by reviewing the specific capabilities in the JWCC Contracts and it was determined that AWS is the only CSP capable of fulfilling the Government’s minimum needs in the manner and time frame required. On November 29, 2024, the Harbinger team conducted market research which included the cost to remove current systems and subsequently return to operational status, the level of effort required to rework the developmental space, and the resources needed to provide new certification training.

The U.S. Navy reviewed publicly available information on Microsoft and Oracle, who also have the required provisional authorizations in IL6. In addition, the U.S. Navy issued a request for Additional Research to Support Fair Opportunity to the four CSPs.

The U.S. Navy received responses from Oracle, Microsoft, and AWS. Google did not respond to the request for Additional Research to Support Fair Opportunity due to their inability to meet the requirement. Based on the information submitted, it is determined that Oracle cannot meet the requirements for an AUKUS IL6 CDE. While Microsoft’s cloud service offerings are capable of meeting the technical requirements, they do not have the ATO essential to perform the requirement. Additionally, a migration at this time would add unacceptable risk of mission failure associated with security, data integrity, certifications, architecture, onboarding, data migration tools, performance, and scalability, and thus would not meet the Government’s current need. Further, substantial duplication of costs associated with migrating to another CSP would not be recoverable through competition. Based on the results of the additional market research, it is determined that AWS is the only CSP currently capable of meeting all of the requirements of Project Harbinger.

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:

Incumbent Contractor: AWS Contract Number: 2021-20101900401-6040 TO Number: FA703725F0006 PoP: December 1, 2023, to May 31, 2025 Competitive Status: Sole Source Business Size: Large

(b) To overcome future barriers to competition, the U.S. Navy is planning a competitive follow-on requirement. The follow-on is expected to be awarded by Spring 2026.

To support 2021-20101900401-6040/FA703725F0006, a justification and approval (J&A) for an exception to fair opportunity was signed in September 2023. The previous J&A was based on FAR 16.505(b)(2)(i)(B), only one source, on the C2E Contract vehicle which was used in reference to the IC Directive 121, Managing the Intelligence Community Information Environment, IC elements shall first use an IC enterprise approach. To

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overcome those barriers, and pursue a cloud agnostic approach, the Harbinger team continues to scale its cloud environment for internal and external development teams within IL6 workloads.

JA25-060 Project Harbinger CUI

TECHNICAL CERTIFICATION: I certify that the supporting data under my cognizance which are included in the J&A are accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

NAME: SIGNATURE:

TITLE/AGENCY:

PHONE:

REQUIREMENTS CERTIFICATION: I certify that the supporting data under my cognizance which are included in the J&A are accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

NAME: SIGNATURE:

TITLE/AGENCY:

PHONE:

CONTRACTING OFFICER CERTIFICATION: I certify that this justification is accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

NAME: SIGNATURE:

TITLE/AGENCY/ORGANIZATION:

PHONE:

PROCURING ACTIVITY COMPETITION ADVOCATE APPROVAL: I have reviewed this justification and find it to be accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Since this justification does not exceed $15M, this review serves as approval and my written determination that the aforementioned FAR circumstances apply.

NAME: Ms. Gay Arnold SIGNATURE:

TITLE/AGENCY/ORGANIZATION: PACA/DISA/DITCO

PHONE:

ALL QUESTIONS REGARDING THIS JUSTIFICATION ARE TO BE REFERRED TO: