Aircrew training: race begins for search and rescue contract.

• Author: Kennedy, Harold
• Position: SEARCH AND RESCUE

The Air Force is preparing to award a contract worth as much as $500 million over the next five years to provide training for its combat search and rescue personnel.

The job--dubbed aircrew training and rehearsal support II, or ATARS II--essentially will be a follow on to a $277-million, six-year award originally won in 2000 by Lockheed Martin Information Systems, of Orlando, Fla., said program manager Greg Riddle, in the Ogden Air Logistics Center at Hill Air Force Base, Utah.

A total of 11 companies have expressed interest in the contract, Riddle told National Defense. Among them are Lockheed Martin; L3 Communications, of New York City and Canada-based CAE.

The service plans to award the contract in August or September, with the work to start in January 2007, Riddle said. The winner will provide mission-qualification training and mission-rehearsal system hardware, software and courseware, including instructors, for Air Force special operations units at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M.; Hurlburt Field, Fla., and Harrisburg, Pa.

The training will cover the MH53J/M Pave Low, UH-1N Huey and HH-60G Pave Hawk helicopters; the CV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, and several special-operations versions of the C-130 Hercules fixed-wing transport.

"Basically, the contract will be the same sustainment version that we currently have with Lockheed Martin, which is primarily for combat search-and-rescue mission rehearsals," Riddle said.

The winning contractor will not provide new simulators but use 38 existing ones, which the Air Force has employed for years. "Some of those puppies are more than 15 years old," he said.

The simulators run the gamut from 'very simple desktop versions to full-bloom weapons trainers that provide the ultimate Disney ride in a duplicate of an aircraft cockpit," Riddle said.

Plans for the contract may be complicated, however, by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Moseley's announcement in February that responsibility for most of his service's active-duty combat search and rescue units will be transferred from the Air Force Special Operations Command, which is headquartered at Hurlburt Field, to the Air Combat Command, which is based at Langley Air Force Base, Va.

"That just dropped out of the sky on us," Riddle said. "It looks like we're going to get a fourth master."

Currently, three commands--the U.S. Special Operations Command, AFSOC and the Air Force Air Education and Training Command--have a role in administering the ATARS...