DISA Industry Forecast

The Defense Information Systems Agency plans to conduct a "2014 Forecast to Industry" at the agency's Headquarters Conference Center on Aug. 23, according to a DISA announcement issued this morning.

"The event will provide our industry partners with in-depth information about DISA's acquisition and procurement plans," the announcement states, adding:

DISA's senior leaders will present briefings on business opportunities, acquisition topics and planned procurements for the 2015/2016 fiscal years. Attendees will have the opportunity to interact with senior leaders, program managers, and acquisition representatives during question and answer sessions and on an individual basis.

One of the topics of conversation during the August meeting could be an innovative satellite communications contract the Air Force's Space and Missile Systems Center awarded earlier this month. As Inside the Air Force reported June 13:

The service awarded the $8.2 million contract to satellite operator SES Government Solutions. Through the agreement, the government purchased two transponders on an already operational SES satellite. SES President Tip Osterhaler told Inside the Air Force in a June 11 interview that the bulk of the contract, about $8 million, pays for the transponders and the remaining funds will purchase up to five years of satellite communication (SATCOM) services from the company. According to an award synopsis posted to the Federal Business Opportunities website on June 6, two companies bid for the contract.

Satellite transponders collect and transmit signals to ground stations. For this particular contract, the transponders are housed on an SES satellite -- Osterhaler would not identify it -- and will transmit signals to a ground station at Ramstein Air Base in Germany.

The contract dictates that SATCOM services be available within 60 days of the June 6 award, but Osterhaler said the company is already in talks with the government about turning over the capability sooner than that. Before that can be done, though, there is some standard testing and configuring of signals that has to happen, he said.

"Whenever you start a new service on a satellite, you test the end-to-end connectivity to make sure you're getting the throughput," he said. "It's what we call 'closing the links' between the terminal and the satellite and then back down to the receiving end."

The Defense Department initiated the commercial satellite communications (COMSATCOM) contract as the first in a series of pathfinder contracts designed to test new ways of acquiring SATCOM services. The department -- through the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) -- has traditionally used overseas contingency operations money to purchase commercial bandwidth on an as-needed basis using one-year, spot-buy contracts. Last year's bill for the entire department was upwards of $1 billion.

Industry has long argued that such a model is not sustainable and, in recent years, the cost of doing business in this way has driven the department, at SMC's lead, to work with industry to explore other options.