Sources Sought Notice Final v3.pdf

Sources Sought Notice: Project Sabre

NOTICE: This is a Sources Sought notice for market research purposes only, in accordance with FAR Part 10. There is no solicitation at this time, and requests for solicitation will receive no response. The Air Force Lifecycle Management Center (AFLCMC) is requesting white papers for purposes of conducting FAR 10 Market Research to assess current market capabilities and identify business enterprises capable of meeting agency requirements as part of AFLCMC’s acquisition strategy.

AFLCMC is conducting this market survey to identify potential capable and responsible sources for varying technology focus areas identified in Section 2.0.

1.0 Program Description

The Government is conducting market research to find capable vendors to deliver mission system capabilities—fielded within weapon system platforms and munitions—through open architectures and standards that revolutionize the warfighting capability delivery pipeline. The Government seeks to inject commercial best practices into Air Force architectures and standards;

create standard-compliant software; leverage the robust commercial hardware and software marketplace for military applications; enhance system survivability in highly contested environments; independently test and verify hardware/software compliance; prototype and instantiate new technologies on platforms; and provide robust digital infrastructure. This enables the Department of War to deliver agile, integrated, and lethal mission system capabilities.

2.0 TECHNOLOGY FOCUS AREAS

The Government seeks capability statements for commercial solutions that prove end-to-end open architecture and systems engineering for modern weapon system platforms and munitions.

Vendors may provide insight on solutions that addresses all or some of the capability pillars below. The desired end-state is a prototype capability that enables a weapon system to exploit open architecture principles across its full lifecycle (development, integration, test, deployment, operations, and sustainment). An ideal partner has a first-party ability to directly leverage underlying commercial technologies to meet project requirements across all classification levels;

supporting partners would be considered enabling providers for specific aspects of the potential solution.

a. Robust Digital Infrastructure: Develop and maintain an affordable, reliable, and rapidly scalable digital infrastructure at multiple classification levels to develop, test, and field mission system capabilities.

Technologies of Interest: Hybrid Cloud IaaS/PaaS/SaaS, Secure Information Transport, Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), Software-Defined Networking (SDN), Edge Hyper- Converged Infrastructure, Zero Trust Architecture, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Cloud Native Design, Software-defined perimeters, Cross Domain Solutions, rapid classified network expansion, high performance computing to support multidomain AI/ML training, data mesh construct, and real-time analytics.

b. Mission Engineering & Analysis: Provide world-class, data-driven products to support architectural solution decision making backed by business, mission systems agility, and capability return-on-investment (ROI) metrics, as well as mission impact traceability to warfighting requirements and mission threads.

Technologies of Interest: Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) using Unified Architecture Framework (UAF), cost and schedule in UAF/SysML models, Machine Learning (ML) / Artificial Intelligence (AI) data factories, Big Data capabilities (data warehousing, data lakes), modeling simulation and analysis (e.g., Advanced Framework for Simulation, Integration, and Modeling (AFSIM); Joint Simulation Environment (JSE); Secure Advanced Framework for Simulation and Modeling (SAFE-SIM)), operational analysis, and ROI analytic framework and analysis.

c. Integrated Open Architectures & Standards: Inject commercial best practices into a tailorable suite of open architectures and standards to enable agile, modular, and lethal system-of-systems effects.

Example Architectures & Standards: Solutions that mature, integrate, or enable adoption of Government Reference Architectures (GRAs) such as Agile Mission Suite (AMS) GRA, Autonomy GRA, Terrestrial GRA, Tactical Operator Interface (TOI) GRA, Open Mission Systems (OMS), Universal Command and Control Interface (UCI), Big Iron, Universal Armament Interface (UAI), and Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA).

Technologies of Interest: Reverse engineering, existing capability refactoring/integration for API microservice architecture, SysML v2.0, standards rationalization and optimization, model-based systems engineering, embedded systems, and software development/engineering.

d. Cybersecurity, Compliance, Verification, & Test: Provide robust infrastructure and products to ensure a particular hardware/software implementation is compliant with the applicable open architecture, standard, or cybersecurity requirements. Facilitate an automated, streamlined testing methodology.

Technologies of Interest: Data encryption; cyber secure processing; continuous integration (CI) / continuous delivery (CD) software pipelines, binary, and container-level application security; and automated compliance evaluation of implementations.

e. Design and Instantiation: Implement, design, develop, and field mission capabilities with a modular open systems approach (MOSA).

Technologies of Interest: Capability development, design agent artifacts, software development, systems engineering, hardware/software prototyping, and test and evaluation.

f. Marketplace Development: Develop a robust mission system ecosystem, using prototypes to rapidly field advanced hardware and software capabilities.

Technologies of Interest: Software development and refactoring for cloud deployment, CI/CD software pipelines with Cross Domain Solutions, novel commercial hardware prototypes for SOSA applications, and GUI improvement/deployment.

3.0 Statements of Capability Content/Constraints

Vendors who can provide the items stated above shall fully identify their interest and submit, in writing, their qualifications and capabilities to meet the requirements no later than 3:00 PM, Eastern Time, on the 15th day after publication of this synopsis. Responses must be submitted to the Contracting Officer, via email at joseph.mizzi@.us.af.mil. Responses received after 15 days or without the required information will be considered non-responsive to the synopsis and will not be considered.

Responses shall be no more than five (5) pages in length. Page size shall be 8.5 x 11 inches;

foldouts are permitted but will be assessed towards total page count. Pages shall be single-spaced, single-sided. The font shall be Times New Roman and the font size shall be no less than twelve (12) points. Alternatively, vendors are allowed to submit a 10-slide max PowerPoint covering the same information with vendor’s choice of how those 10 slides are formatted.

Margins for each page shall be at least 1-inch on the top and bottom and 3/4-inch side margins. Submitting your company brochure is not an adequate response. The Government recognizes that proprietary data may be submitted in response to this Notice; if so, clearly mark any such proprietary data. Responses should include the following information within the first page or slide and will not count toward the page, or slide, limit:

a. Company Name

b. Address

c. Phone Number

d. E-mail Address

e. Point-of-Contact Information

This Sources Sought document is NOT an Invitation for Bids (IFB), Request for Proposal (RFP), or Request for Quote (RFQ), nor does this Notice restrict the Government's acquisition approach. Any information received in response to this Notice will be considered to constitute market research and may be utilized by the Government in developing/updating its acquisition strategy. This market research will be used to assess the availability and adequacy of potential sources prior to issuing any solicitation. The Government will not respond to or provide formal debriefings as a result of this Notice.

The Government will NOT reimburse respondents for any costs associated with submission of a response to this Notice. A determination by the Government not to compete any planned contract action based upon responses to this notice is solely within the discretion of the Government.