KCI to Renovate Barracks, Other Facilities at Fort Leonard Wood, MO

CBRN Training
at Fort Leonard Wood
(click to expand)

KCI Construction Co. in St. Louis, MO won a $20.7 million firm-fixed-price design-build contract to renovate 3 existing 3-story barracks, a dining hall and a battalion headquarters building at the US Army’s Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri.

Fort Leonard Wood is the home of the US Army Maneuver Support Center of Excellence, the US Army Engineering School, Military Police School, and Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) School, the Third Basic Combat Training Brigade, and Joint Training Detachments from the US Marine Corps, US Navy and US Air Force.

Under the contract, KCI will provide all analyses, design, procurement, installation, plant, labor, equipment, materials, and transportation and perform all required work…

Czechs Buying Dingos, Iveco MLVs for Afghanistan

Czech Republic soldiers have deployed a Provincial Reconstruction Team as part of NATO’s ISAF mission to Afghanistan’s southern Logar province, along the Pakistani border havens. The USA offered to lend them more than 20 up-armored Hummers for the duration, but the dangerous regions of southern Afghanistan also demand blast resistant vehicles for the tip of the spear. Hence the government’s November 2007 purchase of KMW’s Dingo 2s (currently in service with German forces to the north) and Iveco’s MLV. LMVs are known by many names, including MLV, Lince, etc.; they are heavier than a Humvee but lighter than the Dingos, incorporate a number of approaches to mine protection, and have been bought by many European countries for use in Afghanistan and other foreign deployment.

The Dingos appear to have run into trouble along the way, but Iveco’s MLVs are receiving additional orders…

Clark Gets $27.7M Contract for USMC Air Station Miramar Prison

USMC Air Station Miramar
(click to view larger)

Clark Construction Group in Costa Mesa, CA received a $27.7 million firm-fixed-price contract for design and construction of a prison at US Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) Miramar in California. The facility will absorb prisoners from other correctional facilities scheduled for closure due to the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Act.

Clark will perform work in Miramar, CA, and expects to complete it by February 2011. This contract was competitively procured via the Navy Electronic Commerce Online website, with 5 proposals received by the Naval Facilities Engineering Command Southwest in San Diego, CA (N62473-09-C-1808).

MCAS Miramar is a 23,000-acre installation located in the northern suburbs of San Diego…

US Issues $200M Contract for 229 More Armored Cars

M1117 on base, Tikrit

Textron Marine & Land Systems in Slidell, LA received a $99.5 million firm-fixed-price contract for 191 M1117 Armored Security Vehicles (ASVs); 32 associated field support tool packages; 11 associated special tool packages; 38 M1200 Armored Knight vehicles; 10 associated field support tool packages; and 3 associated special tool packages. The contract’s total value is approximately $200 million, of which the $99.5 million announced amount represents what is is currently funded.

The M1117 and M1200 Armored Knight represent different variants of the same 4×4 armored car…

L3 Subsidiary Sending Security Contractors to the Front

+3 Terrorist Bane

Oct 3/06: L-3 Communications subsidiary MPRI Inc. in Alexandria, VA received a $15 million cost-plus-fixed-fee contract for law enforcement personnel embedded with units deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan. Work will be performed in Washington, D.C. (13%), and Iraq or Afghanistan (87%), and the contract will end on Sept. 30, 2007. This was a sole source contract initiated on Aug. 31, 2006 by the U.S. Army Research, Development, and Engineering Command at Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD (W91CRB-06-C-0040).

DID has also reported MPRI contracts for operating artillery ranges in Iraq, and staff recruitment at Fort Knox.

US Army Awards for Top 10 Inventions of 2005

Technical innovation is present in all militaries, but America’s combination of do-it-yourself types, large defense budgets, and a gadget-happy national character makes it particularly fertile ground. Now add a global war and its challenges, plus a defense sector with a strong small business component made up of ex-military types. The overall innovation transmission belt may not be as tight or as effective as Israel’s or Singapore’s, but the scale of the US defense establishment more than compensates in terms of the sheer number produced.

Adoption, of course, is another matter. One way to improve it is to raise the profile of sucessful innovations through awards. Along those lines, the US Army recently recognized some special innovators by naming its “Top 10 inventions of 2005,” a list that should be of interest to many militaries around the world.

It includes…

CENTCOM Asking for 14 “Project Sheriff” ADS+ Vehicles

Project Sheriff ADS

The Active Denial System “riot breaker” is a microwave transmitter whose focused beams create burning sensations that force targets to flee in order to escape. Despite the pain, however, the beams reportedly cause no real injuries.Testing on human volunteers has been underway, and a September 2005 article noted the role of the Pentagon’s Office of Force Transformation in creating the ADS (aka. “Project Sheriff“) as an alternative to sometimes-lethal plastic bullets or even live ammunition in order to control hostile crowds.

In December 2005, DefenseTech noted that Iraq may soon have a new Sheriff in town… but as of January 30, 2006, an article in US Air Force AIM Point expresses general puzzlement at the failure to release the system, despite the US Army’s requests.

N-G Wins Up to $9.8M for Investigative Data Warehouse

Northrop Grumman Defense Mission Systems Inc. in Reston, VA received a $5.2 million indefinite-delivery/ indefinite-quantity, cost-plus-fixed-fee, performance-based contract to provide technical support for integration, development of interfaces, deployment, testing, and transitional operations and maintenance of an integrated Investigative Data Warehouse and FBI Automated Messaging System (FAMS, which provides for secure email interlinks). This contract includes options, which, if exercised, would bring its cumulative value to an estimated $9.8 million.

Work will be performed in Charleston, SC (10%) and Washington, DC (90%), and is expected to be complete by August 2006 (August 2007 with options). The Request for Proposal was posted on the SPAWAR Systems Center E-Commerce website, with one offer received. The Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in Charleston, SC issued the contract (N65236-05-D-6853).

Inadequate Reporting Freezes Deal for Swiss M113s to Iraq

With great power comes…

Switzerland Economics Minister Joseph Deiss said on Aug. 15/05 that the country would freeze a deal to send 180 armored personnel carriers (APCs) to Iraq until Baghdad guarantees that the APCs will only be used for “police services, border protection and transport of material.” To Defense Industry Daily’s deep annoyance and considerable regret, our article on the subject has become part of that debate after it was used to assert that the M113 armored personnel carriers would become part of Iraq’s new armored division. To reiterate what we’ve told several Swiss journalists, and what we added on Aug. 13/05 to the very article the Basler Zeitung (wrongly) cited as support for this thesis:

DID did not mean to imply that the M113s are destined for Iraq’s armored division – we had no information to that effect. We used the term “join” only in the sense that these are the first 2 major armored assets purchased by the elected Iraqi government. Which does indeed intend to use the T-72s as part of an armored division. DID could have worded that better, and we apologize for any confusion.

We wish the Basler Zeitung had contacted us in some way (editorial@… works) before running this story – and we wish even more fervently that national and international media like Associated Press and Agence France Presse had either contacted us or gone online to the purported source when dealing with a major political issue, and noted our clear explanation that Basler Zeitung’s claim was based on a misinterpretation. Especially after this fact was published in Berne’s NZZ am Sonntag on Aug 14/05. We have contacted them to set the record straight in no uncertain terms, and we will continue to do so with any other media that get this story wrong. Nevertheless, our article was written in a way that someone, for whatever reason, misunderstood. DID is responsible for writing it that way, which means we screwed up, and we apologize.

M113 in Doraville, Georgia

N.B. With respect the plausibility of M113s for police departments et. al, see the photo at left from the Doraville, Georgia, USA police department. More examples of American police with M113s can be found here. Their Iraqi counterparts, who face much bigger threats due to regular attacks by Islamist paramilitary death squads armed with RPGs and explosives, could probably put M113s to very good use.

350 more M1114 Up-Armored Hummers On The Way

On Patrol in Iraq

Armor Holdings subsidiary O’Gara-Hess & Eisenhardt Armoring Co. in Fairfield, OH received a $21 million firm-fixed-price contract to purchase 350 of the M1114 up-armored High Mobility Multi-purpose Wheeled Vehicles (HMMWV). Work will be performed at the company’s Fairfield facilities and is to be completed by Dec. 31, 2005. The U.S. Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command Rock Island at Warren, MI issued the contract (DAAE07-00-C-S019).