J AAAIUAS.pdf

SOURCE SELECTION INFORMATION- See FAR 3.104

W31 P4Q-08-D-0035

JUSTIFICATION AND APPROVAL

FOR OTHER THAN FULL AND OPEN COMPETITION

- FOR

UNMANNED AIRCRAFT SYSTEMS (UAS)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNICAL SERVICES

1. Contracting Agency: U.S. Army Contracting Command, Army Contracting Command- Redstone, CCAM-RD-D, Redstone Arsenal, AL 35898-5000.

2. Description of Action: The purpose of this action is to modify sole-source, 5-year, Indefinite-Delivery, Indefinite-Quantity contract W31P4Q-08-D-0035 (awarded 8 Sep 2008), for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Systems Engineering and Technical Services support to Joint System Integration Laboratory (JSIL) to increase the labor hours and material/travel/other direct cost (ODC) amounts on the basis of other than full and open competition. The contract type is Cost-Plus-Fixed-Fee (CPFF) term, with a current contract ceiling of $76,639,672. This acquisition will utilize FY 2010-2013, ROTE, APA, OMA, and FMS funds. FMS funding involves a combination of source and non source directed tasks.

3. Description of Supplies/Services: This effort is for increased support of technology integration into the contractor's UAS systems fleet to allow demonstration of enhanced or improved UAS platform, payload and ground systems performance, particularly as it pertains to near term tactical and operational employment of this technology to meet war fighting requirements as part of the War on Terrorism. The increase consists of 167,757 labor hours, material, other direct costs, and travel for task order requirements. The total estimated cost of the proposed increase to the remaining twenty-one month effort under Order Periods 5 through 6 is $35,318,507, comprised of $28,739,709 in additional labor cost and $6,658,798 in travel, material and other direct costs necessary to support technology integration, demonstration, test and operational employment activities. This requirement will increase the current contract ceiling from $76,639,672 to $111,958,179.

The remaining contract W31P4Q-08-D-0035 labor hour ceiling balance through Task Order 05, modification 07 is 49,336labor hours with pending task order actions totaling 8,493 I labor hours. The remaining contract W31P4Q-08-D-0035 ceiling for cost reimbursable travel, material and other direct costs through Task Order 05, modification 07 is $4,041,609 with pending requirements of $27,544. The proposed increase in labor hours and cost reimbursable travel, material and other direct costs for Ordering Periods 5 and 6 is based on previous requirements history experienced during W31P4Q-08-D-0035, Task Order 0003.

4. Authority Cited: The statutory authority permitting the use of other than full and open competition is 10 U.S.C. 2304 (c) (1) as implemented by the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 6.302-1 "Only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements."

FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

W31P4Q-08-D-0035

5. Reason for Authority Cited:

a. The proposed contractor, AAI Corporation, CAGE Code 97384, 124 Industry Lane, Hunt Valley, MD 21030-0126 is the only source with the technical knowledge and expertise required to accomplish the required technology integration efforts for its fleet of VAS systems, currently consisting of the PIONEER, SHADOW 200, SHADOW 400, SHADOW 600 and associated Ground Support Equipment, including its role as major system subcontractor to General Atomics, providing the SKY WARRIOR VAS Ground Control Station. During the course of the remaining twenty-one month effort, it is anticipated that new elements of the AAI Corporation fleet of UAS systems will be added and these new UAS systems will be included within the scope of the engineering and technical assistance services covered by the Statement of Work and this Justification and Approval. The U.S. Army competitively selected the SHADOW 200 as its Tactical close range UAS system and AAI Corporation has produced, fielded and is currently supporting this system to meet U.S. Army requirements. The SHADOW 200 VAS is deployed to Southwest Asia in the CENTCOM Area of Responsibility (AOR) in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. Higher than anticipated wartime customer requirements for SHADOW VAS engineering and technical services resulted in accelerated ordering of available labor hours and associated cost reimbursable travel, material and other direct cost, necessitating the requirement for increased Ordering Period 5 and 6 effort.

b. The government does not possess the technical data or the technical proficiency to perform technology integration with the contractor's proprietary UAS systems. The contractor is the sole source of proprietary technical data for its UAS systems and subsystems considered necessary to rapidly accomplish the required integration, test, modification, demonstration and operational exercise of innovative technologies, technical processes and/or procedures that will enhance and improve United States Warfighting capabilities. The UAS Project Office estimated approximately one year ago, that it would require an additional four years and cost $160M to award another source for SHADOW 200 VAS engineering services. This estimate was updated in Nov 2011 by AAI in which it provided a planning projection of to provide a SHADOW 200 Technical Data Package (TDP), which is a cost exclusive of any limited/restricted subcontractor/vendor data. Although this cost estimate is specific to the SHADOW 200 VAS, it is applicable to the full range of contractor VAS's within the scope of contract W31P4Q-08-D-0035. The additional time and cost to acquire the SHADOW 200 TDP could not be recovered through competition. The estimated cost is based on negotiated labor category rates from contract W31P4Q-08-D-0035, Ordering Periods 5 and 6. The labor mix is based on engineering and technical services acquired to support SHADOW VAS technology integration efforts under contract W3IP4Q-08-D-0035.

c. The contractor utilizes commercially available air vehicle control software from but this software is configured with a proprietary

Application Processor Interface (API) specifically for the SHADOW system that is proprietary to AAI Corporation. Therefore, no source other than the proposed contractor, AAI Corporation, may successfully perform air vehicle, data link or payload specific

~ software modi~cations required the technology into the

- _.;?SHADOW senes. Corporation is the only authorized source for the sale of SHADOW 200 flight eontrol software and modification of this software may occur only through AAI Corporation.

6. Efforts to Obtain Competition: Competition Advocate Shopping List (CASL) record 4765 for this requirement was initially published on 8 Nov 2011 and updated on 8 Dec 2011 with no inquiries received from industry or government sources. The synopsis for this requirement will be issued on or about 30 April 2012. Because of the reasons set forth in paragraph 5, above, no additional efforts will be made to obtain competition in this acquisition. The UAS Project Office does not have a requirement to acquire a technical data package (TDP) for the SHADOW 200. Without this technical documentation, development of a contract requirements package capable of supporting competitive competition is not practical. In addition, even if a TDP for the baseline system existed that was capable of supporting competition, the rate of technical change within the SHADOW 200 VAS caused by the integration of future growth payloads would make the TDP unusable for the purpose of supporting rapid future technology integration under this action.

7. Actions to Increase Competition: The unique combination of knowledge, expertise and access to proprietary technical data required to perform the integration, test, modification, demonstration and operational exercise of technology into the SHADOW series of UASs cannot be adequately defined within existing resource constraints to allow competitive competition. Although it is anticipated that the JSIL will have future funded requirements to perform technology integration efforts into the SHADOW VAS series, this will be for the purpose of demonstrating and using the resultant improved and enhanced warfighting capabilities. There is no technical source that has a requirement for, or is willing to fund, the development of the requisite technical documentation required to accomplish the instant technical integration on a competitive basis. The Government will continue to reassess the technical environment to determine if circumstances have sufficiently changed to allow competitive acquisition of the required engineering and technical services.

8. Market Research: Market research was performed in accordance with FAR Part 10 for this requirement through personal knowledge and contact with knowledgeable persons. The following knowledgeable Government technical personnel were contacted regarding this acquisition with the identification of no acquisition strategy other than direct acquisition from AAI: The JSIL Technical Lead, the JSIL contract W31P4Q-08- D-0035 Contracting Officer's Representative, and the UAS Project Office, SHADOW Product Office Technical Lead. This requirement was published on 8 Nov 2011 and updated on 8 Dec 2011 in the AMCOM CASL, Control Number 4765. To date, no written or verbal inquiries have been received Concerning the proposed acquisition.

Furthermore, a review of available internet sources was made during the Nov 2011 timeframe to verify that no other source is capable of performing the required SHADOW UAS engineering and technical assistance services. No other source was identified through the internet. Market research was conducted on 13 Sep 2011 by the Redstone Scientific Information Center (RSIC) through the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) repository for technical reports and independent research citations at Ft. Belvoir.

The RSIC was requested to perform DTIC research based on the following key word search: "shadow and unmanned aircraft or unmanned aerial and support services or technology integration". The RSIC research provided the following results:

a. Technical Reports (TR) Database -The RSIC TR search provided 28 potential report results based on the 24 Government and 4 Industry sources, respectively. The 28 search results were derived from a total database of 2,205,055 reports. The 28 search results were further stratified as being focused on technical, programmatic, and Concept of Operations (CONOPS) subjects, of which there were 13, 8 and 7, respectively.

Government laboratories and agencies developed 10 of the technical-based reports, all8 of the CONOPS-based reports and 6 of the 7 programmatic-based reports. Private industry developed 3 of the 13 technical-based reports, no CONOPS-based reports and 1 of the 7 programmatic-based reports. Upon review of the abstracts for all reports, none were considered technically relevant to the AAI UAS engineering and technical service requirements. The CONOPS and programmatic based reports were immediately dismissed as not technically relevant since they were based on non-engineering or non technical aspects of UAS operations. The technical reports provided by Government sources consisted of test plans and reports; generic sense and avoid systems and demonstrations designed to prevent mid-air crashes between UAS's and other aircraft;

and subsystem and sensor performance test plans and reports. These reports are very narrow and focused on documenting system and subsystem performance without demonstrating access to detailed AAI technical documentation, knowledge or expertise required to assess proposed system and subsystem level changes and modifications required to accomplish technology integration into AAI UASs. As a result of this review, it was confirmed that there are no Government sources identified through the OTIC Technical Reports database query with the technical documentation, knowledge or expertise that would allow them to perform the required AAI UAS engineering and technical services. The industry source of the single programmatic-based report was considered not relevant to the AAI VAS engineering and technical services requirement because of its general nature involving identification of a process of requirements driven VAS development and the fact that its information is dated in 2007. The technical-based industry reports were examined individually and it was determined that they were not technically relevant to the required AAI UAS engineering and technical services because they dealt with: (1) a general sense and avoid system for Small UAS, which is totally outside the class ofUAS's provided by AAI; (2) a general publication of a report involving an improved mini Ku-band antenna for the Tactical Communications Data Link (TCDL). Although TCDL is a subsystem of the AAI SHADOW VAS, it is provided as a subcontracted subcomponent for which the antenna assembly is only one very minor assembly. It provides no evidence of technical information or expertise concerning the specific interfaces necessary to integrate the ground data terminal, air data terminal and flight avionics necessary to allow effective command and control of the SHADOW 200 VAS or any other AAI proprietary product. This report is considered too general, unrelated and unspecific to current AAI VAS system or subsystem design; and

(3) another UAS antenna technical report which is not considered relevant due to its broad nature unrelated to AAI UAS communications subsystem specifics and the fact that it is 10 years old. Based on the above considerations, it was confirmed that there are no industry sources identified through the DTIC query with the technical documentation, knowledge or expertise that would allow them to perform the required AAI UAS engineering and technical services.

b. Research Summaries (RS) Database- The AAI VAS DTIC search had no results against a field of 320,616 database entries.

c. Independent Research and Development (IRD) Database- The AAI VAS DTIC search had no results against a field of 175,247 database entries.

In accordance with the Market Research Report/Commerciality Determination for this requirement, control #120262, FAR Part 12 does not meet the needs of this requirement and will not be utilized.

9. Interested Sources: To date, no other sources have written to express an interest.

Notices required by FAR 5.201 will be published in the FedBizOpps on or about 30 Apr 2012. Any proposals received shall be considered.

10. Other Factors:

a. Procurement history- Contract W31P4Q-08-D-0035 was awarded 8 Sep 2008 to AAI Corporation lAW 10 U.S.C. 2304 (c) (1) as implemented by the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 6.302-1, "Only one responsible source and no other supplies or

W31P4Q·08·D·0035 services will satisfy agency requirements." This contract was issued to acquire AAI UAS engineering and technical assistance services. The original award amount was $30,166,360, and was subsequently increased on 27 Sep 2010 through contract modification P00011 in the amount of $46,473,312, for a total revised contract ceiling amount of $76,639,672. The labor hour ceiling was increased through contract modification P00011 from 205,000 hours by 201,579 hours, for a total labor ceiling of 406,579 hours.

b. Unusual patterns revealed through the procurement history- None.

c. There is insufficient technical data available to the Government to support competitive acquisition of this requirement and there are no technical sources that will fund the development of the requisite technical documentation required to accomplish this requirement on a competitive basis. The Government will continue to reassess the technical environment to determine if circumstances have sufficiently changed to allow competitive acquisition of the required engineering services.

d. Acquisition Data Availability- The Army tactical UAS that will be the focus of engineering and technical services performed under the proposed contract is the SHADOW 200 UAS, which was initially acquired under a request for proposal issued in April 1999 utilizing full and open competition. The requirement was developed as a performance-based acquisition in accordance with Department of Defense directives to capitalize on commercial technologies, non-developmental items, and other cost reduction techniques. The contract requirements were stated in performance terms, limiting the use of military specifications and standards. Configuration management decisions were based on implementing performance based strategies throughout the life cycle. As a result, no TDP was purchased in FY 99, and there are no current plans to purchase a TDP for this effort. The Army has procured 102 systems of the Army Acquisition Procurement Objective (APO) of 102 funded systems and at this time the cost of developing a TDP would be prohibitive, and the time lost to develop a TDP would result in an unacceptable delay in the integration of new technologies into the production baseline and associated delay in the availability of new combat capabilities to the warfighter engaged in combat operations in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. Purchase of a TDP suitable for full and open competition would be cost prohibitive due to the limited number of systems required by the Army to reach the Army Acquisition Objective (AAO). Further, the UAS Project Office estimated that award to another source for this requirement would take approximately four years and cost $160,000,000 to facilitize another source and procure the technical data required for these efforts described herein. The cost estimate was compiled from AMCOM IMMC UA VS TUAS 7B (Shadow) Common Operational Modeling, Planning, and Simulation Strategy analysis. These costs could not be recovered through competition in the near term. This estimate was subsequently updated in Nov 2011 to a cost of $324M by the SHADOW 200 System Prime Contractor, AAI Corporation.

e. Subcontracting competition- Contract W31P4Q-08-D-0035 includes the requirements of FAR 52.244-5, "Competition in Subcontracting."

f. Summary of paragraph 7 from previous J&A: AAI Corporation possess a unique combination of knowledge, expertise and access to proprietary data required to perform the required engineering and technical assistance services necessary to perform the integration, test, modification, demonstration and operational exercise of technology into the SHADOW U AS. There is no technical source that has a requirement for or is willing to fund the development of the requisite technical documentation required to accomplish the required technical integration on a competitive basis. The Government will continue to reassess the technical environment to determine if circumstances have sufficiently changed to allow competitive acquisition of the required engineering and technical services.

11. Technical/Requirements Certification: I certify that the supporting data under my cognizance which are included in the justification are accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Name:JIIIIIIIIIIIIl ______ __ Date: fhrJ.N J.P. J :OJ{)_.,

12. Fair and Reasonable Cost Determination: I hereby determine that the anticipated cost to the Government for this contract action will be fair and reasonable. This determination is based on the use of contractually priced labor rates for order periods 5 and 6 from contract W31P4Q-08-D-0035 for this increase in effort. In accordance with FAR 15.403- 2(a), certified cost and pricing data will not be required as the cost was established during initial negotiation for awarded Order Periods 5 and 6.

13. Contracting Officer Certification: I certify that this justification is accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Title: ----------------------

Approval

Based on the foregoing justification, I hereby approve the procurement of increased support for contract W31 P41-08-D-0035 for technology integration with AAI Corporation, 1241ndustry Lane, Hunt Valley, MD 21030-0126, and its UAS fleet to allow demonstration of enhanced or improved UAS platform, payload and ground systems performance, particularly as it pertains to near term tactical and operational employment o~ this technology to meet war-fighting requirements as part of the War on Terrorism. The total increased effort is 167,757 labor hours, consisting of 1 08,878 labor hours for Ordering Period 5 and 58,879 labor hours for Ordering Period 6. The total cost of the proposed increase in effort under Order Periods 5 and 6 is $35,318,507, which will increase the current contract value from $74,987,506 to $110,306,013. This increase is pursuant to the authority of 10 U.S.C. 2304 (c) (1), as implemented by the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 6.302-1 "Only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements", subject to availability of funds and provided that the services and property herein described have otherwise been authorized for acquisition.