DIA starts the bidding for $14B analysis, support contract
Gettyimages.com / Yaroslav Kushta
By
Ross Wilkers
The Defense Intelligence Agency is hiring a group of companies to aid in the research, development and sustainment of new and existing systems that feed into military intelligence efforts.
The Defense Intelligence Agency has opened the window for industry to start working on and submitting proposals for a potential 10-and-a-half year, $14.1 billion contract focused on all-source intelligence analysis and production.
DIA’s Missile & Space Intelligence Center is seeking to hire a pool of companies that can help in the research, development and sustainment of new and existing systems that are foundational for military intelligence efforts.
Bids for the multiple-award Contract Operations for Missile Evaluation and Testing contract are due no later than 6 p.m. Eastern time on April 3, DIA said in a Monday notice to release the final solicitation.
The agency is breaking out COMET’s scope of work across five primary mission task areas that include foundational and technical intelligence analysis, foreign materiel exploitation, IT operations, modeling and simulation, and business processes.
Foreign materiel exploitation refers to the process of reverse engineering to understand weapons systems of other countries, including their capabilities and vulnerabilities.
DIA describes that FME area as focusing on software, radio frequency and electro-optical/infrared systems, explosive ordnances, materials science, adversarial artificial intelligence, computed tomography imaging, and microelectronics.
IT operations involves the performance of hardware and software integration across multiple computer infrastructures, networks, laboratories, servers and workstations.
The agency will use a three-step process to make awards, a number of which is not specified in the final request for proposals.
Step one of the process will focus on whether proposals conform to the requirements of the solicitation. DIA is using these four factors in order of importance: security, technical and management capability, past performance, and small business participation commitment.
For step two, DIA will look at the bidders’ likelihoods to offer fair and reasonable pricing. The final step involves determination of whether the competitors are responsible contractors or not.
COMET is a new requirement with no incumbents.