Lt. Col. Keith Jordan, product manager for Tactical Cyber and NetOps within the U.S. Army’s Program Executive Office Command Control Communications-Tactical, or PEO-C3T, said a recent draft request for proposals marks a key step in the military branch’s plan to build an agile, software-defined network through the United Network Operations initiative, Federal News Network reported Thursday.
Jordan told FNN in an interview that responses to the draft RFP for the multiple-award, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract will help inform the Army’s long-term plans for leveraging cloud services and bringing in commercial technologies in support of the new network under UNO.
Responses to the draft solicitation are due July 17.
According to the report, PEO-C3T expects to release a final RFP for the IDIQ contract in early 2025 and make awards in early 2026.
According to the lieutenant colonel, the military branch will soon award “several” other transaction agreements to assess prototypes for the future network.
“The Army acquisition executive last year decided that UNO would utilize the software acquisition pathway. … This really is a revolution of thinking in the Army of how we recognize that software is different than hardware and it needs to be procured differently,” Jordan said.
With the new pathway, the Tactical Cyber and NetOps project manager noted that software capabilities can be delivered on an incremental basis.
“The whole idea is we’re able to rapidly make these updates versus in the past where it may take a really long time to make an update. We want to update very often based on feedback in whatever theater we might be operating in,” Jordan added.