Contractors antsy about army's agile network procurement.

• Position: Defense Insider

Army officials gave themselves a B grade for communicating with industry through the first two rounds of the Network Integration Evaluation program.

Responding to contractors' complaints that the Army has not shared the results of the past two NIE events, Col. John Morrison, director of the Army's Land-WarNet/Battle Command, asked industry for a break.

He said the NIE efforts to field an integrated battlefield communications network so far is moving at lightning speed relative to traditional acquisitions processes. "We've been doing this for nine months," Morrison said.

"Quite frankly, for something inside the [Defense Department] to be moving that fast is pretty significant. So, it is a maturing process," he said. "I would probably give us a B on communicating with industry1. But we're getting much more targeted on what we want industry to help us with."

The Army is set to begin NIE 12.2 in May at Fort Bliss, Texas, and White Sands Missile Range. It will be the third in an ongoing series of field tests designed to provide communications technologies for deployed soldiers.

So far, no new-start contracts for radios or other communications equipment have resulted from NIE evaluations

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The May network trials will be the...