The Air Force’s Mission Partner Command and Control (C2) and Intelligence Information Sharing Capabilities opportunity is currently projected to be released in 2022 with an estimated value ranging between $8 and $10 billion. The October 2021 Interested Vendors List contains over 100 businesses, including approximately 68 large businesses and 46 small businesses.
On any given day, the Department of Defense (DoD) must be prepared to address a wide range of security challenges across the range of military operations. The variety of activities span military and stability operations, counter-insurgency missions, and disaster/humanitarian contingencies. DoD’s success depends upon on the ability of cooperative mission partners to combine quickly, integrate fluidly, and operate seamlessly.
The Mission Partner Capabilities Office (MPCO) executes the Secretary of the Air Forces responsibilities as Executive Agent for the Mission Partner Environment (MPE). For the contract, the MPE framework seeks to improve information sharing, data exchange, and establish interoperable governance standards among users to foster response times for a range of military and humanitarian activities.
Admiral Arleigh Burke remarked during World War II that “the difference between a good officer and a poor one is about 10 seconds.” In a DoD program associated with MPE, the Joint All-Domain Command and Control Cross-Functional Team (JADC2) mission was formed in 2020 to align, converge, synchronize, and integrate all C2 capability development across the acquisition life cycle for the DoD.
Deputy Director and Chair of the JADC2, Brigadier General Rob Parker highlighted on 6 December 2021 in a Defense News article that “Future conflicts with peer adversaries will reduce the C2 timeline to milliseconds. Decision advantage must be achieved at speeds that exceed unassisted human capacity…Traditionally, each military service has independently developed multidomain C2 capabilities without placing sufficient emphasis on joint, coalition, and interagency interoperability across all domains.”
According to Congressional Research Service on 29 November 2021, “China and Russia, have observed U.S. military operations for the past 30 years, noting that disrupting C2 systems could be one cost-effective solution to mitigating U.S. military advantages. As a result, potential adversaries have developed systems and strategies to reduce the effectiveness of U.S. command and control systems.”
With the speed of hypersonic munitions and emerging artificial intelligence enhanced warfare, the DoD must apply a unified approach to capability development to protect the U.S. information and decision advantage. The JADC2 concept envisions connecting sensors from all of the military services into a single network which would eliminate overreliance by U.S. Forces on any one key sensor.
The upcoming MPE contract will consist of two levels of operation characterized by the information and data exchange requirements of the mission and anticipated partners. The Enterprise MPE includes the U.S. Government; state, local, tribal, and territorial Governments; and foreign partners. And the Expeditionary MPE includes multinational treaty organizations, the private sector, and non-Governmental organizations (NGO).
The MPE will provide enterprise-level, worldwide interoperable Command, Control, and Intelligence (C2I) information sharing capabilities including:
- Operation, Maintenance and Sustainment (OM&S): lifecycle management of current hardware and software licenses, new capability deployment, and operation of a service desk;
- Architecture, Engineering and Integration (AE&I): system engineering activities including architecture definition, development, planning, design, integration;
- Transformative Effort (TE): flexibility and choice to acquire specialized subject matter expertise to improve operational efficiency and increased security;
- Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V): IV&V services using Government-furnished equipment.
OST Global Solutions is a professional business development consulting firm. We have experience supporting large, strategic bids like C2. We can provide capture and proposal teams to develop a complete, winning C2 proposal. Or we can provide consultants on a case-by-case basis to fill gaps on your business development team. Our services related to the C2 proposal consist of capture management, proposal management, orals coaching, proposal writing, graphics support, editing, desktop publishing, and cost volume development.
Reach out to us to discuss your C2 bid, so we can discuss how to develop a winning proposal.
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