Air Force adds more contractors to ABMS industry team

The Pentagon has announced a new list of contractors that have received indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contracts worth up to $950 million to support the Air Force's Advanced Battle Management System program.

The companies will compete along with dozens of other vendors that have already won IDIQ deals to demonstrate and mature joint all-domain command and control technology for potential integration into the ABMS infrastructure.

According to a Defense Department notice Wednesday, the Air Force has awarded new contracts to: Amazon Web Services, Anduril Industries, Colorado Engineering, Edgy Bees, Environmental Systems Research Institute, Global C2 Integration Technologies, General Atomics, Grey Wolf Aerospace, Kratos, LinQuest Corp, Oddball, Red River Technology, SES Government Solutions, Venator Solutions and VivSoft Technologies.

Although they are eligible to win anywhere between $1,000 and $950 million over the next five years, the Air Force's current plan is to invest about $3.2 billion in the ABMS program between fiscal year 2021 and FY-25 and it's unclear how much of that funding is specifically intended for distribution to industry partners.

Occasional on-ramp exercises throughout the year allow companies to demonstrate their offerings for combatant commanders, who can decide if they're not interested or if they want developers to mature, alter or even immediately hand over the products for operational use.

The two most recent events occurred in partnership with U.S. Northern Command and U.S. Space Command, followed by U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. The Air Force is planning another in the coming months with U.S. European Command.