Homeland emphasis added at IAC

SURVIAC

The Defense Department has added a homeland security focus along with an increased emphasis on space-based technologies in a recent contract extension for the operation of the Survivability/Vulnerability Information Analysis Center (SURVIAC).

The Defense Logistics Agency awarded the contract Jan. 9 to Booz Allen Hamilton, which has operated the center since 1984. It has a potential value of more than $282 million for 10 years, and the three-year base period is for $56 million, said Bruce Patrick, contract specialist at the Defense Supply Center Columbus, Ohio.

"We're concentrated and focused on the current sets of issues [dealing] with combat effectiveness and survivability of operations and platforms," said Booz Allen vice president Don Vincent, adding that the latest contract includes some new areas of focus.

"There is an emphasis on space technology because it's important to the Defense Department that ground and satellite [systems] continue to function properly," he said, adding that there also is a new emphasis on many aspects of homeland security and homeland defense systems, he said.

SURVIAC, located at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, is a DOD Information Analysis Center sponsored by the Joint Technical Coordination Groups on Aircraft Survivability and Munitions Effectiveness.

The center is DOD's focal point for non-nuclear survivability and vulnerability data, information, methodologies, models and analysis relating to U.S. and foreign aeronautical and surface systems.

SURVIAC, one of 13 IACs within DOD, also provides lessons from prior combat incidents, integrates test results and provides analyses, design guidance and problem-solving expertise. The center also provides services for modeling survivability and lethality.

For example, if a DOD employee would like a survivability analysis on a C-17 aircraft involved in a certain type of conflict, a SURVIAC researcher will provide any data references already available. If there are none, the user has the option of asking the center's staff to perform a specific analysis or study, Vincent said.

The new study immediately would become part of the SURVIAC database and could be used to answer similar requests in the future. The center also maintains a list of subject matter experts from industry and academia, who can sometimes be directly connected to the DOD employee seeking information, he said.