WASHINGTON — The point agency for buying software and technological capabilities for NATO plans to divvy out about $3.2 billion in contracts during the next two to three years, half of which will funnel to satellite communications. Much is yet to be determined from that project, but Peter Scaruppe, director of acquisition for the NATO Communications and Information Agency, spoke to Defense News Jill Aitoro about the goals of the investment during his March 29 visit to Washington.
Can you explain the challenges that NATO is hoping to solve with this program?
The challenges are in the connectivity, of course, in communications; and with satellites it's bandwidth. We don't have enough bandwidth for the reconnaissance capabilities we need. There are a number of nations who need to refresh, but we also need this for NATO operations around the world to make sure the communications systems work, and have the capabilities to process all the data we're collecting from all the various other systems to [create] an operational picture that NATO can use.
Would this support actual battlefield communications or more enterprise IT capabilities?
It's both. It's for operations in the theaters but also the connectivity of the NATO locations.
I know specifics of the program are still getting worked out. Do you know if the plan is to build new satellites to launch into space, or to rely on existing assets?
It's a mix of using existing capabilities from the nations, but also the launch of new satellite capabilities. It's still in its infant stages. We have not secured the funding — we have to go to the nations and make a business case, so to speak, ask for the money, then the nations will tell us if this is enough or too much, or not enough. Then we will be able to launch the competition for the project, launch the invitation for bid, and eventually get to a contract.
The process is first to get the money authorized, [which we expect] in the second semester of this year, and then issue the invitation for bid toward the end of the year or early next, and then we don't know how long the competition will run, because it depends on many technical issues — too many to mention.
A big challenge for governments around the world that hope to implement new technology is attracting non-traditional players. How is NATO trying to bring in those kinds of companies for this and other programs?
That is a big thing for NATO. First, we want to attract non-traditional suppliers who might not like to deal with an organization like NATO, because they think our administration and processes are cumbersome, take too long, bring too much red tape. It may take a long time to see a bid through to competition, and in this time the bidders need to keep the team in place to have the expertise [needed] to fulfill the contract. That's a risk for especially smaller companies. We also know there are a lot of innovative companies that don't need NATO as a customer. We are a smaller customer than the big commercial entity or IT company. So they're not necessarily interested automatically.
We also need to take care of small and medium enterprises, because most of the 28 NATO nations do not have the big prime contractors. There's only a handful of nations that have those. There's a plethora of industry in these other nations that also expect a certain return on investment of their contributions. We're not a cost share, equal work share organization — we deal in competition. It's survival of the fittest. But we still need to make sure [to maintain] the industrial base.
Jill Aitoro is editor of Defense News. She is also executive editor of Sightline Media's Business-to-Government group, including Defense News, C4ISRNET, Federal Times and Fifth Domain. She brings over 15 years’ experience in editing and reporting on defense and federal programs, policy, procurement, and technology.
