On September 27, 2019 and September 30, 2019, in accordance with 10 U.S. Code § 2371b, the Army Contracting Command – Orlando has awarded two Other Transaction Agreements under the Training and Readiness Accelerator (TReX) in support of the Synthetic Training Environment’s (STE) Live Training Environment (LTE) Force-on-Force (FoF) prototype project. The first award was made to Cubic Defense Applications, Inc in the amount of $4,261,340 and the second award was made to General Dynamics Mission Systems in the amount of $1,973,884.
The Army’s future training capability is the STE. The goal of the STE is to enable tough, iterative, dynamic, and realistic multi-echelon/combined arms maneuver, mission rehearsal, and mission command collective training in support of multi-domain operations. The STE will provide units the repetitions necessary to accelerate individuals through unit skill and collective task proficiency resulting in achieving and sustaining training readiness. The future live training environment will provide the Army with a high-fidelity replication/representation of real combat to include direct and indirect fire weapons, and non-lethal fires.
The focus of the STE LTE’s first OTA projects will be on evaluating prototypes to inform requirements and evaluate technical readiness. A Request for Solutions for these efforts was issued through TReX and FBO on June 19, 2019, which sought solutions across four focus areas (FA): FA1 – Direct Fire; FA2 – Short Range Indirect Fire; FA3 – Indirect Fire; and FA4 – Critical Enabling Technologies. Submissions across the four FAs resulted in the submittal of 39 total responses, received from 14 different vendors [FA1 = 10; FA2 = 8; FA3 = 8; and FA4 = 13]. Of the 14 vendors that submitted a solution response, ten were selected to proceed with Phase 2 of the competition which consisted of Solution Presentations / Demonstrations. Should additional funding in support of this requirement become available, the Government reserves the right to revisit pursuing awards amongst the Phase 2 demonstrated solutions.
Upon successful completion of these prototype efforts, the Government reserves the right to award follow-on production efforts via either contract or transaction, without the use of competitive procedures. A follow-on production contract is a possibility if the vendor successfully completes the objectives within the project – defined as successful demonstration of the technical objectives as outlined in the individual vendor’s Statement of Work through user assessment. A follow-on effort could involve, though is not limited to, the potential requirement for continued development and baseline management, further scaling of the solution, integration with other STE LTE capabilities, or integration with other future greater STE capabilities.
The RFS Amendment 2 only updated paragraph 6.4.1 under Development Schedule to include the following text “excluded from the page count” and added Attachment 7, Final RFS STE Live Questions Responses dated 28 June 2019. There are no other changes to the RFS.
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The Army desires a Synthetic Training Environment (STE) enabled Live Training Environment (LTE) that will provide realistic Force-on-Force (FoF) training. To this end, the Government is pursuing partnerships with industry (using Other Transaction Agreements (OTAs) as the partnership medium) to develop prototype technologies or products capable of initially providing Platoon-level live FoF training simulation capabilities. The Government’s intent is that this prototyping activity will help inform requirements for the STE-LTE, provide a quantified evaluation of the Technology Readiness Levels of critical enabling technologies, and provide key foundational aspects of establishing the roadmap for the future of STE LTE. The Government will evaluate the solutions submitted to this announcement with the intent of negotiating OTA(s) under the Training and Readiness Accelerator (TReX).
Funding Profile: The Government currently has $800K available in FY19 funding to kickstart the STE LTE awards, with $8M currently anticipated to be available in early FY20.
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