Air Force awards Lockheed $589M contract

The Air Force has awarded a $589 million contract to Lockheed Martin to become the Air and Space Operations Center’s (AOC) Weapon System Integrator (WSI). The contract has a three-year timeline, with extension possibilities worth $2 billion in the next 10 years.

The WSI effort will integrate command-and-control functions at 19 current and four future center sites worldwide, said Stan Sloane, Lockheed Martin’s executive vice president for integrated systems and solutions, in a statement. Under the contract, the company will also establish standards, metrics and processes for network-centric operations.

WSI will establish an open, service-oriented architecture across AOC, said John Mengucci, vice president of the company’s Department of Defense Systems division. “This approach will also allow the Air Force to quickly and easily accommodate new capabilities and technologies, ensuring a cost-effective, low-risk growth path to net-centric operations,” he said.

Lockheed Martin will lead an industry team that includes Raytheon, Science Applications International Corp., L-3 Communications, Dynamics Research Corp., Intelligent Software Solutions, Gestalt and Computer Sciences Corp.

Lockheed Martin will do much of the work at its Center for Innovation in Suffolk, Va., using modeling and simulation tools, such as the C2ISR Wind Tunnel configuration, which rapidly tests concept and process improvements, the company said.

According to the Air Force, WSI’s tasks include:

• Engineering systems activities related to risk management, operational safety and effectiveness.
• Establishing configuration and performance baselines.
• Delivering an environment friendly to third-party applications.
• Ensuring that weapons system infrastructure is compliant with the Netcentric Enterprise Solutions for Interoperability standard.
• Analyzing alternatives and recommending new strategies and capabilities.
• Helping the government purge unnecessary applications.
• Optimizing fielding, sustainment and training.