Army Awards SAIC $4B in Modeling and Simulation Contracts

The U.S. Army awarded Science Applications International Corp. two major contracts worth a total of more than $4 billion for modeling and simulation systems engineering and hardware-in-the-loop development, SAIC announced Wednesday. 

The two contracts—separately worth $800 million and $3.6 billion—both support the Army’s Combat Capabilities Development Command, Aviation & Missile Center (DEVCOM AvMC), Software, Simulation, Systems Engineering and Integration, or S3I, Directorate. Gabe Camarillo, who leads SAIC’s Army Business Unit, told Nextgov in an interview the two contracts are a part of a group representing a massive recompete contributing to the Army’s modernization priorities. 

“The Army's talked a lot about persistent modernization and maintaining emphasis on its priorities just given obviously the pressure from near-peer threats, and the rapid proliferation of technology,” Camarillo said, adding that DEVCOM AvMC has been effective at modernizing key platforms like the Black Hawk and Chinook helicopters. “As a key supporter and a key partner to AvMC and S3I, we have been a facilitator and enabler of everything [from] general engineering services to bringing some of the latest digital engineering and modeling and simulation capabilities to enable that very quick, rapid insertion of technology.”

Both contracts were awarded under the General Services Administration’s One Acquisition Solution for Integrated Services, or OASIS, contract. The $800 million contract for simulation services including data science and multidomain operations system-of-systems has a one-year base with four one-year options and a six-month extension. The $3.6 billion hardware-in-the-loop contract will start with a one-year base and comes with seven one-year options and a six-month extension as well. 

These awards are the latest in a series of four: in June 2020, SAIC was awarded a $2.9 billion contract to support S3I with software development and maintenance services. In February 2021, they were awarded another contract for $830 million to provide S3I with life cycle support for manned and unmanned systems.

“You can't let your legacy equipment continue to backslide, and I think the Army has done a very good job in this portfolio of investing resources into AvMC, and this organization at S3I to enable it to do the software engineering, the obsolescence management, to be able to make sure that that fleet remains ready able and capable relative to what the Army needs it to do in any combat environment,” Camarillo said. “That also is a critical part of what these four contracts enable us to do as a key partner for the Army.”

Jennifer Ivey-Harper, a spokesperson for DEVCOM AvMC, told Nextgov in an email modeling and simulation services are a "mainstay" of the kind of support the DEVCOM AvMC provides to Army aviation and missile systems. 

"Modeling and simulation and hardware in the loop capabilities enable the Army to assess capabilities in advance of expensive field testing," Ivey-Harper said. "In addition, environments and conditions not easily created on a test range can be evaluated in these virtual environments. Modeling and simulation and hardware in the loop are key enablers for cost effective and rapid evaluation of new technologies in support of Army modernization priorities. System Integration Laboratories also enable and facilitate integration of new capabilities into both existing and future systems.”