ARC-190 High Frequency Radio Market Research for Upgrade or Replacement

Added:
Mar 14, 2018 12:33 pm

Request for Information (RFI):
ARC-190 High Frequency (HF) Radio
Upgrade or Replacement

The United States Air Force, Air Force Materiel Command, Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC), Airborne Communication and Nuclear Command, Control and Communications (NC3), AFLCMC/WNYBB, Robins Air Force Base, GA, is conducting market research to identify parties having an interest in and the resources to provide market research information on upgrading or replacing the ARC-190 High Frequency (HF) radio currently flown on multiple aircraft in the DoD inventory.

PURPOSE/DESCRIPTION
Current Department of Defense (DoD) weapon systems are highly dependent on HF radios for over the horizon, also known as beyond line of sight communications, specific to global conventional and unconventional mission requirements. The DoD currently uses the ARC-190 radio for these missions on the following aircraft:. B-1, B-2, B-52, C-130,

RC-135, C-17, C-5, E-8, F-15E, KC-10, KC-135, HH-60, VC-25.
This Request for Information (RFI) seeks to characterize the current state of research, development, and production of systems that aircrew can use for HF communications requirements. Additionally, the government is interested in the ability to modify current ARC-190 radios or other existing radios to address known obsolescence issues with the current ARC-190 system and impacts on the planned shut-down of the ARC-190 production line.
Backward compatibility with existing systems is a desired goal to improve implementation costs although significant Life Cycle Cost savings would allow consideration of higher development and procurement cost. Enabling commonality across all AF airborne HF radios is also considered a supporting goal.
The government is aggressively pursuing open, non-proprietary, standardized electrical & physical interfaces, message sets, and message protocols for all subsystems and data buses used in their airborne communications suites. The contractor is strongly advised to use when possible commercial off-the-shelf components that currently offer component interface specifications available to the general public at no cost.
See Attached Request for Information and Contractor Capability Survey for additional information.

Added:
Aug 17, 2018 12:14 pm
17 Aug 2018
This RFI is a follow-on to the 14 March 2018 Request for Information (RFI) titled, "RM18-ARC-190_High_Frequency_Radio_Upgrade_or_Replacement", to address gaps identified in the 14 March RFI and request additional information to support AFLCMC market research.


Added:
Aug 28, 2018 11:20 am
28 Aug 2018
Questions and Answers have been posted.
The cut off date for questions is 31 Aug 2018.