Data Recorders (Amendmed)

Sources Sought Amendment for Airborne Flight Test and Ground Telemetry Recorders PSC: 58 - Communication, detection & coherent radiation equipment NAICS: 334511 - Search, Detection, Navigation, Guidance, Aeronautical, and Nautical System and Instrument Manufacturing This is a Sources-Sought Synopsis (SSS) The Air Force Flight Test Center (AFFTC), 412 Test Engineering Group (TENG), Edwards AFB, California is looking for sources of commercial data recording system products and services to support test programs currently executing flight test or are scheduled to be undergoing flight test in the future. The Government anticipates awarding one or more Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ), Firm Fixed Price (FFP) contract(s) with five (5) year duration to support Combined Test Force (CTF) programs at Edwards AFB and other Government agency requirements through Edwards AFB. The primary programs supported by the supplier's products and services will be used to support programs including but not limited to T-38, F-16, F-35, C-130, C-17, KC-10, KC-135, B-1B, B-2, B-52, UCAS and Global Hawk/UAVs. Attachment 1: Detailed list of legacy airborne and legacy ground recorder configurations- (See attachement1) The supplier/contractor will be required to have demonstrated experience and expertise in supporting legacy product (referenced below), providing upgrade/enhancement, repair, maintenance, technical support and replacement for hardware, firmware/software products as necessary. The supplier will be required to have demonstrated experience and expertise in supporting new technical recording requirements including but not limited to new data types that will be defined in future publications of Range Commanders Council (RCC) Inter-Range Instrumentation Group (IRIG) 106, Chapter 10, higher data rates and greater storage capacity. The upgrades and enhancements referred to in this SSS are nominally, but are not limited to include, the added capability to support additional Chapter 10 or other specialized data types. The airborne flight test, training and ground telemetry data acquisition systems are highly advanced instrumentation systems specifically designed for aerospace flight test applications. The airborne legacy and new or enhanced equipment must comply with RCC, document IRIG 106-11 and Chapter 10 and/or previous years' publications of IRIG 106 that legacy recorders were produced under. Continuation of such compliance must be ensured. All output file formats must be in accordance with IRIG-106, Chapter 10. Similarly, compatibility with past and current versions of IRIG 106, Chapter 9 Telemetry Attributes Transfer Standard (TMATS) is mandatory. The legacy equipment includes hardware, and related software/firmware products supplied by Zodiac Data Systems (formerly Heim/Enertec) model ranges including but not limited to D200f, D5000, D7000, MDR, GSSr, and GSR200f existing systems and products that are currently installed on various aircraft and in various ground station facilities. New recorder developments are not in scope for this effort; however, upgrades and modifications to existing designs are required. The Government will not supply any proprietary or intellectual property of Zodiac Data Systems. The supplier must have the capability through internal research and development to support the flight test instrumentation community legacy and new capabilities. These capabilities include but are not limited to previous Chapter 10 interfaces as well as previous versions of IRIG-106 through the current version. These capabilities also include but are not limited to new technical recording requirements for higher data rates and new data types that will be defined in future versions of Range Commanders Council (RCC) Inter-Range Instrumentation Group (IRIG) 106, Chapter 10 (e.g. Ethernet/Gigabit Ethernet, Fire-wire (IEEE-1394b), Universal Serial Bus (USB), RS-232/422, SCSI and SATA and eSATA. The contractor/supplier is not required to have or maintain a secured facility. The supplier will be required to provide onsite technical support with personnel holding a DoD secret clearance. a. Determination of form and fit direct replacement capabilities will be done on either actual proposed equipment or the appropriate technical documentation that provides this information. Determination of functionality of direct replacement products will be done with contractor provided, AF approved, independent testing. The Air Force acknowledges that the IRIG 106 Chapter 10 standard does not ensure playback compatibility among different manufacturer's products. For this solicitation, proposed ground and airborne recorders that provide playback must be capable of playing back RMMs from any of the legacy airborne or ground recorders for all data types. Contractors will be required to provide independent testing of these capabilities to demonstrate compliance utilizing GFE furnished RMMs containing test files. b. On a mission by mission basis, depending of test objectives Edwards test organizations employ airborne recorders that are often reconfigured (with cards/modules to record a specific suite of data type. This drives reconfiguration of the ground or airborne playback recorder to match the airborne recorder configuration. This reconfiguration is accomplished by sharing cards/modules between the airborne and ground recorders. Thus, for legacy recorders, airborne and ground/playback recorders are required to have interchangeable cards/modules within compatible models. Some airborne recorders also have playback capability that is used to support unique test missions and ground tests. Thus, the contractor must provide independent testing that validates this playback capability on these airborne recorders as well. c. Previously, the words "replacement recorder" were used in the sources sought synopsis. This should have been couched as "replacement recorder/replacement parts". Acquisition of replacement recorders were driven by different causes. One cause is when a recorder or enough components are damaged beyond cost effective repair/replacement. Another cause is when new requirements exceed single recorder capacity (e.g. modules/cards for required data types and numbers of channels exceed capacity, or exceed recording capacity); in this case, designs, integration, security approvals and documentation are already available for the existing recorder .Thus the additional recorder must be able to share cards/modules across both recorders. Lastly, direct replacement parts are required to repair broken recorders. d. Direct Replacement Definition. A direct replacement item must be fully form, fit and functionally identical to the item it replaces. Included herein are some salient form, fit and functional criteria examples. These are not complete listings, but are to help the reader understand that "direct replacement" and "form, fit and function" are not casual terms. 1. With regard to form and fit replacement recorders must fit within the existing shape of the item to be replaced. This is not just a height, length, depth three dimensional "box". Most aircraft FTI installations utilize spaces never intended to house test instrumentation. Thus direct replacements must have an almost identical shape to avoid interference with existing equipment or maintenance access/inspection, as well as mate with very specific wire/cable routing and connectors, retaining capability to isolate vibration, provide adequate cooling, enable media insertion/extraction and enable setup/troubleshooting including waste heat removal. Not only must interconnect cables be in the same location, they must also provide identical electrical/electronic function within the allowable range for the item being replaced (e.g. input impedance, short circuit protection, reverse polarity protection, current draw ,transient and quiescent, voltage operating range). 2. Legacy recording equipment that is maintained by this contract is installed in multiple flight test aircraft supporting a myriad of test projects/programs. These projects/programs have end-to-end secure erase procedures that have been validated through rigorous review and approval. Replacement recorders must have secure erase procedures that have no effect in these approved procedures. 3. For both Environmental and EMI/RFI criteria, replacement recorders must meet both the replaced equipment's specified Environmental and EMI/RFI performance, and operate within the environments and EMI/RFI constraints of all the test aircraft that currently utilize the legacy recorders. 4. The above clarifications of direct replacement items (both recorders and replacement parts for same) ensure that existing installation designs can be utilized without revision. Cost to scrap and rework designs would cause excessive funding requirements, extended testing requirements, and cause unacceptable program delays due to test aircraft down time and attendant schedule delay(s). Replacement Recorders/Parts must be compatible and support currently interchangeable spare parts, cards/modules and mainframes. In response to this solicitation please provide the following: - The percentage of items that are COTS (provided to non-governmental entities) and GOTS (provided to government agencies). - Information to demonstrate compliance with standards referenced above. - Identify which applications your company will propose to support with respect to ground recording, airborne recording, data playback and/or support of the legacy equipment. - Include information to identify risks and proposed mitigation of these risks. Risk assessments should cover the repair, technical support, enhancement/upgrade and replacement areas solicited in this document Contractors are encouraged to submit questions and potential RISKS and mitigations associated with this acquisition related to this amendment. - Identify ISO 9000 and AS9100 compliance, including version. This Sources Sought is an amended version of solicitation #: F1S0AF1125B002.