Small businesses fight uphill battle for Army network contracts.

• Author: Parsons, Dan
• Position: Army Technology - Company overview

WHITE SANDS MISSILE RANGE, N.M.--Here at a forward operating base in the middle of 2.2 million acres of uninhabited New Mexico desert is where companies hope they can do what they have told the Army they can do.

Called Oro Grande, this small tented outpost--ringed by concertina wire and flanked by motor pools of mine resistant ambush protected vehicles--is where lab-tested elements of the Army's newest battlefield network are finally evaluated for integration into individual units and vehicles. If they don't work here, the Army won't buy them.

It is the ultimate arena in which large and small companies contend for contracts in the Army's "agile acquisition" process, the third in a biannual series of Network Integration Evaluation events.

Over the horizon is an entire brigade of soldiers, tanks and trucks testing a new mobile communication network against a constant onslaught of virtual enemies. After 10 years of development, the Army's secure battlefield network, its top modernization priority, is fielded and being put through the ringer before it goes into combat next year.

"We have made a quantum leap in our capability to establish the network so that the unit can use the network in an operationally relevant environment," Col. Dan Hughes, director of systems integration for program executive office of integration, tells National Defense. "Instead of them taking the equipment and asking 'How do I make this work?' they now can say 'How can I take this and attack this operation?"

Most of the components of the network are existing programs of record built by companies like Thales, General Dynamics and Harris Corp. that have a long history of doing business with the Defense Department. Also in the field are smaller companies, like Austin, Texas-based Ringtail Design, which was extolled by several Army officers involved with the NIE as an example of increased inclusion of small businesses in the acquisition model.

But small firms face sometimes insurmountable hurdles in their quest for government contracts. Not the least is that meeting Defense Department requirements are new to them and their support teams. That's something even Army officials are readily willing to admit.

"A lot of times we go to a vendor and they say, 'Sure, we can do that,' while their idea of we can do that' is not always the same as what someone who has been through full-on new equipment training expects it to do," says Maj. Erik Webb, product manager for the Program Management Office Capability Package with the System of Systems Integration Directorate.

By the time systems under evaluation reach the range, they have already been...