Oracle lands order for Air Force logistics

The Air Force will use Oracle software for the service’s new logistics and financial systems.

The Air Force announced Oct. 21 that it awarded Oracle an $89 million contract to provide software for the Expeditionary Combat Support System. The new logistics system will replace more than 500 of the service’s existing supply systems, according to an Air Force statement.

The Expeditionary Combat Support System will connect Oracle’s enterprise resource planning, advance planning and scheduling software to allow the service’s logisticians to better plan, fix and track maintenance and transportation orders. Using the new logistics system will automate the gathering and interpreting of logistics data, logisticians will be able to provide “the right materiel to the right place at the right time in the right quantity” according to the statement.

“It will [give] Air Force logisticians and operators a near real-time comprehensive view of logistics that they did not have before,” said Col. William Cox, program manager of the Expeditionary Combat Support System.

In addition to the firm-fixed-price contract, the Air Force will award another contract later this year to a systems integrator to install the Oracle products. The Expeditionary Combat Support System will be ready in 2011.

The Air Force chose Oracle software in July for the Defense Enterprise and Accounting Management System. The new financial system will use the company’s E-Business Suite and Database 10G products and will operate at the Air Mobility Command in late 2006.