Marine Corps seeking information about alternative wargaming facilities

By Justin Katz / November 2, 2020 at 11:41 AM

The Marine Corps is seeking information from industry about alternative facilities to conduct wargames during the interim period while it builds a new facility at its base in Quantico, VA.

The new facility, dubbed the Marine Corps Wargaming and Analysis Center, is envisioned to have a parking garage, area distribution node and require "replacement of electrical infrastructure for portions of the base," according to a public notice published last week.

"The integration of equipment into the ADN and the MCWAC is expected to take 6-9 months after building construction is complete. This may adversely impact [the program office's] ability to timely field the materiel solution," the notice states.

"In order to maintain the targeted fielding timeline, [Program Manager Wargaming Capability] is researching the potential for hosting wargames at an alternate facility until the MCWAC is complete and authorized for wargaming solution integration," the notice continues.

The Marine Corps this summer awarded contracts to three companies to develop the capabilities housed at the new wargaming center. The service in September was scheduled to finish the first phase of the competition to construct the new facilities at Quantico, Inside Defense reported.

Following a contract award for the production build of the center's capabilities, "the alternate facility will need to be prepared with the required infrastructure for network connectivity, physical room separation, space configuration establishment and equipment set-up," according to the notice.

The production build contract award is scheduled for the third quarter of fiscal year 2022.

"The production build will be installed within the alternate facility in support of a Government Acceptance Test (GAT) to declare Initial Operational Capability (IOC). The alternate facility will be required at the beginning of production (1Q/2QFY23) until at least 3 months after IOC," the notice continues.

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