SAIC helping on DISA acquisition

GIG Bandwidth Expansion Notice

Science Applications International Corp. will help the Defense Information Systems Agency in its acquisition of hardware for the Global Information Grid Bandwidth Expansion (GIG-BE) project.

"The hardware acquisition could be as much as $350 million," according to an agency spokesperson. "The government is using SAIC to assist DISA in the selection and ultimate acquisition of the hardware solution. SAIC will put a full and open solicitation on the street and, with the assistance of AT&T, identify a hardware solution.

"If the government accepts the solution," the spokesperson said, "SAIC will acquire the hardware and integrate it into the infrastructure in accordance with government specifications and under government supervision."

The company is seeking bids under its Defense Information System Network (DISN) Global Solutions contract. Repeated attempts to contact SAIC officials were unsuccessful.

The request for proposals on hardware should be issued by the end of this month and awards should be made in the first quarter of fiscal 2004, Anthony Montemarano, program director for GIG-BE services at DISA, said earlier this month at the AFCEA International conference in Washington, D.C.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Harry Raduege Jr., DISA's director, said the GIG-BE project is on schedule to have one-third of the approved sites completed in fiscal 2004, with the rest operational the following year. It is being built to boost the amount of high-speed bandwidth available to the military and intelligence communities.

DOD's GIG-BE vision of a ubiquitous, secure, robust optical IP network supporting all information classification levels should be achieved in fiscal 2005 at the initial sites, Montemarano said, adding that it will expand in future years to more than 600 DISN sites.