Brian Bradley
NS&D Monitor
3/27/2015
Since the Air Force on Jan. 8 announced Boeing the winner of the Minuteman 3 Guidance Subsystem contract under a newly established, government-managed contracting structure for intercontinental ballistic missiles, the company has been working to replace a 40-plus-year-old technology on the weapons that includes instrumentation for flight tests, command destruct, vibration sensing and telemetry, a Boeing executive told NS&D Monitor last week. The technology improves upon a 1960s/1970s technology called “Mod. 7,” a 7-inch wafer that can be inserted only through manual missile disassembly and that impacts the missile’s performance.
The Mod. 7 replacement is palletized, as it easily slides into place and releases as the missile reenters the atmosphere during flight tests, Peggy Morse, Vice President of Directed Energy and Strategic Systems (DESS) at Boeing, said during a March 18 interview with NS&D Monitor. “The last couple years, there have been some anomalies on Mod. 7, and there were questions about what the environments really were, and even though they had 200-plus successful flight tests without even an in-flight failure, there were data anomalies that would happen,” she said. The piece is only used during Minuteman 3 flight tests. “The fact that you are now flight-testing a missile that’s equivalent to the operational missile is a big deal, because otherwise you had to do analysis to figure out what the difference was in flight-test data, translate it back to operational data, and this takes away that operational uncertainty,” she said.
The Mod. 7 replacement was the first awardable task under the cost-plus-award-fee Guidance Subsystem contract, for which Boeing outcompeted Northrop Grumman. While the value announced by the Defense Department is $51.2 million, Morse said the contract’s ceiling—which is obtainable through task orders—is substantially higher. FedBizOpps lists the awarded contract value at $221.2 million. To sustain the subsystem, the company is teaming up with Honeywell and Draper Labs under the Air Force-managed Future ICBM Sustainment and Acquisition Construct (FISAC), and work is expected to complete by Feb. 1, 2023. Morse said for Guidance, her company is currently hiring staff at its Hill AFB office in Utah, and is double-badging current employees at Boeing’s DESS headquarters in Huntington Beach, Calif., for work at Hill. Guidance is one of four FISAC contracts being worked as Northrop transitions off its role as ICBM Prime Integration Contractor (IPIC). According to Air Force documents, the total construct is valued at $4 billion. In addition to the Instrumentation Wafer Replacement Program (IWRP), other Guidance support elements include nuclear hardness and survivability, anomaly resolution, system engineering, nuclear surety, replacements, modifications, upgrades, service life extension, subsystem component design/redesign, integration and flight test support, according to a January 2014 FedBizOpps announcement.
At Little Mountain Test Facility (LMTF) in Ogden, Utah, Boeing tests for impacts relating to nuclear, radiation, shock and vibration effects to ICBMs. The company has worked under a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) contract, which started in January 2013 and lasts until January 2018. Boeing manages the facility and hosts Sandia National Laboratories, Honeywell, Lockheed Martin, Merrick & Company, Orbital ATK and General Dynamics.
FISAC Propulsion
The final FISAC contract, for Propulsion, is slated for an Oct. 1 award, Air Force spokesperson Ed Gulick wrote in an email to NS&D Monitor in January. The service announced its intent to award a sole-source Propulsion contract to ATK in early to mid-Fiscal Year 2014, but after Northrop protested that announcement on deadline, the Air Force decided to compete the contract, executives from various companies told NS&D Monitor. The Air Force did not highlight the protest as a reason for its decision to open the contracting pool. In a January email to NS&D Monitor, a service spokesperson wrote: “The AF identified opportunities to further promote competition which delayed the Propulsion acquisition schedule to enable more contractors to propose.” Orbital ATK is teaming up with Boeing for its Propulsion bid.
Partial-Bridge
Northrop Grumman has managed ICBM sustainment since 1997 under the IPIC, but the Air Force has overtaken portions of the company’s work scope since its Partial-Bridge contract started in July 2013. Rick Hartle, Boeing’s Director of Business Development for Strategic Missile Systems, and its ICBM Program Manager Kelly Johnson applauded the Air Force’s implementation of the Partial-Bridge contract. The transition toward full FISAC has gone mostly smooth, Johnson told NS&D Monitor. “The positive processes are individual gates for transition, so you have to demonstrate a capability before the government signs up on the transition,” he said during the interview. “So it’s a very process-driven, positive transition that they’re going through, very well thought out.” Johnson serves as the company’s main interface with Northrop on the Partial-Bridge.
FISAC Ground
Northrop Grumman in January won a $963.5 million contract over Boeing to sustain the Minuteman 3’s Ground system. While Boeing hasn’t joined Northrop’s team, Morse said “there’s no question” that her company has the ability to perform subcontract work if called upon. “Those discussions haven’t happened yet, but that’s something that we’d always be looking at,” she said. Responding to a question of whether Boeing was on Northrop’s Ground team, Hartle said his company is “ready to help wherever the customer needs us, and in context of Northrop’s business decisions there, too.” Boeing was on a pre-award Ground team with General Dynamics and ATK.
